So now instead of being haunted by one woman, I was being haunted by two.
I wasn’t good with idle time to fill. I was used to working… on pursuing a Target, a job, until it was complete. But this one was different. I couldn’t pursue the senator’s daughter like I would any other woman. I had to wait. I had to be patient. Building up trust wasn’t something I could do overnight.
I went to a gym in the bad part of town. Pulled my Porsche into the alley next to the entrance. There was a bum sitting near the dumpster, reading a tattered paper. He eyed my car and my clothes when I got out.
I fished a couple twenties from my pocket and extended them to him. “Watch my car. Don’t let anyone touch it. If you have problems, come get me. If it’s still here and undamaged when I come out, I’ll give you two hundred bucks.”
He eyed the cash in my hand.
“This now. Two hundred after. Got me?”
He nodded and took the cash.
I went toward the back door.
“You know there are better gyms on the other side of town. Gyms for your kind of folk,” he said.
“Yeah,” I replied and went through the door.
There were better gyms. But he was wrong about my kind of folk. I might look the part of a high-society man. I might have the money and the connections. But deep down beneath it all… I was a fighter.
The gym was one large square and smelled like no one had cleaned it since it was built. I walked past the free weights, the heavy bags hanging from the ceiling, and the many jump ropes hanging on the wall and into the tiny locker room where I kept a locker. I undid the lock and pulled out my gym clothes, stripping away the high-society man and putting on the one I was born as. When my wifebeater, shorts, and shoes were on, I went out to the ring.
There was a guy there, a little bigger than me, and I made eye contact with him. We both laced up some gloves and got in the ring.
I didn’t hold back. The mood I was in wouldn’t have allowed me to anyway. Even after all these years, after all the bodies I’d been through, I still remembered how to box. There wasn’t anything like it. Just two guys and their fists. Back in my days of boxing, I used to think that sheer will was what won fights. I still believed that. But I also learned that those who didn’t have enough will to win cheated.
I took a glove to the eye, felt the skin around it split and the warm trickle of blood down my face. The cut stung instantly because my salty sweat mixed in with the blood. The guy that hit me backed off, figuring I would get out of the ring.
I wasn’t getting out of the ring.
I sprang forward and delivered a series of rapid hits that had him shaking his head to clear his vision. I pounced again, dropping him to the mat but still punching, still delivering blows. It took two guys to pull me off. It wasn’t until they literally tossed me out of the ring that I snapped back to reality. I stood up, wiping at the blood on my face and peering into the ring.
The guy was unconscious. He had a split lip and it looked like a broken nose. The way he lay so still, I wondered if he was dead. Is that what I looked like the night I died? Was I that still and pale with blood on my face?
I realized the room was entirely too quiet. I glanced around. People were staring. Everyone was staring. Except for the men who were bent over the man I pummeled.
I hadn’t been trying to kill him. I was just trying to forget.
And then I realized if he were dead, I would have broken yet another one of G.R.’s rules: kill no one but a Target.
I’d gotten away with it once… many years ago. Something else I really didn’t want to remember. Afterward I’d walked around in a state of panic thinking G.R. would find out and Recall me. But he never did.
I didn’t think I would get that lucky twice.
The man in the ring moaned and relief poured through me. He wasn’t dead. It wasn’t really that I valued his life so much—I had no value for life at all.
I just didn’t want to make this job any harder than it already was.
Chapter Twelve
“Bandage - a strip of material such as gauze used to protect, immobilize, compress, or support a wound or injured body part.”
Frankie
The best part about today? It was almost over. The lines at the DMV today had been longer and more hellacious than usual. Or maybe my mood was just more hellacious that usual. Starting my day with a demanding, self-important moron banging on my door at the crack of dawn just set me off on the wrong path.
On my way out the door, I rummaged through my endless bag of things I might need but never actually used, searching for my keys. When I couldn’t find them, a little tingle of panic shot through me, the kind of panic I always felt when I thought I lost something important.
Except I didn’t lose my keys.
I didn’t have them because I didn’t drive to work today.
“Ugh!” I burst out, stomping my foot on the pavement, and turned to go back into the building. A flash of red caught my eye. I did a double take over my shoulder and sure enough, my Jeep was sitting in the parking lot.
I had no idea how it got there, but I wasn’t about to complain. Now I didn’t have to call a cab. I hurried over to the driver’s side and opened the door; my keys were in the ignition.
Charming had to have done this. He’s the only one that knew I hadn’t driven to work. He’s also the only idiot I knew that would park my Jeep in the parking lot and leave the keys in the ignition.
“Well, I guess that’s better than him actually walking inside. Then I would’ve had to see him again,” I said out loud, disgust lacing my tone.
“Are you referring to me?” someone said from the back seat.
“Agh!” I practically fell out of the Jeep as I was climbing in.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, swinging my purse behind me to whack him on the leg.
He dodged the blow and sat up. “Well, I’ll tell you what I’m not doing and that’s being comfortable. The back seat in this thing is worse than a Porta Potty on a hot day.”
I snorted. “Like you ever use a Porta Potty.”
“I brought your Jeep here because I knew you didn’t have a way home. I was trying to be nice.”
“Please. You aren’t nice. What do you want?”
“Can we go now?” he asked, sitting up from his reclined position. “I left my car at your apartment.”
I turned around to glare at him, but my glare fell away. “What happened to your face?”
“Nothing.”
It wasn’t nothing. He had an angry red gash on his eye that was starting to blacken. “You need to put some ice on that.”