“That’s it, Josh, get some nice thick prints on that handle. Come on, do it like you mean it,” his killer said, peering over Josh on tiptoe from the kitchen doorway.
“Are you sure you can make this look like a convincing lover’s disagreement turned murder, story at
eleven?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t believe how I’ll make this look.
You’d be impressed. It’s a shame you won’t see it.”
“So how did you make Margaret Macey’s death
look?”
“Margaret Macey, Jesus.” Mitchell blurted out a
laugh. “I didn’t do a thing. You did it all for me. I wasn’t expecting that, I can tell you. It was a dream come true. I saw you running out and I was worried. I thought you had screwed everything up, but instead you finished my job just as I wanted. It was beautiful.”
Josh glanced over his shoulder at Mitchell. Mitchell’s focus was on the recollection rather than him. His guard was down. He hoped Mitchell thought he was a willing victim who was going to roll over and die for him. Josh pulled on the knife embedded in Bell’s chest.
“What did you do to scare her?” Mitchell asked.
“She thought I was you.”
Mitchell laughed again.
The knife was stuck tight and required more effort than Josh expected. He’d forgotten the blade was in a person until he looked at Bell. Her eyes didn’t register Josh’s desecration. He felt nauseated.
He glanced back at Mitchell. He hoped the killer
wouldn’t see him tug on the handle. If Mitchell saw him, the hit man would put a bullet in his head without a second thought. Josh’s brains would be splattered all over the wall, game over. The resistance broke, the blade slid from its human scabbard.
“That’s enough. You don’t have to hold the thing all night,” Mitchell said.
Josh snapped around in a heartbeat with the knife in his hand and threw it at Mitchell. Slipping in Bell’s blood at the moment of release, Josh fell backward onto the blood-soaked floor. He crashed into the cabinet behind him, knocking his head on its door.
Mitchell reacted in an instant. He aimed and fired the gun.
The knife hit Mitchell in the chest as he squeezed the trigger on the semiautomatic. Josh’s slip caused the thrown knife to skew its trajectory and the blade batted flatly against the killer before it clattered to the floor.
The knife did knock Mitchell’s aim off and his shot went wild into the ceiling.
Josh clambered to his feet and rushed the hit man.
Before Mitchell could aim again, Josh smashed into the smaller man, driving him into the kitchen door frame. Mitchell yelped, but brought his knee up into Josh’s gut. Josh lost his grip on the would-be killer.
The hit man brought his knee up again, this time into Josh’s face.
The force of the blow jerked Josh’s head back and he released the hit man and clutched his nose, surprised to find it intact. The pain was nauseating. He stumbled backward, trod on Bell’s discarded beer bottle and fell again.
Mitchell steadied his aim at the falling man and fired the weapon.
Josh fell and struck the floor, the bottle slithering across the vinyl. He saw the flash of flame and a two inch hole appeared in the particleboard door to the left of his head. The odor of burnt wood and hot glue from the door’s wound smelled like a sawmill.
The bottle banged against the skirting board and ricocheted back across the floor toward Josh’s outstretched
hand. Acting on reflex, he grabbed the bottle
by the neck and threw it at Mitchell.
This time Josh’s aim was true. The bottle hit
Mitchell in the head, thudding into his left eyebrow.
Smashing on impact, fragments of glass sprayed over the man’s face. He yelled through gritted teeth, his free hand to his eyes. His gun hand pointed in the general direction of Josh. The killer tottered backward into the living room.
Josh got to his feet and charged the hit man. He knew he had to disarm the killer before he had the chance to recover. Throwing household items was no defense
against a gun. Charging at the blinded Mitchell, Josh grabbed the wooden chopping block from the countertop.
Raising the board above his head, Josh brought the block down, edge on, onto Mitchell’s gun arm.
The resulting sharp crack told both men Mitchell’s arm was broken. The hit man screamed in agony and the pistol went flying from his grasp.
Driven on by his initial success, Josh swung the
wooden board like a major league batter. This time the board smashed into Mitchell’s face just as he removed his hand from in front of it. The resounding thud echoed like the crack of a baseball going out of the park.
Mitchell careened back, clipping an armchair, and fell to the floor. Blood spread between the hit man’s fingers covering his nose and eyes, spilling down his face.
He grimaced and exposed teeth rimmed with red in a split and rapidly swelling mouth.
Shocked by the carnage inflicted on the man’s face, Josh turned the chopping block over and saw a blood spattered bloom the size of an open hand smeared over its surface. Disgusted, he sneered, dropped the wooden board and looked for the gun.
Mitchell moaned.
Searching the carpeted floor, Josh found the gun.
The weapon had landed in the corner of the room. He snatched the weapon up. It was heavier than he expected.
Having never owned or fired a gun, he never
imagined the pistol would be such an effort to hold, let alone shoot.
Josh turned the gun on the killer. He would hold the hit man at bay with it while he called the cops. They can sort the whole fucking thing out now. Josh had done his part. He’d found the killer who knew everything the police needed to know. They could take it
from here. The gunshot surprised Josh and he fell backward against the wall. He immediately checked himself for a wound and found none.
Mitchell was sitting up with another gun in his left hand, this weapon smaller than the one Josh held. He was grinning through an open wound of a mouth and squinting through lacerated and bloody eyes. His right arm hung limply at his side. The hit man fired again.
The second shot also missed its target.
“It always pays to bring two guns,” Mitchell said through his broken face.
Without hesitation, Josh jerked his arm out at the killer and fired once, twice, three times in rapid succession.
The first bullet went wild, the second hit Mitchell’s right shoulder and the third hit him in the chest.
Mitchell jerked with each impact from the bullets, but didn’t go down. He did not fire his weapon. Josh, not taking it as a sign of surrender, took another step forward and fired for the fourth time. Another burst of light flared from the gun muzzle, another simultaneous explosion deafened, another spent cartridge ejected onto the carpet, more burnt cordite filled the room and Mitchell took a second hit to the chest. This time, he went down.
Please be dead. Please be fucking dead, Josh’s mind chanted as he rushed over to the killer. Mitchell might have been on his back, but that gun was still in his hand. And as much as he hated having to go near the man, it wasn’t over until he saw a corpse. He stood over Mitchell and saw rasping breaths leaving the hit man’s body. Josh prepared to fire for the last time.
The professional winced in pain. His body sent messages to his brain, none of them good. How could three
small chunks of metal feel like cannonballs thrown at his chest? Talking was a bitch—it felt as if his teeth were dice shaken in a cup and scattered across a table.