Of course, staying on at Sylvan at all was itself a risk-Jonah Green had found me here, hadn’t he? Come walking right into my world?
But Jonah was dead; he wouldn’t be crawling up out of that grave again, not even on Judgement Day. And he had no doubt been discreet in his inquiries about me-he had to be, since he was a selfish sociopath plotting his own daughter’s death, which generally calls for discretion.
Thing was, I was just too goddamn old to start over.
And I liked it here. I liked the cabin, and Gary, and the (must I use this word?) lifestyle. In the unlikely event that assholes with guns came looking for me, they would find another asshole with a gun who would kill them.
A rationalization, sure; but I could live with it.
You will be relieved, I’m sure, to learn that my problem with insomnia was a thing of the past-I was sleeping long and deep with my only problem that low backache I had on waking, but walking over and swimming and using the Jacuzzi and doing a few stretches got rid of that.
Still, old habits die hard, and three nights before the Sylvan staff was about to arrive, a sound woke me-a clatter out there that was not fucking Santa Claus, and my waking thought was that somebody had broken in.
Funny how I can sleep so deep, but the littlest goddamn noise and I’m suddenly wide awake, alert as a butt-fucked sailor; I sat up in bed, the nine millimeter from the nightstand tight in my hand.
Call it paranoia, if you will. But when you make a career out of killing people, you tend to think the worst.
And something was definitely rattling around out in my kitchen.
I crept through the darkened cabin and saw a little light was on in there. Gun in hand, I slipped in and flipped the overhead light switch.
“Shit!” Janet said, wincing at the flood of illumination.
As usual, she was wearing one of my shirts, legs bare, her long dark blonde hair fetchingly tousled, and she was bending down, looking in the refrigerator. She straightened like an exclamation point. “Are you trying to scare me to death?”
I lowered the gun. “No.”
She shut the refrigerator door and turned to me, her expression innocently apologetic now. “Did I wake you?”
I sat at the kitchen table and put the nine millimeter down in front of me, like it was a fork or a spoon. Rubbed my face with two hands.
“I sleep light,” I said.
“So I’ve noticed.” She stood next to me and touched my shoulder and smiled in that way that meant she wanted something. “There’s not a damn thing in that fridge…Would you do me a favor?”
“Who do you want me to kill?”
She gave me a reproving look. One might say, a wifely look.
Then her expression softened and she asked, “Could you please make a convenience store run?”
I just looked at her. She had no notion of the significance of her request.
Janet gestured around the little kitchen, like a disaster survivor talking to a reporter about the damage. “We have cereal here, but no milk. I can make a little list…Would you mind, terribly? And, uh-this is embarrassing, but…”
And now the poor-pitiful-me look.
“…would you mind picking up some Tampax?”
I let out a long sigh, pushed out the chair, stood, and said, “No problem.”
She touched my face and kissed my cheek. “You are so sweet…”
Maybe I was.
But I took the nine millimeter with me.