A Guardian Angel (11 page)

“No,”
Andy slurred. “Not exactly. My real name is Andy Winter.”

“Are you
being serious?” Steven laughed. He was certain that his leg was
being pulled. “That's not even funny.”

“I'm not
joking,” Andy stated. “Haley Flynn? Why I'm here?”
He waited for Steven to nod, and gulped. “I'm here to kill
her.”

Steven chuckled,
cutting the noise off awkwardly once Andy's solemn silence
highlighted the laughter and revealed its inappropriateness. The
color started seeping away from the data collector's face. “Really?”
he asked.

Andy drew his gun
and tossed it onto the coffee table with a fling. Steven's eyes
bulged out of his head at its appearance. Andy could almost hear the
man sweating as his opinion of him was rapidly thrown into question.
“Every bit of information you and I have been collecting has
been for the sole purpose of finding some believable way to murder
her so that it looks like an accident,” Andy explained, finding
it hard to keep his voice level.

“Are you
serious?” Steven repeated.

“I'm a
hitman, Steven,” Andy said after a moment of silence. “A
murderer.”

“You've
killed people?” Steven asked, having a very violent internal
battle between seriousness and humor. Both sides were taking heavy
losses.

“Yes.”

Terror took over
the man. “Jesus Christ!” He began pacing. “Why,
Andy? What the hell are you doing, man?”

Andy looked up at
him, his tear-filled eyes squinted in confusion. He had no response.
Some part of him wished so much that Steven would hit him. That he'd
kick him into the street and spit on him. Steven stood in grief.
Horrible news had been delivered and he felt like someone who had
just been told someone they loved passed, incapable of exhaling.

“What was my
role?” Steven asked.

Andy thought about
the wording. “I've said. You helped me find her weakness.”

“And what was
that?”

“Traffic,”
Andy replied. He had only just now thought of it, but he had
contemplated his options over and over. Every night, he fell asleep
thinking of how to kill Haley Flynn, right down to removing his own
element entirely. Making the scene devoid of evidence. It was his
nature.

“What?”
Steven breathed. Andy could no longer tell if the man was furious or
afraid. Or, perhaps, interested.

“We have a
lot of evidence that points to her not being the most capable of
drivers,” Andy began. The way he spoke scared Steven. He seemed
to be thinking aloud. “Didn't you ever see her drive around?”

Still through
disgust, Steven thought. “Once,” he replied. “That
was only because she had to go out of town and her brother insisted.
I've picked up that he has some weird thing about buses. He hates
them.”

Andy brightened up.
This seemed to unnerve his friend. “Well, see?” Andy
started to explain. “She's driving to the airport tomorrow –
in just a couple hours.”

“How do you
know that?” Steven asked. He was creeped out by his own
interest. “Why wouldn't her brother drive her?”

“No, he's
working,” Andy replied. “His shift just began.”

Steven's eyes asked
questions that Andy never answered. “So what are you saying?”
Steven asked. “What is supposed to happen to me, Andy? Is this
Graves' plot?”

The hitman ignored
him. Perhaps it was the calming buzz of the alcohol but something
soothed him and allowed him to think. It kept the horror at bay while
he prepared for it. Beckoned it inward.

“Andy?”
Steven shouted. He was shaking in place. “Am I supposed to be
killed, too? I know too much. I don't want to die, Andy!”

“You were
supposed to stay ignorant.” The assassin took another sip.

“Well good
damn work making sure that happened!” Steven cried. Then he
became even more pale than he already was. He raised his hands to his
mouth, his eyes wide. He started backing away from Andy. “You
haven't?” his voice quavered. He stopped and looked down at his
feet, unsure of himself. “I mean, you didn't just – did
you?”

“She's
alive,” Andy started, taking another gigantic gulp. He looked
up at his only friend in the city of Lumnin who peered at him like he
was a monster. “Can't you see what this means? Can you?”
he pleaded.

“Yeah, as far
as I see,” Steven spat, “you've gotten me killed. What
have you – ”

“I am going
to die tomorrow,” Andy said, allowing the heavy tear that had
piled up on his cornea to fall off and into his glass. “Me or
her. One of us will be killed.”

“Are you
still going to do it?” Steven asked. “How? I thought you
liked her – ”

“I do like
her!” he cried. “But if I don't do it, someone else will.
She has to die!” He threw his glass at the wall. It cracked
anticlimactically and crumpled to the floor by the television. He
turned and walked away. He couldn't seem to be able to look at the
rest of the room. Once he had collected himself, he went over and
began cleaning up the shattered glass. “It should be me,”
Andy demanded.

“What about
me?” Steven started. “If they come looking for you or
her, they're going to come looking for me! What am I supposed to do?
Pretend I didn't know?”

“Yes,”
Andy hissed. “Like your life depends on it.”

Steven scoffed at
the joke. “Andy, I don't know if I can handle this, buddy,”
he said. He paced. “I'm not a bad guy, you know. I'm really
not. I'm a lot nosier than I ought to be, perhaps a pervert, but I
can't deal with killing someone.”

Andy sympathized as
much as he could. “Can you deal with dying?” he asked.
“That may be your only choice otherwise.”

Steven sat down on
the couch and cradled his forehead in his hands. After a silent
pause, he asked. “Can you really do it?” He looked over
at his new friend, the man who had deceived him. The man he couldn't
label as either a companion or an enemy. Would he be safe if it
weren't Andy he had to work with? Wouldn't it just be another hitman?
Perhaps Andy was the best person for this moment. “Can you
really kill Haley and make it look like an accident?”

Andy sighed. He
didn't know that himself. He wished there was some way that the
problem would go away from him and there would be no lifeless bodies
to see anymore. Nothing horrible to hear about and nothing to regret.

No more funerals
for Max.

“Give me your
notes,” Andy said.

“Sorry?”
Steven blinked.

“Your notes
on Haley,” Andy elaborated. “Let me look over them.”

With a long pause
of hesitation, Steven went back into his room and rummaged around for
something. He came back with a crumpled notebook. It was furled
around the edges from constant use. Andy took it in silence and then
read over the contents. It seemed like hours before he spoke again,
startling Steven.

“Cut the
brake line,” Andy said. “That's what I'll do. She won't
last long on the freeway.” He closed his eyes in pain.

“That's
working on sheer chance,” Steven pointed out.

“That's all I
can do,” Andy offered, his eyes moist. He rushed to the kitchen
and searched the junk drawer until he found a box cutter. He started
moving toward the door.

“Andy!”
Steven called to him. The assassin turned. “You're too drunk.
I'll drive.”

Grateful, Andy
nodded his head. He cocked it to the side. “Why help me from
here?” he asked.

“Well, to be
honest I'm in a lot of trouble,” Steven started. “We're
in a lot of trouble. All I know for sure is that I'm glad you are on
my side.”

-Chapter Ten-

Deadline

For the final time,
they pulled into the alley behind the Five Point apartments. It was
still, the lights in the window that belonged to Haley were on but
dim. No movement could be seen. Silence settled in the car before
Steven broke it.

“Are you
really ready for this?” he asked. He looked over at the
apartments like a startled rabbit. It seemed as though he expected an
ambush. His nerves didn't comfort Andy. The hitman ignored him as he
slipped out of the vehicle. Steven pulled the car away to find a
better place to hide while Andy made his way through the dark areas
of the back yard until he came to the garage. The door was locked, as
it should be, so he made use his of long-learned skills of lock
picking to pry his way in.

The only thing in
the entire garage was an older brown Subaru. It sat in slumber on the
concrete floor with worn wheels. Andy made his way over to its side
and rested his kit of things on the cold concrete floor. He found
that the car was unlocked when he tried the handle. This would be too
easy, Andy thought.

He worked to turn
the front wheels of the car all the way without making a racket, then
slipped back out and located the brake line. He noticed the door
leading toward the rest of the apartment was cracked open. Every
instinct told him to walk away from it, to go back to the brake line
and slash it with haste. But for whatever reason, something drew him
toward it. He cracked the door more and peeked into the building.

It was dark and
dormant. No one stirred, but Andy waited in silence to make sure. The
last thing he wanted now was to get caught, to have the choice he had
to make taken away from him. He didn't want to lose control but he
couldn't leave. He could feel his heart beat.

He tiptoed into the
apartment, observing everything in detail and doing his best not to
disturb a thing. There were signs of a recent shower, the mist still
in the air. Still, there was no movement. The entire apartment seemed
like a dead, decaying version of itself in the dark night. Like all
of the things left in it were abandoned by the previous residents.

Andy made his way
to the stairs with soft steps when breathing drew him away from them.
Carefully, he cracked open a door to a room by the first landing. A
dull light bled through the doorway as he opened it. He was
terrified, certain that someone was watching him. The snoring put him
at minor ease. As he looked in, nothing could be discerned. The
fragile and feminine tone of the breathing heap on the bed became
unmistakable.

Haley Flynn looked
gorgeous, even in the dull light of the lamp on the nightstand. She
held her expressions in a lazy way as she slept. She must have fallen
asleep right after showering, waiting for the time of her departure
to arrive. She laid with her pillow as if it were a lover, a
comforting friend that had no doubt been cried into dozens of times.
Snoring wasn't the term Andy would use to describe the noise coming
from her, but more of a childlike purring.

She was dreaming.

For a moment, Andy
wondered where her mind was taking her now. If it was showing her a
marvelous scene of joy or whether it clung onto her high hopes and
brought them down in despair. Perhaps, wherever it was that she
dreamed of, it was her place to go and hide from the rest of the
world. In her investigations she no doubt had evil things creep into
her head. Bad things that she did not put there herself.

I wonder what a
nightmare is for Haley Flynn,
Andy thought. Was it a world in
which people stabbed each other in the back the moment they're turned
just to insure that the same isn't done to them?
If so, then she's
going to wake up in a nightmare,
Andy decided. A world where
people die without knowing it. Without ever facing their killers.
Without knowing why.

I could do it
right here,
Andy thought. Cover her mouth and make sure that
another breath never escaped. He knew that she would wake up. She
would kick and try to scream, all the while staring some strange
uncharacteristic stare of horror straight into his eyes. The man she
fancied. Killing her. Because it's his job.

That's not what
it's about anymore, though,
Andy added.
It's me or her.
If
Leroy Graves doesn't have Haley's body, he will go to extraordinary
lengths to get his. And she still wouldn't be safe. She would be
hunted to the ends of the earth. That's the kind of man Graves is. He
will not let this go.
And I can't protect her if I'm dead,
he
thought.

With the movement
of a cat burglar, Andy lifted a pillow from the chair by the door.
Smother her,
he thought. She wouldn't even have to see him do
it. She wouldn't even have to know what was happening.