We did a couple more shots, talked more football s.h.i.t, and b.i.t.c.hed about the economy until the hotel bartender finally tossed us out. Jim and I shook hands, and he wished me the best of luck. I jotted my cell number down on the back of one of the cardboard coasters used at the bar and asked him to call me if he heard of any work.

Once Jim was out of sight, I pushed my way through the revolving doors and hailed down a cab to take my drunk a.s.s home. I hadn't actually planned on drinking as much as I did I didn't like the out of control feeling of intoxication but it seemed to have served its purpose as far as "bonding" with Jim was concerned.

I stumbled into my apartment and nearly fell over Odin twice as I attached his leash and took him out the back door. My head was swimming, and I had such a rough time just getting Odin outside in the first place that I decided to forgo the leash law and just dropped the people-end of the thing. Odin never wandered off anyway, and it allowed me time to lean against the wall of the building and debate the merits of puking in the bushes versus puking on the rocks.

Splatter was bad, so I maneuvered a little closer to the bushes.

The dog went about his business, watered down a couple of sticks that were likely going to be bushes in the spring, and then took a s.h.i.t next to the sidewalk. That's when I realized I hadn't brought any doggie bags down with me.

There was no way in h.e.l.l I was going to make it all the way back up to the apartment and then down again to clean up s.h.i.t. It was going to have to wait until morning, and whatever neighbor who was out at this time of night to complain could suck my c.o.c.k.

I whistled, and Odin lumbered up next to me. I checked around to see if anyone had noticed my dog-owner's ultimate sin, but there wasn't anyone around. Just as I was picking up the end of his leash to take him back inside, Odin decided there was something seriously interesting about the "flower bed" recently constructed in the park. There weren't any actual flowers or even any dirt just a lot of slate rocks. I was actually considering puking on them, but Odin was more interested in what was down around the brick base. I sighed and let him continue on it was easier than moving, anyway.

Odin suddenly stopped sniffing at the ground and let out a growl.

I looked up through blurry eyes at the two kids who were walking across the gra.s.s of Lake Sh.o.r.e East Park, coming from between the buildings on East Randolph Street. It really was too late for them to be doing anything legal, and the way they looked up at me and nudged each other was so obvious, it was almost pathetic.

At least, it would have been pathetic under other circ.u.mstances.

Normally this situation wouldn't have concerned me. Two punk teenagers didn't tend to be much of a challenge, but I was drunk. Aside from drunk, I was also unarmed and feeling pretty d.a.m.n stupid to boot.

The two kids moved off to one side of the walkway where the light wasn't as good, but I could still see them pretty well. One had dark hair and a pretty beefy build, and the other was smaller, thinner, and had red hair in a greasy mop on the top of his head falling over into one eye.

The dark-haired one reached around to the back of his jeans and pulled out something shiny and sharp looking. Whatever doubts I might have had before about motives evaporated.

Odin growled again before he took a couple steps to move himself between me and the two teen boys. I put an end to that immediately because the last thing I needed was for the dog to get knifed. I wasn't in any shape to drive him to the vet. I cut him off with my legs, forcing his bulk behind my knees and partially into the rock garden.

"How about you give me your wallet," the kid on the right said. "Maybe then I'll decide not to leave you and the pooch bleeding in the street."

I debated telling him that the street was a good hundred yards away but decided against it. The other dude snickered, and I just shook my head a little. That action caused enough vapor trails to make me stop moving immediately. Taking a step back, I almost tripped over the d.a.m.n dog again.

"The dude's f.u.c.ked up," the red-haired kid said. I couldn't help but look at his hair and remember David Ha.s.selhoff in Piranha 3-DD. He had played himself in the ridiculously campy horror movie Jonathan once made me watch. In the movie, he kept going off on a little red-headed kid who was too stupid to live through to the end. He kept calling him by the same nickname throughout little ginger moron.

I heard myself snicker.

"You think this is funny?" the darker kid asked.

"Now that I think about it, yeah," I answered. "You gonna knife me and the dog here in the park and then drag us over to the street? What exactly does that accomplish for ya?"

My vision blurred again, and the next thing I knew, there was a sharp pain in my side and I dropped to my knees on the cement as Odin let out a short bark.

There was just no way this night could get worse.

Chapter 4 Patient Research.

I landed on the ground, not because of the hit it wasn't that hard, though somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought a rib might be bruised but because my body decided it was just the right time to get rid of the alcohol in my system.

Fort.i.tude only goes so far, and I wasn't able to hold it in any longer.

My mind tried to count the number of shots I must have done with Jim, the security guy, as I retched into the shrubs near the edge of the park. The commotion going on around me barely made sense as I fertilized the rock garden and reminded myself over and over again why I didn't make a habit of drinking too much.

I hated puking.

Just hated it.

Even when I was a kid, the very notion of puking was abhorrent. The slightest feeling of nausea had been enough to nearly send me into a panic attack, and if I had an actual stomach bug, I would cry and scream between stomach heaves. I honestly thought major organs or other important bits of my insides would come out if I threw up too much. I remembered the feeling of terror and helplessness as I knelt over the grimy porcelain bowl at the convent and tried to keep my insides actually on the inside of me.

There was one nun who would smack me and tell me to stop being such a baby; I think I had been about four at that time. Needless to say, that didn't help me get over my fear of vomiting, and though adulthood had given me a more realistic perspective on the whole thing, I still hated it with a pa.s.sion.

By the time I was starting to get a bit of control back, everything seemed to have quieted down. It didn't make any sense at all, but the commotion that had been all around me as I was sick had vanished. The scent from the ground below me was nearly enough to make me puke again, so I started pushing myself backwards and onto the walkway trying to get away from the stench in hopes of saving myself. My knees sc.r.a.ped the rough asphalt, and I cringed as I finally regained enough sense to look around me.

Odin sat next to me, wagging his tail and lolling his tongue to one side.

Some guard dog.

He tried to lick my face, which was just disgusting. I pushed him away as a pair of feet came into view right in front of me. Dirty tennis shoes and bright white socks over hairy calves bounced around in my vision as my head spun in a steady circle. I knew I needed to lift my head to see who it was, but I didn't have quite enough muscle control.

"You look like s.h.i.t," a familiar voice said.

My fingers rubbed into my eyes to try to un-blur my vision while the other hand wiped a sleeve across my mouth. It took a minute, but I was finally able to look around with some clarity only to find both the kids who had come after me were gone. In their place, Terry Kramer was grinning down at me.

"What the..." I shook my head, earning me more woozy feelings in my head and stomach. Terry blurred in and out of existence while I tried to keep myself from puking again. With herculean effort, I swallowed back bile and willed myself not to be sick as I looked up at Terry. "What are you doing here?"

"Saving your a.s.s," he replied with a big grin.

I looked around, but I didn't see the two kids anywhere. There was a little switchblade-style knife lying on the walkway next to the gra.s.s a couple of yards away, but no one around to wield it. Looking over the park, I saw no signs of anyone walking around, so they must have gone around the front of the building. It didn't make sense they had come from the park.

"Great timing I got, huh?" Terry said as I forced myself back onto my feet.

Wobbling slightly, I reached down to Odin's neck and grabbed a hold of his collar. My fingers worked their way around to the edge to the leash, and I wrapped my hand around it. He wasn't going anywhere, but I needed something to help ground me. I kind of needed him to help get me off the ground, too.

With shaking knees and Odin as leverage, I managed to stand up but continued to stare at the concrete as it spun around in my vision. I had to focus. I had to get the s.h.i.t out of my system, so my body would stop revolting against me.

I turned towards the decorative pile of stones and puked again.

"Oh, man!" Terry exclaimed. He took several steps backwards to avoid the splatter. "You're in bad shape!"

Responding to him would have been pointless, not to mention impossible given the current situation, so I didn't. Besides, I had the feeling opening my mouth again would cause problems.

"You're really lucky I was walking by," Terry said. "Those kids might have given you some hurt."

A lot of potential responses bopped around in my head like a Teen Beat celebrity, some with words and others with actions. At least one response included my knuckles. I might have tried to say something, but I really was a little afraid that if I opened my mouth, I was going to puke again.

I needed to brush my teeth and drink half a bottle of mouthwash.

"Where you going?" Terry asked as I picked up Odin's leash and started back towards the building.

I pointed at the door of the apartments and then moved up to swipe the security badge you needed to get in late at night. Terry stayed at my heels, but when he started to walk in with me, I put a hand out to his chest and stopped him.

"What the f.u.c.k?" he said. "I just saved your life, and you don't even let me in to wash my hands or something?"

"Not exactly in the mood for company," I said.

"I just saved your a.s.s!"

There were very few things that annoyed me more than someone who fished for compliments. Whether it was a chick wanting me to tell her she didn't look fat in the f.u.c.king dress, a server batting her eyelashes for a bigger tip, or a punk wannabe thinking I needed to thank him for hanging around my apartment at an opportune time, I found the very act pathetic and undeserving of praise.

"What the f.u.c.k are you doing around here anyway?" I asked. Now that my mind was going in that particular direction, I did find it odd. I'd never seen Terry around this area before. "You don't live anywhere near here."

"I was down at Sweet.w.a.ter's watching the game and having a beer," he said. "I needed to walk and clear up my head, so I cut through the park figured I'd take the Red Line it's the only one running this time of night."

The places he was talking about were close, at least. I shook my still fuzzy head and waved a hand at him.

"Go home," I said. "I'm going to bed."

The door shut behind me, and I didn't look back to see whatever annoyed expression might have been on his face. Instead, I let Odin lead me to the elevator and then down the hall to the apartment. I didn't even make it to the bed, but just the few steps it took to get to the couch and pa.s.s out.

As the room spun around and around and consciousness started to leave me, I realized the walk from Sweet.w.a.ter Tavern and Grille to the Red Line train was the opposite direction from my apartment. There was no way a Chicago native like Terry would have walked the wrong direction to get to the L.

He lied to me.

Most people probably thought my line of work was always dangerous and exciting. It could be, I supposed, but most of it was f.u.c.king dull. There was a lot more research than target practice or killing that was for sure.

I Googled. I clicked. I hovered the cursor over balloon links to other sites. I read celebrity gossip websites and websites that debunked various celebrity gossip websites. Ashton was represented in every one of them, of course. Women couldn't get enough of him, gay dudes couldn't get enough of him, and straight ones put up with it because their women came home h.o.r.n.y and ready to blow them.

I couldn't seem to find any pictures of Ashton in compromising situations with any of the women, though. No scandalous love affairs with senators' daughters or the co-star from his last movie. No groupies getting groped at parties or secret rendezvous in shady hotels with cute little American Idol starlets.

If anything, he seemed more likely to hang out with the starlet's brother.

Interesting.

He wasn't openly out of the closet, but he hadn't denied anything, either. I was perfectly straight, but if he wasn't...well, it was something I could possibly use to my advantage. Whatever got the job done, got me back on my regular pay and off of Rinaldo's s.h.i.t list worked for me.

The whole watching every word I said thing was getting old. I didn't mind being overly polite to the boss I was used to calling people above me sir, so it came pretty naturally anyway. Still, I felt like he was always waiting for me to screw up again, and I hated feeling like I was being evaluated all the time, especially when he compared me to a second-rate little s.h.i.t.

There was the added little tickle in the back of my head that told me I was going to have to kill Terry Kramer.

He was in my thoughts a lot as I lay on my stomach at the local shooting range with my rifle up against my shoulder. With a twelve round magazine instead of a ten, I made multiple holes in the center of the target's forehead.

"Nice shootin'."

"You ain't supposed ta smoke in here," I told Jonathan. I cringed as I realized his accent was being extra contagious today.

He laughed out loud and made a grand gesture as he looked around for some stupid motherf.u.c.ker to argue with him about it. I rolled my eyes and squeezed the trigger again. I was pretty sure Terry's face would look pretty nice with a little round hole between the eyes.

At least thoughts of killing him were keeping my mind occupied. It seemed every time I wasn't thinking about killing someone, thoughts of a brunette riding my c.o.c.k in a hot, stuffy cabin in the middle of the desert kept coming back into my mind.

Terry Kramer's little appearance at my apartment building at three in the morning hadn't been a coincidence. He had spent his whole life in Chicago and wouldn't have gone the wrong direction from a bar to the train, no matter how much he had to drink. Aside from that, he had been perfectly sober enough to lie to my face about why he was there. If he just happened to be at my apartment as two thugs decided to take advantage of a drunken idiot, there were only a couple of ways that was possible. I never considered coincidences to be possibilities.

One, he had been following me.

Two, he hung out around my apartment a lot but kept out of my sights.

Three, he arranged for the thugs to be there.

For a dozen reasons, I was going to go with all of the above.

Various thoughts, considerations, and scenarios occurred to me as I continued researching Brad Ashton's movements via the internet. Most of the thoughts started with Terry being a little too power hungry for his own good and ended with a bullet in his brain.

First things first, though Terry wasn't on my kill list. It wasn't that he had to be on an official list approved by the boss, but if I went off on a tangent before hitting my target, Rinaldo wouldn't be overly pleased about it. I needed to take care of Ashton, which meant I needed to figure out everything I could about his Atlanta trip.

I took a few more shots, packed up my rifle, and sat down in the lobby area with Jonathan and Nick. No surprise at all, Nick had found the one and only woman at the shooting range and was telling her some bulls.h.i.t story about being a makeup artist who specialized in painting women's b.o.o.bs.

She was totally buying it, too.

"You wanna hit the bars tonight?" Jonathan asked. "Looks like I'm gonna lose lover boy over there early."

"Nah, I still got work to do."

"You got a big job," he agreed. "Terry keeps asking me about it."

"That little f.u.c.ker needs to stay the h.e.l.l away from me," I muttered.

"He does push yer b.u.t.tons, don't he?"

"Doesn't," I corrected.

"Wha?"

"Nothing," I replied. "I'm outta here. Gotta let the dog out."

"Sweet.w.a.ter later?"

"Yeah, okay," I said. "I'll meet ya there."

"Want a ride?"

"Nah, I'll take the L."