Get away from yourself
The automated curtains parted at seven o. Soft daylight glowed through the smart blinds, falling oraight pnes and polished surfaces of the wide master bedroom. A ptop shis log-in s on a er end table. The wall-mouV dispyed weather forecasts, market prices, and email notifications in a tight grid. Bright mirror-reflected light and radiant steam poured in from the open bathroom. The shower died and a gymnast-bodied blonde marched out, throwing a towel around her glistening body.
In the back er of the walk-in closet, she found a dark leather motorcycle outfit, just barely broken in by a few casual night rides. It was the only thing not fit for a senior staff meeting or an all-ma cocktail party. She khat the person who ow had been dreaming for years of throwing it on in the dead of night, setting the rest of the clothes on fire, and shooting off dowerstate to anywhere else.
Today was the first day of a two-week vacation, she was as single as anyone could be, there wasn’t a friend in her life she didn’t pany emails, and her family, what little of it there was, had long siteo her months of silend excused absences from all the usual get-togethers.
Lindsey id the memories away like the corpse of a loved one, and got dressed.
The house was all gring white walls and polished crete. Everything i retracted into the ters or hid in seamless ets. The fridge fshed push notifications as she filled the st wine gss from the rack with ultra-filtered water. In the den, with its enclosed bookcases, exposed beams, and marble firepce, the sses reflected tinted daylight through syrupy slivers of Boudreaux onto the wide ft coffee table and ring of couches, where someone who was almost Lindsey had spent the evening “celebrating”.
A thick manil envelope stuck out of the mail slot, double sealed with tape and urgent markings. She ripped it in half, enjoying the e specks that fluttered everywhere, and took out her new phohe earbuds, a set of motorcycle keys, and her Walther PPQ sub-pact. From half a life away, her teacher reminded her “Every sed awake in this pce without a gun in hand is time you’re up to someone else.”
She smiled and put the pistol in her jacket pocket. He had been from that age, somewhere between five and twenty-five years ago, depending on who you asked, where “If you sted a day in the Hardworlds, you were steamrolling through the gig.”
She raked her eyes over the house o time and wished that gres could tarnish, the it all behind with a goodbye door sm that cshed against the atmosphere of not just the house, but the whole god damned neighborhood.
The front wn was a half-circle of razor-cut zoysia grass with a great sugar maple at the ter, surrounded by a crest-shaped pebble-paved driveway. Shrubs and flowers posed in their beds over va rocks that ched under her boots as she cut a direct path to the portable ste pod sitting half one side of the driveway. She ope with one of the keys, flicked on a hanging bulb, and closed the door behind her.
She threw off the motorcycle cover like it was Christmas. Suzuki Hayabusa, all bck, full helmet on top. She squeezed the handlebar a her heart jump around a bit before moving to the rest of it.
A backpack, a purse, and a pte carrier hung on the wall. Ihe backpack was her Galil A .300 blk, with a suppressor, two sights, white and IR lights, a mags, all secured in the interior. The purse had three mags for her PPQ, a decoy phone, a pocket drone in a faux makeup case, medkit, bump keys, mon, and other various tools of the trade. She put the low-profile pte on under her jacket, slipped one of the pistol mags iher pocket, and locked the purse in the seat partment.
She opehe pod and hit the street at forty mph. For half a mile, she thought about nothing but the electric m feeling that always apahe first few hours of a job. When it had settled ioes and floated in her lungs, she got to work.
“Call HQ.”
The earbuds chimed twice.
“M,” said EP
It had taken EP less than two hours to wake up, get settled in, and locate the target. She wasted no time cheg that Lindsey had dropped in and sendihe address. Another job that seemed too simple to be true. They had his name and POE, and the rest was surely being scraped into EPs files and databases like so much ig on the proverbial cake. It beat spending days dropped in, staking out old addresses and harassing exes, or waiting for Celeste and Kra to skim enough from some wet dream to put a profile together.
A voi the back of her mind reminded her.
“It’s hat simple, darling.”
How would it feel to leave it all behind? ime, someos a eyeful. episode, Strip mall.