Love Kills Twice Read online

“I work in a lot of countries, Sofia.” And if they’re tapping my phone, I’d rather not admit to the obvious. Attorney-client privilege only stretches so far.

  “Not on anyone they like,” she counters, “and no one’s ever actually charged you with a crime. Accidents don’t make Interpol watchlists.”

  “While Chicago PD is too busy giving out tickets.” I drum my fingers over the wheel. “That just leaves the obvious.”

  “An abusive bastard and his desperate wife want the exact same thing?”

  Blunt but accurate. “Exactly.”

  “So, what’s the next step?”

  Someone has to be lying to me. “I want to know where Richard’s money came from. If Justine’s telling the truth, he shouldn’t have had fifty grand to spare.”

  She lets out a curious hum. “That didn’t ping your radar before?”

  Not before tonight. There are a lot of men like Richard. “With his demographics, I guessed an inheritance. My mistake.”

  “No, it was mine too. I’ll follow up and dig deeper.” I hear Sofia’s pen scribble, then a soft click as she sets it down. “Are you telling Mrs. Fortin?”

  If I did that, I might as well hand myself over in cuffs. “Of course not. I can’t take care of Richard if she doesn’t trust me. And I think she wants him gone more than anything else.”

  “Aren’t you the knight in shining armor?”

  I hope she can feel me rolling my eyes.

  “No, you’re right,” Sofia adds. “Keeping quiet is the sensible thing to do until we figure out what’s going on.”

  Then it’s settled. “Justine was impressed by the contract. Good job on that one.”

  “As if it’s the first time I’ve fit together a fake bill of sale.” This time, a fork clatters. Sofia has a bad habit of eating at her desk. “Has she paid you yet?”

  I sail through a green light, then two. It’s my lucky night. “I just left, so not yet. But she absolutely will.”

  “You sure about that?” Sofia asks.

  Amusement tugs at the edge of my mouth. “When am I ever not sure about anything?”

  She laughs. “You remind me of my dad that way, you know. The first day he was unsure about anything was the day he died.”

  The twenty cops Alessandro tried to fill with lead might have had something to do with it too. He was old school, the honor code type. While Sofia and I get along well, I’ve always been strictly independent. Family is not an easy thing for me, chosen or otherwise.

  As Alessandro proved, anyone I look to for that kind of bond is never long for the world.

  So I redirect the subject. “She had that look in her eyes, clear as crystal.”

  “A woman scorned, huh?” Sofia murmurs. Cattaneos know scorn like butchers know a prime cut.

  Except this cuts deeper than scorn. There’s a point where betrayal braids so deep and tight with hate and pain that the threat of losing your life doesn’t register, so long as it means the one who hurt you loses too. Dig two graves and all that.

  Justine nearly broke into tears during our first call, describing every way her husband had torn her life apart. I could have recommended divorce, but after doing this for so long, I know better than to try.

  Some people want vengeance more than they want peace. Peace is only worth so much if it feels like you’ve wasted your life on someone who couldn’t care less. Distance alone won’t ever satisfy that hollow feeling.

  Richard’s reasons for hiring me are different. He sees his wife as an obstacle, a cage he’s grown too big for. I usually don’t ask for justification when someone calls, but now, the imbalance is plain as day. He’d lose too much leaving Justine, especially if the infidelity came out. So he needs her dead, leaving everything she worked for behind.

  What a prick.

  “Campbell, you still with me?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.” The road is empty, so I lean into the gas. “Thinking too much.”

  Sofia is quiet long enough that I’m about to tease her.

  “That’s what I thought. The anniversary is coming up soon, right?”

  I tighten my hands around the wheel, trying to steady myself, squeezing until my knuckles turn white.

  Maria. Emily. Chris. Lee. Brandon.

  Reflex urges me to close my eyes and picture their faces, to make sure I still can, but if I do that, I’ll run myself off the road. Instead, I count breaths, focusing on the distant stretch of asphalt until I can’t think about anything else.

  “Yeah,” I say, a thousand miles out, “it’s soon.”

  “Then go to your hotel, and go to bed. You deserve it.” Sofia’s voice is warm with real sympathy⁠—she’s the only friend I have, the only one who can talk to me in such a way⁠—but my hackles are up. It can’t pierce the ice, not now.

  “I will. Good night.”

  Prying my hand off the steering wheel, I end the call as her goodbye carries across the line. The Perceforest is one block farther, a charming little hotel that values privacy and quiet. My car makes two in the lot. The other belongs to the night watchman. Late autumn is the off-season, my favorite time of year.

  I moved in a week ago, so my equipment is already set. After a quick sweep of the car, I slip out my keys and unlock the main gate with a soft click. It swings open into a sedate garden, tree-of-heaven branches entwining into a shadowy canopy. A black iron lantern marks my room, highlighting a heavy wooden door. The style is rustic, but I’m a fan of the classics.

  It’s a lot easier to know who’s been in and out of a place when the locks aren’t digitized, and any bars on the windows don’t buckle with a hard elbow. This lock turns with a hard roll of steel, ending with a solid thunk before letting me inside. I stand in the dim, listening for any sound of movement in the dark, then flip the lights on.

  As requested, no one has touched the room. I made the bed myself this morning with hospital corners, my gun case and duffel tucked at its feet. An empty suitcase blocks the window I don’t have a good angle on, and once I lock the door again, I’m alone.

  Stripping out of the suit is like peeling off a second skin. It’s cut to downplay the muscle corded tight in my frame, cuffs and shoulders playing more to professional than intimidating. I’m not a bruiser, but my work takes a certain foundation of raw strength at all sorts of unexpected moments.

  Once I’m down to my underwear, I stretch, then drop to the floor for pushups. I loop from one set of fifty into sit-ups, not giving myself even a breath to rest. The cold wood against my back is warm by the time I move to squats, lacing my hands behind my head. Habit’s rhythm scours the last bit of ice lingering in my chest, and I’m about to start another set when my phone buzzes.

  Fetching it from the pocket of my jacket, I check the message, then smile. “Payment received. You’re an eager one, Justine.”

  I’ll surveil her house again tomorrow, note any changes, and set up a meeting to pick up the keys I need. Even without Richard’s schedule, I can do some cursory reconnaissance on the university. Chances are that I’ll be taking him out there, considering how rarely he’s home.

  I wipe an idle drop of sweat from my brow and decide on two more sets before a shower. Both the exercise and the water will get my mind running, sharpening all the instincts that get the job done.

  Once there’s a towel wrapped around my hips, I reach for my phone again. Three layers of security protect the right account, but I hate to make Sofia wait for her twenty percent. The funds transfer, and I leave the rest in place. Until I itemize my expenses, I try not to cut the money from contracts into too many pieces.

  My laptop hums to life when I flip it open. I already have a few notes on Richard, but now that he’s a target, the rest of the blanks need to be filled in. His online profile as a professor is a good start.

  One search gives me everything I’m looking for.

  “Women’s studies?” I blink. “Seriously?”

  No wonder he has a constant stream of willing coeds jumping into his bed.
I can only imagine he frames it as liberatory, like fucking a man who knows where the clitoris is somehow worth the patronizing power dynamic. Justine’s cold determination to see him dead makes even more sense than it did a few minutes ago.

  What are the chances he uses the fact that he’s married to seem trustworthy? Between eighty and ninety percent, if I’m generous. Shaking my head, I note down what he’s teaching this semester, ready to match time slots to the schedule when Justine hands it over. One of the courses is starred as always being in the evening, which would be useful. Darkness gives the best sort of excuses.

  I study the picture in Richard’s profile. When we met, he didn’t look quite so polished, a five o’clock shadow creeping up his jaw, blond hair stippled with gray. He smiled too much, trying to use the two inches of height he had on me and gesturing with his hands. I’m used to nervous clients. It comes with the territory, but this wasn’t nerves. Fear and adrenaline share a fine, shaking line.

  No, Richard had been excited, eager to pry the details of what would happen out of me. I presented him with options⁠—I consider it a consultation, even before payment⁠—but I rarely make up my mind until knowing enough about a target. Anyone who wants a specific method has to pay an extra fifty percent up front. He declined.

  Not out of financial constraints, of course. Richard made that clear, insisting he wanted to be surprised. I don’t understand the appeal. I hate surprises. Even the good ones tend to be a waste of time, in some sense or another.

  My next click is one of those rate-your-professor sites, which are always a goldmine. Not every accident goes as I intend, and it’s best practice to splash alternate motives around another person’s feet. By the time the police sort through the details, I’m already in another state. Another country, if it’s a target I wager will catch the feds’ attention.

  Professor Fortin’s ratings lean to positive, but I scroll through every page, flagging the negative ones. One is particularly terse: Don’t take this class. Trust me. It belongs to a Mandy Carr, whose name I add to my notes. A few others subtly recommend avoiding Richard’s private tutoring sessions, and I jot their names down too. Most are freshmen; all of them read as women. The only guy I find among the bunch⁠—self-described⁠—states his relief that he could take a class on feminism with a “relaxed” teacher.

  Relaxed is one way to put it.

  After closing my laptop, I set it out of sight under the nightstand. I rise from the bed, then run through the motions of hanging up my suit and laying out tomorrow’s outfit. I’ll need something that blends, nice and casual. Then I check locks on the windows, the door, and move to kneel in front of my gun case.

  It clicks open, revealing the rifle and pistol tucked inside. My excellence-in-competition badges are pinned to the foam at the top. I’m a distinguished shot in each weapon, respectively, but I don’t use guns on a job unless it’s unavoidable. They’re such a mess. Five nameplates hang in a clean line next to them, plates I’m not supposed to have, but no one had noticed them missing. Not when everybody attached to them had been cremated.

  I bite my tongue and taste ash. Tracing over the letters of each one, I take the chance I didn’t have in the car, picturing their faces. Mine’s changed a lot in ten years, but they would be exactly the same. I can still remember smiles, but everyone’s laugh left my memory a while ago.

  Time for bed. I’ll be sentimental when the right day comes.

  Chapter Three

  JUSTINE

  Eleven thirty at night, and I’m alone in the house. Richard’s last class ended at eight, but he didn’t bother texting an excuse. It’s why I knew he wouldn’t notice me going to dinner, and why I’m standing in front of the mirror right now.

  I don’t want to take off the dress. It’s petty, the urge to have him come home and ask what I was all dressed up for. Maybe he’d be jealous, or at least pretend. Except I wasn’t cheating on him⁠—as much as Richard would deserve it⁠. I hired someone to cut him out of my life for good. So the evidence can’t stay, which means anything linking my dinner with Campbell to the death waiting in the wings.

  With a sigh, I strip off the dress and tuck it in the very bottom of the hamper. Laundry is a must tomorrow. Then that black number goes to the back of my closet again as if it never left. My makeup is next, lipstick bright as blood on the washcloth as I wipe it clean. The dark streaks that follow ruin the effect, grim pleasure gone in an instant.

  I cleaned up well. At thirty-five, I can still pull off the looks that shone through my twenties, albeit with a little more restraint. Breaking out the stockings and garter belt for Campbell would have been embarrassing for the both of us. I’m not that kind of desperate, and they aren’t interested. All I am is a client.

  It’s nice to be a client. At the gallery, I deal with people who flaunt a hundred times my net worth without thinking, full of demands and short on patience. Everyone wants a Basquiat, no one wants to pay market price. Right now, I split my time between acquisitions and promoting local art, hoping to push new names into a life-changing sale. I’m neck-deep in paperwork so often it’s impossible to appreciate every piece coming in.

  And then there’s the starved, envious part of me that wishes they were mine hanging on the wall.

  That serpent bites deep, bitter fangs lingering all the way to bed. I flick the lights off with prejudice, then slip beneath the sheets. They’re cold, untouched since morning, and I shiver while trying to get comfortable. My eyes drift up toward the ceiling, staring off into nothing. It’s late enough that I should be tired, but I keep playing the evening over in my mind, waiting for what I did to sink in.

  I hired an assassin. Richard is going to die.

  My heart pounds in my chest, pumping adrenaline and heat through my entire body. A laugh bubbles up my throat, and I let it out, ringing high to the very edges of the room. There’s no one here to keep me quiet, no one to ask what’s so damn funny.

  I’m getting what I want. I’ll be free.

  The notion possesses me, shoving sleep aside. I wouldn’t mind, except I don’t want to be awake whenever Richard stumbles in. Shifting under the sheets, impatience rubs like a rope against my skin, and I reach over to my bedside table. Opening the drawer, I fumble for the e-reader inside. The little battery light blinks red, a quiet accusation.

  Oh, damn it. I didn’t throw it on the changer after last time.

  The alternative is going all the way downstairs, cracking open a bottle of wine, and hoping it helps me doze off. Unfortunately, that means grabbing my robe, and I’m not risking sneaking down there naked and running into Richard at the wrong time. He’d probably take it as an invitation.

  I bite my lip. Who am I fooling? No, he wouldn’t. If my husband wanted to fuck me, he’d be home right now in bed. It’s been too long since I’ve had sex, and even longer since the sex was good. He’s busy with the eighteen-year-olds hanging off his every word, convinced they’re special. I don’t begrudge them that; I thought I was special, too, back when he was on one knee proposing.

  Tension coils in my gut, frustration stringing my throat tight. I wish I could summon someone willing here, pull them on top of me and dare them to do their worst. A blossom of heat answers between my thighs, and I rest both hands back against my stomach, taut with consideration.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve touched myself. I have to be aching to even think about it, which between work and Richard, isn’t often.

  Then I think about Campbell, those storm gray eyes and graceful hands, the warmth of their mouth when it brushed my skin. Six feet of predator in a tailored suit, ready for the kill the second I promised Richard was predictable.

  I can picture those same hands where mine are now. With a featherlight touch, I tease them lower, centimeter by centimeter. My fingertips pass down the slight swell of my belly, fanning out toward my hips. Campbell would be meticulous, careful compared to any stranger I could find in a bar or off some app. They’d take the time to figu
re out what makes me gasp, cold gaze locked on mine as my thighs part to welcome them in between.

  With a single finger each, I circle around the tops of my legs, starting from the outside and working in. By the time I’ve reached the sensitive space along the inside of my thighs, my heart jumps, and I’m starting to get wet. I imagine Campbell’s grip tightening, almost bruising, prying my knees open as wide as I can stand. Nails bite into my skin, a touch sharper than their own blunt set, but the rush of picturing Campbell spreading me open transforms the flash of pain into a pleasant throb.

  A hand drifts up to my breasts, toying with each hardened nipple. I arch into the touch while fingers explore through dark curls, seeking the slickness hidden underneath. Campbell parts my folds with a slow caress, bares the core of heat building inside my pussy. A moan escapes high in my throat, hips rocking forward to deepen the contact. Even like this, they stay completely dressed, having slipped in through the window to take what they want.

  One finger dips inside me, slow and precise. I clench around the digit, but it’s not enough, and a second follows suit, just as deliberate. My legs stay parted, keeping me exposed and eager to welcome every thrust. Another, rougher tweak of my nipple makes me gasp, pleasure sparking through my nerves. Campbell’s weight presses against me as their fingers move, dark words whispering against my ear.

  “If I knew the idea of killing your husband got you wet, I’d have taken you right in the restaurant.” Both fingers curl inside me at the end of a deep thrust. “Slid my hand up your dress, just out of view.”

  When the rhythm quickens, I fight the urge to thrash. The hand at my breasts rises up to wrap around my throat. It’s not tight enough to be a threat, but even the faint pressure makes me shudder. Campbell’s palm brushes against my clit with each push, split-second friction intensifying every moment of contact. A third finger toys against my entrance, and when fingers tense around my throat, a choked moan escapes me as I let them inside.

  My next breath is a rasp, barely slipping through their tight grip. The hold releases long enough for me to gasp, an intoxicating rush of air matching another hard thrust. I haven’t been this wet in years, stretching slick around Campbell’s fingers as my clit aches, desperate for just a little more stimulation.