Max Collins - The last quarry

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.