Kelley Armstrong - Made to Be Broken

For a minute, Jack let Fenniger dangle in fear that he'd misread the signs, that Jack was not the reasonable colleague he'd believed. Then he said, "My partner takes issue with your new line of work."

In the silence that followed, I could have laughed, imagining Fenniger struggling as hard to interpret the meaning of Jack's full sentences as I did with his three-word ones.

Jack let him flounder in uncertainty some more, then said, "She doesn't like you killing teen moms."

"Oh, right. I-I can see that, her being a woman – "

"I don't much like it, either."

I swore I heard Fenniger suck in the rest of his words. I grinned as I flexed my hands, trying to still the giddy bubbles in my stomach. It was all but over. Now I could just sit back and watch Jack work.

After another thirty seconds of uncomfortable silence, Jack said, "But business is business. I suppose it'd be a lucrative way to make some fast money."

"It is," Fenniger said, words tumbling out. "If you want, I could cut you – "

"Not interested."

Reel him in. Let him drop. Keep him off balance, searching for equilibrium.

"Can I at least ask who I'm dealing with?" Fenniger said.

"No."

An audible sigh of relief. If Jack gave his name, even his street name, that would mean Fenniger would never get the chance to use it against him. By withholding it, calling me "girl," and getting pissy when Fenniger looked my way, Jack was suggesting that while he might intend to kill Fenniger, the matter was still open to negotiation. That was essential – a man who's about to be executed has no reason to talk.

"I suppose it'd be a decent gig, though," Jack said. "If you could stomach it. I can't blame a guy for that. I've done stuff…"

I'm sure Fenniger was barely breathing, eyes screwed shut as if he could mentally swing the pendulum his way. Thoughts of escape wouldn't enter his head. Jack was a pro, at least as good as he was, plus armed, physically bigger, and with a psychotic partner. Fenniger's only escape would come through cooperation. There was no cowardice in that, no loss of face… or so he'd keep telling himself.

"Shit like this?" Jack continued. "Not my style. But business is business, and you take what you can get. If you don't take the job, someone else will."

Ah, hitman justification at its finest. I'd used that one a few times myself.

"The sick fucks are the ones who put out the contracts," Jack said.

Fenniger's nods punctuated every word, though he probably didn't even realize he was doing it.

"Something like this?" Jack said. "Who dreams this shit up?"

My fingers stopped drumming against my thigh and I squinted into the darkness, as if I could see Jack's expression, though he had his back to me. What was he doing? We'd discussed what we needed from Fenniger. First, confirmation of the hit. Second, the name and location of the people who'd bought Destiny. I had no idea what I'd do with the latter – probably nothing – but if I didn't ask for it, I'd be waking up at 2 a.m., certain Destiny had been sold to a Satanic cult or something.

Parents… buyers… That's where he was heading – giving Fenniger an "out" by blaming them. The muscles between my shoulders tightened. Letting this bastard lay the responsibility on people whose only crime was desperation? But Jack was right. It provided Fenniger with an excuse for giving them up.

"That's who I'm interested in," Jack said. "You? You're just a means to an end."

"Okay," Fenniger said, head still bobbing. "So you want to know who hired me?"

"Yeah, that's what I want to know."

Silence.

Damn it, Jack. He's not that bright. Prod him. Dangle the buyer as his scapegoat and he'll -

"They made contact through the broker. A guy named Honcho."

"I've heard of him. Headhunter, right?"

A headhunter was a broker who took contracts based on a price, with only the barest of details: number of marks, deadline, international versus domestic, political versus personal. Then, he offered it to his hitman contacts, who'd get the specifics directly.

The broker would argue that he's providing an invaluable service by tightening the security between client and pro. He's really just covering his butt. Any advantage to the hitman is more than wiped out by the liability of accepting a job based almost exclusively on price. That's the best a second tier has-been like Fenniger can get while still making enough to finance his drug habit.

So I didn't doubt he was doing other work for this "Honcho" guy. But to blame him for this job, one he'd created himself? Low. Risky, too, presuming Jack would follow up.

And yet… maybe Fenniger was more clever than I gave him credit for. If Honcho didn't know the details of the jobs he gave Fenniger, how would he know he hadn't given him one for killing teen moms?

"So Honcho sets up the meeting…" Jack prompted.

"Byrony Agency."

"What?"

"That's the name of the company. Or, at least, the name of the office the client works at. I don't know if it's legit or a cover, but after the meeting, I followed him back and that's where he went. Byrony Adoption Agency in Detroit. Moron walked away from the meeting and never even looked over his shoulder. Complete amateur. Got the bright idea to hire a hitman to help him steal babies, and had no fucking idea how to go about it. I had to hold his hand through the first two."

So this hadn't been a one-man project. It hadn't even been Fenniger's idea. The way he was now spitting details, I knew he wasn't dreaming up a story on the fly. He gave us a description of the client, a play-by-play of their meetings, and the address where he'd dropped off Destiny. With the first two babies, he'd taken them to the client in a park, but after the second hand-off caught the attention of a passerby, the client decided they'd do this more privately. With Destiny, he'd given Fenniger a suburban Detroit home address, met him there, and taken her.

The scheme had been orchestrated by this Byrony Agency. They found the parents and they sold the babies, while Fenniger juggled the roles of scout, killer, and delivery boy. Earlier, Jack had said it was a lot of work, considering his pace. This is what he'd meant. It was too much work for one man.

Why the hell hadn't I seen that?

Because I hadn't allowed myself to consider the possibility. I'd been completely focused on my goal, and that goal was one man. Like Drew Aldrich. Like Wayne Franco. Like Wilkes. One perpetrator. One target. That I understood. That I could stop.

An entire organization… How could I stop that?

Forget it for now. I had to concentrate on the immediate situation. The immediate resolution. The immediate vengeance.

By the time Jack finished, I'd found my focus again.

"Dee?" he called.

At that word, Fenniger's head jerked up. In that second, as he heard Jack say my name, he knew he wasn't walking away. He started to struggle, to protest, to promise, to threaten. The words passed by me, meaningless. All I heard was the rich undercurrent of fear.

I thought about Sammi, her fear and rage in those final moments, and I slowed my pace, dragging it out until I hoped his panic outweighed anything she'd suffered.

I stood in front of him, and let him see me, and he knew that meant he wasn't walking out of here alive. And I prayed that in that last second, maybe he thought of Sammi and the other girls, maybe he thought "so this is how they felt."

Then I lifted the gun and pulled the trigger.

My first body dump. Jack seemed shocked when I said so, but after a moment's thought, he realized that with my specialty, it wasn't surprising. Half the reason for calling a mob hit was to warn others. A corpse in a subway car said "Screw us over, and we'll get you, anytime, anywhere" far better than a former ally missing, presumed dead.