Dirty Hitman Read online

  Dirty Hitman

  Vivian Connelly

  Copyright 2017 by Night Watch Publishing. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover art by ResplendentMedia.com

  Edited by Gray Feather Editing

  It is in no way legal to duplicate, reproduce or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Duplication of this content onto information storage and retrieval systems is expressly forbidden without written permission from the author.

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  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Prologue

  Micky

  I swung my feet out of bed and felt the matted carpet under my toes. I turned to look at Ruby one last time before getting out of bed. Her naked ass looked perfect but the fact she had another guy’s name tattooed above it told me we were anything but exclusive. I was reasonably sure that the guy in the tattoo wasn’t in her life anymore, but I was pretty sure he was still on her apartment’s lease.

  We may not have been exclusive, but she was on a short list of maybe three girls in places like this scattered throughout the city. She was one of the few girls that knew there was only one way I would have sex, and she neither judged me for it nor asked questions about it. I stood from the bed and pulled on my jeans and watched her body as it started to wiggle to life.

  “You leaving, Micky?”

  I looked at the briefcase I had sitting by the bed. She knew the answer to that question before she had even asked it.

  “Yeah baby. I’ve got kind of a busy day ahead of me today.”

  I sat down on the bed and started to pull on my boots, and Ruby rolled over to face me. She was depriving me of the view of her ass, but the front of her was nearly as nice.

  “Am I going to see you again?”

  She was asking another question she already knew the answer to. What was it with women? They always seemed to do that. It was one of the reasons men were forced to lie so much.

  I wasn’t going to lie.

  “Probably not, baby.”

  “You’re going to miss me.”

  She was probably right about that. I pulled on the other boot and I stood. I was reaching for my shirt, which had been thrown in the corner in haste seven hours earlier. And then she spoke again.

  “But you’re right about one thing, Micky. You’re never going to see me again.”

  It was an odd thing to say, and I turned to look at her when she said it. I turned my head towards her and away from the door and I almost didn’t hear it as it crept open. But I saw the shift in her eyes and I started to duck, but by then it was already too late.

  It was a wooden club, surprisingly soft as far as blunt force weapons go. It wouldn’t make much noise, and it might have cracked my skull, but I ducked just enough that it only knocked me off my feet.

  The room exploded in white hot pain and my vision blurred for a single, precious second. And by the time I was seeing clearly again, he was taking his second swing. I managed to raise an arm and deflected part of the blow with a forearm, but my ribs ended up taking the brunt of the attack.

  “Get him, Vince!”

  Ruby’s voice. Fucking women. You couldn’t even trust a cocktail waitress with a tramp stamp these days…

  She didn’t do Vince any favors, though. Her calling out caused him to look up for just a second. It was just long enough for me to take a breath and raise up my leg, and Vince looked down in time to watch me kick him right in the balls. The club dropped out of his hands and he groaned as he staggered back. And it was all the time I needed. I was getting to my feet and he was reaching into his jacket and I knew I had to make every second count.

  I lunged at him and felt my ribs screaming at me, but I managed to catch the arm that was coming out with the gun. I grabbed him by the wrist and drove him into the wall and watched one of Ruby’s velvet paintings fall to the floor. Vince was no light weight. They never were. He was able to start lifting his gun hand up. But I had my right hand free, and that was a weapon far worse than any wooden club.

  I gave him a shot to the solar plexus, as hard as I could manage, considering we were locked in the dance of death. The arm with the gun jerked, and the gun went off, and I heard the sound of the bullet passing behind me. It made a sickening swish as it passed through Ruby’s chest and it left a splatter of her blood on the wall behind her bed.

  Sorry about that, baby. Not the way I wanted it to end for you…

  I knew what Vince was thinking because I was thinking the same thing. His gun didn’t have a silencer. He had intended to beat me to death. The gun went off and it was loud, and the sound reverberated throughout the tiny room. It had probably been heard by half the people in the apartment building and at least two or three were probably now calling 911. The clock was ticking; we probably had less than six minutes before the badges started to roll in.

  I heard the sick thud of Ruby’s body hitting the floor as Vince and I kept on fighting. He was still struggling with that fucking gun so I drew back my fist for another shot to the solar plexus. My arm got more leverage this time, and I felt the air leave his body as the gun dropped to the floor. He would have to take me on with his fists now, and I knew there wasn’t a guy in the family who could beat me like that.

  He landed the first blow. It was a glancing shot to my jaw and I felt the metal of his ring finger open up my face. I staggered back and covered up and landed the next three in succession. The last shot was an uppercut that I was sure drove his jaw bone into his brain. His body dropped like a bag of wet cement and I felt myself fall to the floor.

  My body was numb from the pain, but I was still racing from adrenaline. And I could see another shadow forming in the door. I started to hear the low, plaintive wail of police sirens in the distance as the next assassin showed his face. I knew who it was going to be. Even before I saw that fucking scar, I knew who had come to kill me. And I greeted him like I had been expecting him the entire time.

  “Hi, Sammy.”

  His gun was at his side because he was a fucking idiot. I lunged for the gun on the floor and I heard gunshots from Sammy’s gun as Vince’s gun skittered across my fingertips. Two shots—one in the wall above my head and one through the shoulder, but I now had a weapon in my hand. I changed direction and dove behind Ruby’s bed just as I heard the beautiful sound of a handgun clicking as it jammed in Sammy’s hands.

  Fucking Sammy. I don’t know how many times I told him to clean his gun. I warned him it would cost him one day. Turns out today was the day.

  My shoulder was screaming—the awfu
l, searing pain of a metal bullet passing through my body as the blood started to pour. My ears were ringing from the two additional gunshots in the room. Somewhere in the apartment building, I thought I heard someone scream. There were probably more calls to 911 going out now, which meant one or two more squad cars on their way. But I got a second wind, for the same reason Sammy was now scared. He and I both knew the same thing about Vince.

  Vince had been obsessive about keeping his gun clean.

  Adrenaline was all I had left, but it was enough to lift me to a knee overlooking Ruby’s bed. Sammy was there for a second with his useless gun as I brought my working pistol up. My first bullet went through the doorway where he had been standing a moment before. Two more blasts to the left of the doorway, in case he was dumb enough to hide behind the wall. But Sammy was already off and running, probably halfway to the staircase by now.

  I should go after him.

  I needed to finish this thing. I needed to finish him.

  The pain had been a dull throb a few seconds before, but was now pounding through my veins. I felt the room starting to spin and the warm feeling of blood tricking down my shoulder as my body slumped to the floor. Any adrenaline I had left in my body felt like it was trickling out on that little river of blood. I was looking into Ruby’s eyes. Ruby’s cold, deceitful, lying eyes.

  The room was getting cold.

  Peaceful and cold.

  Lights out, Micky. Lights out.

  Chapter 1

  Jackie

  “What do you have planned this weekend, Jackie? Please tell me it’s something. Please tell me you’re not spending another weekend in that house alone.”

  Jill, my BFF, my confidante—and a nagging pain in the ass. And I loved her too much to lie to her.

  “I’m actually looking forward to this weekend, sweetheart. I’ve decided to finally paint the guest bedroom. I don’t have to work again until Saturday night, so I might as well put it to good use.”

  OK, two little lies. I wasn’t looking forward to the weekend, and I wasn’t painting the guest room. And by looking into her face, I could tell that she knew I was full of shit on both accounts.

  “Oh Jackie…”

  “Don’t start with the pity, Jill, I don’t need it.”

  I stood up and finished putting on my nurse’s scrubs. This pair was my newest pair. I think. It was getting too hard to tell, and I was pretty sure scrubs officially occupied greater than eighty percent of my wardrobe by now. I tried not to look at the cute sweater Jill had hanging in her locker. The benefits of being married, I suppose—she still had a guy to look good for…

  “It’s not pity, Jackie. Why don’t you let me set you up with someone? That’s all I’m saying. Robert’s got a couple of friends. One guy from work. He’s a little bit younger, but he’s cute.”

  She was persistent, I had to give her that. I shut my locker and I stood up and made it towards the wall with the mirror, but the massive twenty foot distance in the locker room was not providing me with enough buffer from her.

  “Or there’s this other guy he knows. He’s a sweet guy. Divorced.”

  Ugh. The dreaded ‘D’ word. I remembered when I was a little girl growing up and thinking the word sounded so ugly and dark. I had a friend whose parents were getting divorced and I thought that meant they were all going to die. The word had a whole new meaning to me now, but it didn’t seem any less morose.

  “Not interested.”

  I sang it out in a little harmony in an effort to make myself sound happy. A quick pivot from the mirror and I was heading to the coffee pot. Two other nurses were sitting at the table—hopefully they would provide a little cover.

  “Seriously, the divorced guy isn’t that bad, Jackie. He’s been single for a while, an amicable breakup or something. It’s not like he was cheating on…”

  She caught herself before she got any further, but it was already too late and she knew it. As much as it stung, the look of shame on her face still made me feel a little bad for her.

  “I’m sorry, Jackie. I didn’t mean that.”

  The two nurses sitting by the coffee pot were caught in the middle of something neither of them signed up for. One of them looked uncomfortable and was ready to bolt and the other one looked like she wanted to hear every word. And I saved them both by hauling ass back to the wall with the mirror, but not before comforting my friend.

  “It’s OK, sweetie, I know you mean well.”

  She paused for half a step, but followed me to the other side of the room, where we had a teeny bit of privacy. Suddenly, painting a second bedroom in my house wasn’t sounding so bad. I stood in front of the mirror, adjusting myself to work a shift where I would not even be seen.

  “I’m just not ready yet, Jill, that’s all. It’s too soon.”

  “Too soon? Jackie, you’ve been separated for over a year. And no offense, but the marriage was finished long before that. What exactly are you waiting for?”

  Jill, the perpetual master of tough love. I turned from the mirror to look at her. She looked so damn cute, ready to go home to her husband. She always looked cute once she was officially out of the scrubs.

  “Well, for one thing, we’re not even officially divorced yet. I’ve been waiting on it forever, but he just wants to fuck with me as long as he can. It doesn’t matter that he’s already living with some tramp over on Riverside, he still wants to be a prick and drag this thing out.”

  “Why, what is it he’s asking for?”

  “Money. What else? He’s trying to fight me for the house now, that stupid bag of shit. I paid for the entire thing nursing the midnight shift for years on end, and now he’s trying to get a piece of that too. I refuse to do it, Jill. I’ve already had my attorney send him another agreement stipulating I get the entire thing, but I know he’ll be a prick about it. And I’m sure he’s shacked up with that other woman of his and not paying for anything other than his legal fees. He won’t be happy until he bleeds me for every last cent.”

  It was more than she was looking for, but she pushed and I gave it to her. In a way, it felt good to get it off my chest, since I knew I would be around a bunch of sleeping patients for the next couple of hours. She remained silent and I turned and looked back at the mirror. All dressed up and nowhere to go…

  “Do you think it’s true what he said about me, Jill?”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “When I caught him having the first affair. He told me he was bored with our marriage. He said I was boring.”

  I was still looking at Ms. Boring in the mirror and I felt my friend’s hands on my shoulders. She spun me with the strength of a woman scorned, and I found myself looking into angry blue eyes.

  “He’s a fucking asshole, Jackie. That is the excuse of a man trying to justify being unfaithful. Don’t let that shit get into your head. It doesn’t matter what kind of woman you are, he would have ended up cheating on you anyway. Guys like Martin will cheat no matter what. Don’t go blaming yourself for what he did.”

  Talking about it was only making me tired. And I was about to pull the overnighter. I moved from the mirror to the lockers and let myself slump onto the bench.

  “He’s a fucking asshole, Jackie.”

  Jill wasn’t through, and she already had her shift behind her.

  “Nothing personal, but I never liked the guy from day one, and you know it. I didn’t like the way you two met, I didn’t like the way he treated you, and I don’t like what he’s doing to you now.”

  She paused.

  “And he never should have laid a fucking hand on you.”

  The conversation was only going to get worse and it wasn’t going to accomplish anything. It was the same conversation we had three nights a week and my life was still a mess. But I felt myself getting a second wind and I stood and I hugged my BFF. The uncomfortable nurse by the coffee pot was already halfway to the door. Her friend was leaning in just a little bit closer.

  “I
love you, kiddo. And I love that you’re looking out for me. I’ll date when I’m ready, I just don’t think I’m ready yet. Tell Robert I said thanks, but not yet. The thought of a younger guy doesn’t appeal to me because, well, maybe I am boring.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off. She had said plenty already.

  “I’ll think about the divorced guy though, OK? The idea of getting set up on a blind date doesn’t thrill me, but we’ll see. Just let me settle this business with Martin and finalize the divorce before I officially hang my shingle out, OK?”

  “You’re the boss, sweetie.”

  I watched her walk back to her locker and grab the rest of her things. Cute pocketbook, cute shoes, and an unboring jacket being slung over her shoulder. On her way home to her husband. If I didn’t love her to death I would have a major hate-jealousy thing going on.

  “Another exciting Thursday night at County General, Jill. I hope it’s quiet.”

  “It shouldn’t be too bad, sweetie. The only exciting thing to happen today was the buzz with all the cops.”

  “What cops?”

  “They were in here most of the afternoon. There’s a GSW in room 210 that they were interested in, but as far as I know, he was still out. He looked like he was in pretty bad shape when they brought him in, like someone had killed him but just forgot to tell him.”

  GSW. Gunshot wound. Ugh, a criminal in room 210, just what I need.

  “Oh, that and the old man Stevens at the end of the hall. He’s back in and he’ll likely be up half the night needing help with his catheter.”

  The gunshot wound wasn’t sounding so bad all of a sudden. I watched her scoop up the rest of her things and prance off towards the door. She stopped and kissed me on the cheek as she went past me.

  “Doesn’t sound like your life is all that boring to me, Jackie. At least not tonight.”

  Chapter 2

  Micky

  Darkness, but Vince is there with that big club of his. I’m sore so I know he’s already gone to town on me, and for some reason, there’s no getting up. I can only lie there, frozen, as he steps towards me. But I know it’s not just him. I know there’s another guy in the room.