Hostile Takeover Read Free Page B

that seemed worth dying for. I felt it with Alice. And I got what I wanted. Ish.
    But love is filled with conflict and volatility—especially new love. Of course, when you’re dealing with two “normal” people, the result of this conflict and volatility is what you might expect in a burgeoning relationship. You’re hot, then cold, fucking, then fighting, making plans, then burning bridges, and so on. Alice and I are aboutas far from normal as you can get. In fact, she and I are like the two compounds your chemistry teacher told you never to mix. We’re professional killers! That’s taking conflict and volatility to a whole new level. With normal couples, someone might get thrown out of the house after a fight. With us, someone is liable to get thrown out a window.

2
    F lashback three years. It was Valentine’s Day, for those who enjoy irony with a side of psychosis. I was in Nowhere, New Hampshire, driving through one of the worst blizzards on record, feeling like Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man as my car slid all over the road. I couldn’t trust anyone. I knew that death was around every corner, the smiling friend who would invite me in for a hot cup of coffee to get out of the cold. But that was the least of my concerns. Finding Alice was all I cared about. The last time we had laid eyes on each other was in Honduras, through machine-gun sights. She had just finished fucking me over so royally that she made Judas look like Job. In fact, she and my old boss Bob had been in cahoots on the betrayal (long story), so I smoked his traitor ass, and Alice and I lost each other in the chaos that comes with Honduran death squads, a hail of bullets, and high explosives.
    After crawling back to the U.S., I spent every waking moment tracking her down. Finally, I got a bead on her in New Hampshire and there I was, a jackass in a snow globe, making my way to Point A. After plowing through half the state, I saw the cabin where she was holed up through the four-inch circle on my windshield that wasn’t covered by a sheet of ice. I drove past, hid my car in a grove of trees a mile up the road, and backtracked to the cabin. I approached from the rear, concealing my tracks in the powdery snow with apine bough. The day was so cold it was like Flannery O’Connor’s last breath—raw and as hard as the hammer of divine retribution. I entered through the back door. It was dark inside. I sat in a chair, covered myself with a blanket, and waited like some film noir detective. After an hour or so, I heard tires crunching in the snow out front, followed by the tread of boots coming up the steps. The door opened.
    Alice walked in.
    Sweet Alice. She looked amazing in her full-length Burberry black leather biker trench coat with a fox fur collar, carrying a bag of groceries. I reveled in her beauty, then greeted her by shooting her in the shoulder with my Walther P22. The groceries went flying and she fell back onto her butt, clutching the wound, a look of shock and confusion on her face. She reached for her gun but saw it was me and reconsidered.
    â€œHi, honey. I’m home.” I laughed.
    â€œJohn? What the fuck are you doing here?” Alice asked as blood gushed through the fingers wrapped around her shoulder wound.
    â€œTaking care of a loose end,” I said.
    â€œDo you think I’d be up here if I was still after you?”
    â€œYou’re up here because you’re working a target. Based on the surroundings, my guess is it’s someone in intelligence. CIA. Rogue. About five-foot-ten, a hundred and forty-five pounds. Am I getting warmer?”
    â€œWhat have you done?”
    â€œI told him to get the fuck out of Dodge before he gets his brains splattered all over Robert Frost country. I told him that his lovely intern is really a cold-blooded killer who is using him to get close to his boss so that she can cut his throat with a tant ō