Run Away

Chapter Ten

Ash placed the cup of coffee on the table. Dee Dee bowed her head in prayer. Ash tried not to roll his eyes. Dee Dee finished the prayer in the same way she always did, “Forever be the Shining Truth.”

Ash sat across from her. The target’s name was Damien Gorse. He owned a tattoo parlor in a New Jersey strip mall across the highway from where they now sat. They both turned and stared at the name on the awning.

Dee Dee started giggling.

“What’s so funny?”

“The name of the parlor.”

“What about it?”

“Tattoos While U Wait,” Dee Dee said. “Think about it. I mean, how else would you do it? ‘Hey, man, here’s my arm, put a skull and crossbones on it, I’ll be back in two hours.’”

She covered her mouth as she giggled some more. It was all kinds of adorable.

“Good point,” Ash said.

“Right? Tattoos While U Wait. I mean, what name came in second place?”

He chuckled now too, either because the joke was a little funny or more likely because her giggle was contagious. Dee Dee drove him crazy. She could be annoying as all get-out, no question about it, but mostly, he was terrified that soon these jobs would end and she’d be gone from his life again.

Dee Dee noticed him looking at her funny. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Ash...”

Then he just said it: “You don’t have to go back.”

Dee Dee looked up at him with those damned beautiful get-lost-forever-in green eyes. “Of course I do.”

“It isn’t the Shining Truth. It’s a cult.”

“You don’t understand.”

“That’s what all cultists say. You have a choice here.”

“The Shining Truth is the only choice.”

“Come on, Dee Dee.”

She sat back. “I’m not Dee Dee there. I didn’t tell you that.”

“What do you mean?”

“At Truth Haven. They call me Holly.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“They made you change your name?”

“They didn’t make me change anything. Holly is my Truth.”

“Name changing is Cult Indoctrination 101.”

“It represents that I’m a new person. I’m not Dee Dee. I don’t want to be Dee Dee.”

He made a face. “So you want me to call you Holly?”

“Not you, Ash.” She reached across the table and covered his hand. “You always saw Holly. You were the only one.”

He felt the warmth of her hand on his. For a moment they stayed like that, and Ash wished that the moment would never move on. Stupid. He knew that it wouldn’t last. Nothing lasted. But for another moment or two, he just soaked this in and let it be.

Dee Dee smiled at him as if she knew just what he was feeling. Maybe she did. She could always read him in a way no one else could.

“It’s okay, Ash.”

He said nothing. She patted his arm several times, disengaging slowly, so it wouldn’t just be a sudden pull away.

“It’s getting late,” she said. “We should probably get in position.”

He nodded. They headed to the stolen car with the stolen plate. They took the highway north and exited on Downing Street. The local road led to the back of a ShopRite supermarket. They parked near the exit, away from any surveillance cameras. They started through a wooded area and came up on the back of the tattoo parlor.

Ash checked his watch. Twenty minutes until closing time.

Murder was simple if you kept it simple.

Ash already had the gloves on. His outfit was black from head to toe. The ski mask was off because those things were too hot and itchy to put on prematurely. But it was at the ready.

There was a rusted green dumpster behind the tattoo parlor. A side window had a red neon sign reading PIERCINGS — ANYWHERE, EVERYWHERE. Ash could see the silhouette of someone sweeping up inside. There were two cars left in the lot — a Toyota Tundra pickup truck, hopefully belonging to the last client of the day, and in the back, near the dumpster and out of sight from the highway, a wood-paneled Ford Flex belonging to Damien Gorse.

Their intel, such as it was, had informed them that Gorse always closed up.

The plan was to let Damien Gorse lock up, walk to his car, then kill him in a “robbery gone wrong.”

Ash heard the tinkling of the shopkeeper bell when the front door of the parlor opened. A man with a long red ponytail stepped out, turned back around, and shouted, “Thanks, Damien.”

Damien shouted something back to the ponytailed man, but they couldn’t make out what. The ponytailed man nodded and trudged through the gravel lot toward the Toyota Tundra. His arm was completely bandaged. He stared at the arm with a big smile as he walked.

“Maybe he just came back to pick it up,” Dee Dee whispered.

“What?”

“His arm. You know. Tattoos While U Wait?”

Inside the shop, the silhouette stopped with the sweeping.

She giggled as the ponytailed man got into the Toyota, started it up, and merged onto the highway.

Dee Dee moved closer to Ash. She smelled the way only a beautiful woman can, like honeysuckle and lilacs and some form of ambrosia. Her proximity was a distraction. He didn’t like that.

Ash shifted a little away from her and put on the ski mask.

Inside the shop, the lights went out.

“Showtime,” Dee Dee said.

“Stay here.”

Staying low, Ash moved closer to the back of the lot. He squatted behind a tree and waited. He looked at the Ford Flex. The faux wood paneling made it look like a family car, though Gorse was unmarried and childless. Maybe it was his mother’s car. Or his father’s. If there had been more time, Ash would have known all that, would have done all his own intel. But knowing all that was often, pardon the pun, overkill.

Just do the job, move on, don’t leave any tracks.

The rest was flotsam and jetsam.

It also helped to think methodically. It would take him fewer than ten seconds to make it to the car. Don’t hesitate. Don’t give him a chance to react. Walk up to him and shoot him in the chest twice. He’d normally go for a headshot, but one, a robber might not do that, and two, Kevin Gano had gone down with a headshot.

No reason to repeat himself.

Of course, there was nothing else connecting Damien Gorse and Kevin Gano. Ash was using completely different handgun makes and models obtained in completely different ways. One death — Gano’s — had been a “suicide” in the Boston area, the other — Gorse’s — would be a robbery gone wrong in New Jersey.

There would be no law enforcement link.

More than that, Ash could find no other connections between Kevin Gano and Damien Gorse or any of the others. They were all between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-two. They lived in various parts of the country. They all attended different schools, held different jobs. There had to be an overlap, of course, something that linked the targets, and maybe if Ash had more information or more time he could figure out what it was.

But for now he didn’t have either and that was okay.

The tattoo parlor’s shopkeeper bell trilled.

Ash had the gun in his gloved hand. The ski mask was in place. Ash had learned over the years that ski masks don’t offer enough peripheral vision, so he’d already made the eye holes a little bigger. He stayed in his squat and waited. To his left, he could see Dee Dee had moved closer to the periphery. He frowned. She should know better and stay back. But that was Dee Dee.

Gorse was coming at him from the right. Dee Dee was on the left. There was no chance he would spot her before the bullets hit him.

She just wanted a better view.

Still, he didn’t like it.

The crunching of feet on gravel made him turn his head toward the side of the building.

It was Damien Gorse.

Perfect.

Now Ash just needed to time the strike, but really there was plenty of room for error, especially on the late side. Arrive too early and maybe Gorse could run toward the road or back into the shop, though that was unlikely. Arrive too late and it meant that Gorse was in his car, but glass doesn’t stop bullets.

No matter. His timing was perfect.

Gorse stuck out a hand holding the car remote. Ash heard the familiar beep-beep as the car unlocked. He waited until Damien Gorse arrived at his back bumper. Ash stood up straight and rush-walked toward him. Don’t run. Running will throw off your aim.

Gorse’s hand was just reaching out for the car door handle when he spotted Ash. He turned toward him, a questioning look on his face. Ash raised the weapon and fired two shots into Gorse’s chest. The sound was louder than Ash had anticipated, though that wasn’t really a big deal. Gorse’s body fell against the car. For a second the car seemed to hold him up before he slid down the door onto the gravel.

As Ash hurried toward the still body, he spotted Dee Dee, thanks to his peripheral vision, moving to her right so she could get a better view of the dead body. He had no time for that. He bent down, made sure Gorse was dead, and then rifled through the man’s pockets. He took out the wallet. Gorse also wore a Tag Heuer watch. He took that too.

Dee Dee moved closer.

“Will you get back?” he snapped.

He started to rise, but then he saw the look on Dee Dee’s face.

She was staring over his shoulder. Ash felt his stomach drop.

“Ash?” she said.

Then she gestured with her chin.

Ash spun. There, next to the green dumpster, a man stood holding a garbage bag.

The man — no, more likely a teen, a freaking kid for crying out loud — must have exited out the back of the store to throw out the trash. He still held the bag up in the air, as though he’d stopped in mid-toss, frozen by what he’d witnessed.

The kid just stared at Ash, who was wearing a ski mask.

And he stared at Dee Dee, who wasn’t wearing one.

Shit, Ash thought.

No choice. He aimed his gun and fired, but the kid was on the move. He ducked behind the dumpster. Ash started toward him, taking another shot. The kid scrambled on his hands and knees, the bullet flying over his head. The kid ducked back in through the exit door and slammed it shut.

Damn it!

Ash had chosen to use a revolver for this murder, a six-shooter. He’d already fired four shots, leaving him two. He couldn’t waste them. But he couldn’t waste time either. It would take only a few seconds for the kid to call the police or...

An alarm shattered the air.

The sound was so loud Ash stopped for a moment and started to cover his ears with his hands. He spun back toward Dee Dee.

“Go!” Ash shouted.

She nodded, understood the protocol. Take off. He was tempted to do the same — get out of here before the cops came. But the kid had seen Dee Dee’s face. He could describe her.

So the kid had to die.

Ash tried the knob on the back door. It turned. Maybe five seconds had passed since he took the first shot. If there was a gun in the store, it was doubtful the kid would have had time to find it. Ash burst in and looked around.

No sign of the kid.

He’d be hiding.

So how long did Ash have? Not long enough. But.

The mind is a computer, so in the brief time it took him to make a step, a lot of probabilities and outcomes flowed through him. The first one was the most obvious and instinctive: The kid had seen Dee Dee’s face. He could identify her. Leaving him alive was thus a clear and present danger to Dee Dee.

Conclusion: He had to be killed.

But as he took the next step, he began to realize that his gut reaction might be a bit too extreme. Yes, the kid had seen her and perhaps he could make an ID. But what would he say exactly? A beautiful woman with a long blonde braid and green eyes who didn’t live in New Jersey, had no connection to New Jersey, who would soon be out of state and perhaps back on her commune or retreat or haven or whatever the fuck she called it... how would the police even know how to find her?

Then again, suppose Dee Dee didn’t make it that far. Suppose the police caught her now, before she could get away cleanly. The kid could identify her. But again — see how the mind works? — so what?

Strip it down: Dee Dee had been standing in a parking lot when Damien Gorse was murdered. That’s all. So had a man with a ski mask and a gun — why would anyone assume that the two of them were together? If she was in on the killing, wouldn’t she have worn a mask too? Wouldn’t Dee Dee be able to easily claim that she had nothing to do with the killing, that she’d stumbled upon the scene, even if she was somehow caught and somehow identified because of the kid’s testimony?

Inside the tattoo parlor, Ash took another step.

More silence.

Really, when he thought about it, what were the odds that if this kid lived, it would bring danger to Dee Dee? When you added it all up — when you weighed all the pros and cons — wouldn’t the best route, the best chance of a successful outcome, derive from Ash getting away now, before the cops came? Was it worth the time lost pursuing this scared kid and risking getting caught — versus the miniscule threat that this witness’s survival could really harm Dee?

Let the kid live.

Ash heard a siren.

He didn’t relish killing him either. Oh, he’d do it, sure, and with no problem. But killing the kid now seemed wasteful, and when you can, you might as well err on the side of the angels, no? He didn’t believe in karma, but then again there was no reason to poke karma in the ribs.

Sirens. Getting closer.

This was the kid’s lucky day.

Ash turned. He sprinted toward the back door to make his escape, because in truth his options were down to one — flee.

That was when he heard the click come from the closet door next to the exit.

Ash almost kept going.

But he didn’t.

Ash opened the door. The kid was down on the floor, his shaking hands on top of his head as though readying to ward off blows.

“Please,” the kid said, “I promise I won’t—”

No time to hear more.

Ash used one bullet, a headshot, leaving himself one last bullet just in case.