Agnes and the Hitman (16 page)

Wait a minute,
she thought, but the heat was everywhere and so was he, his hands on her, his body wrapped around her,
in
her, her skin itched and crackled and she couldn’t stop shuddering, it was too late, and he wasn’t
stopping, his breathing ragged and out of control behind her, she couldn’t even see him, massive behind her, surging into her, and the pressure built, and her blood pounded, the tension everywhere, her breath coming in little gasps as she writhed under his hands and his weight, and then he shifted and rocked into the perfect spot, and she screamed, “Oh,
God,”
and came her brains out, rattling the headboard so hard, she woke up Rhett and made him bark right before she collapsed onto the mattress with Shane on top of her. A moment later, the electricity went out.

In the darkness, all she could hear were the crickets and somebody breathing really hard. That was her. Shane was so still, he was immobile, completely silent, for minutes, hours maybe, while Agnes felt her body spiral back from the good stuff, and then he relaxed, sucking air as hard as she was. He’d been listening, she realized. For what, God knew. Maybe another dognapper.

He pulled out of her and put his hand on her back. “Are you okay?” he said after a minute, still breathless.

Agnes thought about it. “Yes.”

She moved away carefully, assessing the damage she’d brought on herself. There was surprisingly little, considering how much banging around she’d been doing. Mostly it was just that every-cell-I-have-has-just-collapsed feeling that a really good orgasm gave her. She breathed for a while, trying to sort things out, and then she said, “How are you?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, sounding bemused. She heard him sit up in the dark and she did the same, cautiously. “Sorry?”

“No. No complaints. What happened to the lights?”

“Sometimes they do this.” She tried to catch her breath. It seemed to have gone permanently. “The circuit breaker blows. Or on hot nights sometimes the grid goes.”
Well, this is weird. And how was it for you?
She drew another deep breath. “I’ve got flashlight lanterns stashed all over the place.” More breathing. “There’s one by the door and a couple more in the kitchen.” She could see the paler moonlit blue squares of her bedroom windows now that her eyes were accustomed to the dark. Her body was coming back, too. It was her mind that was leaking out her ears. “Usually when the circuits blow, it’s because there’s too much power being drawn, but we weren’t using any power.”

“Oh, there was a surge there at the end.”

As pillow talk, it wasn’t much. On the other hand, her foreplay had been trying to kill somebody. Definitely time to go back to therapy. “Thank you for taking the fork away from me.”

“You’re welcome.” He got up and put on his jeans, and she could have sworn he’d picked up his jacket and taken out a gun. He put whatever it was in his waistband. “We need to get that kid out of the basement and ask him who sent him, although my money’s on Grandpa Thibault. Then tomorrow I’ll go take care of whoever it is, and you’ll be safe again.”

“Oh. Good.” Agnes squinted at him, still trying to see what he’d put in his waistband. It wasn’t like he needed guns. He was terrifying all by himself. Which reminded her. “Thank you for threatening Taylor.”

“My pleasure.”

“Listen, did I do anything awful to you? I mean, just now?”

“No, Agnes,” Shane said, sounding exhausted. “You had sex with me. I’ll take pretty much anything that comes with that.”

“Okay.” She slid down a little in the bed.

“So we don’t have power, which means we don’t have air-conditioning,” Shane said.

“Right.” Agnes realized that sweat was already dripping between her breasts. “Oh, hell. And you got me a new unit, too. Well, it’s the thought that counts.”

“Doyle got the screens up on the back porch before he left.”

“Yes.”

He moved and she saw his silhouette against the window as he looked out. Big guy. Well, she knew that. She tried to move and felt the effects of him everywhere. Really big guy.

“After we deal with the kid, let’s sleep on the porch.”

“We’ll have to wake up early,” Agnes said. “I always do,” Shane said.

“Okay.” Agnes got out of bed and picked up her pillow. “You know, I wouldn’t have killed Taylor.”
Probably.

“Hell, Agnes, you almost killed me.” Shane picked up his pillow.

“Humor. Har.” Agnes gathered up the comforter and opened the door, turning back to get her clothes. “I—”

Shane pointed a gun and fired straight at her twice, the muzzle flash lighting the room, bullets cracking past her ear, then a thud—

Shane went by her, his face expressionless, his hand on her shoulder, pushing her down. “Stay there,” he said, and she turned on her knees and saw a guy lying in the moonlight in the kitchen, his arms splayed out at his sides, a gun in one open hand, and Shane, firing twice more into the man’s chest as he went past on his way out the back door.

Agnes nodded, even though he was gone.

As near as she could tell, the guy with the bullets in him was big. Older. Not skinny like the kid who’d died in the basement last night. This one outweighed her. He’d have shot her even if she’d thrown raspberry sauce at him.

Not that it was a problem now. He was dead.

She saw her glasses on the floor there, where they’d fallen off when she’d been fighting Shane on the way into the bedroom. She crawled forward gingerly and picked them up, not sure why she was being careful since the guy had four bullets in him. He wasn’t getting up again.

She put her glasses on.

Those last two bullets. Just fired right in as he went by. Agnes put her head on her knees and shook.

After a while Shane came back in and said, “He did something to the power. We’ll get it back tomorrow.” He went over to the body and put the flashlight on the face. “You know him?”

Agnes stood up very carefully and went to look, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. He was older, grizzled hair, broad ugly face, two bullet holes in the center of the forehead, two more in his chest. Two holes. Like in Taylor’s neck. “No.”

He leaned down and picked up the guy’s gun. “Shouldn’t you wait for Xavier for that?” Agnes said. “We’re not calling Xavier.”

“Oh.” Agnes put a hand out to steady herself but there was nothing there. “You sure?”

Shane looked at her. “What do you think Xavier is going to do about another body here after the kid in the basement?”

“Well...” Be pretty suspicious about it, but that wasn’t why they weren’t calling him, Agnes was pretty sure. Still she wasn’t going to argue with the guy with the gun, even if she had just had sex with him. She just didn’t know him that well.

“What are we going to do with the body?” She had visions of dragging it into the swamp, whispering, “Here, gator, gator,” and she made a little sound of distress at the thought.

“I’ll take care of it. From now on, I take care of anything like this. No more Xavier.”

“What do you mean, ‘from now on’? You think there’s going to be more of this?”

“It’s possible.” Shane rolled the dead man over on one hip, found his wallet, and flipped it open. “Wallace Macy.” He pulled out five crisp one-hundred-dollar bills and frowned.

Well, he wasn’t the only one frowning. He should be having her evening. Jesus wept.

Shane pulled out his fancy phone and punched in a number. “Carpenter,” he said into the phone. “I have some woodwork.” He listened for a moment, then flipped it shut.

“Who is Carpenter?”

“He’s a man of many talents.” He looked up at her, and she remembered she was naked. “You might want to get dressed. He’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

“Is he going to try to kill me?”

“No.”

“Already I like him,” Agnes said, and went into the bedroom.

She picked up her sundress, patted Rhett, straightened the bed, went into the bathroom, took off her glasses, washed her face, and combed her hair. Then she threw up until it felt as though she’d lost everything she’d ever eaten in her entire life.

When she was done, she splashed cold water on her face again and realized she’d been crying the entire time, ever since Shane had fired those two shots into the dead guy, ever since she’d seen those two holes in his forehead.

“Two holes,” she said to her reflection. “I almost killed Taylor. Just like that. Only that didn’t seem real. This was real. I could have done this. Oh, God.” She put her forehead on the cold mirror and swallowed hard and tried to think what the hell had happened to her life. She’d been writing a successful food column, and engaged to a terrific chef, and living in a great house, and now she was sleeping with a killer, and somebody was trying to take her house, and she’d almost killed her fiancé. ...

“Ex-fiancé,” she told her reflection. “I’m pretty sure that’s over.”

And then there was the flamingo wedding.

She started to laugh. She couldn’t help it, she had to, and then she couldn’t stop, even when Shane knocked on the door and said, “Agnes?” she still couldn’t stop, and he rattled the door but she’d locked it, so he kicked it in and came in and held her and said, “It’s okay,” and she held on to him and said, “I know,” and cried and then after a while she stopped, and he kissed the top of her head and patted her back, and she said, “That was
bad,”
and he said, “Yeah,” and she said, “I won’t do it again,” and he said, “I thought you meant the shooting,” and she said, “That, too,” and let go of him and got dressed and put on her glasses.

When she had herself together again, she went out to the kitchen and got Rhett a dog biscuit in case he’d been traumatized. “At least it won’t ever get any worse than this,” she told him. He seemed comforted by that.

Then as Brenda’s goddamned son of a bitch ugly black grandfather clock gonged midnight in the front hall, she went out onto the porch to wait for somebody named Carpenter to come and clean the blood out of her kitchen.

Heartache often drives us to consume things we wouldn’t otherwise, such as an entire pint of Caramel Pecan Perfection high-fat ice cream, covered in ganache, the crack cocaine of frozen dairy. Twelve hundred calories per pint, six hundred and eighty of which are fat calories, but it only dulls the pain for the moment, there’s that carb fog while you’re standing at the sink shoving it in your face, and then it’s over and you feel... used. Like a cheap pickup the Dove people seduced and abandoned in your kitchen, leaving you with sticky hands and an empty cup and a still-broken heart, except now you’re mad at Dove, too.