Shapeshifter - 4. Tunes of a crazy person

~*Noom*~

Life is hell.

I bet you despise those words as much as I do, and I bet you hate people who say those words as much as I do. It's melodramatic, nothing else. Nobody cares, really. Keep your shit to yourself, don't give people even more reasons to laugh at you. But in using those words, I don't whine, I just observe. And I form strong, silent statements out of my observations. No one ever gets to hear them, but thinking them makes me feel all warm and cozy inside.

Life is a very tame simulation of hell so you'll be prepared once you die.

We're all going to hell. Everyone. Everything. They even have Pepsi Cola Light there to torment you.

When I met him I was prepared too. Prepared to kill him, shoot that delicious little creature with his perfect perky butt and those full, rosy lips. I had seen dozens of perky butts and lush lips in my life, and I knew there would be dozens more in the future when I followed him into the bathroom. My head was clear, my conscience without any blemish when I pointed my beloved Beretta at him.

It was my finger that wouldn't move.

I knew that look he had on his face when he saw the muzzle pointed at his head. That mix of wonder, panic and slight morbid amusement he had in his unbelievable eyes as he held up both hands to try and catch a bullet traveling at the speed of sound. It was the look of a pure soul that had been damaged deeply and never been fixed.

I knew that look because my girlfriend had had it on her face, painted on there for eternity by death himself.

Back then I hadn’t given two shits about souls or people or even her feelings, the drugs had damaged me way too far to care. And with the drugs there had been the need to make money, and then the lack thereof, and finally someone had decided to take my misgivings out on her. They had left her where I would find her, and they had made her into a spectacular surprise. I never touched drugs again after that; or women on that account.

But there was no need for women in my world anyway. I wanted him. I wanted him because there was no hope left in him, no happy future, no bright light at the end of his tunnel, and he knew it. He knew it, and still believed in good people, probably still was able to smile and laugh and relish small things, broken as he was, lost as he was. He was a living ‘No Leaf Clover’, and it intrigued me to no end.

I wanted him because I couldn’t ruin him anymore. I could fix him, make things better, but nothing I did would be enough to fuck him up beyond repair, and the possibilities were a siren song in my head.

That night I robbed him, debased him, fucked him, hit him, and he took it. He was in constant terror, but he never crossed the line to blind panic. He never lost his nerve enough to forget about the gun and he never fell into that fear-induced stupor some of my victims dropped into. I had never before tried to have sexual intercourse with any of them, mind you, but his sheer beauty and despair had me test the waters before I could restrain myself. And that, too, seemed to be right up his alley.

Only when I looked down at his unconscious body lying on my shabby living room couch did my sanity come back to remind me of the deep shit I had just flung myself into. My assignment had been to kill him and bring a piece of his body back to prove it. Taking into account the kind of money I had been offered for this, my client really, really wanted the boy dead, and I had fucked up royally by taking him home.

I caught myself stroking his pitch-black hair and jumped back, balling my hands into fists. The way this boy influenced me was more than dangerous, and if I didn’t put a stop to it right now I was as good as dead.

My fingers touched the butt of my gun sticking out of the waistband at the small of my back, but somehow I couldn’t pull it. My reeling consciousness hurried to find some lame excuses, like the riches I had seen in his condo, and how there must be more of it if I just kept him a bit, squeezed him a bit more, but I knew the truth. I was thinking with my dick.

Since jumping an unconscious victim was definitely beyond me- even mercenaries have morals!- I hurried to go downstairs and distract myself with the one thing I had kept out of my girlfriend’s belongings: Her coffee maker. I loved that damn old thing to death, the brew it spit out was thick enough to stick a spoon in it and have it standing upright.

Just as the old kettle sputtered the last drops into the coffee pot, I noticed movement from upstairs. The ceiling/floor between the ground level and the first floor was only a few wooden planks and beams, and the gaps between the planks were wide enough to let small clouds of dust pass wherever anyone walking on the first floor set his foot. It was a neat trick to catch a guest unfamiliar with my old hut by surprise.

I grabbed two cups of coffee, fixed one up with milk and sugar and silently crept upstairs. It was stupid, having both hands full, but I didn’t need to worry. That black haired bastard was so immersed in the key pad on my weapon’s locker, he didn’t even hear me walk right by him. I wanted to laugh, but that would have ruined the fun. Instead, I put the cups on the small coffee table by the couch, drew my gun, sneaked behind him and pressed the muzzle against the back of his head.

His gasp and the small jump were delightful, but I had expected a yelp or a scream and felt strangely disappointed with his self control. He must look glorious when he totally lost it, be it in arousal or fear, but somehow he just wouldn’t reach the point of total bliss, or total terror.

He slowly held up his hands, head ducked, and the one thing that really caught my attention was the relaxed state of his fingers. Slightly bent, pale, hands tilted a bit outward, and no tension anywhere else except for his head and shoulders. I didn’t even know why I picked up exactly that detail and nothing else, but it somehow calmed my frisky, dangerous mood down. I lost the need to play cruel games with him instantly, and for once, I wasn’t even sad about it.

“Sorry, I couldn’t help it,” he muttered, sounding abashed and coy, words and voice totally out of place. It made me grin and put my gun away. Guns weren’t needed right now.

Grabbing his arm, I pulled him up and towards the couch where I had left him before, herding him towards Binky, my plush unicorn. “Now, don’t look so sullen. Your naive fascination was actually cute. But it’s just a trunk, and it won’t kill you if it gets annoyed, I will. Now sit and drink your coffee like a well-mannered guest is supposed to.”

Well, actually the trunk could kill him, but he didn’t need to know that. It had a smart bomb wired to the lid, and if someone decided to break it open, the resulting explosion would take down the whole house with everything in it. Paranoid, who, me?

Kel grabbed for his mug, face skeptical as he took the first sip. His skepticism quickly turned to bliss when he found the contents to his liking, and I couldn’t help watching him devour the coffee like kids devoured cotton candy.

There was something entirely odd about my little captive, but I simply couldn’t put my finger on it. He talked like a normal person, walked like a normal person, acted like a normal person, but still, something about the way he reacted, the way he moved, the way he seemed to interpret the world around him just wouldn’t fit. He stood out, and not just because of his devastatingly good looks or his pricey wardrobe. Like in that moment when he seemed totally lost in the taste of his coffee, humming lowly, eyes closed, head canted in thought, sitting face to face with the armed crazy person who had tried to kill him just sixteen hours ago.

I couldn’t resist the sweet lure of creating confusion. If something looked harmonic and peaceful I had to poke at it. “You’re strange, ya know that?” I huffed, interestedly watching his face contort as he twitched and blinked. He was totally at ease, even though I obviously made him nervous and antsy, but there’s a difference between someone constantly fearing for his life and someone being threatened and then left alone to recuperate from the shock.

Kelaste DeLargo definitely wasn’t feeling the pressure of constant danger.

He even made excuses for his spaced out behavior, like any talkative, polite person would. “I think I have a concussion,” he chirped, and blushed a nice shade of pink. “And I’m not strange, I just like coffee,” he added hastily and kneaded his mug a bit. The movement of his elegant fingers around the black clay pottery made me look at his hands, and then my eyes inevitably wandered deeper. I ended up eying his crotch, where an uncut, plump and rosy one-eyed snake nodded overly friendly in my direction. He was getting hard, and it made me jealous of the coffee mug.

Not wanting to stare like a creep, I looked back up to his face to see if he had caught me checking him out, but he still kept his eyes fixated on the table before him like a scolded school boy. He also hadn’t made any attempts to hide his state of lust from me, which did make me wonder if coffee made him that disconnected from the world.

“You do realize that you are naked and partially hard down there?” I inquired, fighting down the urge to grin and point at his cock. Instead, I just plastered one of my saintly smiles on and watched the show.

He hadn’t realized it, and at my remark, he looked down, jumped up and bumped into the coffee table, leaving it to me to save both our mugs from sudden death. Strangely enough, I didn’t feel the need to go for my gun, even though he hysterically grabbed for Binky the unicorn to hide his crotch and skittered away from the couch like a cockroach from sunlight. I still didn’t have the faintest idea how he did it, but his body language was an open book for me, nothing hidden, everything crystal clear to see and interpret. And right now, he didn’t pose a threat at all, his body told me in no uncertain terms.

I put the mugs back down as he scanned the room for his clothes, face redder than I had ever seen before. I looked to my bed and remembered the second hand box I had stashed underneath it, filled with old clothes destined to be cut up and sewed into something new. I didn’t know why I bothered with his desire to get dressed and hide his erection from me, but I also didn’t stop to think about it much. I just bent over, pulled the box out from under the bed and sifted through the layers of cloth until I found pants. They looked small, but if he didn’t fit in them, I’d still have a few more layers to go, and probably be able to find something else.

I threw the striped pants at him. “You won’t be able to wear that for long, but since I plan to finish my coffee before I jump you, you can put that on - for now,” I cooed, but he didn’t get it. I got dead silence for my pun, but it didn’t bother me much - nobody got my humor, something I had gotten used to a long time ago.

I only realized how bad a choice I had just made when he wiggled into the pants, barely able to pull the waist band over his butt. Damn, I could see everything! Every swell of muscle, every crease and cranny, and when he finally got it zipped up his cock made a tell-tale bulge at his crotch that simply was mouth-watering to see. Luckily, he still didn’t dare look at my face, so he didn’t catch me staring like a love-struck teenager as he sat down, putting Binky back on his spot on the right side of the couch.

I forced my eyes to look at his face, and it was a good thing I did, because now I was treated to a show of utter self control. He took a deep breath, then his shoulders slumped with conscious effort on his part. The relaxation made his whole body shudder and go limp, and then he lifted his eyes to finally look at me properly.

It felt like a time lapse back into that bathroom stall in the night club. His eyes were breathtaking, a strange, supernatural mixture of gray, white and iridescent silver, big and shiny and hypnotizing. His pupils were the sizes of pinheads, typical for a heroin junkie, but they slowly dilated as he was staring at me. I knew what that meant too: Lust, fighting the effects of the opiate cursing through his bloodstream. He was lusting for me, and he stared at me with that come-hither-look on his face that made my cock go on a rampage in my pants. I wanted to hear my name come from his lips, begging me for more, moaning in utter delight as I thrust into him from behind, pulling his hair, a tight grip on his wrists used as an anchor against my movements…

And then I remembered that I knew his name, but he didn’t know mine yet. I had to fix that, it disturbed my daydreaming.

“Noom,” I said. It made Kel jerk back startled, but it didn’t rob him of his politeness.

“Excuse me?” he asked confusedly and busied his hands with his mug to hide his confusion.

“That’s my name, Noom,” I repeated, and inevitably looked down at his crotch again. Yep, his cock was still hard as a rock. The Old Faithful of abduction victims, and all mine.

Of course, Noom wasn’t the name on my birth certificate, but I hadn’t used my real name in more than ten years. The day I had run away from home had been the day I’d started to use my new name, which I had chosen while gazing at reflections of the moon on a shop window in the middle of the night. Reflection of the moon, ‘Noom’, get it? Yeah, it’s not funny, I know. I had been tripping so bad I had nearly been run over by a car, but my new nick name stuck in my head like chewing gum to the sole of a boot.

“That’s a pretty exclusive name, I guess,” he offered shyly, and I could see him hesitate a bit. Questions were racing across his beautiful face, but he was smart, and he didn’t utter any of them. I liked him more and more, even though I didn’t want to admit it. He was exciting and beautiful and sexy and occupied my thoughts with an ease that was frightening. It had been a long time since anyone had last been able to do that, and I didn’t want to lose him so quickly. Which meant that I had to get to the roots of our combined problem: the bounty on his pretty head.

Instead of griping over my own fate, I just got on with finding out what the hell this young boy had done to make someone powerful want to kill him.

“Tell me why the Mafia wants you dead,” I asked, even though I didn’t really know who was behind the whole thing. I just knew that my contact, Franko, was working for them, so I guessed.

He looked surprised enough to be convincing. Either I had guessed wrong and the Mafia weren’t after his perky ass, or he simply didn’t know their range of influence. They were into drug dealing, though they kept eerily quiet about it. But hadn’t he at least figured out that someone wanted him dead? I had to be sure.

“You thought I wanted to kill you? Do I look like a sociopath who runs around killing jail bait for fun, just because?” I snorted, and felt a little bit hurt when his eyes said yes and no word came across his lips. I had my pride, and he had just innocently trampled all over it.

I wanted him to say no, or anything else to reinforce my ego, but instead he said, “I don’t know. Maybe they want to weaken my father by killing his offspring?” It was a nice change of topic, a good guess for a naive rich kid, but it didn’t fix my insecurities about my character. I hadn’t killed him, had I? How could he think I was a bad guy after that?

Still, instead of reprimanding him for thinking so little of me, I just went back to the problem at hand. “No, they would have threatened him first, and they would have left some kind of message for him if that was the case,” I explained, having had my own experiences with the Mafia. Like a dead, cut up girlfriend for example, but he didn’t need to know that. Maybe he would never learn about my gruesome past, and maybe it would be better that way. I waited for him to continue, but he just flushed again and grumbled, “Hey, don’t look at me like that. The only illicit thing I ever did was buying drugs and paying with sexual favors. The Mafia doesn't do drugs.”

He was wrong about that, but I didn’t correct him. The Babylon Mafia didn’t look kindly on people ruining their secret dealings, and we were neck deep in shit already. No need to shovel more dirt.

My time was better spent finding a way to keep the black haired scrap for a little longer, because even though his residency in my hut would cause problems of unknown proportions, I had already gotten addicted to his character, to him. The only way to accomplish that was finding out who wanted him dead, and why, and either find a way to fake his death, or buy him off. If the hit order came from someone I knew and had already worked for, my chances at winning my very much alive prize were much better, and buying off would probably work. They’d know I would be able to control him and keep him out of whatever business he had interrupted. If it was someone I didn’t know and hadn’t worked for yet, there was no way I’d be able to bring up enough money to buy the hit, and I’d have to fake his death - not an easy task at all.

But first things first.

“I wanna keep you around for a few days, but I don’t want to end up where you are now, havin’ a bounty on your head and what not. They said ‘kill 'im where he stands,’ and that's what I'd do under normal circumstances,” I explained to him, scratching the back of my neck. Maybe it was a bad idea to be that open with him, but I always found the truth to be easier to handle than a lie. A lie you had to remember, and build upon, the truth just sat there most of the time, ready to be used like a Russian hooker. Also, with my luck - or lack thereof - he wouldn’t survive another week, and whatever knowledge I gave him would die with him, so no need to worry.

Kelaste didn’t seem to think that way. "So why don't you? If you're a contract killer, you shouldn't mind who you kill," he whined and looked utterly crestfallen. Another enigma for me, as if he hadn’t already given me enough to ponder about. That was simply no way to talk to your executioner, but he did seem to sense my reluctance to do him harm just as much as I managed to telepathically guess his intentions. It was strangely cute to see him unhappy like this, not because I relished unhappiness, but because he felt secure enough to show me.

But me? A contract killer? I didn’t look like a Leon, or a Vincent Vega, and though it did flatter me a bit that he thought so highly of me, it offended me at the same time. I was no damn contract killer, thank you very much! I told him as much in no uncertain terms, and just to be sure he understood my profession, I explained lengthily.

"I'm a mercenary. Usually, I get to hit people until they pay their debts, or blow up something, or deliver packages of dubious origin. I've shot my share of people, mostly armed ones that wanted to shoot me too - until I met ya'. I was ready to blow your brains out when I went into the men's room, but there you were, sucking happily on that darn ugly cock. I waited and watched you, and then I started to think. 'Why would the Mafia send a mercenary for a simple kill? He's got no weapons at all.' I told myself, 'maybe they want to set you up.' So when you gave me that kicked-puppy-look, I decided to find out more."

I had talked myself into one of my Sherlock Holmes-esque moods, and it called for something softer than old school punk music, so I got up and just switched to another playlist.

It didn’t stop me from talking, of course. "When I saw your penthouse and learned your name, I got even more suspicious of the whole 'Kill him' story. So I decided to take ya' with me. Have a little fun, you know. Find out if they want to get me arrested."

Ah yes, sweet memories. When he’d first told me his name, I had known instantly that the shit had hit the fan. Everybody knew about DeLargo senior and his very multicolored business advances, but only the darker throng - like me - knew what a dangerous, despicable man Theodore DeLargo, CEO of Flatlands Inc., really was. I had my own history with Kel’s old man, and it was connected right to the darkest hours of my own life. It had been his drugs I had been sucking in like a vacuum cleaner, and it had been one of his goons who had come to pay a visit and reassemble my girlfriend to death.

I doubted that Kel knew that side of his father, or that his father knew what his goons were doing to get debts settled with his customers. Old Theo probably never had seen his illegal drug labs in person, he was just the money pot for the cooks. That didn’t stop me from blaming him for every misfortune I had ever encountered, of course. I dreamed of shooting him every night.

Kel’s panicky voice ripped me out of my reverie. “So, how do you plan to do that? I mean, how do you plan to find out if they want to get you arrested?”

That was a particularly good question, and one I couldn’t answer. But I was already cooking up some ideas on how to go from here. “You'll see soon enough,” I answered with one of my hyena grins. Better keep him off-balance, he already looked way too comfortable in my life and on my couch. I didn’t need a stinkin’ live-in-sweetie.

I decided to get going right then and follow the flow. Getting up, I stepped right next to him, trying to get him to back away with pure physical presence, but he didn’t budge. He just tried to become invisible by shrinking, but it wasn’t good enough for me. On the other hand, he was still clutching his coffee mug, and I didn’t want to get brown sauce spilled all over my beloved couch, so that was the first thing needing to be fixed.

I grabbed the mug, but he wouldn’t let go. Clever little scrap, he had guessed already that I was careful with the state of cleanliness of my couch, and he didn’t want to lose his leverage on my willingness for physical persuasion. I still tried to be reasonable first. “Let go,” I grumbled sternly, and he obeyed. I set the cup aside and then grabbed for his wrists, just as he tried to hide them under his crossed arms. He really was perceptive, but he also seemed to cope well with orders, so I just told him what I wanted. “Don’t struggle,” I barked and brought his hands behind his back. I needed to make sure he wouldn’t run while I was out investigating his case like a private eye, and to be sure he stayed where he was, I had to hogtie him. This time though he didn’t listen to my command and started struggling like an eel on the hook.

I lost my grip for a moment and my fingers started to hurt from the awkward angle and supporting his full weight. He nearly slipped out of my hands, but I managed to catch him a split second before his face could collide with the armrest. It was just a lucky catch to be honest, but at least he instantly stopped resisting and just let me do my thing.

Actually, he grew so still and passive I wasn’t sure he hadn’t hit his head after all, so I pulled him up to his knees as soon as I was done binding his arms. This caused another lovely spin-off, namely being able to touch his naked chest and stomach, and press my own body against his. Touching his skin felt like hugging a ray of sunlight, and for a short moment, I wondered how he managed to hold such a high body temperature with so little clothing.

Then I felt his hands cupping my crotch. It was horribly distracting, but somehow I remembered that I had to say something. “I need to go out for a few hours, scrap. Since I can't – and won't – trust you, I'll have you tied up like a pretzel.” As I said those words, I did with my fingers on his hairless belly what I wanted him to do with his, stroking and kneading his skin. I wanted to find out how far his instinctual interpretation of my behavior went, because I still couldn’t get over the fact that he gave the impression of reading my mind, and that he somehow enabled me to read his, so to speak.

His fingers fumbled with the buttons of my pants, even as he pleaded with me to let him go. His actions said the exact opposite as his hands freed my cock and wrapped around it greedily. The steady, demanding pressure made me moan and writhe against him, and he proved to be quite talented even with bound hands. Every touch started right at the root of my cock, pulling upward to squeeze pre-come out of my slit, only to cover his fingers with it and start all over.

My own lips caught his earlobe, and I nibbled at it while I stole a glance down his front. I could see his own raging erection dent out his slutty pants and leave wet spots on the denim where his cock strained against the cloth. He obviously enjoyed this just as much as I did, and it gave me an idea.

“You like my cock, huh?” I asked, even though the answer didn’t really matter to me. I just did it because I knew he wouldn’t answer, being too preoccupied with working me to a blasting orgasm. This was about testing a theory - okay, and about me having said orgasm. I let one of my hands trail down to his crotch, cupping it as I silently counted to five, just to give him enough time to react.

He didn’t. He just sped up his hands on my cock and nearly made me go blind with lust and euphoria.

Out of his sight, I snarled silently in triumph and grabbed his crotch hard. I was careful not to exaggerate the pressure though, just enough to give him the kind of pain I liked to inflict on my lovers. His reaction was beautiful and reassuring.

“Yes!” he gasped, and for a moment I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be his answer to my question or just an exclamation of happiness. “Yes, what?” I whispered gleefully, because I felt that he somehow expected me not to be satisfied with that answer.

“I like your cock very much,” he gasped and made a strange sound as I started slowly rubbing his erection through the denim. It sounded similar to a purring cat, and it made me want to draw more of those lovely gasps out of him, so I opened his fly and caught his cock as it bounced out.

It was perfectly sized for me, a little under seven inches, silky and painfully hard, and it gave me all the reassurance I needed to know that he loved what I was doing to him. He was a little masochist, that one, which fit me perfectly. I didn’t think of myself as a real sadist, but there were bouts of violence in all of my sexual fantasies, and I had always looked for someone who appreciated that.

His hands tortured my cock with a myriad of small, clever touches, and though I already reciprocated his efforts, he still started to beg for more. I knew instantly he wanted me to fuck him right there on the couch, bound and forced into submission, and I had his trousers down before I could use my brain. I had things to do, important things at that, like saving my life - and his in the process. If we started to fuck now, I would never leave the house, because his body held wonders to lose myself in. My self control had its limits, and as he was pushing them mercilessly, I had to protect them, for both our sakes.

Instead of bending him over and ramming little Noom home where he belonged, I breached his anus with a finger. I couldn’t stay away completely, he was too luscious for that, but I could restrain myself to a certain extent.

Only when he started fucking himself on my fingers, sweating and groaning in utter abandon, did I get jealous of my own hand and started regretting my sense of responsibility. He moved his whole body at that time, riding my crooked fingers, stroking my cock with every movement, and he swore under his breath and between his groans, “Oh fuck! Oh fuck!”.

I finally was able to see him totally undone. It hooked me instantly; I felt myself get addicted to him right there and then. It should have frightened me, or made me angry, but instead I just felt the warm tingle of an impending orgasm ripple through my lower abdomen. “Come for me,” I whispered frantically, because it somehow seemed important to have him come before me, to prove my sexual prowess with holding back my own orgasm. He craned his neck and whimpered, and I couldn’t resist.

When I bit his neck hard, he bucked, shouted, and came like a small geyser.

It was the hottest thing I’d ever seen.

He fell forward onto the soft, sticky couch cushions, blissfully tired, and I stroked myself into a fast, electrifying oblivion of my own, marking his back and ass with my cum. ‘Mine,’ my brain whispered happily, and I didn’t even try to disagree.

But if I wanted to keep him as much as I desired him, I had to get going now, and not waste another minute. I left him lying there, bound and exhausted, and got dressed.

I had to go see Viking Mike.

~*~

Viking Mike was the closest thing to a friend I’d ever had, though I didn’t call him friend. There was not a single person I trusted on this world, but on a scale ranging from blood lust to sympathy Viking Mike was on the uppermost part of my personal chart.

He lived in an old, small and beautiful detached house in Cat’s Cradle Peninsula near Bracket River, just beyond the Southern Ghetto. Though his 1600 square feet of living space didn’t trump my own home by much, his was definitely more classy. Dark wooden furniture, gleaming hardwood floors, curtains and carpets that actually had seen a shop from the inside at one point in their life, and of course, there were weapons.

Not the kind of weapons I carried around, mind you. Axes, swords, crossbows, lances, daggers and knives hung from various contraptions, dangling over my head and from the walls like some kind of private museum. They weren’t the main reason for his nickname though.

Mike let me in after the second knock, towering over me like a Scandinavian model on his day off. He was about 6’6’’, built like a tank and as blond as me. Contrary to me, he didn’t have to bleach his hair to get that color, and I envied him for that.

“Noom, good day to you. Business or pleasure?” he said and turned around to walk into the kitchen.

“Business. The private sort.”

I closed the door behind me and followed him until we reached his living room, then made myself at home there. I heard him fiddle around with his French coffee machine, a giant hissing monster made of tubes and copper plates. There was no way he would get down to said business without having met his duties as a host, so I just swallowed my impatience and waited for him to join me.

A few minutes later, he sat down on the other couch and set two Italian Cappuccinos down on the black coffee table. The cream was dotted with slowly melting caramel crumbles, and he’d even bought cinnamon cookies to put next to the cup for decoration. That man had some serious barista ambitions.

Mike unpacked his cookie, dunked it into the cream and gave me a raised eyebrow. “So?” he said and took a bite.

I ignored my cookie and took a foamy sip, licking my upper lip as I played the words through in my head. “I’ve got an assignment from Franko, but I think he, or whoever ordered him to find someone for it, is ripping me off big time. I can’t shake the feeling they’re looking for a scapegoat, and I won’t put up with that. I need more information, find out who gave the order in the first place. Can you help me?”

Mike inhaled the rest of his cookie, looking thoughtful and focused as he listened. The spoon made soft clinking sounds as he stirred the rest of the cream and the caramel crumbles into his coffee. Then he grumbled, “Sounds like you want me to spy on your clients. Are you sure you want to do that? We’re talking about your reputation here, you know.”

It wasn’t criticism on Mike’s part, but I wouldn’t have accepted those words from anyone else. I didn’t like to explain myself under normal circumstances, but in this case, he was right. “Yeah, I know. But I’ve got a really bad feeling about this job, and it has been itching at the back of my mind for two days. If I need to spy on my client to survive, I’ll just have to swallow my pride for once. And if he’s trying to rip me off and blame the kill on me, he’s not worth protecting anyway.”

Mike shrugged. He didn’t really care about my reputation, he knew me too well to give a damn about it. “Fine, I’ll do it. You’ll need to tell me everything about the assignment though. Can’t find dirt without a shovel.”