And once again I realized I couldn’t care.
That wasn’t my business.
Killing her was my business.
I drove to the airport, and for the next two days I began to stalk the employee parking lot, using a different rental car each time. Most of the flight crew I saw looked a bit like her but lacked the certain vitality she had. So I waited in mounting frustration, just wanting this job to be over with.
On day three, just as I was driving past for the forty-second time that morning, I spotted her getting out of a silver Honda, wrestling with her overnight bag. I quickly pulled the car around again and parked at the side of the road, plumes of dust rising up around me. There was nothing but a chain-link fence between us as she began the long walk toward the waiting airport shuttle. Her modest high heels echoed across the lot and she tugged at the hem of her skirt with every other step. Not only was she beautiful, but there was something adorably awkward about her.
What had she done?
No, I couldn’t care.
I looked down at the bag in the passenger seat and took out the silencer, quickly screwing it on the gun that I was holding between my legs.
She only had a few seconds of life left before I put the bullet in her heart.
I got out of the car, moving like a ghost, gun down at my side. In three strides I would make it over to the fence where I would take quick aim and shoot. She would go down and I would be gone.
I was one stride away when it happened.
A golden sedan pulled out of a parking space in a hurry and slammed right into Alana, knocking her to the ground. She screamed as she went down, tires screeching to a halt, and people started shouting from the shuttle.
The sedan reversed then sped around Alana’s crumpled body, not stopping to check on the woman they had just hit.
I’ve been in a lot of situations before that smack you square in the face – abrupt and brutal scenes that change the course of the day, the course of a life. They come out of nowhere, but you adapt, you roll with them. You refuse to be shocked. I should have been able to collect myself better than I did.
But seeing that car speeding away toward the parking gates and crashing through them as it fled the scene, well I seemed to lose all logic. Before I knew what I was doing, I was getting back into my car and driving after the hit-and-run sedan.
As I passed the broken gates to the parking lot I could see people – employees – emerging from the shuttle, one of them pointing at me. I had been spotted. Maybe as a witness, maybe as someone that was a part of the crime.
Only it wasn’t the crime they thought it was, but the one I didn’t get to commit.
I was fucking everything up for myself and I knew it. But seeing that car gun her down then keep going, as if the driver thought they could get away with it, brought back every debilitating moment from Afghanistan. I watched a lot of people get killed before I became the killer.
I would like to tell myself that I was going after them because they fucked up my potentially perfect assassination. That would make more sense than the truth – that I felt like a helpless soldier again, watching the world around him crumble from senseless acts. I was angry, angrier than I had been in a long time.
I’d snapped. I guess I had it coming.
I drove the beat up car I’d rented from a cheap agency right on his ass, following him in heated pursuit. I wasn’t thinking, I wasn’t even breathing, I was just reacting to some long-forgotten, deep-seated need for vengeance.
The sedan screamed down the road, tires burning on hot asphalt, heading for the highway. I was going to stop him before that. I didn’t know what I was going to do after that, but I had an idea.
I pressed the gas pedal down as far as it would go and willed it to catch up, muttering expletives as it shuddered beneath me. The rental car was a pile of shit to look at, but it turned out the engine worked well enough to let me catch up with the sedan that was sputtering erratically, a tire having blown out as it fought for control on the rough road.
I couldn’t get a good look at the driver, but through the dust I could see him thrashing around in his seat, panicking at the wheel. He wasn’t a professional by any means. Then again, I was supposed to be one and I was trying to kill his fucking ass for no reason at all.
No reason except that it felt one hundred percent right.
His car suddenly shifted right and I took that moment to gun it until my front end clipped his back. The headlights shattered, and with a screech of metal, the car went spinning to a stop.
Before I could comprehend what was going on, I was jumping out of the car, gun at my side, and running to his door. I threw it open and aimed it right at the man’s head.
The dust blew around us, and through the haze he looked at me, mouth open, the whites of his eyes shining as they stared at me with fear or shock or regret.
I didn’t care which one it was.
He raised his hands, screaming out in Spanish, “It was an accident, please, it was an accident!”
“Who are you?” I asked, my voice more steady than I felt.
“It was an accident,” he cried again. For a brief moment he took his frightened eyes off the gun and looked behind him, at the parking lot in the distance and the commotion that was gathering there. Soon they would be heading our way. “Is she all right? Please, please, the girl, is she all right?”
“No,” I told him, and pulled the trigger.
Because of the silencer, the sound of his brains and skull splattering on the window – a bright burst of red – was louder than the gun.
I quickly got back in my car and drove away. There was no time to stand around and figure out who the man was, if it was truly an accident or something else. Questions would come later, as they always did, only this time I’d be the one doing the asking.
***
I spent the rest of the day inside my hotel room, cleaning my guns and watching the local Puerto Vallarta news, trying to see if the accident would be mentioned. It was at the end of the segment when they finally reported on it. It was the usual shoddy shot of the serious reporter standing in front of the smashed gates to the parking lot. Alana, as it turns out, wasn’t killed or even critically injured. She had been admitted to the nearest hospital. The bigger part of the story was the part that had my hand all over it. It was that someone had caught up with the driver and shot him in the head. The news wasn’t sure whether this was a botched hit-and-run or vigilante justice.
I didn’t know what to think of it myself. One minute everything was going to plan, the next minute I was putting a bullet in the head of someone else, acting out of pure, untrustworthy instinct. That lack of control scared me. I hadn’t responded like that, so loosely, so foolishly, since my wife had been killed.