Excerpt: Contract Killer Corporation

The door was thrown open before Joel could say anything else, and a person I recognized stumbled into the room. His name was Jerry. His shirt was drenched in blood, and his face was pinched in agony as he drunkenly made his way over to the table. Most importantly, he was without a partner.

Jerry fell to the ground and the Captains ran over to him. Kiley and I stood as he was brought over to the table and made to lie down on it. He was openly sobbing, but when I got close enough, I noticed he wasn’t wounded. The blood on his shirt wasn’t his.

Joel held Jerry’s hand and put another on his forehead. “Jerry,” he whispered. “What happened?”

Jerry shook his head, tears streaming down onto the table. I felt Kiley move closer to me and I instinctively put an arm around her waist.

“What happened to Jered?” Joel shook the broken man’s frame a little. “Come on Jerry, tell me what happened to him.”

“Jered is my partner.” The people surrounding the table all looked down at him.

“I know that Jerry. I need you tell me what happened to him.”

Jerry moaned and sobbed some more. “Jered is my partner,” he repeated, a little louder this time. “Jered is my partner, and I will always keep him safe. I will never leave him behind.”

I felt my blood run cold. Beneath my arm, Kiley began to tremble.

When we’re five, they teach us the importance of partnership. A Guardian sat me down one day and told me how vital it was that I stay with my partner no matter what. Kiley was getting a similar speech across the room.

“I need you to memorize something for me, okay Kimball?” the Guardian had asked. I agreed and learned what the Guardian wanted me to. Kiley and I both had to recite it until it wasn’t forgotten.

“Kiley is my partner. Kiley is my partner, and I will always keep her safe. I will never leave her behind. I will cherish her life even more than my own and protect her from harm no matter what the cost. Kiley is my partner, and that will never change.”

Joel managed to calm Jerry down long enough to tell us what happened. He was still shaken and had trouble focusing on anything in the room, but at least we could understand what he was saying.

“We were in the hotel room. We’d finished the hit and were suppose to leave tomorrow morning. I went to the bathroom to wash up. I wasn’t gone for more than a minute, but when I got out, Jered was gone.”

Jon swayed and had to lean on the table. “Gone?” he repeated faintly.

Jerry nodded. “The window was open. Someone took him without my noticing in under a minute from the twenty-second floor of a hotel room.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a bright red envelope. “This was all that was left behind.”

Jon snatched the letter from Jerry’s hand and opened it. He found a black note card inside and read it to himself. Joel read over his shoulder. There couldn’t have been much; they were both done in just a few seconds.

“It just says ‘You have twelve minutes to save your partner.’ Then there’s an address.” He turned back to Jerry. “This address was close to you?”

“Yes.”

“And you went there?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“I was two minutes too late.” Jerry hung his head, more tears coming to the surface. “I found his body when I got there, but no one else was around. They were already gone. I tried bringing him back here, but I couldn’t do it.”

I tried to imagine going through a similar experience. I saw myself in the bathroom at a hotel room, fully prepared to argue with Kiley about what to watch before going to sleep, but when I went to her, she was gone. All I had to go on was a letter, a given
deadline, and where she would be.

What if I didn’t make it in time? What if I found just her body, still warm but completely lifeless? I would never get to argue with her again or say something stupid to maker her angry with me.

I felt sick at the thought and nearly fell over. Kiley looked up at me in confusion. “I’m okay,” I lied.

“No you’re not.” She wrapped her arms around my waist. “I know what you were thinking, I was thinking it too. That’s not going to happen to us.”

I gave her a nod but was positive she hadn’t even convinced herself. She leaned against me and turned back toward Jerry, who could no longer speak, only sob loudly to himself. The other people in the room looked pale and terrified. The Captains were having a quiet conversation that no one else could hear.

Someone managed to take one of us from a very high floor with a professional assassin in the next room. They brought him to an address nearby and shot him in twelve minutes, before Jerry could get there. And I thought we were good.

“This is too much of a coincidence,” I said so quiet only Kiley could hear. She didn’t look up, but I felt her body stiffen. She knew what I was talking about. “Jered is murdered the same night we’re ambushed. Incidences are so rare with all of us, and now we have two in one night.

“I think someone wants us dead.” I pulled Kiley even closer to me. We were both most comfortable around each other, but that’s something we never talked about. “And it sounds like they’re just as good as us, maybe even better.”

The Captains had finally come to an agreement about something. They both nodded to each other and looked down at Jerry with sadness in their eyes.

“What do we do?” Kiley finally glanced up at me. No one seemed to notice we were having our own private discussion.

I pushed some of the hair out of her eyes. “We’ll do what we were told to do. We’ll protect each other.” There was no way I was going to lose her and end up a mess like Jerry now was. I wasn’t ready to die, and if I lost her, that’s exactly what I would do.

Jon waved two Guardians over to collect Jerry. “Bring him out back.”

We all knew what that meant, even Jerry. He didn’t fight them off but didn’t bother walking himself either. He went limp and let the two Guardians drag him away while he continued to shake and sob like the world just ended.

I never saw him again after that.