He turned his stony gaze to mine. “No.”
“All right then.”
I took off my shoe and then my sock, and I stuffed the sock into his mouth. He fought then, teeth gritted against the pain in his shoulder. But I managed to get it in without being bitten.
When I started to walk away, he decided he was feeling chatty. At least, that seemed to be what he was trying to tell me, grunting and wriggling madly as I abandoned him to the bunnies and squirrels.
As I turned the last corner near the lodge, I was confronted by yet another armed killer on a mission to track me down.
“Hey,” I said to Jack. “Did you start worrying that a hired gun had attacked me in the forest?”
He rolled his eyes and jerked his chin back toward the lodge. “Emma’s baking. Should be ready.”
“Great, but I’m going to suggest you get your cinnamon roll to go. I shouldn’t leave that guy bleeding in the forest.”
“Guy?”
“The hired gun.”
Jack stared at me. “You serious?”
“Also, I’d like my sock back.” I gestured down at my bare leg. “I just hope he hasn’t chewed any holes in it.”
“Fuck.”
“Agreed. All these times when I mocked you for telling me to take extra precautions on my jog and now you get to say ‘I told you so’ forever.”
I handed him the page I’d taken from my would-be assassin. As he read it, his expression changed. If I was the guy in the woods, I’d start gnawing my arm off.
Jack folded the paper, carefully and deliberately, running his nails along the edges before he looked up.
“If I’d had any idea—” he began.
“—that Drew Aldrich’s killer would presumably send someone here after me? It’s a completely unforeseeable turn of events, Jack.”
His grim look said it should have been foreseeable. He jerked his chin toward the road. “Let’s go.”
“You aren’t wearing a disguise,” I said.
“Don’t need it.”
I could have gotten my would-be attacker to talk without Jack’s help. No matter how inclined a guy might be to discredit a woman’s potential threat, it’s possible to beat the sexism out of him. But I didn’t need to do that when I had a partner who was a lot better at getting reluctant people to talk.
Bringing back male reinforcements did not bolster my attacker’s opinion of me. He lifted his head as we approached, saw Jack, and managed a snort, as if to say “Figures.”
Jack walked over, gun at his side. With his free hand, he grabbed the guy by the hair and lifted him as he crouched to study his face. Then he dropped him and shot him in the other shoulder. The guy let out a strangled squeal through the sock gag and the stink of urine wafted over.
“He didn’t piss himself when I shot him,” I said.
“Saw yours coming. Gotta be faster.”
The guy writhed on the ground. When Jack bent again, he tried shimmying backward.
“Stop moving or I shoot you between the shoulders.”
The man stopped. Jack hunkered down in front of him, gun dangling so casually it might have been a half-empty beer bottle.
“I need to talk to you. I’m going to take that sock out. You yell, scream, holler? I shoot you. You don’t answer my questions, I shoot you. Basically? You piss me off, I shoot you. Understood?”
The guy nodded.
Jack pulled out the sock gag, tossed it aside, and looked up at me. “What’re we calling him?”
“His fake ID says Douglas. Dougie works for me.”
Dougie followed our exchange, gaze slightly narrowed, as if not sure whether to be offended by my casual tone or take it as a sign that the situation wasn’t as dire as it seemed. He opted for number two. He asked Jack, “You a cop, too?”
Jack looked at me.
“My throw-down tipped him off,” I said. “Apparently, he didn’t know his assigned target was a former law-enforcement officer.”
“Fucking idiot,” Jack muttered.
“He’s not too bright,” I said. “Did I tell you how he got me into the woods? He convinced me to help him find his lost dog.”
Jack snorted. “How old does she look to you? Twelve?”
Dougie’s eyes narrowed as he looked up at me. “She tricked me. Fucking bitch—”
Jack shot him in the leg. When he screeched, Jack grabbed his hair and slammed his face into the ground.
“Shut the fuck up.” He lifted Dougie’s head as blood surged from the man’s broken nose. “Didn’t I warn you not to piss me off? Calling her names is going to piss me off.”
“You crazy . . .”
Dougie trailed off, watching Jack’s emotionless face. He seemed to decide that crazy wasn’t quite the word he wanted. He swallowed hard and dropped his gaze.
“What’s the job?” Jack asked.
Dougie was having trouble focusing. “Wh-what?”
“The job. This.” He shook open the page with my information. “What were you supposed to do?”
“Just . . . uh, find her. Get a look and see if she was the woman in the other photo. Which, obviously she’s not, so I’ll say there was a mistake and—”
“Stop babbling.”
His teeth clicked shut.
“And if she was this woman in the photo?” Jack said. “What were you supposed to do?”
“Tell the guy who hired me. That’s it.”
“So you were only supposed to confirm whether Nadia Stafford was the woman in the photo. Which required a gun, handcuffs, and fake ID.”
The man decided not to answer, instead shifting and wincing, trying to find a less painful position.
“Who hired you to check her out?”
“I don’t know. That’s not how I work. I have this other guy, like an agent, who takes the, uh, job requests.”
“A middleman? Who?”
“He’s just a guy. It’s not like you can look him up in the Yellow Pages. Hell, even I don’t know his—”
“—his real name. Yeah, I know. I’m asking what he goes by.”
Dougie eyed Jack. I could see the wheels turning, hoping this was just idle curiosity. Knowing if it wasn’t, that meant Jack might recognize the middleman’s nom de guerre, which would mean Jack wasn’t just some petty criminal I’d brought along for backup. One should hope the guy had figured that out by now.
“He goes by Roland. All I have is a phone number and even that changes—”
“Roland? Out of Pittsburgh?”
Sweat rolled down Dougie’s cheek. “Maybe. I only know it’s a Pennsylvania area code.”
Jack turned to me. “I know him. Runs a pack of lowlifes and losers. Third-rate pros. Like this dumb fuck. Ask Evelyn. She’ll know more.”
Jack wasn’t explaining this for me—this was for Dougie. It took him a minute to piece together that Jack knew his middleman, and he knew Evelyn. Pretty much everyone in the business knows Evelyn’s name. She makes sure of that. All that added up to one conclusion—Dougie was dealing with a fellow hitman. And not some “third-rate pro.” He looked at Jack as he tried to figure out who he was. Jack might be a legend in the business, but he wasn’t nearly as interested in getting his name out as Evelyn.
“Let’s back up,” Jack said. “I asked what the job was. I already know, but I want to hear you say it. And if you don’t?” Jack didn’t raise the gun or threaten. He just shrugged.
“It was a hit,” Dougie said. “The job was to hunt down this Nadia Stafford chick, and if she was the woman in the other picture, then I was supposed to kill her.”
“Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“We have time. And it’ll make me happy.”
Dougie wanted to make Jack happy. His life depended on it. He told his story—or as much of it as he knew.