27WE STOP OURinvestigations late in the afternoon when I get a call from Duke letting me know he’s on his way. Knowing that I need to work on getting information out of him, I suggest we meet at the coffee shop on the corner and he agrees (though I’m sure he wouldn’t protest if I asked him to come straight to my room again ... )Half an hour later, I’m sitting at our usual table in the coffee shop, and my fucking traitorous heart skips a couple beats when Duke walks in the door.We hug, kiss each other on the cheek, and order our coffees. Duke talks about a beat-up old Chevy he’s working on at the shop which is probably on its last legs. I make up a story about how the ‘lawyer I’m working for’ is a total ass who is constantly trying to get in my pants. Basic small talk—stuff I usually hate engaging in, but for some reason I don’t mind it so much with Duke (partly because I don’t actually have to be honest with him about my side of things).“So, do you have any pl
28THE NEXT TWO DAYS, pass in pretty much the same fashion. I wake up tense after a night of incessant nightmares and find the parking lot of the hotel plagued with flashing red and blue lights (Thursday morning’s victim was Kirk Arce, a 45 year-old male killed in room 329, and Friday’s was Sandra Campbell, a 36 year-old female killed in room 710). I get my daily massage from Bill the Masseuse. Mary Sue and I spend the day listening to surveillance tapes. In the evenings, Mary Sue visits Clark Jr. (who still can’t find the ‘magic button’) and unsuccessfully tries to get information out of him, while I meet up with Duke and have equal success getting information out of him, followed by admittedly great sex which still leaves me wanting to slice him open with a knife. Duke leaves, Mary Sue gets back to the hotel and we compare useless notes, I go to bed and the nonsense starts all over again.Saturday morning starts much the same, except I wake up knowing this madness is almost over. W
29WE AGREE TOput off our surveillance of the Anderson Klan’s town hall meeting—everything will be recorded and available for us to listen to when we come back. Settling things with Nick Jin is a far higher priority. And of course we don’t leave un-armed, we each sport a handgun, and I also have my favorite knife in a scabbard tucked under the waistband of my jeans.After a fifteen minute drive to Montgomery Bell State Park, we find a campground to park the Skank Mobile, and make the remaining trek on foot, following the directions on my phone to a quaint old log cabin-style church. A plaque outside reads ‘First Cumberland Presbyterian Church.’“This must be it,” Mary Sue whispers. “This reeks of an ambush ... ”“I know, but it was just Nick that met me at Enger Tower in Duluth, so maybe it’ll just be him again ... ” I whisper back, not really sure how much I believe the words myself.“Well, either way, we might as well do what we came here to do,” Ma
30“WHAT THE FUCK?” I scream, rushing to Mary Sue’s side, even though I already know there is nothing I can do to help her. “You said–”“I said I had explicit instructions not to kill you, Sarah,” Nick replies with a bored shrug, as if we were discussing something as mundane as the weather, not his murdering my only friend in the world. “I didn’t say anything about Mary Sue.”I raise my handgun to shoot, but Nick has already disappeared into the shadows. I spin around, searching every shadow for some sign of my foe.Suddenly, I feel Nick’s foot sharply connect with my back and I am pushed forward, my handgun clattering across the floor of the church as the wind is knocked out of me.As I try to regain my breath, Nick flips me onto my back and sits on my stomach, straddling my torso between his thighs, and further pushing what wind was left out of my struggling lungs.“I said it in Duluth, Sara, and I’ll say it again,” Nick breathes menacingly into my ear. “It’s too bad you aren’t
31I WAIT UNTILmidnight, and then make the drive out to Bucksnort, my plan fully formed, all the while praying I don’t cross the path of a speed trap and wind up in a radar-induced coma.I go to Duke’s apartment first, as his murder will be the simplest to take care of, since he lives alone. Using my trusted lock pick, I break into his apartment for the second time this week. I’m glad I was the one who bugged Duke’s apartment, because having a mental image of the apartment’s layout helps me navigate my way through it in the dark.I tiptoe down the hall to Duke’s bedroom, and enter to find him, snoring lightly on the bed. I cross the room and kneel by the bed. As I look at him sleeping so peacefully, I start to wonder if I will actually be able to go through with this.I put my knife down on the edge of the bed, and reach over to stroke his hair. Duke suddenly wakes with a start.“Jesus, Nanny!” he gasps. “You scared the shit out of me, what are you doing here?”“I’m sorry,”
1DO WE REALLYhave to go through this whole ‘introduce ourselves’ thing again? The only thing I hate more than introductions is repeating myself.Okay, okay. Fine. I’ll do this, though I have to say it would be easier for all of us if you just read my first book.So, my name is Sarah Killian and I am a Professional Serial Killer. DO NOT confuse me with an assassin. I hate those guys. Every. Last. One.Well, except for Mary Sue. She’s an exception. She’s an exception to a lot of things. I’ll get to herin a bit.In a tortoise shell, I work for a secret organization known as T.H.E.M.—the Trusted Hierarchy of Everyday Murderers. T.H.E.M. is clandestinely contracted by private individuals, corporations, or sometimes even the government to complete the dirty work of furtively killing off individuals or groups of people.I won’t bother covering the assassin side of things, because that’s pretty much just the boring, run-of-the-mill shit you’ve seen in every Hollywood movie.
2HAVE YOU EVERwoken up some morning with a burning, insatiable desire to go out and kill someone? No? Huh. Guess I’m weird, then.Anyway, this morning I wake up with such a craving. As usual, the craving has been preceded by a dream—well, a flashback to be exact. It’s always the same memory, and if you think I’m going to tell you anymore than that, you really doneed to go back and read the first book, because you clearly have not yet learned I am the kind of person who will break the fourth wall a couple times every other page, but you will have to torture me (and not the fun kind of torture) before I talk about personal, psycho, feelings shit.Thanks to my contract with T.H.E.M., I can’t exactly just go out and find myself an unsuspecting tourist on Hollywood Blvd. to lure back to a hotel room where I can de-spleen the poor bastard. However, Zeke is generally pretty flexible about finding us short projects whenever we need a quickie.Technically, one-off jobs (where w
3NORMALLY BEFORE Igo on an assignment, I would pay my mother a visit. It’s really just about the only time I visit her, which is one of the many reasons I deserve the award for Worst Daughter of All Time (though not the main reason, by a long shot). However, since this isn’t exactly going to be a long-term assignment, I decide to put-off the visit and go straight to T.H.E.M. headquarters.The headquarters are located in Chatsworth at the far-west-end of the San Fernando Valley, in a building the general public assumes to be a porn distribution warehouse. It takes me longer than it might to get to Chatsworth, due to the fact I have to avoid freeways thanks to my ‘condition.’ See, I have a somewhat rare illness—so rare none of the doctors I’ve seen about it have ever heard or seen anything like it before. In a nutshell, I’m allergic to radar. Technicallyspeaking, it’s not really an allergy—just a hypersensitivity. See, radar has this annoying tendency to send me into a min