Free Kim Oh 2: Real Dangerous Job (The Kim Oh Thrillers) by K. W. Jeter Page A

or not? Because it’s one kind of job to get in there and blow away somebody like that, and it’s another kind to blow them away and get back out. Which do you want to do?”
     
    I didn’t have an answer for him. This was something I hadn’t thought about before. In the short little movie that played on the screen inside my head, nothing came after the scene in which I emptied a gun into McIntyre’s chest.
     
    “Well . . .” I gave a slow nod. “I guess I want to get back out. When we’re done. And . . . you know . . . alive and stuff.” I nodded a little more forcefully. “Yeah. I’m pretty certain that’s what I want.”
     
    “You sure? Because that makes it harder.”
     
    “I got responsibilities. There’s my brother –”
     
    “That’s as good an excuse as any.”
     
    “It’s not an excuse. He’s . . . like you. He can’t get around on his own. Somebody’s got to look after him.”
     
    “I know all about that,” said Cole. “And that’s fine. But like I said – it makes the job harder.”
     
    “But we can do it, right? And get back out. That’s doable, isn’t it?”
     
    “Yeah, sure.” He went on doing reps with the weight. “I just need to think about how we go about the job. Everything’s possible, Kim. Except for the stuff that isn’t.” The veins on his arm were starting to stand out, like blue snakes. “In the meantime, you do some thinking, too. About what you know. About McIntyre.”
     
    “All right.” I stood up from the bench. I started for the warehouse door, then stopped and looked back at him. “What about you?”
     
    “What about me?”
     
    “What do you want? Do you want to get back out, after we kill McIntyre?”
     
    “Maybe.” He shrugged. “I mean . . . it’d be fine if it happened that way. But I don’t really care. One way or the other.”
     
    “Oh.” I didn’t know what to say next.
     
    “Don’t worry about it.” Cole set the weight back in the rack and picked up a bigger one. “It’s just one of the ways that you know. That’s there’s still a difference between you and me.”
     
    I didn’t say anything at all. I just turned and left.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
    NINE
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    At least Cole wasn’t watching cartoons when I got over to the warehouse the next day.
     
    “Check this out.” He had gotten himself hooked up with one of those DVR rigs – that probably also came out of the money I had stolen from McIntyre’s business accounts – so he could record and play back shows he’d otherwise have missed. “You didn’t make the news. That’s good.”
     
    I stood beside the mattress on the floor, unzipping my jacket, and watching the news report he brought up with a couple pushes on the remote. The face of Karen Ibanez, the reporter who I’d gone to see a while back – not that it’d done me any good – came up on the screen. She was holding a microphone with the station logo on it. Behind her was the blackened street corner where the bomb in Braemer’s backpack had gone off, the whole area cordoned off with yellow Police Investigation – Do Not Cross tapes. Usually she did straight business coverage, but since the explosion had taken place right at the edge of the downtown financial district, that must’ve been the reason she got sent out for this spot.
     
    Cole turned up the volume so I could hear what she was saying.
     
    “. . . Meanwhile, federal agents are investigating possible links between at least two of the victims and international terrorist organizations –”
     
    He muted the portable TV set with another push on the remote.
     
    “Pretty cool, huh?” He looked up at me. “They’re all going to be chasing their tails, looking for big, bad terrorists. Who said these heightened security alerts don’t do any good? Nobody saw some little Asian chick shooting away from the scene on a motorcycle.”
     
    “Maybe if I’d been wearing a burqa