Free Kill Code by Joseph Collins

a
semi-abandoned industrial park. It had burnt itself out, without
anyone noticing. A garbage truck driving by had noticed the
burnt-out hulk and called the police. The patrolman who had pried
the trunk open, against all crime scene procedures, would never
make that mistake again. The smell of his vomit behind the car
added a sour taste to the sense slamming odor.
    The fire had been so intense that it melted the rear
license plate into unrecognizable metal. But the front plate was
intact and had come back registered to a rental car company. The
company would be faxing over the information that they had on the
renter.
    He couldn't imagine what caused this amount of heat
and fire. He could see that part of the frame under the trunk had
melted and the tires were charred and flattened.
    Stepping back, he motioned to the flat bed truck
driver to do the best he could to roll the remains of the vehicle
to the crime lab where they would attempt to remove the body and
start trying to identify it.
    That was going to be the tough part—what burned hot
enough to destroy tooth enamel? The fingers had also received
similar attention.
    Jeff wondered if this was an isolated incident or
was a sign of something much bigger and worse to come.
    ###
    Leo wondered about the repercussions of the
information that Jackie revealed. That they were going to have to
make a trip back to her office was maybe something he could
exploit. Could he use her as bait to lure the people trying to kill
them?
    As hard as Leo thought he could be, hell, he used to
kill people for money, it wasn't something he felt that he could
do. He liked her. There was a naivete about her, hardened by
something that he couldn't place. Maybe it was the recent loss of
her boyfriend? Or was it that she had almost been killed today?
More things to think about when he should be figuring the angles on
how to keep from getting killed.
    Besides, she was cute. Not stunning, but she could
be that way if she wore something besides her almost shapeless
clothing and no makeup. Though he wasn't much better himself,
pretty much having slept in his clothes last night, not shaving and
spending several hours shooting. He agreed with Jackie about
needing to get something to eat. His shooting session had taken a
great deal out of him, besides the pounding he took from the brutal
recoil. It took one hundred ten percent concentration to pull off
the almost perfect shot and that translated into tiredness deep
down into his soul—much more than physical and mental.
    She broke into his thoughts by saying, “I still
don't want to learn how to shoot.”
    Leo, trying to maneuver through rush hour traffic,
couldn't answer for a few minutes. Then he said, “You came very
close to being killed today. It was the same for me two days ago.
These people won't stop until they kill us both. But I suspect that
our deaths are part of something a great deal larger.”
    “Why?”
    “If Nathan emptied out your accounts, that money
went somewhere. And, while I have been out of the killing business
for a while, the price of a hit probably hasn't grown that much in
the intervening years. With the amounts you are talking about, you
could pay to have a bunch of people killed.”
    He found it easy to talk to her about what he had
done. It wasn't something that he had ever done—with anyone,
including himself. When he had walked away from assassination, he
thought he had closed that door on his life forever. He would have
been happy to live out his days dealing with coin dinks. His days
spent on the range with a rifle and the targets dancing in the
scope influenced by humidity and wind. Forever on the quest to find
the perfect rifle, bullet and load.
    All he wanted was to get back to that life. But now
that he was involved in the hunt, the old, long forgotten thrill
had come back. He knew it was intoxicating and could suck him back
into the evilness. He would do only what was necessary to get his
life back and nothing more.