No One Needs to Know by Kevin O'Brien Read Free Book Online Page A

funny-looking bitch, with her wiry build, long face, and pale complexion. She always wore black—maybe to match her short-cropped, coal-colored hair. And she never smiled. But she’d paid them well for their last couple of jobs, so Grissom wasn’t going to complain.
    However, this last job was her screwup. They’d acted on her instructions to the letter. While his partner had lured the woman out of the food truck, Grissom had gone to work quickly and efficiently. He’d even come up with a piece of improvisational genius: nuking some aluminum foil in the microwave to set off the gas explosion. And not that he gave a crap one way or another, but the collateral damage had been pretty minimal. They’d done a damn fine, neat job—on the wrong woman.
    “Harder, do it harder!” screamed the porn actress on the video Trout was watching.
    With a sigh, Grissom leaned back in the passenger seat. “What the hell is the point watching a movie on a screen that size? Her tits are about as big as a couple of pinheads. I mean, can you see anything at all?”
    “I can zoom in,” his friend said, eyes riveted to his mobile device.
    Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, Zelda appeared at the driver’s window, staring in at them. Grissom saw her first and flinched. “Shit!”
    The woman had a way of sneaking up on them. They never heard her, never saw her coming. But all at once she was there.
    Trout glimpsed her on the other side of the glass, and he dropped his device. Fumbling to retrieve the phone, he finally snatched it up and switched it off. He restarted the engine so that he could lower his window. “Jesus, you scared the shit out of me,” he said to the woman.
    Stone-faced, Zelda put her arm up on the edge of the door. Grissom noticed she wore some kind of weird, studded black leather cuff that went almost all the way to her elbow. “We have a problem,” she said in a quiet voice. “As you must know by now, the wrong woman was killed. Cheryl Wheeler is still alive, and my client isn’t too happy about it—”
    “Well, that’s not really our fault,” Grissom said. “I mean, c’mon, you—”
    “Now Cheryl’s in the spotlight,” the woman said, talking over him. “And we can’t touch her for at least another couple of weeks, not without the police catching on. That’s really unfortunate. You two did excellent work on the Hawaii job—as well as the L.A. assignment. But this mistake on Friday, it’s disappointing . . .”
    “Hey, you gave us the go-ahead,” Grissom said. “It’s not like we went in there on our own . . .”
    Zelda stared at him. Her mouth seemed to tighten.
    Grissom shut up. He didn’t want to push his luck with her.
    But his friend didn’t seem to care. “We carried out your orders,” Trout said, one hand on the steering wheel. “If the wrong woman is dead, that’s your fault, not ours. Now, we don’t mind correcting this screwup, but it’ll be at our regular fee. Don’t think you can get a freebie by shifting the blame on us.”
    Zelda took a small step back from the window. She tugged at the leather cuff on her arm.
    Grissom squirmed in the passenger seat. “Listen, what Trout’s trying to say is—”
    “Oh, for Christ’s sake . . .” Trout interrupted, turning toward him. “A minute ago you were going on about how if she tried to pin the blame—”
    He didn’t get another word out—just a deep gasp.
    The woman had reached inside the car. It had happened so fast. Grissom had thought she was swatting a fly off his friend’s shoulder.
    Now he realized what was happening. Trout started to twitch as if he were having convulsions. Then his body suddenly went limp and slumped toward him.
    The woman was wiping the blood off something that looked like a meat thermometer. She must have pulled it out of a pocket in that leather cuff on her arm. She slipped it back inside the cuff.
    All the while, blood gushed from a hole on the side of Trout’s neck, just under his ear.
    Grissom