Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

Author:Deanna Raybourn [Raybourn, Deanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

NOVEMBER 1981

Billie has a theory that every life has a soundtrack. Some people are big band people or smooth jazz. Others are pure Baroque opera theatricality. Her soundtrack is not that glamorous. “Delta Dawn” was on the jukebox when her mother left her—age twelve, sitting in a strip mall pizza joint—and never came back.

And “If You Could Read My Mind” is being played by a soft-rock combo in a hotel bar in Chicago when she is passing time, waiting to meet up with her partner for the first job after a debacle in Zanzibar. Vance Gilchrist, her mission leader for the assignment, has been unstinting in his report and she realizes she will be watched to see if she makes a habit of going off piste. This is a chance to redeem herself and she means to make the most of it.

She sits at the bar, nursing a glass of tepid Chablis while the singer invokes ghosts and wishing wells, and feeling faintly sick to her stomach with anticipation as she goes over the coded exchange they are supposed to use to establish contact.

“Is anyone sitting here?”

She glances up and falls—at least that’s how it feels. It is a second, maybe two, before she answers. But two seconds is a long time when your life cracks open.

He isn’t handsome, not like the polished-up pretty boys Natalie favors. This one needs a second look, but that look is a killer. He has maybe five inches on her, and an easy, loose-limbed way of holding himself that only comes with the bone-deep confidence of knowing there is nothing on earth you’re afraid of. He wears a washed-out Henley and faded jeans with a battered leather jacket and a pair of Frye boots that have seen a dozen years of hard wear. A narrow silver bracelet circles one wrist and a knotted cotton braid wraps around the other. He has the sort of light brown hair that goes gold with too much sun, just unruly and wavy enough to bury your fists in when you’re kissing hard. His beard and mustache are about two days past needing a trim if you mind about that sort of thing. Billie doesn’t.

He has been looking down the bar to signal the bartender, but he turns to her and gives an almost imperceptible start, a brief widening of deep brown eyes and the slightest parting of the lips.

“Oh.” It isn’t a whisper; it is an exhalation, a statement. He gives her a long look that seems to say, It’s you. Finally.

“Yeah,” she answers. He turns back to the bartender and lifts his hand as he levers himself onto the stool beside her. A minute later the bartender sets a beer in front of him, the liquid in the bottle fizzing gently. He swings it to his mouth and takes a long swallow, looks hard at her, then takes another.

“I don’t think I have it in me to play this cool,” he says finally. He takes another deep drink.

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