Page 1 of Mustang

CHAPTER ONE

Mustang

The truck smelled like cigarettes and gun oil.I’d been sitting in it for three days straight, parked on the same stretch of curb across from Hannah Morgan’s house, and the smell had worked its way into my clothes so deep I could taste it when I swallowed.I didn’t mind.Familiar smells kept me sharp, and I needed to be sharp for this.The contract was simple, clean, familiar work I’d done enough times that my hands knew the steps before my brain did.

The envelope sat on the passenger seat, sealed.Next to it, a grainy photograph of a woman with long red hair walking down a street I’d never been to.The address was handwritten on the back of a napkin in the client’s blocky script.Below that, a number: fifty thousand dollars.Cash on delivery.

Fifty grand.Most men would sign without blinking.

The client wasn’t new.We’d done business before, back when he needed a problem solved quietly and the club needed the money more than we needed clean hands.This time, the problem was Hannah Morgan.She’d seen a crime she shouldn’t have.Identified the wrong people.The client wanted her gone before she could testify, talk, or breathe another word to anyone who mattered.

I studied the house across the street.Modest two-story, white siding that needed pressure washing, cracked concrete walkway up to the front steps.A window box of wilting flowers on the left side.Through the front window, a bakery apron hung on a hook, pale blue with a blurred bakery emblem I couldn’t read from this distance.

I’d been watching for three days.Cataloging.

Day one: She left before sunrise.I heard the door at 4:17 AM, watched her walk to her car in the dark with her apron already on, a travel mug in one hand, keys in the other.The neighborhood was silent.Her headlights cut through the mist and she was gone.

She returned at 10:43 AM.I caught the smell before I saw her – yeast, sugar, warm baked dough carrying on the morning air.She parked, climbed out with tired shoulders, and went inside without looking around.Exhaustion from standing on her feet for hours, not fear.

Tuesday afternoon, she walked two blocks over to a children’s home.I watched through binoculars as she carried a cardboard box through the front door.Came out an hour later, empty-handed, smiling at a staff member’s comment.

Thursday, same routine.Box in, hour later, smile out.

Every morning, same thing.She came home from the bakery, changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt, and waved to the elderly woman next door.The neighbor waved back.Ritual.Comfort.Predictability that made my job easier and my stomach tighter with each passing hour.

I’d expected a liar.A liability.Someone tangled up in dirty work who’d brought this on herself.A woman with angles, who knew the score and played it anyway.I’d dealt with plenty of those.They were easier.You could look at their face and see the calculation behind their eyes, the same math you were doing, just from the other side of the equation.

Hannah Morgan didn’t calculate.

On day two, I watched her hold a door open for a stranger at the corner store.The man didn’t thank her.She didn’t seem to care.

That same afternoon, she left a paper bag on her neighbor’s porch.Pastries, probably.The old woman found it an hour later, picked it up with wrinkled hands, and stood on her porch looking at Hannah’s house for a long time before going back inside.

Day three, I caught her through the open window of the community home.She was kneeling in front of a little boy, murmuring words that made him laugh – a real laugh, full-bodied and bright.She laughed too, her head tipping back, red hair falling over her shoulders, and for a second, I forgot why I was there.Forgot the envelope, the photograph, the number written on the napkin.Forgot the gun under my seat and the things I’d done with it.

The feeling lasted exactly two seconds.Then I was back in the truck, jaw clenched so tight I could feel the scar along it pulling.My notes were sparse because there was nothing to write.No pattern of suspicious visitors.No late-night calls.No men coming and going.Just a woman who baked bread, visited children, and waved to her neighbor like clockwork.

I picked up the photograph again.Turned it over.Her face was grainy, slightly blurred from movement, but the green of her eyes came through even in the cheap print.I’d seen those eyes in person now, through the binoculars, bright and alert and completely unaware that someone, with a gun, a contract, and fifty thousand reasons to pull a trigger, was watching her.

I set the photograph facedown on the seat.

The house across the street was darkening as evening fell.The wilting flowers in the window box caught the last of the daylight, pale and struggling.The bakery apron hung motionless behind the glass.

I checked the mirrors.Empty street.No cars I hadn’t already accounted for.No movement in any of the neighboring windows.The elderly woman’s porch light had come on, casting a yellow glow over her stoop where the paper bag had been.

I made the decision the way I made all decisions.No debate.No second-guessing.Just a shift in my body, a restless pressure finally settling, and the knowledge that I was going to move.

The envelope stayed on the seat.The photograph stayed facedown.I reached under the driver’s seat, felt the cold weight of the Glock, and didn’t pull it out yet.

Not here.Not yet.

I started the engine.Let it idle.Watched the street one more time through the windshield, then the rearview, then the side mirrors.Nothing had changed.Nothing would change unless I changed it.

The weight of what came next settled across my shoulders like a burden I’d carried before and would carry again.Heavy.Familiar.A weight that didn’t get lighter no matter how many times you picked it up.

I put the truck in drive and pulled away from the curb, headlights cutting through the gathering dark.Hannah Morgan’s house receded in the mirror, small and quiet and completely unaware of what was coming for it.

I had three hours until midnight.Enough time to get ready.Enough time to make sure that when I walked through her back door, the job would go exactly the way I planned.