Page 2 of Mustang

Enough time to pretend I hadn’t already decided, somewhere between day one and day three, that I wasn’t going to kill her.

The backyard gate whined when I pushed it open.Not loud – just enough to make me pause, listen, count to five.Nothing moved.The neighbor’s dog didn’t bark.The street stayed quiet.I stepped through and closed it behind me, the latch catching with a soft click that sounded twice as loud as it was.

Rusted patio chair to my left.Small herb garden along the fence line – rosemary, thyme, maybe sage.The smell hit me as I passed it, green and sharp, cutting through the night air.The back door was locked, but only in the way that mattered to honest people.I had it open in under thirty seconds, my fingertips finding the right pressure points on the frame, the lock giving way with a whisper.

The kitchen smelled like bread and coffee.Warm.The range hood light was on, casting everything in a yellow glow that made the room feel smaller than it was.Flour dusted the counter in a fine white layer.A half-finished loaf sat wrapped in a dish towel, the crust still soft.The coffee maker gurgled on its timer, the pot half-full and steaming.

I cleared the room in seconds.Glock drawn, low and ready, sweeping the corners, checking the doorway to the hall, the space under the table.Empty.The house was quiet except for the coffee maker and the low hum of the refrigerator.

Then she walked in.

From the hallway, barefoot, in a sleep shirt that hung past her knees.Red hair loose around her shoulders, the way I’d seen it through the binoculars but closer now, real, catching the yellow light.Green eyes.Wide.Frozen.

I raised the gun.Center mass.Two-handed grip, the way I’d done it a hundred times.

She didn’t scream.Didn’t run.Didn’t even breathe for a second that stretched longer than it should have, filling the kitchen, pressing against the walls, and making the coffee maker’s gurgle sound like it was happening in another room.

Then Hannah glanced at the coffee maker.Her eyes came back to me.She raised her hands to shoulder height, palms out, and her voice came out steady in a way that made my finger tighten on the trigger.

“It just finished brewing,” she said.“Do you want a cup?”

I stared at her.The gun didn’t move.Her hands were trembling – I could see it from six feet away, a fine shake running through her fingers – but her voice stayed steady.No tears.No begging.Just a question, offered like she was talking to someone who’d knocked on her door at a reasonable hour.

She was watching me the way someone watches a stray dog.Careful.Assessing.Not cruel.Not panicked.Just...careful.The same way I’d watched her for three days, except she was doing it from six feet away with a gun pointed at her chest and nothing between us but air and the smell of coffee.

My finger stayed on the trigger.The safety was off.I could feel the metal against my skin, the slight resistance before the break, the way the gun would jump when it fired.I knew exactly what would happen if I pulled.I’d seen it before.I’d done it before.

I studied her face.

No calculation.No angle.No hidden agenda playing behind those green eyes.Just a young woman trying to survive the next thirty seconds by offering a stranger coffee in her kitchen at midnight.

A hard lock tightened in my chest.A catch.A hitch.A feeling I hadn’t let myself have in years because feelings got men killed in my line of work, and I’d been doing this too long to start making exceptions now.

But the gun was heavy in my hand.Heavier than it should have been.Heavier than it had been when I’d cleared the room thirty seconds ago.

I lowered it.Not all the way to my side – just enough that the barrel wasn’t pointed at her anymore.Just enough that the air in the room changed, thinned, became breathable for both of us.

“Sit down,” I said.

She did.Pulled a kitchen chair out from under the table and sat in it, drawing her knees up to her chest, bare feet on the edge of the seat.Her sleep shirt rumpled around her thighs.She didn’t take her eyes off me.Didn’t glance at the gun.Didn’t glance at the door.

Just watched me.Green eyes, steady now that the trembling had stopped, waiting to see what came next.

I stood there with the gun at my side and the coffee steaming on the counter and the half-finished loaf of bread wrapped in its towel, and I tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do.

The job was clear.The contract was signed.Fifty thousand dollars cash on delivery, and the delivery was supposed to be proof that Hannah Morgan wouldn’t be identifying anyone, ever again.

I’d walked through her back door with a gun and three days of surveillance notes and the cold certainty of a man who’d done this before and would do it again.

Now I was standing in her kitchen watching her watch me, and the coffee smelled good, and the bread smelled better, and the range hood light made everything seem warmer than it had any right to be at midnight with a gun in the room.

She hadn’t asked why I was there.Hadn’t asked who I was.Had just offered me coffee and sat down when I told her to, and now she was waiting, knees pulled to her chest, and I was the one who didn’t know what came next.

The coffee maker clicked off.The last drops fell into the pot.Steam rose in a thin curl toward the ceiling.

I holstered the gun.The weight of it settled against my hip where it belonged, and a decision settled with it – a choice I hadn’t known I was making until it was made.

She kept watching me with those green eyes, and in the yellow light, with her red hair and her bare feet and the flour on the counter behind her, she was exactly what she was: a baker who visited children and waved to her neighbor and had no idea why someone with a gun had just walked through her back door.