Page 82 of This Life of Mine

I do.

There’s something oddly grounding about watching her live. No customers demanding her attention. No crises to solve. No shadows waiting just beyond her line of sight. Just Lina, stealing back a day to worry about herself. A day long overdue.

My eyes linger a moment longer before I force myself back to the reason I’m here.

The contract.

Rain crawls down the window beside me as the glow of my laptop washes over the room. Lina’s name sits in the center of the screen like the calm eye of a hurricane.

Target:Lina Allister.

Status:Active.

Contract Window:Open until further notice.

Somewhere out there, someone accepted money to make her death look accidental. And if Reese and I don’t identify the person behind it first, eventually someone will come to collect.

The thought digs in deeper than I’d like.

I scrub a hand over my jaw and glance back at the monitor. Lina hums softly to herself as she wipes down the kitchen counter, completely unaware that somewhere beyond the walls of her home, strangers are bargaining over the value of her life.

Not while I’m still breathing.

Three years ago, Reese and I were hired by a third party to investigate whispers about a network buried deep in encrypted channels online. At first it sounded like conspiracy bullshit. Rich people paying to make problems disappear through “accidents.” Until bodies started piling up.

A senator’s son dies in a boating accident. A corporate whistleblower overdoses two weeks before testimony. A woman falls from a balcony during a charity gala despite never drinking.

Every death looked clean on paper. Random. Explainable. But Reese saw the patterns first. The timing. The money transfers.

The anonymous cryptocurrency wallets routed through dead-end shell corporations. The same digital fingerprints surfacing around deaths across multiple countries.

When we realized what was in front of us, we were already too deep to walk away.

The site operates like a marketplace hidden behind layers of encryption and invitation-only access. Clients submit contracts.Contractors bid. Payments move through blind accounts and disappear before authorities can trace them.

No names. No faces. Just money and death packaged as convenience for people wealthy enough to afford it.

The kills are intended to blend into ordinary life. Heart attacks. House fires. Muggings. Drug overdoses. Single-car accidents on rainy roads. Deaths that never become homicide investigations because nobody thinks to look twice.

Reese and I made one decision early on—we weren’t going after the clients first. We were hunting the structure itself.

Find one of the contracted killers. Follow the chain upward. Locate whoever manages the network. Burn the entire fucking thing to the ground.

That’s what brought me to this town. It wasn’t Lina specifically. Not at first. We intercepted chatter about an active contract tied to a woman in Texas whose death was expected to resemble either a domestic violence escalation or suicide. Routine enough to avoid national attention.

Then Reese identified the target. Lina Hill.

Since then, every lead has only made things uglier.

The current contractor assigned to her hasn’t made a move yet, which means one of two things. Either he’s disciplined enough to wait for the perfect opportunity…or he knows he still has time. Neither option sits well with me.

My burner phone vibrates against the kitchen counter. Reese.

I answer. “What do you got?”

His voice comes through calm and steady. “The facial recognition chatter is fading. Your face is disappearing from the system.”

Good.