“Some guy’s riding my ass.” I explained what was going on.

  “There’s nothing on the street. In fact, I got another job for you. It’s all lined up. You know, the jerk’s probably just a redneck having some grins. You see that a lot in the country.”

  “I don’t think so, Johnny.”

  There was a beat of silence. “Well, if makes you feel better, why don’t you take the long way home?” That was code to hole up for a few days. “I’ll be waiting for you whenever you show up. We need to spend time together.”

  I smiled as I disconnected. Johnny D was my boss. And my man. It didn’t matter he was twenty years older than me. Or that he’d been one of Pop’s buddies. His partner, as a matter of fact. Johnny D taught me a lot about my job. And after Pop died, he taught me other things. A shiver of pleasure ran up my spine.

  I took another look in the rear view. The Buick was still there, but it was holding steady fifty yards back. Maybe Johnny D was right. Maybe this was just some joker getting his rocks off by scaring me. Like I said, I didn’t get much sleep last night. I could be a little paranoid. I decided to hang tight for a few more minutes.

  I thought back to my visit with the old lady. There was a lot of history between us. Pop used to do jobs for her. When he wasn’t using a gun he was using a hammer, and for a long time he was the caretaker at her place. A huge estate overlooking Lake Michigan, it was in the kind of neighborhood no one pays much attention to. Mostly because the rich families who live there make sure of it. Private roads. Private beaches. Private clubs. There’s a shitload of Detroit money up there, Pop used to say. And the old lady’s place is sitting pretty, right in the middle of it.

  Once I asked my father how he met her. He said he knew her husband first, and had promised Grayson—what kind of a name is Grayson?—that he’d look after the old lady if anything happened. And, wouldn’t you know it, Grayson up and died one night. Helped along by the .38 slug that blew his brains over the desk and against the wall. But that was a long time ago, when I was still a little girl. After that we started to visit the old lady a couple of weeks in the summer. To make sure she was okay, Pop said.

  At first my mother came too, and we stayed in the guest cottage. My mom, my dad, and me. Mom tried to pretend I was one of those girls. She even bought me this fancy white dress with lace all over it. Except I got a big fat blueberry stain on the front the first time I wore it. I never put it on again.

  I always wondered if that’s why she took off. It was only a few days later. Pop and I had been fixing a pipe in the old lady’s kitchen, and we went back to clean up for supper. Mom wasn’t there, but there was a note on the table. Pop read the note, then crumpled up the paper and pitched it into the trash. He didn’t read it to me, and I was too scared to ask. I thought she left because the stain wouldn’t come out of the dress. When I was older, though, I figured she just couldn’t hack it. Pop once told me she liked living on the old lady’s estate. Said it made her feel respectable. But I guess when you can’t have what you want all the time, you want it even more. And when there’s no chance in hell of getting it, you just give up.

  Which is why I try not to want anything.

  I checked the rear view again. The asshole was still there, but now he was closing. Christ. I didn’t think a Buick had that much in it. Who was this creep? Who sent him? Johnny D said everything was quiet back in Detroit. Unless one of the mark’s bodyguards had one of those bugs you stick to a car to track someone. I’d been thinking of getting something like that myself. Make my job a whole lot easier. Damn. I should have looked under the Camry at the truck stop.

  But what if it wasn’t the guy or his men? The only other person besides Johnny D who knew where I’d been was the old lady.

  Think, Tare. What happened yesterday?

  After the preliminaries, she started to talk about my father. She had this strange way of describing his work, using plain words but weird inflections, kind of like a drama queen, to get her point across. Either she didn’t want to admit what he did, or she wasn’t sure if I knew. Which made me realize she didn’t know what I did, either. Then again, how could she? I hadn’t seen her since I was fifteen, well before I started following in Pop’s footsteps.

  I decided two could play her game, and when she asked what I was up to, I kept it vague. “A little of this, a little of that,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

  “Do you have any thoughts of going back to school, Teresa dear?”

  “It’s a little late for that.”

  “You’re only thirty. It’s never too late for an education,” she smiled.

  I shrugged again. “I never was much good in school.”

  “I see.” She stirred her tea with this tiny little spoon, then set it down on her saucer.

  We were circling each other like two wary cats. I guess she realized it too, because, all of a sudden, she came out with it. Did I know the kind of work Pop did?

  “I think so.” I answered cagily. “He worked for you.”

  She pressed her lips together. Did I ever hear from my mother?

  “Nope.” I shook my head.

  Now, I looked in the rear view mirror. The tail was only thirty yards back. Much too close. I hunched my shoulders and squinted through the windshield. I was cruising over eighty, and there weren’t any other cars on the road. No rest stops, either. But Pop taught me not to panic. “All you need is a plan, TJ. You got a plan, nine times out of ten, you can get out of a tight spot.”

  I tried to focus. Trees and billboards zipped by. A green sign said I was forty miles from Kalamazoo. It could have been forty million for all the good it’d do me. But then, on the side of the road, an orange sign flashed. Detour Ahead. A smaller sign underneath said that Route 131 was closed for repairs.

  I was still in the left lane; I twisted around. Nothing on either side except the Buick. The detour was only half a mile ahead. I kept my foot on the gas. Pop used to say never advertise your plans. I tightened my seat belt. A quarter mile. I sucked in a breath. A few hundred yards. I veered sharply to the right and tore up the exit ramp. I threw myself off balance, but I managed to hold onto the Camry. I glanced at the speedometer. I was clocking in at 82.

  As I charged up to the stop sign, I heard the screech of brakes. He’d overshot the exit! The plan had worked—I’d bought myself some time. I looked both ways down the road. On the left was a gas station and quick mart, then the entrance back to 94. On the right, nothing but farmland.

  I turned right and nudged the Camry up to sixty. I sped by fields of com and hayfields with bales of the stuff curled up like pinwheels. A farmhouse with a barn on the side. In between the fields were woods with lots of trees. Ahead of me on the left was a farmer riding a tractor. He stared at me as I passed. For him, it was just another day with nothing but work to do.

  I opened the glove compartment and slid out my Sig. The nine has always been my favorite. Hardly any recoil. I slammed in the clip, then set the gun on the passenger seat.

  I felt a chill on the back of my neck. When I looked in the rear view, I tensed. He was only a speck in the distance, but he’d be closing fast. I passed a few dirt paths that bisected the fields. They probably led back to homes or barns or storage sheds. Plenty of cover back there. Getting to it was the problem. Everything was out in the open. Too risky.

  I kept driving. The Buick was gaining. My hands grew slick with sweat. Ahead of me were more woods. They ended at the side of a cornfield, but continued around the back. At the far edge of the field was a dirt road. As I got closer, I could see it led back into the woods.

  I slowed and swerved onto the dirt path. Trails of dust blew up behind me. Damn! I might as well send up smoke signals. But I had no choice. I kept going. The path was studded with rocks, and the Camry lurched unevenly. I heard a squeal from the chassis. I couldn’t think about it now. The woods were just ahead. A few more seconds. I let myself glance back at the road. The Buick was making the turn.

  When I pulled into the woods, the Camry was swallowed up by trees and underbrush. No way was I going any farther. I braked and switched off the ignition. I opened the car door, grabbed the Sig, and launched myself into the brush. I thrashed through bushes, ignoring the branches and brambles that scratched my skin. The thicket was so dense I couldn’t see much in any direction. I squatted on the ground and pointed the Sig back toward the road.

  A minute later the Buick drove up. I heard the engine idling. I pulled back the slide on the Sig. He knew I was hiding. He wouldn’t get out of the car without reason. Still, the longer he waited, the edgier he’d get. Another lesson from Pop. Be patient and let him come to me.

  I was ready. It was silent. Even the bees stopped buzzing. My calves started to cramp. All that crap about women crouching in the fields to give birth and then getting up to work was bullshit. No way could you stay in this position for long. I swatted away the gnats and tried to work out why the old lady sent him. I thought back to her questions. She’d been fishing—she wanted to know how much I knew.

  What she didn’t know is that I was fishing too. See, when Pop died last year, he left me a letter. Written in a scrawl with all those spelling mistakes, it said he wanted to clear the record. Seems as if after her husband died, one of her neighbors put some heat on her to sell her land. She asked my father for help, and two months later, the neighbor dropped dead of a heart attack. Instead of the neighbor buying her out, she was the one who bought. A few years after that, when the neighbor on the other side tried the same thing, he died in a car accident. The old lady ended up with a compound that stretched over a mile of lakefront property.

  But I knew all that before I went to see her. In fact, that’s why I went. Pop’s death had been real sudden. One night he was fine, and the next morning, he keeled over. The doctors said it was a heart attack. He was almost seventy, he liked booze and cigars, and he ate all the wrong things. But there are chemicals that can simulate heart attacks, and any professional knows how to use them. So when Pop said he had visited the old lady before he died, well, let’s just say coincidence isn’t a word in my vocabulary.

  But now I realized she must have figured out I knew. Don’t know how. I thought I’d been careful not to spill anything. Unless Pop told her I knew before he died. Which meant the guy following me was hers. She had the connections—hell, Pop probably gave ’em to her. “Use him for back-up,” I could hear him saying, “if I’m not around to help you out.”

  A car door squeaked. I tore myself back to the present. With one hand I grasped the end of a branch and carefully pulled it back. I caught a glimpse of the Buick. The driver’s door was open, but there was no sign of the goon. I kept perfectly still. Just one opening. That’s all I needed.

  Suddenly he stepped in front of the car door, his gun drawn. He started toward the bushes. Christ. Had he spotted me? My heart went ballistic and it was tough to breathe. Then he stopped, uncertain, maybe, which way to go. It was only a brief moment, but it was enough. I raised the Sig, aimed, and squeezed the trigger.

  I waited until I knew he wasn’t going anywhere, then scrambled to my feet. I rolled him and found a few hundred in his billfold. I stuffed them in my jeans. I didn’t expect to find any ID, and I didn’t. The road looked deserted, but I dragged his body back into the woods. When I got back to the Canary, I stripped the plates and wiped all the surfaces. Then, just for the hell of it, I checked under the car. No bug. I got all my stuff out of the back then inched the car as far into the brush as I could. With luck they wouldn’t find it for a few weeks. Hell, maybe the whole season.

  The door to the Buick was still open, and the keys were in ignition. I slid into the front with the Sig beside me. I backed out onto the road, running through the checklist Pop taught me. Everything was accounted for. Even the farmer I passed on the way had left.

  IT WASN’T HARD to take care of the old lady. She was still in her bathrobe, her clothes laid out on the bed. She didn’t scream or struggle when I broke in—it was almost like she was expecting me. I didn’t say anything, and I was quiet when I used the pillow. I didn’t want one of the maids barging in. I wore gloves, and made sure there were no marks. With luck they’d think she had a heart attack. But even if they didn’t, the only thing the cops would have was a description of a blue Buick, not a Camry. Afterwards, I slipped out the door and for second time that day, headed back to 94. I ditched the Buick just outside Detroit and hitched the rest of the way.

  I lay low for a few days in case there was any heat. I didn’t even call Johnny D. I saw something in the paper about the old lady’s death—they said it was a heart attack—but there was nothing about a Camry or a body in the woods near a cornfield. After four days I was running out of clothes and money, so I decided to go home. I staked out the place until two in morning before I went in. Nothing suspicious.

  I didn’t check my messages till the next morning. There were three: two from Johnny D and the third a thin nasally voice I didn’t recognize. Said he was Kenneth McCarthy, the old lady’s lawyer. I grabbed some clothes, stuffed them in a gym bag, then pried up the floorboard next to the bathroom. I threw my entire stash into the bag, grabbed the keys to my Honda, and bolted.

  It took an hour of driving around to realize I probably panicked for nothing. If someone out there had made me, the call would have been from the cops, not a lawyer. And theirs would have been in person. This had to be something else. I drove to a diner for some food. Behind the register were these crummy little paperweights with tiny dogs and cats and butterflies suspended inside a glass ball. The butterfly had some silver stuff on its wings, and it sparkled in the light. I could hardly take my eyes off it.

  After I ate, I called the man from a pay phone.

  “Teresa Nichols?” The nasally voice asked after I’d waited about a year on hold.

  “You got her.”

  “Yes, well. . .” McCarthy cleared his throat but when he spoke again, his voice was still nasally. Almost whiny. “It seems as if you’ve been named the sole beneficiary of my client’s will.”

  “What?”

  “My client has left everything to you. The estate. The bank accounts. The investments. Even her jewelry. Over ten million dollars in assets.”

  “Are you fuck—I mean are you out of your mind?”

  He cleared his throat again. “There’s a letter for you from her. It’s marked confidential. If you’d like to come down to our offices, I can give it to you personally.”

  Yeah, right. I wasn’t born yesterday. “Why don’t you read it to me?”

  “As I said, it’s marked confidential.”

  “You got my permission.”

  “You won’t mind putting that in writing?”

  “What the—sure—whatever.”

  “In that case, well. . .” I heard the rip of an envelope, the crackle of paper. His tone was so emotionless he could have been reading a grocery list.

  “Dearest Teresa,

  After Grayson died, your father was my confidante and closest friend. But you were the most precious thing in his life. He always wanted to give you a better life, and he never stopped trying. He talked about you so much I felt like I knew you. And though I wasn’t your birth mother, I loved you, too. Now that I’m gone, I’m in a position to help your father express his love for you. Just consider it my way of repaying all the favors.”

  The lawyer was quiet. I stared out at the street but to this day, I don’t remember what I saw.

  “Miss Nichols, are you there?”

  “Yeah.” I grunted after a pause.

  He started spewing details about what I was supposed to do and when, but I wasn’t paying attention. He said he’d send me a registered letter and checked my address. I hung up the phone and started to walk back to the car. My head was spinning. The old lady didn’t order the hit. I took out the wrong target. And now I was rich. I massaged my temples.

  But if she didn’t do it, who did? I stopped. There was only one other person who knew where I was going. Johnny D. He knew everything about my father. He’d been there when Pop died. He was the only man I trusted. We’d even had our wills done together. He’d promised Pop, he said. It was the best way to protect me from the occupational hazards of our jobs.

  I walked around some more, then headed back to the car. I had one more job to do. It would probably be my last. But I’d do it, and I’d do it well. Pop would have wanted me to. The old lady, too. But first maybe I’d go back to that diner and buy the frigging butterfly.

  DAVID MORRELL

  DAVID Morrell is the award-winning author of first blood, the novel in which Rambo first appeared. He holds a PhD in American literature from the Pennsylvania State University and taught at the University of Iowa until he gave up his tenure to devote himself to a full-time writing career. “The mild-mannered professor with the bloody-minded visions,” as one reviewer called him, Morrell has written numerous best-selling thrillers that include THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE (the basis for a highly rated NBC miniseries), THE PROTECTOR (which features Cavanaugh, the hero of this story), and CREEPERS, his latest. Eighteen million copies of his books are in print. His fiction has been translated into twenty-six languages.

  On the topic of this anthology, Morrell comments: “Stories about hitmen take us to the edge of our civilization and perhaps also to the core of it. Dispassionate violence. Indifferent brutality. Somehow, during recent decades, these became familiar rather than exceptions. In Cold Blood now seems almost quaint. Perhaps stories about hitmen can help us understand where we are and how our society needs to change.”

  Visit his website at www.DavidMorrell.net.

  THE ATTITUDE ADJUSTER

  David Morrell

  A ROAD-RENOVATION crew. Trucks, grinders, rollers. Only one lane of traffic is open. As you drive toward the dust and noise, a man holds a pole with a sign at the top. The pole’s bottom rests on the dirt so all he needs to do is turn the shaft to show you one side of the sign or the other. SLOW, you are directed, or else stop.