Lambton doesn’t see another car coming either way on this stretch of road. Not much traffic out here, he thinks. Something could happen to someone out here, no one would ever know.
Don’t let your mind go there, he says to himself. Then, Okay, maybe just for a minute or so.
He pulls his long jacket around the front of him, buttons it. Not just to keep dry against the drizzle. He doesn’t want to scare this chick from the get-go by showing off the growing bulge in the front of his pants.
“Trouble?” he shouts.
Figures, help her out, change her tire, then see if she wants to grab a coffee somewhere. He’ll be all wet by that time. She’ll feel sorry for him, indebted. It’ll be hard for her to say no. Maybe she’ll suggest he come back to her place, dry off.
The woman peers out from behind her car.
“Oh my God, thanks for stopping!” she says. “I think I ran over a nail or something!”
“You call Triple A?” he asks, hoping she’ll say no. Doesn’t want some tow truck driver crowding in on his action.
“I’m just kicking myself, right? I get those notices in the mail, telling me I should join, but then throw the things away. Total idiot, right?”
He’s around the back of the car now, getting a good look at her. Five-nine, maybe 140 pounds, high cheekbones. Small tits, but you couldn’t have everything. Looked European or something. Long legs, jeans fitting her good and tight like leggings, tucked into her boots. Leather gloves. Something athletic about her. The way she holds herself.
“You should join,” he tells her, then worries she’ll suggest he call using his own membership. He’s only a couple of feet from her now. Doesn’t want to crowd her, frighten her. She looks wary. Like, I’m glad you stopped, but please don’t start waving it at me, okay?
“I guess I’m lucky you were going by,” she says.
“What’s your name?”
“Nicole.”
“I’m Frank,” he says. Why use his real name on what is clearly not the beginning of a long relationship?
“You want to sit in my car while I do this?”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Nicole said.
Lambton’s cell rings again but he ignores it.
“Is there anything I can do?” Nicole asks. “Like, hold a flashlight or something?”
“You got one? I got one in the truck.”
She takes out her own cell phone from inside her jacket pocket, which Michael thinks is interesting, since most women keep them in their purse. “I’ve got this app. I can turn the phone into a flashlight.”
“You don’t want to get that all wet,” he says. He has a grip on the tire and is leveraging it over the back bumper, getting ready to drop it to the ground.
“Which tire’s flat, anyway?” he asks. It occurs to him, at that moment, that he hasn’t noticed the car listing to one side or settling on any one corner.
“Front passenger,” Nicole says.
As he peers around to the front of the car, Nicole bends down, like she’s giving a tug on one of her knee-high boots.
“Nicole, that tire doesn’t look flat to—”
The ice pick, swift and noiseless, feels hot going into his right side, just above his waist. In the second it takes him to register the pain, Nicole has withdrawn it, the pick red and glistening, and thrust it into him once again, this time higher, between his ribs.
Nicole withdraws again, then drives the ice pick in a third time.
Hard.
Michael Lambton gasps and falls to the wet gravel. He tries to speak but all that emerges from between his lips is blood.
Nicole kneels down and says to him, “Your people, they wanted me to tell you, they know you sold them out. They know about the double-cross. They know you fucked them over.”
Then, just to be sure, she runs the ice pick into him a fourth time, piercing his heart.
She stands and turns her face up to the rain. It feels good. Cleansing.
She rolls Michael Lambton down into the ditch and slips the spare tire back into the hold below the hatchback floor. Once she’s behind the wheel and heading off down the two-lane blacktop, her own phone rings.
“Yes.”
“It’s me.” No hello, no introduction. But she recognizes the man’s voice. It’s Lewis.
“Hey,” she says.
“I’m calling about your availability. I mean, it’s not like you’re exclusive with Victor anymore.”
“Kind of busy right now,” she says.
“I may have something for you.”
“I’m north of the border. About to take some time off.”
“But if I had something for you, could you take it on? It’d be worth your while.”
“What do you mean, if?”
“I have to make the case to my boss. I think he’ll go for it. I’ll know very soon.”
She thinks. She really wants some time off, but then again, she hates to turn down work.
“What’s the job?”
“Some chick works in a bar,” he says. “Piece of cake.”
“Sounds like a job anyone could do,” Nicole says.
“We need some distance on this one, too.”
“Let me know when you’ve talked to your boss.”