Not Dead Enough by Warren C Easley

hiking back down, he slipped under the shade of the low tarp he’d rigged earlier, took a long pull on a bottle of water, and lit up a Camel. But the cigarette did nothing to calm him. He laid back using his backpack for a pillow and let out a deep sigh that turned into a moan. You fool. You never should have agreed to this.
    His thoughts flashed back to the night he’d arrived at the guest house…
    He’d let himself in, like the text said. But no one was there. Instead, he found two envelopes with his name on them, and he almost giggled. “Damn, this is like some kind of spy shit.” He opened the thick envelope first, whistled softly, and sat down on shaky legs. It was stuffed with money—a wad of crisp, new one-hundred dollar bills a couple of inches thick. One hundred and fifty of the little beauties. He counted them twice and did the math. A cool fifteen thousand.
    A note tucked into the bills read: “Down payment. Another $15,000 paid upon completion of task.” When he tore open the second envelope his hand shook slightly, and he felt a sinking feeling in his gut. The details of his job—what he was to do, who he was to do it to, and how—were precisely laid out on two pieces of typed paper. There was an explanation, too. It made him feel a little better. Some crazy old Indian hermit was going to dredge up the past and hurt a lot of innocent people. This was unacceptable to the Old Man, and he needed Jake to put a stop to it. The Old Man would consider it a great personal favor.
    But Jake still felt shitty after it all sank in. Kill a man? Sure, he’d killed his share of big game—long horns, elk, deer, even a couple of bears. But a man? That was different. Then he glanced over at that stack of bills. Thirty thousand bucks would change his life, big time. He could pay off some debts, get caught up on his alimony. A sliver of hope slipped into his thoughts. Maybe Amy would change her mind after this. Maybe we could start over...
    But then the thought of the awful task in front of him came back in full force. He sat there in the guesthouse for a long time, going back and forth. What finally swung it for him was the Old Man, what was said in the note about doing him a personal favor. Maybe this would really count for something. God knows, nothing I ever do is good enough. Sure, the money was great, but he knew deep down he would have done the job for nothing, just to please the old bastard.
    And besides, the job’s a no-brainer, and no one will miss the old Indian, anyway.
    Jake’s thoughts were brought back to the here and now by a gust of wind that slammed into the weathered tarp above him. He sat up. “No-brainer, my ass. Now there may be a witness out there. I hope to hell I killed that son of a bitch, too.”
    When the sun finally sank behind the rim of the canyon, he fired up the propane stove inside the protective ring of rocks he’d built and waited for a pot of water to boil. Freeze-dried beef stroganoff with noodles was his favorite camp food, but this particular night it didn’t taste that good. As a matter of fact, the food caught in his throat and the only thing that went down easy was a fifth of I. W. Harper.
    But the whiskey didn’t keep him from seeing the old Indian’s face in the scope of his rifle. Over and over again.
    He woke the next morning with a splitting headache, but as he hiked back up the ridge he felt more hopeful. I pumped two rounds in right where I saw the muzzle flash of that shotgun. I must have hit him. Hell, they can just pay me the rest and I’ll go home, lay low and let this thing blow over.
    But the text that came in read: There’s a loose end. Sit tight for 24 hrs.
    Jake’s throat constricted as he read the text, and he had difficulty swallowing. Shit. Missed the bastard. This ain’t over. Not by a long shot.

Chapter Nine
    Once inside Watlamet’s house, I put Arch and the shotgun