The Kill by Jonas Saul Page A

she yelled again. “There’s no need.”
     
    The man jumped in behind her and even before his door was shut, the vehicle got underway.
     
    Rosina righted herself, adjusted her blouse and sat back in the leather seat. The man who grabbed her sat to her right. Another man sat facing her in a backward-facing seat aimed at hers. Both men were grinning. She had no idea why, but they were.
     
    “You two wanna tell me what the joke is?”
     
    They looked at each other and then both turned their attention on her. The man who threw her in the limo said, “It’s over. That’s why we’re happy. We get to go home.”
     
    “What’s over?”
     
    “We have that rat bastard of a husband of yours and now we have you.”
     
    “You have Darwin? Where?”
     
    “We’re taking you to see him right now. Don’t worry, it won’t be long now.”
     
    She looked out the window. If they already had Darwin, and they were taking her to where he was, what did that mean? When he said it was over, what could he mean? Home now? Where was home for these men?
     
    Then she decided on another question.
     
    “Was it your people who shot at us the other night?”
     
    The man sitting across from her raised a hand to his companion. “I’ll handle her questions. This is the fun part. I like toying with my prey.”
     
    “Prey? I’m nobody’s prey.” These disgusting brutes talked like animals.
     
    “Whatever you think, missus. Yes, it was us.”
     
    “Why would you shoot at us? If one of your bullets had hit me or my husband, you could’ve killed us.”
     
    “We’re sorry. We weren’t trying to hit you. Believe me, if we were, we wouldn’t have missed.”
     
    Confused, she asked, “Why were you trying to miss us? That doesn’t make sense, if you’re after my husband for accidentally killing that man.”
     
    A smile played across his mouth. “We wouldn’t want either one of you to die so easily. We don’t believe in that. What kind of men would we be known as? Hit men? Hired guns? No, we like to hurt and kill people in unique ways.”
     
    Even though she hadn’t eaten much, her stomach lurched and what little she had eaten threatened to come up. There was no way the man sitting across from her was telling the truth.
     
    He continued. “If you’re still wondering why we would shoot at you, it was because we were hoping you’d call the police. They’d file a report and then we’d know where you were staying. All the time you’ve been in Rome, we’ve been trying to find where you two were staying. We hadn’t got permission yet from the ruling families here to do our business, so we had to wait, collect information. We knew we were running out of time, so we thought we’d try to run you over, shoot at you, get you to call the police. But that didn’t work. Then we found out you were headed for the airport, and we just got granted our permission. So we made our move, and here we are, nice and cozy.”
     
    He was lying. He had to be. “How would having us call the police help you?” she asked.
     
    He laughed and shook his head a little. He had bad teeth and five-day old beard. The guy looked unkempt, and yet he acted cocky and cool like he was in disguise.
     
    “You really don’t know who we are, do you? You aren’t aware of our world? How men like us have police on the payroll? How politicians, back home in Canada, do what we want? You live in your ivory towers and look down at us, not having any idea that we’re the ones who make the world go ‘round. You fucking whore,” his voice rose in volume. “You fucking slut. You have no idea what you’re in for.”
     
    Rosina didn’t think of herself as stupid or naive. She knew there were people like the man in front of her in the same world as her. But why would they hurt innocent, regular folk like Darwin and her. She was barely twenty-five years old. She’d never even been in a fight except for a little hair-pulling in grade school. As far as