Page 3 of Mustang

I knew why.The client knew why.The contract knew why.

But standing in that kitchen, with the smell of coffee and bread and herbs from the garden outside, none of those reasons mattered the way they should have.

The job I came to do was one I could not finish.Not here.Not tonight.Not with her sitting in that chair watching me like she was still deciding whether I was dangerous or just lost.

I was both.I’d been both for longer than she’d been alive.

And I was going to have to tell her why.

I made the decision the way I made all decisions.No debate.No second-guessing.Just the facts arranged in the right order, and my body moving before my brain had finished catching up.

“You’re coming with me,” I said.

Hannah didn’t blink.Her knees were still pulled to her chest, feet bare on the kitchen chair, and she looked smaller like that, younger, though I knew from the file she was twenty-six.Old enough to know better.Young enough that it still shouldn’t have mattered.

“Someone wants you dead,” I said.“Staying in this house tonight means you don’t wake up tomorrow.”

She swallowed.I watched her throat move.“Who?”

“Don’t have time to explain it.”

“Are you going to hurt me?”

The question hung between us.Direct.Unflinching.The same steadiness she’d shown when she offered me coffee, now turned toward the only thing that mattered.

“No.”

I said it before I’d decided to say it.The word came out clean, certain, and I meant it in a way that surprised the hell out of me.Not the way you mean an answer when you’re lying to keep someone calm.The way you mean a promise when it’s true, and you’re only just realizing it.

Her eyes locked on mine.Searching.I let her look.I had nothing to hide in that moment except the fact that ten minutes ago, I’d walked through her door to kill her, and now I was standing in her kitchen telling her I wouldn’t hurt her, and both things were true in ways that didn’t make sense together.

I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out a zip tie.Plastic, white, available anywhere.I’d carried a dozen of them for years.Useful things.

“Hold out your wrists.”

She did.No hesitation.Palms up, together, waiting.

I looped the tie around both wrists and pulled it snug – not tight enough to cut, not loose enough to slip.Enough to show whoever might be watching that she was restrained, if they were watching.Enough to keep her from doing anything stupid if panic set in later.

It wouldn’t.I could already tell.The set of her shoulders, the way she’d accepted the binding without a fight – she was scared, but she was thinking.Assessing.The same careful watchfulness she’d shown since I raised the gun.

I guided her up from the chair with one hand at her shoulder.Her skin was warm through the thin cotton of the sleep shirt.She stood, steady on her bare feet, and didn’t pull away from my touch.

“Through the back,” I said.

We walked through the kitchen, past the coffee maker and the half-finished loaf, through the back door I’d left open.The night air hit us, cool and damp with the promise of morning fog.Her herb garden smelled stronger out here, rosemary and thyme sharp in the darkness.

She didn’t scream.Didn’t call out.Didn’t do any of the things a person might do when a stranger with a gun guides them out of their house at midnight with their wrists bound.

At the gate, she paused.Glanced back at the house once, quick, like she was memorizing it.Then she turned to me, and her voice came out quiet, so quiet I almost missed it under the sound of the distant highway.

“Where are you taking me?”

I didn’t answer.Couldn’t answer, because the truth was, I didn’t know yet.Somewhere safe.Somewhere the client wouldn’t look.A place that would cost me fifty thousand dollars and possibly a lot more if the client decided I’d crossed a line.

I guided her through the gate and across the yard to where the truck waited at the curb.Engine running.Headlights off.The street was empty, fog hanging low between the houses, turning the porch lights into blurred halos.

I opened the passenger door.Helped her in – my hand at her elbow, steadying – and she settled into the seat with her bound hands in her lap, bare feet on the floormat.She didn’t turn towards me.Didn’t glance at the street.Just stared straight ahead through the windshield at the fog and the dark and whatever was coming next.