Page 3 of You Were Warned: Part One

“This is my space.”

“Come on, have some fun. Watching people scream is a favorite pastime, though I prefer it when they’re in pain.”

“I would prefer it if you were in pain,” I mumble, but he doesn’t miss it.

“Are you offering?”

“Over my dead body.”

“Your dead body would be a work of art,” he muses.

“Keep talking and we can compare corpses.”

The Jester laughs, which irritates me even more. “Finally, a date.”

“An execution,” I grumble.

The Jester shrugs. “I’m flexible, either works for me.”

“You’re impossible . . . clinically fucking impossible. I could lock you in a windowless room with nothing but a chair, and somehow within ten minutes the chair would be on fire, you’d have blood on your face, and someone outside the room would be screaming. You have no sense of self-preservation, no concept of personal space, and I’m not entirely sure you have ever had a useful thought in your life. You just fucking appear everywhere, with your bells jingling.” I look down and see the glint of silver in his grip and shake my head. “Knife in hand, saying something that makes me want to remove your tongue and wear it as a necklace. Yet you’d fucking like that, wouldn’t you? That’s the problem, I can’t threaten you because you think it’s flirting, and I can’t insult you because apparently being called an island imbecile gets your dick hard. Sure, I could tell you I’m going to cut you open, pull out your intestines, and use them to hang your corpse from the front gate, but you would probably ask me what time to meet me there. And I can’t hurt your feelings because I’m beginning to think you don’t have any. I can’t scare you because apparently death is foreplay, and I can’t get you to leave me the fuck alone because every time I tell you I hate you, you look at me like I’ve just confessed my undying love. There is no winning with you. You are a walking, jingling fucking migraine in face paint. One day, Jester, I am going to kill you.” I take a breath and glare at him, watching as the corner of his mouth twitches. “I swear, if you fucking smile right now, I’ll do it tonight.”

His lips pull back down. “Those would make good wedding vows.”

“That was your last fucking warning.” As I turn and stalk away, behind me his bells jingle. “And stop fucking following me.”

I make it out of the building before I realize I’m smiling, and my face drops immediately.

Absolutely fucking not.

Jester

Jensen Layne takes his coffee black, no sugar, from the same place every morning at seven fifty-three. I know because I have been watching him for the last nineteen days, and in that time, he has not varied by more than a few minutes. Until today.

I check the time, watching as he walks straight past the coffee shop. Seven fifty-three. He doesn’t slow down.

I lower the newspaper I’m pretending to read and peer at him through the window as he doesn’t change stride. Interesting. The coffee shop is three blocks from his apartment on a corner that gets good foot traffic until around nine, then it empties. He normally sits at the window when he can get it, and if he can’t, he takes his coffee to go and drinks it on his walk home. He always walks home faster than on the way there, almost as if he remembered he left the stove on.

Jensen seems a lot more comfortable when in motion than with his back exposed, which told me pretty quickly that he’s aware of being followed. I know for a fact that there were two before me who tried to find what my client is looking for, and neither succeeded. Amateurs.

I fold the newspaper and leave it on the table, then push up. Jensen is already halfway down the block when I get outside. This job came through its usual channel, with a name, location, and briefing. Follow first, retrieve what he has, and eliminate him. Seemed simple enough, except the client wants the item before Jensen dies, which complicates things. It means I can’t simply kill him and search his apartment afterward. I need him alive until I have what I need.

Normally I would have had fun with that, and nineteen days ago that was my plan.

Jensen is twenty-nine and a private-tech contractor who works from his apartment. He takes jobs through three platforms, under two names, which I originally put down to professional discretion. By day five, I revised that assessment. Jensen wants to be difficult to find, as he sources things for clients through the black market. Information, access, items that are less than legal, and he is good at it. Really fucking good. In another life, we could have been friends, and someone like him would be useful.

A few months ago, someone hired him for a job, and from what I can gather, he never handed over what he found. That is how I ended up here—the client wants a flash drive. If you ask me, it is very 1900s. Who even uses flash drives anymore? My client has been less than forthcoming about what is on it, which I don’t particularly like, but I don’t need to know what is on the drive to retrieve it. I only need to find where Jensen put it, but Jensen is not stupid enough to keep it on him. At least I hope he isn’t, since that is a surefire way to get himself killed. Although considering the way he has been acting the last few days, maybe that wouldn’t bother him.

The thought comes out of nowhere as I stare at the back of his head. His hair is a mess today, not at all his normal style. Jensen’s shirt is creased, and there is something near the hem that looks like a stain. His hands are shoved into his pockets, shoulders curving forward, and for once he isn’t checking for reflections.

It bothers me; he always checks shop windows, car mirrors, and glass doors. He notices people behind him without turning around, but today a man almost walked into him, and Jensen barely reacted. Maybe he knows I’m following him, so I slow down. I thought when he passed the coffee shop, breaking his routine and changing direction, that he was seeing if anyone was following him.

It’s smart and what I would do.

Except he isn’t acting smart or careful. In the last few days, he’s been different—just small things. He stopped going to the park, four blocks east, where he sat on the same bench most afternoons after he finished work. He did nothing there besides sit and watch the people, which seemed like a waste of a perfectly good park to me, but Jensen apparently enjoyed it. Then he started leaving the lights on all night. At first, I assumed paranoia, and then I wondered if he wasn’t sleeping. Now he has been wearing the same hoodie for three days and didn’t shave yesterday. Unless he developed an intense dislike for coffee sometime between going to bed and waking up, he has just stopped doing the one thing he did consistently for nineteen days straight.

I don’t like it, which is ridiculous. I don’t need to like anything he does—I simply need the flash drive, then he is dead. That’s what I’m being paid to do.

He crosses the street without looking, and a car blasts its horn. Yet he doesn’t jump, swear, or give them the finger—he just keeps walking.