Shorts

Short stories and articles.

The Hitman’s Retirement – Chapter III

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III. The Next Complication

Tony was still upset when he reached the door to the hotel room.  He had a bona fide situation on his hands.  First of all, his target slipped through his hands which never happens.  It had been a long time since he tasted failure and he did not like it one bit.  But now he had to do some scrambling.  He was going to have to postpone his trip a little longer so that he could finish the job.  In order to finish the job, he was going to have to ditch Cheyenne which meant more lying.  He shook his head because he really didn’t like that part.

After he did all that, he was going to have to track down the target again knowing the mayor had hired his own gun.  Which means the mayor must have known someone was coming for him.  Not as small town as Tony thought.  That showed a little sophistication Tony had not anticipated. 

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The Hitman’s Retirement – Chapter II

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II. The Target

It was after 8:00 PM by the time they returned to the hotel.  Tony waited patiently for Cheyenne to climb into bed.  Part of her residual army training made her an early bird and Tony was counting on her going to bed early.  Tonight though, she did not.  Much to his surprise she was still wide awake at 10:00 PM.

Even his tolerance and patience were being exceeded while he waited for her to doze off. Instead of being able to locate the target’s house during the day he had to spend the time retrieving data from the broken phone.  Which meant he was going to have to find it for the first time in the dark of the night.  Doable but sloppy work.  But it had to be done that night.  Cheyenne was expecting for the two to get up and get an early start to the Park. 

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The Hitman’s Retirement – Chapter I

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 I. The Reconnect

Tony looked at his watch.  It was only 4 minutes since the last time he snuck a glance.  In between time checks he would glare at his brother-in-law.  Thanks to Jackson, he spent the afternoon attempting to salvage his work phone.  He managed to turn it on and retrieve most of the files he needed.  But he had to buy another phone to transfer all the data to which created a data trail.  Any type of trail is sloppy work.

Plus, he had the added pressure to do all this while keeping Cheyenne in the dark about how important the phone was for his assignment.  She didn’t know anything about the job he was contracted to do.  There was no way he could tell her now.  How would that go?  “Oh, by the way, honey, you know how you think I work on wall street?  I don’t. I have killed a stock broker before but you don’t need to know about that.  The important thing to remember is I love you and I am changing my whole life because of you.  Isn’t that great news?”

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Story behind the Post – The Hitman’s Phone

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July was a 5-Saturday month. Which means in June, I was scrambling for a story. I had a few ideas but which one to pursue? One day while on a break from work, I took my daily walk down the sidewalk. There in the gutter was a phone. It was cracked and had definitely seen better days. Instead of picking it up, I left it there thinking someone may come looking for it. Of course, I took a picture of it. Then I forgot about it. It was gone by my next walk the following morning.

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The Hitman’s Phone – Chapter V

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V. The Retrace

It hurt to open his eyes but Tony knew he needed to open them.

“Hon,” he heard a woman’s voice say from somewhere in the distance.  Was it an angel?  He couldn’t say for certain but he guessed that if he were, in fact, dead there would be no angels greeting him.

“Tony,” he heard the voice again. It was a familiar voice.  It was his wife’s voice.

He opened his eyes and sat up but wished he hadn’t done either.

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The Hitman’s Phone – Chapter IV

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Chapter IV: The First Complication

The next morning, the two of them were on their way.  It had to appear like they were actually on vacation so Tony planned a two-day driving trip.  Whenever Cheyenne complained about not stopping to see something he would just say, “We only have a week.”  Which was his timeline for completing the job before someone else would be sent in to clean it up.  And technically, the timer started yesterday.  This was day two.  He should have the assignment completed by the end of day 3.  That gave him a little cushion time of four days but he never liked to bank on cushion time.  Best to get in and get it done.

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The Hitman’s Phone – Chapter III

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III. The Plan

The very next morning, Tony went to the store to buy supplies for the trip. As he stood in line at Wal-Mart with his new phone he smiled. Did he have the greatest wife or what? She was so willing to make the trip west with him and he didn’t even need to use his full-on convincing tactics he had been prepared to use. No wonder he married her. She was simply the best. How lucky could one man be?

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The Hitman’s Phone – Chapter II

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II. The Job

There was some loudmouth in Wyoming of all places that had caught the attention of Tony’s newest employer. His recent employer had a billion-dollar multi-faceted company and one large chunk of it was a mining operation in Wyoming. The mine actually housed two sources of revenue. The mining was, in fact, legal and ironically above ground. It employed thousands of locals and was a main industry to the nearby town. The other source of revenue, however, eclipsed the earning potential of the mine. It employed hundreds of people but none of these particular employees ever filled in a W2 form. They were responsible for receiving special shipments from Mexico and rerouting them to various locations in the United States and even up to Canada. Shipments of drugs would come in by the truckload. They would go out in special compartments underneath the mined material in the train cars.

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