Conflict of Interest

Chapter Forty One

"Shut up."

"Sorry."

It was almost humorous. I had no idea what this woman wanted out of us, but if this was her way of getting Carrie back for seducing her, she sure was an extremist. Carrie and I were seated adjacently on stools at her kitchen island, as Lindsay the hot neighbor stood, playing red rover with her handgun and shifting her aim intermittently between Carrie's forehead and my own.

It fell silent, as though she didn't know how to proceed.

"So," Carrie stabbed at conversation after a while. "Is that a licensed firearm?"

"You'll speak when you're spoken to."

Carrie whistled slowly. "You know, you are not as pleasant as you come off at first."

"Yeah, well," she said bitterly. "We all have another side."

"If this is for not having sex with you earlier this week," Carrie prodded. "We could give it another go. I mean, no weapons involved though, I'm not really into that."

"Carrie, shut up," I pleaded.

"You really think this is about that?" she laughed. "You really think I was ever interested in you in the first place?"

"Oh," Carrie said, coming to a realization. "I get it. That sex was going to be decoy sex, to get me where you wanted me, so you could properly end my life."

"More or less."

"Because it looked like you were going to tear straight through your shirt, but I suppose that was just decoy arousal?"

"Carrie, you are asking for a bullet in your head."

"Well I mean, shoot me, that's one thing, but don't pretend not to be attracted to me. That's just an insult to my intelligence."

"If you were all that intelligent," Lindsay pointed out, "You wouldn't be moments from your own death right now."

"What did I do to you, then?" Carrie wondered out loud.

"Oh, no," Lindsay said. "Not to me. No, it's nothing personal at all. Just part of the job."

"Wow," Carrie said, acting impressed. "When you said you worked in corporate strategy, you never mentioned moonlighting as an assassin."

"I do work in corporate strategy," she said. "This is just part of the strategy. The company felt it was best for all involved if you weren't around to fuck with everything."

"Funny how earlier this week you wanted me to 'fuck with' something else," Carrie began to mutter as I began to consider quite a different route.

"Company," I repeated. "What company?"

"It's going to be a lot harder than that to coerce a confession, Detective," she said. "But I appreciate the enthusiasm."

"Well if you were so certain of your ability to kill us both, you'd have no problem with confessing," I egged her on. "So tell me, did just Shaw put you up to this, or the whole board at Novita?"

"Okay," Lindsay said. "Fair enough. You're going to die anyway, so I'll walk you through it. The first two, I don't even know their names, but they were easy enough. You follow her home, you tell her your phone died and ask if you can use hers to call a cab - that was similar to your own approach, wasn't it, Detective?"

"I see the irony," I admitted.

"So she lets you in, because let's be real, no one expects a female assassin, you put a bullet in her head, and from then on, it's like setting a stage in a theater. You do some damage to the body to get sex crimes to come knocking - see, Detective, we've been waiting for you - and before you know it, the entire unit is plugged up. And that's what we wanted. I always get what I want, you know. So that was the first few, and then we found the perfect pawn, this pathetic little street kid with a hell of an addiction that his budget can't support. We pay him off in company money, to fund his crack addiction, and hire him to find your little plaything, I forget her name. But that one, that was as easy as telling a kid you've got candy in your van. She didn't need much coercion, but from what I hear, she cried a lot."