The two men, killers, stood silent outside the high outer walls of the mansion, lingering among the
palm trees.
Dressed in black, they looked like two wraiths, dark ghosts, hiding in the shadows. On this night,
they wore hooded coats to protect themselves against the pouring rain. The raised hoods further
obscured their faces.
They called themselves Mr. Blue and Mr. Green, but Mr. Blue's real name was not Blue. He was
broad and muscular, and he was known for his bad temper. His body was scarred by countless battles.
He had murdered dozens of people. His nose bent sideways as if punched by the hand of God.
Mr. Green's real name was, in fact, Green. He was tall and slim, with very fast hands. His face
was unremarkable. He had a receding hairline. He looked like he could be an accountant, or a teacher.
You wouldn't remember seeing him. He was logical and detail-oriented. He was also cold blooded
and relentless.
For both men, killing was a job and, on this night, that job took them to this sleek, white stucco,
four-story house on the coast. Only the twenty-foot high stone walls and state-of-the-art security
system stood in their way.
Mr. Green opened a metal control box at the base of the wall, and made quick work of the latter,
disabling the home's security cameras and electronic lock system, as Mr. Blue looked on. The two men
had worked together before. Mr. Blue didn't much like Mr. Green's personality, but he appreciated his
professionalism and his knack for the finer points of technology. It was a beautiful thing to witness.
Mr. Blue was less polished, but no less effective. Interrogation was his specialty. Compliance,
restraint, and information extraction - that's how they described it in industry jargon. In regular
English, it meant torture. He was especially good with reluctant subjects.
Those skills wouldn't be needed tonight. This was a straight contract kill, made to look like a
break-in gone wrong.
He watched as Mr. Green closed the control box and nodded. The movement of Mr. Green's head
was barely perceptible.
"You opened both doors?" Mr. Blue said.
"The wall and the house," Mr. Green said. "We're as good as in."
Mr. Blue went to the reinforced steel door set into the wall. He grabbed the giant decorative knob
and pulled. The door came open easily. He smiled to himself and, just like that, he slipped inside the
wall.
The two men walked across the grounds toward the house. The shimmering pool was to their right.
It was a beautiful setting, with the Gulf of Mexico stretching to dark infinity beyond the seawall. The
rain fell hard and fast, and struck the ground in fury. The pool water looked like it was boiling.
The house was to their left. Mr. Blue gazed up at it as they approached. From here, it was
impossible to tell what shape it was. Maybe it was a triangle, maybe it was an arrow pointing to
heaven. Some pointy-headed college boy with an auto-cad must have thought it made a statement.
Certainly, it was contemporary. It was abstract. It was a piece of shit.
It was, he had to admit, a much nicer place than the one he lived in. These computer scientists
made a lot of money.
Mr. Blue knew he should keep his mind focused on the job at hand, but he allowed himself a
moment to muse about the last scientist they'd met.
He and Mr. Green had just visited him out on the west coast, at a cliff house near Big Sur. A guy
named Martin Wacker - what an arrogant prick! Wacker had taken a little rest and relaxation trip out
there. And they had come to see him during his holiday.
They had tied Wacker to a chair, forced him to drink bourbon at gun point, then sent him off the
cliff in his Mercedes convertible.
Whoops! Drunk driving accident. People should drink more responsibly, especially on curvy
mountain roads high above the ocean.
Before he went, Wacker had tried to buy them off. It spoke volumes about the kid that he thought
such a thing was even possible. Blue remembered sitting in the living room of that fantastic cliff house,
a little drunk himself, watching the sun sink below the ocean. He listened to this snot nose, bearded,
four-eyed 32-year-old genius tell them about how much money he had, and how they could have it all,
if only they let him live.
"We already have money," he told Wacker. "Lots of it."
Blue glanced at Green. Green stared straight ahead, his eyes blank, waiting until Blue gave him
the word. He wasn't even listening. Hell, Green didn't care about money. He didn't care about
anything but doing the job. He had all the money he needed. If he had any more, what would he even
buy with it?
"In the drawer," Wacker said. His trimmed beard and his black framed Gucci glasses made him
look like some kind of fake backwoodsman in a fashion magazine. With his head, Wacker indicated a glass china cabinet with a couple of sliding wooden drawers. "On the right. There's about ten
thousand dollars in there. Cash. I brought it just to have some spending money. You can have it.
Consider it a down payment."
Blue was wearing black leather gloves, as he always did. He went over to the cabinet and pulled
open the drawer. A wad of cash sat there. He didn't bother to count it. He picked it up and put it in his
pocket.
When he turned around again, he caught Green frowning at him. Green shook his head.
"What?" Blue said.
"It's a breach of protocol."
Blue shook his head in turn. Everything was a breach of protocol these days. Everything was
against the rules. Don't touch anything. Don't take anything. Don't drink beer from the fridge. Don't
steal the artwork off the walls. Don't blow up the safe. Where was the fun anymore? Hell, Wacker
wasn't going to need the money.
Blue walked back over to the computer genius. He took the bottle of bourbon off the small side
table, poured another double shot, and held it to Wacker's lips. Behind his glasses, Wacker's eyes went
wide.
"Drink," Blue said.
Wacker's lips were trembling. "I don't want anymore."
With his free hand, Blue pulled his gun out of its holster. He put the business end to Wacker's
temple. He would never shoot the man - this death was going to be an accident. But how could
Wacker know that? He couldn't.
"Drink," Blue said again.
Wacker drank.
Before the end, before he passed out, before they bundled him into his pricey car and let him loose
off the edge of the bluff and into the waiting arms of mother ocean below, Wacker started talking. He
talked too much, in fact. It was drunken gibberish, and Blue hated listening to the ravings of dead
people.
That, and Wacker was crying. Blue couldn't stand it when men cried. It didn't make him feel
sympathy. All it did was piss him off. Blue came from that world where men didn't cry, and boys
stopped crying when they were eight years old.
"Please," Wacker said. "Please don't do this. I know a secret..."
Blue was bored. He wanted to wrap the night up. Still, he raised his eyebrows. He liked secrets.
Secrets often meant money.
"Okay."
"I have the secret to everlasting life. It's why they want me dead. I can give it to you."
"Martin," Blue said, "I have to be honest with you. That doesn't sound very promising."
"No, it's real. If you had this secret... Listen, it's incredible. The brain... it isn't what they think.
The human mind is elsewhere."
Blue's mind was elsewhere. He held the glass to the man's lips again.
"Drink," he said.
Now, a week later, he and Mr. Green had reached the security door of the beach house in Florida –
the house of Scientist Number Two. They paused by the door, and stood in the heavy downpour. The
rain pattered on their raincoats, and ran in rivulets down their faces.
"Any sign of trouble, we blow her away," Mr. Blue said. "Alarms, panic rooms, anything like that,
just boom. We don't want a protracted episode in there, and we don't want any uninvited guests. If
there's no trouble, then it's just a break-in and we play it like that. You check her identity and I'll do
the honors. We got it?"
Talking to Mr. Green was like talking to a cardboard box. Mr. Green nodded. "Got it."
Mr. Blue touched the door and pushed. It opened easily.
They went in.
* * *
Inside the house, Susan Jones was afraid. So afraid, she could barely move.
With Martin dead, it was only a matter of time before they came for her. Oh, they said Martin had
died in a drunk driving accident, but she didn't believe it. Martin drank, and Martin drove, but Martin
didn't drink and drive. If Martin was drunk and he needed to go somewhere, he called a taxi.
Susan sat in her living room, listening to the heavy rain drum outside against the tall windows.
She sipped from a glass of red wine. She could feel her heart beating through the wall of her chest.
Her hand trembled as she lifted the glass to her mouth. The dark color of the wine made her think of
blood, and of death.
She wore slacks and a dress shirt, pulled untidily from the waist of her pants. Her shirt was open
three buttons, and her long hair, usually pulled back in a tight bun, hung loose and unkempt. Her feet
were bare. When she came home, she hadn't bothered to change out of her work clothes.