Chapter 160
160
With Sean’s help, I began weeding through various jobs he found on the Dark Web that fit our criteria of ‘killing bad people for money p>
Some fell apart once we looked closer. For instance, angry spouses who wanted to get rid of a husband or wife, but their justifications – ‘he’s a pedo,’ ‘she abuses the children’ – turned out to be extremely unlikely once we did the research.
Well… once Sean did the research.
You can learn a lot from hacking into a person’s computer… or a nanny cam.
Other jobs progressed to talking to the client over encrypted chats. I actually took a couple of those.
One was in Hungary, where a 27-year-old man had drugged and raped a dozen young women. He’d gotten away with it because his father was a powerful politician with a lot of influence.
Unfortunately for the 27-year-old, one of his victims had a father with a lot of influence, too – in the form of money.
The client was heartbroken about his daughter… and furious enough to offer 30,000 euros to anyone who would kill the rapist.
I happily obliged.
It was an easy job. I made it look like a mugging gone bad, then left town an hour later.
The multiple rapist got his just desserts…
Sean got his finder’s fee…
And I was able to pay my bills for several months.
Then there was the pedophile priest in southern France. The Vatican had been covering for him for over 30 years – we’re talking hundreds of children over three decades – and he was currently abusing a boy in his village. Several of his parishioners had pooled enough money to hire someone to remove him from his job permanently.
I took that one for a vastly reduced fee.
Best of all, no one ever learned my name or saw my face. They only knew me by the name I chose:
Diana.
The Roman goddess of the hunt.
There were a couple other jobs… then more.
Word of mouth spread. We no longer had to go look for jobs – they came to us.
And then…
I got the oddest offer of all.
“We’ve got an odd one,” Sean told me at the pub. We met regularly in a booth in the back when the place was mostly deserted.
“‘Odd,’ how p>
“They want you to whack a guy in the mafia p>
I stared at Sean. “Come again p>
“What? That’s exactly the kind of bad guy we should be taking out p>
“‘We’ should be taking out, huh?” I asked with a smirk.
“Hey – I’m a part of the team,” Sean said haughtily, like I was churlish to overlook his contribution. “Hence, ‘we p>
“Okay, whatever. But mafioso sounds like a big step up from rapists and pedophiles p>
“Yeah, well, that’s why they’re willing to pay 200,000 euros p>
I nearly choked on my beer. “What p>
“Yep. But… there’s a catch p>
“What, that it’s the fucking mafia p>
“No. You have to meet the client in person p>
“Unh-unh. No way p>
“Hold on a second – here’s the interesting part: they’re willing to pay 20,000 euros just to meet you, even if you decide not to take the job p>
I stared at him. “They’ll pay 20,000 euros just to meet p>
“And discuss the job p>
“Why does this sound like the beginning of a fucking horror movie?” I muttered.
“Come on – if I’d told you five months ago that you could make a really good living knocking off rapists, pedophiles, and other assorted scum of the earth, would you have believed me p>
I sighed grumpily. “Who’s the client p>
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t say p>
“How do we know he’s not in the mafia p>
“The mafia doesn’t farm out hits,” Sean said derisively. “Especially not at 200K a pop. Whacking people is what they do. It’d be like a… I don’t know… like a male porn star paying somebody else to fuck for him p>
“That’s a delightful metaphor,” I said sarcastically. “Thank you so much p>
“Anytime. Oh – plus, they’re willing to reimburse you for travel expenses and they insist you fly first class p>
“And they’ll pay me 20,000 euros just to meet p>
“Yup p>
“Without any commitment to do the job p>
“That’s right p>
I sighed. “…fine… set it up p>
It turned out to be a hell of a meeting.