“It was supposed to be easy. A quick smash and grab, in and out before anyone knew they were there, and then it was off to paradise with more money than they could spend in a lifetime. Hell, two lifetimes! Shoulda known nothing was ever that easy…”
Six convicts.
One helluva score.
What could possibly go wrong?
Originally published on the Quest of Evolution by Joseph Nassise.
It was just after two a.m., but there was still a throng of looky-loos three people deep outside the apartment complex.
Vultures, Ed thought disdainfully.
He stood amongst them, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up to make it harder to see his face in the early morning darkness. The blue lights from the handful of squad cars parked nearby flashed over the crowd repeatedly, casting odd shadows across the pavement, helping to hide his features from even his closest neighbor.
Not that anyone was looking in his direction.
The assembled crowd had their attention focused like a laser beam on the door to the building in front of them, where rumor had it that a young woman had been brutally murdered just a few hours before. Ed knew it wasn’t a rumor, for he’d been the one doing the killing.
It had been too long since he’d allowed his darker nature out to play and he knew that if he didn’t do something to relieve the pressure he might inadvertently cause problems during the job later that day. One wrong look, one cross word, and he might go ballistic at exactly the wrong time, endangering not only himself but the rest of the crew by slaughtering some hapless idiot who simply had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That couldn’t be allowed to happen, so he’d been forced to sate the urge while he had the opportunity to do so. Getting into the building had been easy; he’d just pushed all the intercom buttons one after another until some idiot had buzzed him in without checking. After that he’d simply waited near the mailboxes in the lobby for the right victim to come walking through the front door. She’d put up a struggle, but it hadn’t been anything he hadn’t been prepared to handle.
Now, with the urge satisfied, he be able to lock down his emotions for whatever arose later that morning and do his job just as he’d been hired to do. Satisfied, he watched another moment longer and then slipped away into the night.
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