Kim Oh 2: Real Dangerous Job (The Kim Oh Thrillers) Read Online Free

Like, uh, killing Pomeroy?”
     
    That was the name of the old man, a business associate of McIntyre’s, who I’d had to blow away. He had been trying to kill me at the time, or as close to as didn’t make any difference – but it’d still been a new thing for me. The positive upshot was that it had allowed Cole and me to hang on to the money that I had snuck out of one of McIntyre’s accounts, using the passwords that I’d tricked Pomeroy into giving me.
     
    Right now, though, there was a weird, fluttery sensation going on in my gut. Just from holding the assault rifle and knowing what could be done with it.
     
    “Maybe . . .” The words inched from me. “Maybe I’m not . . . cut out for this. Despite what you think.”
     
    “Not cut out for it, huh?” I could see Cole’s expression souring. “You idiot.”
     
    He’d always had lightning-fast mood swings. Being crippled had made them worse.
     
    His hand shoved forward the joystick. The wheelchair shot forward, into my legs, knocking me over. I landed on my butt, the loaded assault rifle clattering scarily on the concrete floor beside me.
     
    “Little late to figure that!” Cole’s rage mounted. “You’re in too far now to back out!”
     
    “I wasn’t –”
     
    “Just where do you think you are?” He gunned the wheelchair closer toward me. I had to pull my legs back to keep from being run over. “You’ve already stolen from somebody who can have you pulled apart like a turkey carcass, and you’ve killed somebody to cover it up! What’re you gonna do now, turn yourself in to the police? Then what? Where the hell do you think you are?”
     
    “I know, I know.” I tried to calm him down. “I know all that.”
     
    There was more I knew as well. Stuff that his girlfriend Monica had pieced together for me. That he had been the one to set me up with the old man Pomeroy, so that I’d have no choice except to kill him. Once you’ve done something like that – killed somebody – your options narrow. Mine had. I knew that now I had no choice except to go ahead with our plans to kill McIntyre. That was the only hope I had of staying alive.
     
    “Sure you do.” Cole backed me up harder against the wall, my knees drawn up under my chin. “So now you probably think I screwed you, huh? Ran a number on you. Trapped you in a corner, huh? Well, if I did, it’s because I had good reasons to. Because I knew that if I didn’t, once things started to get a little hairy, you’d wet your panties and run away.” He glared at me. “And now you can’t.”
     
    “I wasn’t going to –”
     
    “Doesn’t matter what you were going to do.” He turned his personal thermostat down a couple of notches. “You don’t even know what you were going to do. Because you were dreaming! Everyone dreams about killing somebody else – only you went walking around in that dream. Like it was the real world. You told yourself, I’ll just go talk to this hard guy I know, and we’ll go kill our old boss who screwed us both over. Only you would never have done it. You would’ve chickened out. Because you were just dreaming. Well, now it’s time to wake up!”
     
    Frozen in place by his sudden tirade, all I could do was watch as he leaned over the arm of his wheelchair, picked up the assault rifle, and tossed it at me. My finger accidentally snagged the trigger as I caught it. A searing burst ripped from its short muzzle. Cole didn’t even flinch as the bullets stitched the wall behind him.
     
    “Not bad.” He was one of those types who actually found the noise of gunfire to be soothing. Could’ve fallen asleep to it. He looked over his shoulder at the close pattern of bullet holes in the wall, then back to me. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
     
    “No . . .” I shook my head, then carefully set the AR-SF down on the floor. It looked like a black snake coiled up there, if snakes had right angles. “It was okay.”
     
    “So