#4

The wind caused more trouble with anyone who might be trying to calm a frantically beating heart than previously thought possible.

A loose shutter banged loudly on the side of the old house, increasing the heartrate another notch and causing the woman hiding in the deep shadows of the bushes lining the front of the house to feel sure that she had just lost another year of life. She had just begun to get used to the strange howling sound that came from the wind blowing through the six foot vinyl privacy gate that was behind her, not to mention the creaking noise it made as the wind pushed harder and harder against it as it picked up intensity, but that shutter knocking was new and it was starting to get downright creepy.

Dressed head to toe in black, dark hair pulled back from her face in a tight ponytail, the woman used her gloved finger to push back her sleeve and check the faint glowing hands on her watch to check the time.

One in the morning.

Great.

He was supposed to have been here by now. Why can't lying, cheating, worthless, scum sucking...weasles at least have the decency to be a little more predictible?

The woman shifted uncomfortably and then leaned forward to reach under herself in order to remove a very hard and pointy rock from her seat on the ground.

Stakeouts always seemed so glamorous in the movies and in books. Even sitting in a car in the middle of the night with nothing but stale donuts and a cola to keep her company would be better than sitting on the freezing, rocky ground in the bushes at the home of her only client's latest obsession.

Her client was a controlling, manipulative jerk who hired her to follow other controlling, manipulative jerks in order to find out everything on them before taking over their companies. She was fairly certain the information she gathered was used as blackmail of sorts, but she justified her involvement by talking herself into the fact--grey area though it was--that this was the only human on the planet who was as desperate for information as she was for a job. That, and all she did was take some photos, check the internet for public information on the person she was following, and then hand over everything to her client to do with as he wished.

And then she would collect a very large check for her services and pray that someone else would hire her for her private investigative work, or that her only client would suddenly need someone else followed before she was evicted from her apartment. Usually the latter happened.

Okay. Always the latter happened.

This time the object of her investigation was a man who her client wanted to know everything about for seemingly personal reasons. He hinted at a family tie, but he wanted to make sure that the skeleton's in this new guy's closet weren't too big to overcome. Or maybe he really wanted to know if the skeletons were too small to benefit his motives.

Whatever they were.

Sometimes she wished she knew more about the motivations of her client. But usually when she felt that way she quickly reminded herself that she was not as objective when it started to become personal, and she would stop thinking so hard and just get the job done.

In her internet search on the new guy, she had pulled up quite the social spreadsheet. A mover and a shaker, this guy seemed to be suave in all areas. Business and personal. She had rarely found a photo of him with the same woman. And she could tell by his wardrobe that he didn't buy off the rack.

She also thought he looked like a slick weasle, so she had started calling him that. Weasle. It fit. He had shifty eyes and a pointy chin. But money talks, so it seems that all the beautiful women that draped themselves on his arm for publicity photos didn't mind in the least that he resembled a large rodent. Money talks. Which was why she was sitting in the bushes with a numb backside at one in the morning.

The sound of a car pulling into the drive had the woman pulling back further into the darkness. She heard the shutting of two car doors, followed by a flirtatious giggle and the deep rumbling sound of a man's voice in reply. She peeked through the bushes and brought her night vision camera up and focused on the couple as they walked together up the walk toward the front door.
She started snapping photos silently, focusing in on the weasle's face and that of his latest conquest, proud of herself for being able to take photos and roll her eyes at the same time, when she suddenly saw movement from the street and watched in shocked horror as two gunmen came running up to the house toward weasle and his date who hadn't seen them yet.

She swung her camera around by instinct and kept taking photos, knowing somehow that if anyone knew she was there watching she would be in serious, serious trouble.

Like watching something from a movie--feeling like it was all happening outside the real world and she was just watching from the relative comfort of a movie theater--she saw the two men draw their guns. She saw the flash from the muzzles of the guns, and heard the zing of the silencers. And she watched as the weasle and his date crumpled to the ground without having known that their lives were in jeopardy.

She kept taking photos by sheer shock. Photos of the men checking the bodies. Photos of the men looking even more menacing as they whispered together and then pulled out a cell phone and made a call. They didn't even look one bit remorseful as they talked in heated tones to whoever they had called on the phone.

And they had the gall to laugh and slap each other on the back before running back into the darkness and to their waiting car down the street.

The woman sat in the bushes. Unable to move for a long few minutes. Then she quietly pulled out her cell phone and dialed 9-1-1. She stood, brushed herself off, and willed her shaking to stop.

Then she promptly leaned back into the bushes and lost whatever meager contents were in her stomach, wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve, and sat on the grass to wait for the police to arrive.