Girls Don't Hit

Girls Don't Hit

Geonn Cannon

Supposed Crimes LLC, Matthews, North Carolina

Smashwords Edition

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All Rights Reserved

Copyright 2014 Geonn Cannon

Published in the United States

ISBN: 978-1-938108-45-7

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Chapter One

The choice of Pierre as her home base was strategic. When time was of the essence, she could be anywhere in the country within five hours. It was a large enough city to get lost in, but not so large that she had to worry about an extraordinarily vigilant police presence. South Dakota was her refuge, her hiding place. The life she created there - the life of Jocelyn Webb, homemaker and corporate mediator - was nothing but a wool cap pulled down over her face to prevent people from looking too closely at her. When she first started out, she tried her damnedest to be Susie Homemaker. She took night classes at the library, ordinary things like cooking, interior design, literature studies. Anything that she could use to appear more plain-Jane to her neighbors.

Myles supported her actions, since he approved of anything that deflected attention from their activities. When she was younger she allowed her friends to set her up on blind dates with bachelor brothers and coworkers who were just perfect for her. She went on the dates, although she had to watch several abysmal romantic comedies to figure out how she should act. She'd never been particularly good at figuring that out for herself. She was only concerned with looking right between jobs. As far as she was concerned she was an actress playing a part, and Pierre was as good a place as any.

Sometimes there were only a few days between calls, other times she only got one call per month. She often got close to craziness during the longer dry spells. She often found herself following strangers through the Sutley's parking lot, imagining how she would go about killing them. She never followed up on those urges; she never killed without being paid for it. She likened it to a mathematician playing Sudoku in his off hours. She was just keeping her skills honed for when they were needed.

After a few years of aimless dating she realized that some of her friends were whispering about her when she wasn't around. She was fast approaching thirty and was still single, and might there be something wrong with her? The single male population of Pierre was dwindling as men her age either got married off, or established themselves as the euphemistic eligible bachelors, or she had dated and seemingly rejected them. To draw attention away from her strangeness Joss decided that the next man she dated would end up being her husband. Colin Webb was the lucky man, a slightly clumsy and skittish man with curly black hair and permanent stubble.

Seven months after their first date they were engaged, and two months after that they were married. She invited her friends from town and, when prompted to bulk up her guest list, lied and said her parents had died and she had no extended family. Jocelyn set Myles up with one of her 'friends' from the book club so he could attend the wedding, and afterward he congratulated her on keeping a straight face through the vows. When she became pregnant a few months later she considered terminating immediately, but a child would only improve her cover. It required her to spend a few months on the bench, but eventually she returned to work with a vengeance.

In her true life, when the veil was lifted and she stepped into the world as if finally awake from a dull dream, she was Joss Kurtis. She was a contract killer, hired by one anonymous person to kill another. Myles would call and provide her with the information, money would appear in the bank account Colin didn't know about, and she would tell him she was being summoned out of town for a job. As far as he knew, she traveled to offices across the country to arbitrate disagreements between managers and employees, or to help defuse tenuous situations between coworkers.

Her company was called Synergistic Business Services, and her official title was ombudsman. Everything accurately fit her cover story, but it was so difficult to parse and understand that they got very few people calling them to actually serve as intermediaries. They had a branch in Pierre and Joss often went to sit in a cubicle and pretend to do work. She used the time to write up reports of her jobs, which she then printed out and deleted from the computer. The reports went to Myles. He hated email and any sort of electronic correspondence. He tolerated phones because they were a necessary evil in their line of work. His belief was that no one ever hacked a piece of paper, and once it's been shredded and mulched it's gone.

Joss killed for a living. She was very good at her job; she was approaching her one hundredth kill. The fact it had been twelve days since Myles last called made her anxious, but she knew it was only a matter of time before the phone rang again and she was packing another bag. She figured everyone in America knew at least one person they wanted dead. And there were plenty of people willing to pay in order to make that wish into a reality.

As long as they had the cash, Joss was more than willing to be the weapon of choice.

#

She was twenty-one the first time.

There was no real plan, no intention to become a murderer. All she wanted was revenge. She was a student at Syracuse studying architecture because she liked the aesthetics of buildings. A blueprint was something solid and definitive. She enjoyed creating something from the ground up and having a real and complete product when she was finished. She had always been an introverted child, quiet and self-sufficient to the point where her parents were certain something was wrong with her. They set her up on playdates with children of their friends and she always found ways to either escape or divert the other kids so she could stay on her own. She didn't need anyone else getting in the way of her games.

College allowed her the freedom to be her true self. Her roommate, Crystal, made a sign for her book bag that read I'm Not Anti-Social. I'm Pro-Solitude. She wore it proudly through freshman year and most people took the hint to leave her alone. She was able to spend long hours in the library without anyone approaching her to form a study group. She knew many people like her who quietly hoped for those invitations but she was grateful for the bubble.

Toward the end of her freshman year, she made a pass at Crystal. The kiss wasn't rejected outright, but Crystal insisted she wasn't gay. They had a long and awkward conversation during which Joss convinced her that choices made during college didn't have to extend into the real world. They kissed again, and Crystal found it pleasant, so they progressed to having sex. They weren't in a relationship in any sense of the word. Crystal still considered herself straight and often went out with men, but when she was single she would end up in bed with Joss more nights than not. Joss assumed it was Crystal's way to ensure she never had to sleep alone, but she didn't mind being used.

They were together for almost a full year before Crystal was murdered. Her date was a bust and she decided to walk back to the dorms. She made it almost two-thirds of the way before one of the shadows on the path broke away from the darkness and began following her. No one reported hearing any disturbances, no shouting or screams until the RA went out to see why someone had left a pile of laundry on the walkway.

Crystal was rushed to the hospital, but she died from her injuries. A few people told Joss it meant an automatic A for her, but she refused to believe the urban legend. Even if it was true it would hardly be any comfort. She didn't care about grades, and the only person she'd felt any kind of kinship toward was gone. The police didn't have any leads, and their mediocre response was to simply increase patrols in the area. Left to her own devices, Joss began pacing back and forth through the quad, passing through the darkened spaces Crystal would have taken on her final night.

It took three weeks before she heard furtive footsteps on the sidewalk behind her. She had earphones on so the bastard didn't waste time on staying quiet. She waited until he was almost close enough to touch and then dropped into a crouch. She spun on the ball of her foot and relaxed her wrist. The baton slid out of her sleeve and she gripped the end of it as she started the swing. She heard it crack on his kneecap and he cried out in pain as he went down.

She pinned him to the ground with her body as she grabbed the lapels of his hoodie. She hauled him up and slammed him down, growling with rage as his head rebounded off the sidewalk. For a brief moment through the red rage she had the fear she had miscalculated, that she was assaulting an innocent person who just happened to be walking the same path she was. But then he thrust his fist up against her, just above her hip, and she felt the cloth of her shirt being pinched against her stomach. The discomfort came before the rush of warm blood, and she redoubled her effort.

He was dead when she stood up, his knife extending from her shirt like an odd handle. She was bleeding and also dripping his blood as she stared down at his broken body with detached disinterest. She held the knife in place, unsure if it was better to leave it or try taking it out, and she stumbled toward the RA's room to report what had happened. She carried the baton in her other hand until she found an appropriately thick bush in which to stow it.

The ambulance arrived moments before the police, and the EMTs insisted that Joss' wound took precedence over the story. She finally told them that her roommate had been attacked so she was simply defending herself. One of the officers pointed out the fact she had been seen walking along the same path multiple times and suggested she had possibly been lying in wait for the man. She denied it, naturally, but they were still convinced it was a premeditated attack. She acknowledged she had been stabbed only after she started beating his head on the pavement, and one officer suggested maybe the victim had been carrying the knife as protection due to the recent murder of a student in the area.

As soon as they referred to the rapist as the victim she knew she was in trouble.

They took her to the station and sat her in a small room. It wasn't like on television; there was a table and two chairs, but no mirror and no cameras that she could see. She stretched out on the floor because her stab wound still hurt despite the painkillers she'd been given. One of the EMTs had given her a scrub top to replace her bloody blouse. She stared at the ceiling and waited.

After close to three hours she had fallen asleep. The door opened and Myles Hoffman entered her life. He was soft in the middle, visible even with his shabby suit hanging off of him like rumpled drapes. There was a dark stubble on his cheeks that thickened around his lips to become a half-hearted salt-and-pepper goatee. His hairline had receded to the top of his head, where it stood up in a shock that he'd made an attempt to slick back before entering.

Miss Kurtis, I presume?