Casey had shoved the girl away. “My name isn’t Haley.”
After a few minutes of convincing, the sorority girl pulled out her phone, took a picture of Casey, sent a text. Pings came back and she shook her head. “Are you adopted?” she asked. Casey didn’t answer but didn’t need to. “You need to come with me.”
That’s how she met Haley, who’d come to campus and rushed a sorority before the other freshmen. Looking at Haley was like looking into a mirror. Except that Haley hadn’t been adopted by a poor couple on a farm in Adair, Nebraska, but instead by a hedge-fund manager in Greenwich, Connecticut. They were identical twins except Haley’s lowlights were expensive, her clothes designer, her teeth straighter.
Turns out they both love horror movies, both eat too much candy （both favoring Mike and Ikes）， both scored 1545 on the SAT, and both applied to a small liberal-arts college in Vermont, mostly for the skiing. And they learned that the similarities didn’t stop there. After a night of drinking—both being partial to gin—Haley confessed that she had an empty hole inside her that made her care about no one but herself, that she’d been disciplined in school for hurting other kids, that she liked doing it.
That’s when Casey admitted that she’d worked at a slaughterhouse. That killing cattle—using a device called a penetrating captive bolt—was one of the few things that comforted her. The whoosh of the device driving a retracting steel bolt into their brains was pure white-noise comfort.
After Casey got expelled for breaking a frat boy’s nose when he got handsy, they decided to take
Haley’s father’s advice: The secret to life is to find something you love and get them to pay you to do it.
“How’s Miami?” Casey asks, the white lines on the highway a blur ahead on the dark night.
“Peachy.”
The sound of wind blows into the receiver. It’s late, but Haley’s still outdoors.
“Where are you?” Casey asks.
“The beach.”
“No fair. You get a Caribbean cruise, then a beach in Miami, and I get Chestertown, Pennsylvania, and a coal mine in West Virginia.…”
“I’ll make it up to you,” Haley says. “So, what’s he want us to do? Clean up the mess?”
“He said there’s too much heat right now. The media is all over it. He said he needs to think about next steps.”
“Is that his way of firing us?”
“Probably.”
“It’s funny.”
“What’s that?”
“He thinks it’s his choice.”
She smiles. They always think alike.
“I’ll see you in Philly. This isn’t over yet.”
“City of Brotherly Love, watch out!”
PART 2
THE REUNION
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
JENNA
On the drive back to D.C., Jenna’s mind blazes. More questions: She’s been out for five years, so why now? Is The Corporation cleaning house? Closing shop and tying up loose ends? Is it about a past job? One of her targets’ kids? Like in those shows where a son comes back decades later to avenge the murder of his father? Best served on a cold plate and all that.
But her jobs had been clean. Well, mostly clean.
Her mind flashes to the target at the Capital Grille: Artemis Templeton, a fellow resident of Savior House. Was that a coincidence? Or are they both targets? And if so, why? It doesn’t make sense. She hasn’t seen Arty since they were kids. He’s a famous businessman now—a tech visionary who’s constantly trying to outdo whatever Bezos, Branson, Musk, and the rest of the bored billionaires are wasting their money on—the only reason she recognized the adult version of him.
If she hadn’t identified him, would she have taken him out? Could she so easily go back to the person—the killer—she was?
Her thoughts flutter to another killer, the attractive woman from the bus stop, from SoulCycle, from behind the 7-Eleven. She has a ghastly tool she used to murder those poor hipsters. It’s Jenna’s fault they’re dead. That feeling of bugs crawling under her skin she’d shed so long ago is returning.
She needs to fight it, cover her flesh with the repellant of compartmentalization, denial, the stuff that got her through, made it capable to start a new life. First as a single Washingtonian, then as a yoga mom in the burbs of Chevy Chase.
The sucking sound of the weapon rattles in her head. She remembers what it reminds her of: a job that did indeed go sideways.
Jenna arrives at the party, a private affair, in a short skirt and looking leggy as required. Sabine said the target was an investigator from the Securities and Exchange Commission, of all things, attending a bachelor party with his college buddies. They’d rented a space in the West Village, which had a bar on the main floor, a party room upstairs, and a basement.
The party is tame enough at first, when the girlfriends and wives are there. The men are all Master of the Universe types, members of an Ivy League secret society that isn’t so secret. It’s really just a fraternity filled with secret handshakes and blood oaths and so much testosterone that it makes the SigEps seem like feminist advocates. Jenna is part of the troupe hired to look pretty, give the men
some eye candy, flirt, but nothing more. This after the significant others leave so the “boys can be boys.”
She’s made eye contact with the SEC guy throughout the night. He’s twice peeled away his gaze, as if confused. He’s not the same as the others. His suit isn’t from Savile Row, he doesn’t wear an expensive watch, lacks the swagger.
At eleven, when the wives start clearing out, the best man—Chief, they all call him—taps his glass with a pen to get everyone’s attention and announces the festivities for the rest of the evening.
“Brothers!” he exclaims.
The men snap to attention with a bellowing, “Oorah! ” like they’re Marines, which is ridiculous given their uncalloused hands and muscles by Equinox.
“We’re here to celebrate the death, I mean marriage, of our brother Connor.”
“Oorah!”
“It wouldn’t be a night with the Robber Barons without the Dancing Turtle, the Lazy Susan, and, let’s not forget, game night!”
Jenna doesn’t understand any of it, all inside jokes or rituals, but she’s already finding her way to the SEC man. She says hello, holds eye contact.
She’s supposed to make it look like an accident. So her plan is simple: get him alone, slip the fentanyl in his drink, and sneak out as he convulses on the floor.
But something isn’t sitting right. In a room full of what she imagines contains many very bad men, he doesn’t seem like one. He’s kind of sweet. Uncomfortable with the company and their shtick. Like he doesn’t belong. Jenna’s always been a sucker for outsiders.
“College friends?” she asks, raising her voice over more cheering.
He nods, almost embarrassed. They drink and she tries to make him feel comfortable, laughs at something he says, touches his arm. When it comes down to it, men are simple creatures.
Past midnight, when she’s about to make her move—invite him somewhere private—the clang of a bell rings. The leader, Chief, slicks back his Gordon Gekko hair with a hand and proclaims: “The flowers have arrived, gentlemen.”