“Not exactly what we signed up for,” Mary Alice said.
“I always told myself we were making the world better, safer,” Helen said finally.
“And we did,” I told her. I looked around at their devastated faces. “Look, I know it feels like a betrayal—”
“Feels?” Natalie’s voice rose.
“It is a betrayal,” I corrected. “But whatever we may have done, it was inadvertent. We believed in the organization. We trusted them. If we’ve made mistakes in who we took out, we can deal with that later. Right now the problem is the board. They’ve decided to make scapegoats of us to save whoever is behind all of this. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”
We looked at each other, and we knew this decision was going to be bigger than the four of us.
We summoned Akiko and Minka and brought them up to speed. I ate a cinnamon bagel while Natalie pulled hers to pieces, making little bagel pellets with the insides and flicking them around the room.
“Could you not?” Mary Alice asked, shaking one out of her hair and flicking it back.
“I’m just fidgety,” Natalie said. “I don’t like being on this end of things.”
I looked around the table. “We’re going to be on this end of things forever unless we take control,” I said. “We’ve never been marks before, but we’ve also never had to decide on a target before. That’s always been decided for us. For better or worse, we’ve always been the instrument and not the musician. We don’t choose the tune. And you two,” I said, eyeing Minka and Akiko, “have no idea what it’s like to get your hands dirty.”
Minka gave me a cool look. “I maybe know better than you think.”
“Maybe you do, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is uncharted territory for all of us. We have two choices. One, we can walk away right now. We can get Minka to forge new papers for each of us. This is a big world and with the right documentation, we can disappear. We can start new lives and just let this one go.”
“And do what?” Natalie asked. “I’m broke. Thanks to the board, my pension blew up somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean.”
“Mine too,” said Helen. “After the illness, Kenneth didn’t leave much.”
Mary Alice and Akiko didn’t speak, but the look they exchanged suggested they weren’t much better off.
“We could get jobs,” I pointed out.
“Doing what?” Natalie demanded. “We’ve spent forty years assassinating people, Billie. It’s all we know how to do, and you can’t exactly find clients for that on LinkedIn.”
“I think Craigslist would be a better place to find clients,” Helen put in.
I held up a hand. “I’m just saying, we can try to walk away.”
“Okay, and what would that be like?” Natalie asked. “We’d spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders, wondering if we’ve been made, if today is finally the day when somebody gets to cash in a nice fat bonus check for bringing back our hides.”
“I don’t like it any better than you do,” I said. “If it were up to me, we’d already be working up a plan to take out the board and end this. But I don’t think this is something we should rush into. We can take a day to sleep on it—” I started.
“I’m in,” Mary Alice said firmly.
To my surprise, Akiko spoke up. “Me too.”
“Really?” Mary Alice asked, sounding hopeful. Akiko didn’t return her smile, but it was a start.
“Alright,” I said, tallying. “That’s Mary Alice and Akiko in.” I looked around. Minka nodded and Natalie grinned and sat up straight. “What’s the expression the kids use? ‘Hells yeah’？ Well, hells yeah. I don’t know how many years I’ve got left and I’ll be damned if I spend them looking over my shoulder for whichever goon the board decides to send next. Besides, we’ve got a score to settle.”
I looked at Helen. She opened her mouth and closed it again, nodding. She might be less than what she had once been, but she was still worth a hell of a lot.
I closed my eyes and inhaled, holding it for a count of six. I exhaled slowly and opened my eyes. “Then it’s unanimous. The Board of Directors is going to die.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
When we had finished our discussion, I went to my room to throw a few things in a bag. At some point we were going to have to leave New Orleans and I figured it was easier to pack when I had the chance. I was stuffing clothes into a small duffel when Helen slipped into my room, closing the door behind her.