The Mark

I wiped my knife off with my mark’s shirt tail, careful not to get any blood on me. I slid the knife back into its sheath and put the sheath in my pack. As I backed out of the room, I looked around one last time. After thirteen years on the job, I’d gotten pretty good at disappearing without leaving any traces, and this time was no exception.

On the plane ride home, I nodded off several times. I told myself this was the last time I was going to travel internationally for work. No more weeklong trips. No more cancelling plans with my husband and daughter. But I’d said all that before. The truth is it was hard to turn down these jobs. Let’s be honest: the money’s fantastic. But aside from that, I was damn good at it. I’m smart, thorough, and charming as hell. Plus, no one ever suspects a woman. Go ahead and judge me, but I took pride in my work.

It was late when I got home. I checked on Chloe. An angel in Snoopy pajamas. I kissed her forehead and padded to the bedroom I shared with my husband. I got into bed as softly and quietly as I could. Joe stirred, then reached out and slipped his arm around me. I froze. He ran his hand over my breasts and then slid it between my thighs. I forced a yawn and gently rolled away from him. It had been a very long day and I was just too tired. He eventually pulled his hand away and, on opposite sides of the bed, we feigned sleep until the real thing came.

--

“How’d it go?” Joe asked the next morning as he shuffled into the kitchen rubbing his eyes.

“Oh, you know. The usual.” I finished buttering my toast, grabbed my mug of coffee and took a seat at the dining table. “Was putting out fires the whole time, but the clients seemed happy in the end.”

“Good. Good,” he nodded half-heartedly and poured himself a cup. “So you have a break now, right?”

“I should hope so. I told my boss I need some time off. I’m tired of entertaining corporate knuckleheads. Let someone else run these events for a while.”

“They’re not gonna like that. You’re indispensable to them. Whenever they call you, it’s like life and death.” He chuckled.

I laughed then bit my lip and turned my face toward the window.

“So, uh…” Joe rubbed the back of his head. “I wasn’t sure you’d be home today, so I made plans with a friend.”

“Oh. What are you doing?”

“I’m meeting Bill at the club. We’re gonna play a couple rounds, maybe grab lunch afterward.”

“Sounds nice.” I smiled. It wouldn’t be fair to get mad at him, not after all the times I’d left him and Chloe hanging while I went on last-minute trips. Plus, it was a weekday. No big loss.

“One more thing,” he started. “Chloe asked to have a sleepover at Sasha’s on Saturday. I said yes.”

My chest tightened and I felt my face turn red. Weekends were reserved for family; we had so few of them together.

He lowered his voice. “Listen, I know I should have talked you first, but she’s been begging me. Besides, I was thinking. It’ll give you and me some alone time. We can have ourselves a date, catch up, just the two of us. It’s been a while.”

I nodded. “You’re right. That sounds good.” My heart was still sinking.

“Great.” He got up and kissed my forehead. “I’m going to get Chloe up and get ready myself.” He headed back toward the bedroom.

I stared at my cooling coffee, then ran my hand over the marble tabletop and gazed out the window at the stunning view of our swimming pool and lush acreage. The few pangs of guilt I had dissipated, replaced by the pride and satisfaction of having been able to provide all this comfort for my little family. No, my marriage was not perfect. I knew this. And I had missed out on much of my daughter’s life already. It was time to make it better.

I had just started thinking about what the three of us could do together on Sunday when Chloe bounded out of her room and into my arms.

“Mommy!” she squealed.

“Chloe! I missed you so much!” I showered her with kisses and smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “How’s my baby?”

“Good. Me and Sasha are going to ride her horses on Saturday!”

“That sounds like fun! Do you want me to take you?”

“Daddy’s going to take me.”

“But I can take you if you want.”

“But you don’t know where Sasha lives.”

“Daddy can tell me.”

“But Daddy always takes me.” I could see the anxiety rising inside her. They had a routine. I shouldn’t mess with it.

“Okay, sweetie,” I relented. My heart broke a little as she slid out of my arms and ran to her room to get ready for school.

--

After I gave Joe a perfunctory kiss and Chloe a long squeeze, the two set off for their respective days. I watched them do a silly dance together down the front walk then closed the door. I stood in the foyer and looked around, unsure of what to do with myself.

I heaved a sigh and made my way to the office, which was just as I’d left it the week before. I knew Joe didn’t spend much time in there—only to check his emails occasionally. I decided to check my own emails and turned on the computer and sat down in the leather executive chair.

As the computer warmed up, my wrist buzzed. There was a notification on my watch of a missed call to my cell phone. I waited a minute. No message. I knew what that meant. I retrieved my burner from my purse in the kitchen and returned to the office, closing the door behind me. I dialed the one number besides my own that I knew by heart.

“Yeah,” a man’s voice answered. My handler.

“It’s Dolly,” I said, using my alias.

“Good. Listen. I know you wanted to take a break, but I have a job you should hear about. It’s a sweetheart. I’d take it myself if I could.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m probably going to regret this but go ahead.”

“It’s a new client. He’s local and he’s paying a lot. I’m talking primo dollars. He already put up a deposit.”

“How much is a lot?”

“Three times the normal.”

“Wow. High profile?”

“Nope. Just a regular guy.”

“Continue.”

“Age-old story. He’s trapped in a shitty marriage. Went and got himself a mistress and fell in love. Yadda yadda yadda. Now he wants his wife out of the picture. As a bonus, he took out a hefty life insurance policy on her a little while ago.”

“Typical. Preferred method?”

“Late night botched robbery in the home. A nine-millimeter should do. Nothing fancy. In and out. Easy peasy.”

I took a deep breath, leaned back in my chair, and stared at the ceiling.

“Local, you said?” I asked.

“That’s right.”

“When?”

“This Saturday.”

Shit. That was my date night with Joe. “Any flexibility by any chance?”

“No. It has to be Saturday. He’s firm on that.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. I knew Joe would be pissed if I left him hanging for work again. But then I thought about how he made plans for Chloe without my input and I bristled. Screw it, I thought. Let him stew for a night.

“Okay. Give me the address.”

“There you go. It’s 122 Meadowlark Lane.”

My eyes popped open. “I…I’m sorry. Say again?”

“122 Meadowlark Lane.”

My mouth went dry and the earth fell out from under me. That was my address. The very house I was sitting in.

“Still there?”

I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“You got it?”

“Yeah...”

“Good. I’ll have someone drop a photo at the usual spot. Call when it’s done.”

“Yeah.”

We hung up.

Holy shit. Did Joe really want me dead? How long had he had a mistress?? My head spun and I became acutely aware of my breath. This Saturday. That’s why Joe arranged for Chloe to be gone! Jesus. Should I have told my handler that was my address? Probably. But I was in shock and wasn’t thinking clearly. But if I had told him, what would happen then? What would the options be? Joe put up the money. There was a contract that needed to be fulfilled. Where would my handler’s loyalties lie? Fuck.

I stared into space still gripping my phone. What the hell was happening? Was this real? Did my handler have his information right? I started to doubt whether the call actually happened. I looked at the call history on the phone. Yes, it happened.

My eyes searched the ceiling, the walls, then the floor for signs that I might have been dreaming. Then they rested on the computer in front of me.

“…he took out a hefty life insurance policy on her a little while ago.”

I bellied up to the computer, launched the browser, and opened the search history: golf clubs… restaurants…rare jazz records…and then, like a punch to the face, a list of half a dozen life insurance companies.

I shoved myself back from the desk as far as I could. I’d seen enough and I didn’t want to believe it. I turned off the computer.

He did want me dead. How detached must I have been to not know how bad things had gotten between us? Had I not done enough? I became dizzy with the million questions that whirled in my head. I forced myself to slow down and think it through.

My husband was a kept man. He hadn’t had a job for eight years. If he divorced me, and it was discovered he had a mistress, he wouldn’t be entitled to any alimony. Even if he could keep the affair a secret, the alimony would stop as soon as he got remarried. But with an accidental death, he’d get the life insurance plus the house and all our savings—essentially everything I ever earned. And he’d get to live happily ever after with this woman. Who the hell was she? Did she know about his plan? Was it her plan?

I decided it didn’t really matter who she was or whose idea it was in the grand scheme of things. The plain fact was that my husband put up a large sum of money to get rid of me. And I had to decide what course I would take.

Though a divorce seemed the “right” answer, there was potential there for a huge mess that would leave me in a very bad place. His lawyers would go through my earnings, travel, taxes, everything. Shine a light on my “job.” And while I’d been diligent about keeping fictitious records, it would be fairly easy to poke a hole in my invented career. I couldn’t risk all that, much less potentially expose my associates.

And Chloe! Oh my god, Chloe. Joe would likely get custody of her because he’d been her primary caretaker her whole life. And frankly, if a judge asked her who she preferred to live with, I’d fear the answer. But Chloe was my child as much as she was his. She’s a huge part of why I do what I do. I wanted her to have the best life possible. But at what cost? Now a strange woman could end up raising her. No. I couldn’t let that happen.

A small part of me still hoped it was all a mistake. My handler had said there’d be a photo drop of the mark. I grabbed my keys and headed into town.

--

The train station was busy as I’d expected. Singles and families bustled this way and that, arms laden with coats and bags. I pulled down the bill of my baseball cap and made my way to locker 1147. I did a quick scan of the area then opened the locker with my key. A familiar manila envelope lay innocuously at the bottom. I picked it up.

What if the picture inside confirmed everything?

I already knew deep down what I’d do. Joe and I had reached the end of our relationship—that was clear. There was no possibility of saving our marriage now that I knew what I knew. It was me or him.

He had to go.

I could disappear with Chloe, build a more stable life with her, be there for her. I’d change careers, do something on the up and up. I was fairly young; there was still time.

I held my breath and pulled the photo from the envelope.

It was me.

Standing on the Santa Monica pier during our last family vacation. I was tan and smiling a little half smile. I remember Chloe had just learned to walk. That was over four years ago. A pang of guilt shot through me, followed immediately by searing anger. How dare he? This photo, though never meant for my eyes, was a jab—a symbol of my shortcomings as a mother and a wife. A reminder of my perpetual absence. Surely there was a more recent photo he could have used. Or was there? Another wave of anger passed through me.

I tore up the photo and shoved the pieces into a nearby garbage can. I will no longer be absent, I thought. It’s time to make things better.

I strode out of the station, mentally preparing for my last hit, taking place that Saturday—a botched robbery at 122 Meadowlark Lane.