Further Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman Read Online Free PDF Page A

to know I was causing him to feel guilty. Despite that his second job involved killing people, he was, in fact, a gentle soul. “Really, Patrick.” Reaching out, I tried to pat his arm. My hand ended up on his thigh instead.
    He captured it with his own hand before I could move it in the wrong direction . . . whichever way that might have been.
    Doomsday immediately laid her head on top of our intertwined fingers, trapping us. I tried to tug free, but neither the man nor the dog budged.
    “We need to talk about that other thing.”
    That other thing was my sister Marlene. The one who’d run away after her twin had been murdered. The one I’d been sure was dead, but who Patrick had said was not. “I can’t. Not tonight.”
    “Mags . . .”
    “Please, Patrick.” I know it was cowardly of me to avoid the conversation, but I wasn’t quite ready to tackle it.
    He sighed his displeasure, but thankfully didn’t ask me why I was unwilling to talk about my sister. “If the Garcia contract comes through, what do you want me to do?”
    I stroked Doomsday’s ears with my free hand. “I don’t know.”
    “How ’bout I ask you again, if, or when, the time comes?”
    “I’d appreciate that.”
    Pulling my hand out from under the dog’s head, he raised it to his lips, pressing a quick kiss to the back of it before releasing me. “You sound tired. I’ll let you get some sleep.”
    Pushing the dog off of him, he got to his feet. “I really am sorry I let you down at Gary’s.”
    “You didn’t,” I assured him, struggling to stand.
    I thought I saw him shake his head, but in the shadows, it was impossible to tell for certain. “I’ll be in touch.”
    Patting Doomsday on the head, he said, “Keep an eye out for her.” With that, he walked out of my apartment.
    Once he was out of sight I locked the door, switched on the light, and turned on the dog with a vengeance. “What the hell is wrong with you? You’re supposed to tell me if someone’s here. You’re eating me out of house and home, the least you could do is pretend to be a guard dog.”
    Doomsday cocked her head to the side and looked at me as though I were some sort of rabid squirrel she didn’t quite know what to do with. “Sorry?”
    It never ceases to amaze me how she can convey in one breathy word how much of an airhead she is.
    “Damn right you should be sorry. I’m coming home to an empty house and—”
    “Not,” she interrupted.
    “Not what?”
    “Here Doomsday. Here God.”
    It was my turn to cock my head at her. She was right. Technically I no longer came home to an empty house. Instead I lived with a dingbat dog and a smugly superior lizard. Which reminded me . . . why the hell hadn’t God warned me of Patrick’s presence? The Doberman had the excuse of being a few brain cells short of a full load, the lizard did not.
    Stalking into my bedroom, the mutt following closely on my heels, too closely considering the mood I was in, I went to confront Godzilla. In the light flickering from the television I’d left on for him, I could see that he was draped over a branch in a corner of his glass-enclosed terrarium, eyes closed and belly bulging.
    “Wake up!” I pounded on the lid of his home like I was the Big Bad Wolf getting ready to blow his house down.
    Startled, he fell off the branch in an undignified mess of legs and tail. “Earthquake! Earthquake!”
    “It’s not an earthquake. It’s me.”
    He drew himself up to his full height (which is only a couple of inches so it’s not nearly as impressive as he’d like to think it is), crossed his arms over his chest, and leveled an unblinking stare at me. “Why,” he asked in his snootiest, wannabe-a-British-aristocrat voice, “why did you do that?”
    “Because you didn’t warn me that Patrick was sitting in my living room.”
    “Was he?”
    “Yes! He was! And neither of you thought to tip me off to that particular fact. I almost had a heart attack when I realized I