It was my job to collect the debts. Not to listen to excuses. I hoped this one would be quick.

I stood in a dusty bar, waiting for the crowd in front of me to clear so I could get to the back room. My hand was in my pocket, holding a loaded snub-nose black Colt Cobra. I didn’t usually carry firearms on jobs, but David Arroyo had proved to be erratic in the past. I hated erratic.

“Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

I turned around, surprised. At the bar was an older redhead in a tight black dress that clung to her body as desperately as she seemed to be clinging to her youth. She was sitting on a stool, leaning toward me. She looked to be a few drinks deep. Her eyes looked tired.

I looked at the bulge in my hoodie pocket, then at her, and shrugged. I figured she could tell I had something in my pocket, but probably couldn’t tell it was a gun. She was just being flirty. I turned away. I had no time be talking to empty-headed women at the bar.

“You’re just gonna ignore me? Come on, buy me a drink!” She laughed through her nervousness.

“I’m not buying you a drink. You buy me a drink,” I said dismissively, without turning to look at her. “Then we’ll talk.”

“Wow, you’re confident,” she said. She leaned toward me. Apparently, she found my indifference attractive. “If I buy you a drink, what do I get in return?” She looked me up and down, and smiled coyly.

There were a hundred bars in the city, with a thousand women just like her, many of them prettier. I truly had no interest. I needed to break it off so I could deal with Arroyo. “Don’t you think you’re a little old to be dressed like that, coming to the bar and acting like a whore?” Next would come silence and the tears, and then he’d be able to get away and take care of business.

But the tears didn’t come. “Ha!” the woman laughed. “If I’m buying you the drink, doesn’t that make you the whore?” She was unfazed. Her tired, emerald eyes glittered in the dim light. I blinked in surprise, which made her laugh even more. “I know I’m not a spring chicken. I’m sure someone handsome and strong like you could get someone younger and more beautiful. But there are advantages to dating someone older, you know!”

I wasn’t even interested in hooking up, but now we were dating? “Yeah?” I asked, intrigued enough to continue the conversation a bit longer.

“Sure. Young girls are always making drama. I’m old enough to know what I want. I’m direct. I’m not gonna cry if you’re direct back. I can actually hold an intelligent conversation, at least I like to think! And besides that, older women have more experience in bed. If you think you’ve had—” She suddenly turned her head toward the back of the bar. “Oh, fuck, it’s my husband!”

“Husband?”

“Shit. He saw me. Just don’t tell him I was flirting with you, okay? Just say you were asking me where the bathroom is.”

She looked terrified. Her skin went white under her makeup. For the first time I noticed that she had a black eye. She’d done a good job covering it up, but it was there.

“How did you get the black eye?” I asked her. “Was it your husband?”

She subtly shook her head, not to answer the question, but just to tell me to shut up. A second later she greeted her husband. “Baby!”

“What are you doing out here, baby girl? Why are you dressed like that?” asked her husband. It was David Arroyo, the man I was here to threaten.

“I was just getting a drink, baby!” she pleaded.

“And who are you?” Arroyo asked me, accusing me. That question sent me up a wall. He must have seen the change in my expression, as he backed up instinctively.

“Who am I? Who the fuck are you?” I said, grabbing the collar of his shirt and pushing him backward. Once we were out of sight of most of the patrons, I pulled out my gun, and pointed it in his face. “Who are you, that you think you can owe over eighty thousand to my boss, and not answer his calls?”

“Whoa!” he said. “Relax! I have the money!”

The woman followed us, but kept a safe distance.

“All of it?” I asked.

“Most of it! It’s in my pocket, here’ let me get it,” he said, starting to reach for his inner jacket pocket.

I hit him in the face with my gun. “You’re not carrying eighty thousand in your jacket pocket. You got a gun in there? Nice try. Keep your hands up! Up!”

“Okay, okay,” he said. He went to stem the bleeding from his bloody lip, but thought better of it and kept his hands up, allowing the blood to trickle onto his teeth. “It’s in my office, in the left desk drawer, I swear! I’ve been saving up!”

The woman came to him with a napkin and tried to clean the blood.

“Leave me alone!” he said, smacking her face with the back of his hand. “Can’t you see when I’m busy?”

The bar went cold. I looked at her, cowering, then back at him. I lowered the gun slightly, and pulled the trigger. He dropped to the ground. His hands clutched his stomach, and he looked up at me. He was innocently surprised, like a child whose toy had been yanked out of their hand.

“You shot me! You killed me! I’m gonna die!” I could tell from the blood the wound would be fatal. There was chaos in the bar behind me as people ran for the exits.

He weakly reached for his jacket pocket, slowly pulling out a gold-plated Desert Eagle. His hands were trembling, and he could barely keep from dropping it. He started to lift it toward me, coughing blood as he did so. I kicked the gun out of his hand. Dejected, he collapsed onto his back.

The woman’s back was against the wall. She was wary, but she wasn’t crying. She was holding her face where she’d been hit.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

She nodded.

I went to the back office to see if he hadn’t been full of shit about having my boss’s money. To my surprise, there was over sixty thousand in his desk drawer. Since I’d shot Arroyo dead, I decided to keep the money for myself, and tell my boss I’d killed him because he was empty handed. My boss would chide me for killing Arroyo, but in his eyes, I’d still be on another level from now on. Someone willing to kill, if that’s what the job took.

I pocketed the money and walked out. There she was, still standing there. Waiting for me. “Did you get the money?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“Good. Good for you.” I’d thought she’d be mad, or at least ask for half.

I had to step over her dead husband to leave the bar. “Why would you stay with someone like that?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “I didn’t have the courage to shoot him.” She looked like she wanted to say something else, but she hesitated. Only when I started to turn away did she say, “take me with you.”

“Huh? You just watched me kill someone. Now you want to hang out?”

“I’ve seen my husband do worse. You put down a rabid dog. That was a kindness. In a world filled with evil, it’s not that you kill, but who you kill.”

“You continue to surprise me,” I said. “Fine. Just don’t get in my way.”

“I would never.”

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