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Just A Day at Work
Openings of thrillers need to intrigue: whose the killer, obviously? whose the victim, maybe? And why? Here’s a fragment to whet your appetite.
“Why was he so attracted to independent women?” Charlie pondered. “The ones that were so much more capable and multi-talented than himself.”
He adjusted his telescopic sight slightly so that the shadow in the window sharpened.
“Maybe it started with my mother,” he thought, smiling at the idea’s gross simplicity; after all, didn’t everything start there for everyone?
The fact remained that the women he could not resist were brilliant. Sometimes unrewarded by the world, of course, but consistently brilliant. He, on the other hand, with just the one skill, was so well-paid that he took no more than three jobs a year. He also knew that profits grew when he was selective, and the chances of being caught diminished.
He had seen the target enter the apartment and observed him lower the blind before entering the kitchen. The chances were high that the shadow was him, but ever the perfectionist — eager to maintain his reputation for clean kills with a single bullet — he paused.
He considered what he saw. The silhouette was consistent with someone sitting at a desk typing on a laptop; judging by the light dispersal and the height of the figure. There…
