WORKING VACATION, fiction By Michael Bracken
Less than an hour after their arrival, Bob and Marcie Jones stood on the floating dock of the riverfront Airbnb Marcie had rented and let the cool breeze rearrange their hair. Bob took his wife’s hand and pulled her close. “I’m glad you did this,” he said. “We needed to get away.”
Though work took them all over the United States, they rarely had time to enjoy the places they visited. They never stayed anywhere more than a few days before moving on to their next assignment, and having a long weekend to themselves felt like an eternity.
“I hope you don’t get bored,” Marcie told her husband.
Bob turned to face her. “I’m never bored when I’m with you.”
He lifted her chin with one finger and kissed her gently.
“Hey!”
Startled, Bob stepped back from his wife and reached under his jacket for something that wasn’t there.
A hulking middle-aged man, a holstered Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum at his hip, lumbered down the path leading from their rental home to the dock. He stopped at the end of the ramp, blocking their egress. “You the renters?”
“Yes,” Bob said. “You the owner?”
“Oh, hell no,” the man said. He jerked his thumb toward the next house downriver. His floating dock was a twin to the dock upon which Bob and Marcie stood. “I live over there.”
“What can we do for you, Mr.—?” Marcie asked.
“Kettleman. Ernie Kettleman.” He rested his right hand on the butt of his revolver and used his left to wave vaguely at the homes upriver. The sun glinted off his wedding ring. “You can make sure you don’t disturb all the nice folk that live around here. It’s people like you, coming and going at all hours, with your loud music and wild parties, that have turned this neighborhood into a—”
Marcie cut him off. “I’m sorry you’ve had a bad experience with previous renters,” she said, “but you won’t have one with us. We plan to spend a few quiet days enjoying the river.”
“That’s what all you people say.”
Bob watched the man’s eyes. “My wife’s right, Mr. Kettleman—Ernie, if I may—you and your wife won’t even know we’re here.”
“My wife? My wife’s in New York with her sisters, so I have to deal with you people all by myself.”
Bob started up the ramp and was within a few steps of the larger man when Kettleman said, “You two keep it down over here, so I don’t have to shut you down.”
“You’ve done that before, have you?”
Kettleman didn’t answer. Instead, he glared at them for a moment before turning and lumbering away.
When their neighbor was out of earshot, Marcie said, “We don’t need to attract attention.”
“He’s just trying to intimidate us. I doubt he’ll do anything. I doubt we’ll give him a reason to.”
“I don’t know,” Marcie said with a wink. “I had some pretty wild plans for later this evening.”
* * *
They woke early the next morning and sat on the bungalow’s rear deck with steaming mugs of coffee and a pair of bear claws they had warmed in the microwave. A hummingbird visited the feeder at the far end of the deck. A pair of squirrels chased each other around a nearby tree. A half dozen ducks floated near the dock. Only the sound of a motorboat heading upriver broke the morning stillness, and they watched as it passed before them.
They had never worked a job in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and they did not plan to stray far from their rental.
“Plans for the day?” Marcie asked.
“I saw a couple of paperback thrillers on the bookshelf,” Bob said. “I thought I might try sitting on the deck and reading one of them.”
“You won’t get frustrated when the writer gets it all wrong?”
He shrugged. “If I do, I’ll just throw the book in the river.”
They both laughed, finished their coffee and bear claws, and went inside to dress for the day.
* * *
Bob read only three chapters before he tossed the first thriller aside, and he didn’t even finish the first chapter of the other paperback. Though he was tempted, he didn’t throw either book in the Ouachita River. Instead, he returned them to the bookshelf and offered to help his wife prepare lunch—ham and Swiss on whole wheat, a smear of mustard on one slice of the bread, a smear of mayonnaise on the other. His contribution was opening the bag of sour cream and chive potato chips and opening two bottles of cola.
Just as at breakfast, they sat on the deck. As they ate, they watched an unending parade of motorboats and personal watercraft heading upriver and down.
“You’re already bored, aren’t you?” Marcie asked.
Bob patted the back of his wife’s hand. “I’m fine.”
A moment later, she said, “We’re being watched.”
“Kettleman? I saw him earlier. He wants us to know he’s watching. He gets off on it.”
“Should we quake in our boots?”
“If we must.” Bob finished his sandwich, descended from the deck, and walked across the yard toward the other man’s property. When he was within earshot of their neighbor, he called out, “We didn’t make too much noise last night, did we?”
Kettleman rested his hand on his revolver. “Your wife, she’s a live one ain’t she?”
“My wife?” Bob glanced back at Marcie. The only way Kettleman could have heard her is if he had been in their yard. Bob feigned embarrassment.
“Wish my wife was even half as en-thu-si-as-tic.” Kettleman stretched out the last word, giving it a lascivious twist.
Bob averted his gaze, not wanting to challenge the larger man with a stare down. “We’ll keep it down.”
“Yeah, you do that.”
* * *
Later, after they had cleaned up their lunch mess and returned inside, Bob told Marcie what their neighbor had said.
“Do we need to harden the perimeter?”
Bob shook his head. “We’re on vacation, and he’s an amateur.”
“You sure? He could be hiding behind that asshole persona. Maybe he suspects something.”
“We should pay Mr. Kettleman a visit later, learn what we can about him.”
“Let me,” Marcie said.
They had packed the tools of their trade and, until that moment, had had no plans to unpack them until they visited Boise later that month.
“It’s a simple in-and-out,” Marcie said. “I won’t need everything.”
They spent the rest of the day much as any other vacationing couple might. They read the travel guides the Airbnb owner had supplied, walked down to the floating dock to look up and down the river, and took a leisurely stroll along the two-lane road that led past Kettleman’s home and dead-ended three houses beyond, all the while surreptitiously learning what they could about their neighbor’s home and property.
As the clock ticked down to midnight and the lights winked off in the Kettleman home, Bob opened the case containing their twin Walther PPKs, infrared goggles, lockpicking kit, and other necessities. Marcie dressed for her visit next door, blackening her face to match her clothing, and took the lockpicking kit, a penlight, thin latex gloves, and her Walther.
Bob slipped on the goggles and watched through the bedroom window as his wife crossed both yards, paused at the sliding glass door at the back of Kettleman’s house, and then disappeared inside.
She’d been gone half an hour when Bob heard an unexpected sound from the Airbnb’s floating dock. He grabbed his Walther and moved from the bedroom window to the living room window. He watched a man secure a rowboat, walk up the ramp, and pause to screw a suppressor onto a pistol.
Bob couldn’t watch the Kettleman residence and the intruder at the same time, and he had no way to warn his wife that there was a new player in the game. But he didn’t have to. He took off the infrared goggles, slipped out the front door, and eased around the house. He caught the intruder testing the back door, which they had left unlocked for Marcie’s return. As the intruder eased the door open, Bob pressed the muzzle of his Walther against the base of the man’s skull and whispered, “Let’s not wake the neighbors.”
* * *
The back door opened, and Marcie stepped into the house. “Kettleman is exactly who he appears to be, a— Who the hell is that?”
Bob had zip-tied the gagged intruder to a dining room chair. The intruder was dressed in black and had his face blackened, just like Marcie’s. In only a few words, Bob explained what had happened. “He says he was hired to kill the man of the house.”
“Who hired him?”
“His wife.” Bob pointed to a grainy photograph printed on computer paper that had been unfolded and flattened on the dining room table, a photograph of one of the twin docks behind the Kettleman house and their rental. Next to it were a burner phone and a suppressed Beretta.
“Kettleman?”
“His wife’s in New York.”
“How much?”
“Fifty K, in advance.”
The man in the chair didn’t look like someone who would give up information easily, but Bob was persuasive and had already accessed the man’s offshore account and had transferred the balance—one hundred and thirty-seven thousand and change, which likely included payment for the current job—into their account.
“Shall we finish the job for him?” Bob asked.
They stepped out of earshot of the intruder. Marcie quickly described the layout of their neighbor’s house and confirmed that Kettleman slept alone but not in the master bedroom. Then they agreed to a simple solution to their problem.
Marcie took the Beretta and returned to their neighbor’s home. Bob followed a few minutes later, pushing the intruder before him. He paused at the sliding glass door long enough to insert ear plugs. Then he pushed the intruder into the house and down the hall.
As soon as they stepped into Kettleman’s bedroom, Marcie shot the intruder with Kettleman’s revolver, an explosive sound that would have deafened them had they not both worn earplugs. Their neighbor already lay dead in his bed, shot with the Beretta. Marcie put Kettleman’s Smith & Wesson into his hand and, after Bob removed the zip ties binding the intruder’s wrists, put the dead man’s Beretta into his hand.
Satisfied that it appeared the two men had shot each other, Bob and Marcie let themselves out of the house.
After they walked across both yards to their rental’s dock, Bob removed the burner phone’s SIM card and crushed it beneath the heel of his shoe. He threw the phone and the SIM card into the river, then untied the rowboat and pushed it away from the dock. The current caught the boat and sent it downriver.
Then Bob took his wife’s hand and together they walked up the hill to the bungalow they’d rented for the long weekend.
* * *
They remained in the Airbnb for two more days. Kettleman’s wife did not return from New York before their stay ended, and no one visited the home. They spent their final day removing all evidence that they had spent time in the bungalow, and they drove away in their non-descript SUV.
Within three hours, Bob and Marcie Jones ceased to exist. Sam and Ella Witherspoon continued the drive toward their next assignment in Boise.
Excellent. Grabbed me right from the start.
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