We Are Both In The Dirt Ch. 08

The Murder Twins. That's what people called them. Mira is unsettled by the moniker, yet it suits them. She imagines they seem mystical to people who don't know the men and their flaws up close and personal. Even she had been mystified for a while after hearing about their upbringing. Their lives had played out like some sort of television drama; the parents split up, the dad moves to Russia with one son while the mother remains in the United States with the other.

They'd lived vastly different lives and yet to her they are one conflicted being whose most evident personality variants are buried deep in a phyche preoccupied with acquiring wealth by any means necessary, men after her own heart. It pains her to reflect on how she'd spent an eternity with a man she so thoroughly hated when instead she could have been sandwiched between the bodies of Mint and Mandrake Mallard while they were all still sweaty from some take or another. She smiles to herself. She's never considered being sandwiched between them before, but the thought isn't at all unpleasant.

She thinks of them fondly even after what they'd kept from her--and while she'd been angry at first she isn't now. If anything she feels a bit sad though she is not surprised they have kept secrets. She has to come to grips with the fact that she is in love with two liars.

She waits until the slight breeze dies down and puts a cigarette in her mouth, lights it as she considers a no smoking sign nailed to the inside of the red hotel awning above her. Her eyes catch the uneven gait of a man approaching. She remembers Fowler's phone, the names of the men in the text messages that he and Montana had shared. She watches the man for a moment more, and the cigarette falls from her lips as she realizes who it is she's watching. She turns with feigned nonchalance and reenters the hotel. She walks calmly to the elevator and calls the car. She waits. She hears the door to the lobby open. The elevator comes and the doors slide open. She gets on, presses her back against the wall and slowly inches up the fabric of her dress until she can feel the holster and the small gun attached to her thigh. She breathes in and out slowly in an attempt to fend off a panic so sharp it gives her tunnel vision.

After a few painful seconds the doors slide shut. She exhales, hopes that she is imagining things. She all but runs to Mandrake's room and slides the keycard into the reader with shaking hands. She opens the door to find Mint and Mandrake fighting in the kitchen.

"No fucking time for this! Fucking Mace McSwain is here--I think."

"What do you mean, 'you think? Is he or isn't he?" Mint asks, out of breath as he disengages himself from Mandrake's grip. He clicks the safety off of his gun aims it at the door.

"I mean I think! Sorry I didn't get a chance to ask him if it were really him. Let's just get the fuck out of here, now! We never should have stayed stationary in the first place. We don't have the luxury." Mira runs into the bedroom and gathers a few cosmetic items and a stack of twenties she'd left there. She turns to leave and hears gunshots followed by a crescendo of shattering glass. She waits a beat then bursts from the room, her gun up and aimed at anything that isn't one of the two hulking clones she's found herself anchored to.

She narrows her left eye and takes aim at the man standing just inside the doorway with his feet planted and his teeth bared. Mace McSwain indeed, complete with the tracksuit, theatrical limp and smoking sawed off shotgun that contributes to a mystique amplified by his ability to be both lethal and dim. Before he can lift the heavy, ugly gun that has seen its share of successes in his hand, a knife flies and buries itself in his forehead. Mira would've missed the trajectory save for a tiny flash when the blade caught the light from the chandelier above them. Mira exhales and advances into the room, her eyes on the window Mace had apparently shot out, the drapes whipping through the hole out and into the night.

"Fucking Mace McSwain," Mandrake says as he stands predatorily over McSwain's corpse, "never thought I'd have to do it to you, man, not to you." Mandrake rips his knife from Mace's skull and wipes the blade off on the royal blue fabric of Mace's tracksuit.

"I never got the tracksuit, myself," Mint says. He catches her gaze and smiles.

"Don't smile at me," she says and smiles despite herself. The nervousness leaves her as she watches Mandrake pace the room, his phone to his ear.

"I'm going to fucking kill Montana," Mint says.

"You'll get your chance, Mint. He sent his damn brother after us after all, and thank God for that," Mira says.

"Thank God?"

"He wants it so bad he's not thinking straight. Sending Fowler? If he keeps making mistakes like this we'll survive this. Did he not know who he was sending his only brother, up against?"

"He knew and didn't care. I don't know if it's desperation or frivolity. This is Montana we're talking about. He just wants us dead, he doesn't care how it happens or who gets killed in the process."

"You're right about that!" Mandrake says after he ends his call. "I got someone coming to take care of Mace McSwain! Is that even his real name? Funny, his track suit and huge gun, that is the American way, no?"

"Mandrake don't make sweeping generalizations based on a man who prided himself on acting like a villain from a bad 90's action move," Mira says, happy for a moment of levity no matter how small it might be. She ignores Mandrake's scoffing, checks her watch. "Are they coming soon? I want to get out of here."

"We don't have to wait. Get your shit, we're heading out!" Mint says. He holsters his guns and picks up his cigar case.

Mira shoulders her purse and follows them toward the door. She tries not to think about how many more days like this they will have to face until Montana finally runs out of henchman and comes for them himself. That is when the real horror will begin. She jumps when her phone rings--a series of chimes that seemingly pierce her eardrums--and for the second time in less than an hour she nearly faints. Mandrake catches her.

"What is it, Mira?"

"Montana. It's Montana calling," she says.