Smile!

When the file hit her dropbox, she’d thought nothing of it.

NAME: Elias J. Malik

PLACE: PRAIRIE VIEW, TX

PRICE: $20,000

MODE OF PROOF: Photographic

ATTACHMENTS: em-pht.png, s3csoc-crd.pdf

Alright, sure, she’d raised her eyebrow at the pricing — for her specific skill set it was a wee bit on the low side — but the water in her apartment didn’t keep itself on, and her baby brother’s medical bills certainly didn’t magically go away by being picky. Along with the usual seasonal lull in requests for jobs heralded on domestic soil, she had quickly summarized that the gig was better than nothing.

That was days ago. Presently, Kyt Hannelore — average height, russet skin, and a tongue made of razor blades — hums disdainfully as she lands on her feet at the bottom of the mossy oak that she’d painstakingly decided to take her refuge in. It's the middle of winter, but it seems that spring showers are coming early in Texas this year; the ground sloping away from the oak’s roots is flooded and soft, and her socks soak easily as she sinks into the mud. The dirt cakes on in sloppy chunks along the soles of her boots, and her jaw clenches in further annoyance.

She raises her gaze to the gloomy sky above and heaves a sigh. Two days in the air, one day on the road, another dismal and cold winter day to make sure that she wasn’t misunderstanding things — all this time wasted, and now her socks are wet.

There is nothing in her world right now worse than muddy, wet socks.

“I can't believe this is my life!” Hurriedly, she scratches her target’s name from the last marked page in her little black notebook. “What on god’s green earth have I gotten myself into?”

Slipping the parcel back into the inner pocket of her denim jacket, Kyt sets her pace down the hill with determined steps. The house ahead is old and small, the once-white paneling ruddy from years of no care. The look is fairly typical for an off-campus home, but even her place during the tepid years she’d spent slumming around the outskirts of university had been much better kept.

She supposes that’s what you get when you leave boys in charge of things. With another great sigh, Kyt takes her tube of emergency lip gloss from her jacket pocket and expertly swipes it on.

“Let's get this over with,” she mutters. Her knock is steady and sure, if not agitated. She resists counting the seconds it takes for the door to swing open. Elias Malik, as she knows him from the file, stands before her in nothing but blue lounge shorts and a pair of clean socks.

Kyt’s eyebrow twitches. Of course her target didn’t bother to put a shirt on for answering the door; with a video game controller in hand and every bit of his pale-tan physique on display. It only moves to confirm the conclusion she’d come to form over the last few days of studying his movements. According to her keen eye — and there are no eyes keener — Elias J. Malik is just a simple guy in college.

That’s it.

Nothing less, and definitely nothing more. Normally she might be indifferent to her target’s lives, but that’s only due to the hard cold evidence that supports the claim that her target is actual scum of the earth.

This particular target, she thinks as she plasters on a façade of friendliness, absolutely does not fit her bracket of ‘most’.

In the days she’d spent gathering intel and, frankly, budgeting her impending pay day, she’d discovered nothing about her target that makes him worthwhile. The man didn’t even smoke weed. She’d seen him do nothing but go to campus and come right back to his house to toss his backpack and hop on his computer. His schedule was fixed. He studied, played video games, stuffed his mouth, and went to bed. One night she tailed him on a run around the neighborhood, but other than that there was nothing else.

So, she took an extra day to hunker down and do some digging. As expected, there wasn’t a scratch on his record — county, state, or federal.

Elias Malik is the squeakiest of cleans. There is simply no way she can bring herself to hurt the guy; however, the death of her paycheck certainly begs some query. Hence, the trek to the front door.

What exactly did he do to have $20,000 put on his head?

“Hi!” She finally greets. “I’m Kyt. I was just—”

“Um.” Elias interrupts her, his smooth timbre making her blink, and he looks at her with curious brown eyes. “Sorry,” he says, “but do I know you?”

The lie she’d started to tell reforms easily on her lips. “I’m stopping by for my uncle. He owns the house, but it’s harder for him to get around at his age...” Kyt bats her lashes, trusting her hazel stare and full glossy lips to do their job.

Elias looks on blankly.

Great, Kyt thinks, book-smart but street-dumb.

“Would you mind giving me a quick tour?” Kyt continues to ask, eager to for an excuse to get out of the winter air. “It’s really just a check-up.”

After a prolonged beat where Elias cocks his head to the side and sweeps his gaze up and down over her — likely assessing her as unthreatening, and, ha, Kyt would say to that — he slowly steps aside and makes an awkward sweeping motion in allowance. Kyt lets herself in.

“So...” She starts the second the door closes, dropping the nice act and getting down to business. She flicks her gaze around the area — kitchen on the left and den on the right, hallway straight ahead; just like in her blueprints. “who’s daughter did you send home crying?”

Silence.

Kyt turns to her target on the balls of her feet, her nose scrunching as she notices the rather enormous pile of dishes in the sink. And what is that smell? Boy? Kyt gives the air a cursory sniff and fights every instinct to recoil; yup, definitely boy-smell. If her time scouting him out told her nothing, the clutter of the house alone said more than enough: her target is harmless and there is 100% absolutely no way or reason for her to keep this job.

$20,000 down the drain...

Elias looks around the house as if he’s never seen it before. “I thought you were here to check out the house.”

“I lied.” Kyt makes a dismissive motion with her hand at the incredulous sound her target makes. “Are you going to answer my question?”

Elias sputters. “Are you going to answer mine?”

“You didn’t ask a question,” Kyt points flatly, a wry smirk pulling at her mouth as Elias’s brows furrow. “Anyway. A useless pretty boy like you? If I was getting paid today I’d bet my whole check that's what got you blacklisted—!”

“Blacklist? Paid? What are you — no. How do you know my name?!” Elias waves his hands in front of him, as if he can erase whatever he thinks is happening to him.

Kyt scoffs. If anything, he’s happening to her. Seriously — why is this guy worth twenty grand? Looking at Elias fully, she sizes him up with everything she knows and everything she’s currently learning by simply just getting him to speak. He hasn't attacked, or even asked if Kyt is her real name... Maybe her check isn’t quite down the drain yet..?

Elias continues on, oblivious to her calculating stare. “What kind of check-up is this? You have ten seconds to answer before I call the cops!”

Kyt nearly takes a deep breath, but remembers the boy-smell and quickly changes her mind. “Look,” she sighs, wandering into the kitchen. As expected, her target trails after her. “you seem like a... guy, so. I’m going to help you out here.”

Kyt takes out her own phone and pulls up the correct file. She holds it up to Elias's face until she can tell that he gets the picture.

"What..?" Elias asks. "What?!"

Kyt takes her phone back. "I know, right?!"

More silence. Kyt gives an aimless nod in understanding, turns to open the refrigerator, and then nearly groans when she spots restaurant pouches of sauces stuffed where the butter should be.

"What are you doing?!"

“Helping you, Elias.” Kyt answers as she selects a handful of ketchup packets., more than sure that her impromptu plan will work. She ignores the dreadful look of confusion that has made its way on to her target's admittedly handsome face. “Someone wants you dead but it turns out that I don’t, really. I’ve met bugs more harmful...”

“Wait — uh, Ky? I still don't understand. Who are you?”

Kyt raises a brow. Was it really not clicking for this guy? “I'm Kyt," she drawls, "I have a reputation to uphold.”

It answers next to nothing. Though it's not a complete lie... Elias here doesn’t really have to know that. Or that she’s about to cheat her way into a check and — stupidly, probably — give it all away to him. It's the least she can do, after all. She sure as hell knows she'd appreciate a random deposit after having her day ransacked by a complete stranger.

Kyt shakes her thoughts away and continues on. “Don’t worry. I have every intention to make this quick for the both of us.”

Elias looks at her, his mouth working over words that don't escape and looking for all the world that he wants to make joke — but then he looks at her, gaze sweeping from her head to boots again, and, oh, no, she can see it on his face. She can see the realization that there's a very pretty girl standing right in front of him.

“I hope not,” he attempts with a wavering smile.

Kyt represses a shiver and a sigh. Too many times she's had targets make a distraction out of her in that way after learning about her... reasons, for showing up.

“Yeah..." She ignores him; at this point she wants go home and check on her brother. Kyt clutches her acquired ketchup packets and holds her fingers out in L’s, her trained eye capturing Elias's face between them in frame. HE eyes her warily — as he should. Without further preamble, Kyt curls her fingers into a fist and promptly lets it fly. A definitive crunch rents the air, Elias’s head snapping back from the blow. He howls as red streams from his nos.

Kyt holds back a grin. That felt far too good.

“Ky!” He shouts; Kyt, she corrects. “Whatever! Are you out of your mind?! I thought weren't going to hurt me!”

“I said that I don't want you dead.” Kyt retorts slowly, giving her fingers a wiggle. “And sadly for the both of us, I’m perfectly sane.”

Elias keeps his head tipped back, inching further away from her. "Explain before I really do call the police!"

Kyt sighs. "I need photographic evidence as a confirmation on a job well done. Since I have no intentions of actually doing my job..."

"You're staging a murder," Elias concludes after a beat.

"Bingo!" Kyt says. "Now lay on the floor and stop freaking out. Unless you want me to hit you again..?"

After some fussing — and convincing, and several empty ketchup packets — Kyt finally has the angle she wants.

“Well your nose isn't broken, so that's great. May I suggest buying a shirt? Or getting your house cleaned, perhaps.”

Elias glares up at her from the floor with confused eyes. "You need professional help.”

Kyt chuckles wryly, expertly aiming her phone as if it were her preferred weapon. “Oh, sweetheart," she says, snapping the first picture. "I am the professional help. Now. Smile! You're on camera."