Hunter And Cash

2: Blood everywhere, but it's okay

Lauren Jauregui tried to be a good person. She really did. She played the whole straight and narrow good grades, good college stereotypical all American dream that her grandparents and parents left Cuba for. She even got a job straight out of college working with a really big pharmaceutical company as a lead researcher. She was the choice topic of conversation in the Jauregui household then with all who were willing to listen . The good old days.
Then she cracked.
Looking back as one always does with hindsight, she felt they should have seen it coming. The signs were always there. Raised in a conservative Cuban home and schooled at an equally conservative catholic school , it should have been literally impossible for her to end up a lesbian and come to the realization so young too. But her parents had brushed it off so easily and accepted her with welcoming arms. Wether it was their attempt at being 'the hip parents ' or simply wanting to leave the mental shrine they had errected to her undamaged she did not know. What she did know was there should have been questions. There should have been questions when she constantly felt the need to catch rodents and torture them in the worst ways imaginable just to create a pain gradient curve for the science fair. There should have been more prodding into why a twelve year old found it necessary to learn aikido from online videos and hacked cam footage of classes she wasn't allowed into.
Maybe she would still be in that cute little lab in Miami separating fentynol from xanax. Maybe she wouldn't be sitting in a room in a 2 star motel watching an unrepentant human trafficking piece of shit examining a 7.6 million dollar painting while his goons prepared to gun her down to avoid payment. There were so many maybes and what ifs but Lauren Jauregui hadn't made it this far by focusing on them.
No a survivor like herself focused on the now, on the here. And the now was a classic chess game between a master and a novice. The rook thought he had captured the pawn, backed her into a corner. The king in his castle about to pounce on the unsuspecting fawn. Dimitri Orlov was no king, he might think it, dream of it as he lay with one of the underaged girls in his stock, work towards it in his own twisted, rudimentary animalistic way but he was no king. He was just a pawn with too much leg room on the board and luckily for everyone involved today was his checkmate.
Up close he was all cliches. Dark designer suit, excessive cologne,gaudy visible tattoos, bad shaving and the list goes on. The two towering silent guards at his side seemed so much more intriguing or at least worthy of a scruple of her time. For the umpteenth time today, she wondered of all the art pieces in her possession at the moment ,why he had requested this one. Don't get her wrong, it was a beauty and she had even been tempted once or twice to keep it in her personal collection but that was her, Lauren Michelle Jauregui, thief extraordinaire, part time smuggler, part time evil lab rat and sometimes assassin (if the price was right because she found killing to be such a personal act and one she would rather perform on her behalf alone). Dimitri was none of these things and never would be. His small mind could barely comprehend a fraction of the world that she lived in. A thug. That was all.
So why he wanted this particular piece and especially how he had come to acquire her contact details were the primary questions on her mind and in fact, the only reason she had shown up at all. The opportunity to root out a mole from her organization was one the control freak in her could never pass up.
She leaned forward reaching for her coffee very aware of her exposed cleavage and Dimitris leering reaction to it.
"it's real "
Lauren bit her tongue. She didn't know wether to burst out laughing or shoot the idiot in the head( in an ideal situation stabbing him would be best). Did he really think his caveman ogling could be considered proper authentication procedure for a piece as old or valued as the one in front of him, if so she was amused. On the other hand and the most likely option was he was just that dense and full of himself enough to think he had fooled her. In that case, she most definitely would need a knife; she would take her time carving up his smug ugly face
When she didn't reply immediately, he took it as an invitation to keep moving his mouth.
"La Cirque , the last one isn't it? " She knew exactly to what he was referring. The unfinished piece of pointilist perfection was the last painting of the great impressionist master Georges Pierre Seurat before his death in 1891 thus leaving it unfinished. If he thought that top of Wikipedia page type fact was going to impress her, he was in for a huge surprise. Honestly if he intended to kill her, she couldn't fathom why he would be trying to hit on her.
Then again, nothing so far was adding up so preherps she could give him the benefit of doubt and believe that this was the one in a million day that a wanted unpolished criminal took time out of his busy schedule of dodging cops and dropped in for a random art purchase. Maybe she was getting a little too paranoid anyway. Not everyone was trying to kill her and...
BLAM! (I'm an idiot but I like it besides what's the right onomatopoeia for an exploding head, if you know comment here 😔)
Blood,brain matter and God knows what else spilled over her once five hundred dollar Gucci dress (I'm clueless about this as well. I'm sorry I'm a mess ) as what was once Dimitri Orlovs head made it's abrupt and extravagant goodbye. She barely registered her ruined dress as she was flat on the floor in the time it took the two caddies to register what had happened and reach for their weapons.
Once it kicked in though, they returned automatic fire vehemently. Lauren couldn't fathom what for. The shooter had obviously only been interested in Dimitri and had achieved his or her target and for all intents and purposes they had failed their prime directive. Anything they were doing now besides self-preservation would only make sense if they had some sort of real loyalty to the recently deceased art lover. Maybe she had ranked them above their now deceased employer too quickly.
As if to prove her point, another loud exploding sound rocked the room as goon 1 joined Dimitris head in redecorating the room. She reached into her purse subconsciously retrieving a trusty FN five -seven pistol ( guns I do know about so at least that will be accurate) . Whoever had braught the little get together to a halt had plans to use the rest of them for target practice.