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    Chapter 20

    tab Riiiiiiing!
    tab Oh, another call. Wonder what it is this time. Better not be Charles... Kyle stretches his hand down pocket, and takes out his phone.
    tab "Hello?"
    tab "Kyle. I had to do it. Charles is dead."
    tab "Did you, now? Of course, that's what I wanted. And you know that as--" John interrupts,
    tab "Kyle, what's going on?" Kyle replies with a sort of mock surprise in his voice,
    tab "How unlike you, John. Charles was untrustworthy. I told you that from the very beginning. And I also told you that you would have to take any necesarry steps to eliminate him, which included, most and foremost, of course, killing him."
    tab "You didn't answer my question. I already knew all that. And I'm not doubting you. After all, that's quite a lot of money your giving me. But what I was asking was, why'd you tell him? Why'd you tell him I did it?"
    tab "Rather simple. I like to call it a sort of 'ripple effect'. I tell him you killed the lady, not me. He figures out I betrayed him. He gets angry. He tells you everything he knows. And, obviously, you 'eliminate' him. I had to make sure you would, and the only way I could do that was to bring him into the light of things like that."
    tab "You could've just called me." Kyle simply chuckles, and responds,
    tab "You forget, John. You're a police man. No calls from criminals."
    tab "And you forget that police men also don't murder people! Especially allies. I thought when you told me to eliminate him, it meant to simply throw him in jail."
    tab "You're not arguing with me, are you?" John tries to think of saomething clever to say, but stops, and says in a calmer, yet still petulant voice,
    tab "No. I just want answers."
    tab "Same thing, really. Gotta hand it to you, you have a rather sentimental for an assassin. So, let me remind you. You're an assassin. You want money, not answers."
    tab "I don't know where you get your information from, Kyle, but you got it wrong. Money isn't the only thing that defines assassins. No matter what the case, assassins, at least for me, need to get straight the motive. And that's not the case here. So, I want to know everything. Why Elizabeth had to die. Why Charles had to die. Did you hold a grudge on Chad's wife?"
    tab "No, I bore no ill feelings against our dearest Elizabeth. However, she was very connected to what I did bear ill will against."
    tab "And that would be...?" Kyle puts on a large grin on his face, like a five-year old when in sight of a Hershey bar.
    tab "Chad. He's the reason I was locked up. "
    tab "Then why didn't you ask me to kill him?"
    tab "I didn't want it to end too fast. Elizabeth was the only thing that would hit Chad as hard as it hit him."
    tab "And how would you know that?"
    tab "Oh, little birdie told me. You know, the big, ol' one that you killed."
    tab "Charles?!"
    tab "Yeah. 'Friend' of Chad. Dug up tons of information. Said Charles lost his son, and now he was left alone with his wife. And that was it. Our target. I wanted to have Chad fall. But I didn't want to stop there."
    tab "What are you talking about?" Kyle leans closer into the phone, and whispers,
    tab "All right, listen carefully..."