Her parents named her Holliday, but she went by Olli. She had just set up shop, selling jewelry and weed out of a rundown storefront rented by her friend Trevor, who sold t-shirts with his artwork screen printed on them.

Olli had met Trevor in NA a couple years back, when she’d thought maybe she was a drug addict. At some point, she’d decided she wasn’t and stopped going regularly, but sometimes she would still tag along to a meeting if she had nothing else to do.

Trevor was older than Olli, and grizzled by the years he’d spent living what he called a “chemical life.” He had two kids, with two different women, but he didn’t know where they were or much about them, other than the fact that one was a boy.

Sometimes they would get high together and draw bizarre things to put on t-shirts. Other times, Trevor would get high alone and not talk for hours, dragging shards of old glass across the paint-flecked concrete with his shoe.

One Tuesday afternoon, a woman came into the store. She was rail thin and carrying a dirty white dog in a canvas tote over her shoulder. Her eyes were too big for the sharp angles of her face. The dog whimpered.

Trevor’s eyes flicked up from his sketch pad, just for a second.

“Can we help you?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” the woman said.

She tucked a piece of dark hair behind her ear, which was crowded with silver jewelry. Then, clear as day,  “I need to have somebody killed.”