“I already know who you are,” I insisted. “Even without your face, there can’t be two dudes walking around town looking like—” I gestured to him.
He hesitated. I wished I knew what he was thinking when he just stared at me like that. He looked so conflicted. I wondered what kind of internal battle was going on that I just couldn’t see. Finally, he reached up and pulled the black mask off to reveal the face I knew was hiding beneath it. His lips pressed into a firm line as he watched me for some reaction that I didn’t have.
“Who are you?” I whispered.
He turned his attention away from me, taking a pair of small pliers and picking out pieces of gravel from my knee. He responded without looking at me, “Halo.”
“Okay, let me rephrase.Whatare you?”
He didn’t answer right away. Just dabbed antiseptic on my skin and winced when I winced. “I was hired to kill you.”
No apology. No sugarcoating. No hesitation. I looked down at his hands while they worked. They were so steady, precise.
“So why didn’t you?”
He glanced up, just once, and in that moment I felt it: the same thing I’d seen in him the first night he sat in the corner booth. Guilt, and something darker.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
Silence spread between us, seeming to expand and fill the emptiness there.
I looked around again at the shadows in the corners and felt the absence of warmth. “No one else lives here?”
“No.”
“Why did you bring me here? To kill me now?”
He sighed through his nose, putting his tools down to use both hands to rip the leg of my already torn pants up my thigh. I reached down to shield myself, but he pushed my hand away and continued to work, cleaning the wound. He didn’t bat an eye at my exposed flesh.
“I’m giving you a chance,” he said. “To understand what’s going on, to stay alive.”
I folded my arms tightly around my stomach. “So, talk.”
He paused.
“You saw something you shouldn’t have.”
“The guys in the alley?” I asked, voice quiet.
He nodded. “An execution. It should never have been done where someone could see it.”
“But I reported it to the police; they should be investigating it.”
“That was a dirty cop. He went straight to the leader of that criminal organization, and they think you know too much. They want you quiet.”
My heart dropped. “I won’t say anything else. I can act like I never…”
“That’s not how it works.”
The sudden sting of something he had applied to my thigh surprised me, and I jerked away from him. He recoiled and then leaned back down, blowing gently on the spot and dabbing it with gauze until the trickle of blood subsided.
“Arms, now,” he demanded, and I presented them to him. He leaned over to get more supplies from the box, and I noticed the claw marks on his own arm. I reached out to touch them, and he froze at the touch.
“I’m sorry I did that… I was scared.”
He pulled his arm away from me, looking up for a moment before setting back to his work. “I know.”
“So you aren’t going to kill me then?”
