He didn't laugh at my joke. Instead, his eyes—those hard little beads of flint—bored into me. "She heard. The blind hear everything."
I shook my head slightly. "She didn't hear anything. She didn't even know I was there." I waited a beat, letting the lie settle. "She's not a player, Vik. She's background noise. You clip a blind piano player, and you bring the wrath of god down on this place.ADA lawsuits, news vans, sympathy pieces. You don't want that kind of heat for a clean kill."
Viktor took a drag, narrowing his eyes at the nickname. Or maybe it was the rest of what I'd said. He hated when I used logic. It interfered with his instinct to bludgeon problems until they stopped moving.
"Verify that," he grunted finally, pointing his finger at me. More ash fell to the freshly mopped floor with every statement. "You watch her. You stay close. If she talks to the cops, if she even looks like she is remembering something... you call me. Then I handle it."
"Consider it done." I pushed off the doorframe, flashing him my best surfer-boy grin. The one that never reached my eyes. "I'll be her shadow."
"Good. Now get out. You stink like bleach."
I walked out the side door and into the ally, stepping over the spot where I’d scrubbed a man’s life off the pavement less than twenty-four hours ago. The bleach he spoke of had done its job. The concrete was pristine, lighter than the surrounding asphalt. A blank slate. Soon enough the weather, rodents and grease from the restaurant would make it unnoticeable from any other part of the alley.
That was what I was supposed to be. A blank slate. A nobody. A void where problems disappeared.
But as I slid behind the wheel of my nondescript sedan, the engine turning over with a low, predatory purr, I knew I wasn't doing this to appease Viktor.
Usually, once the bleach dried and the bags were burned, the job was done. The faces faded into the gray static of my memory. They were just messes I’d tidied up. Debris.
Not this time.
Not her.
I checked the rearview mirror. My own eyes stared back, moss-green and flat. I told myself it was risk management. Loose ends strangled you if you didn't cut them. If she remembered something—a sound, a smell, anything—then Viktor was right. She was a liability.
But that was a fucking lie.
I shifted into gear, the vibration humming up my arm. I didn't care about the risk. I didn't care about Viktor's paranoia.
I just wanted to fucking see her again.
Day one was clinical.Professional.
That's what I told myself as I tailored my schedule around the number forty-two bus route.
I sat in my car, three lengths back from the bus stop, watching Raven Oakley navigate the rush hour crowd.
Raven.
I was slightly surprised when Viktor told me. An unusual name for an unusual girl.
It was drizzly out today, and she wore a beige trench coat belted tight at the waist with black, rubber-soled shoes, her white cane sweeping in rhythmic arcs before her. Tap. Tap. Step. Step.
She didn't move like a victim. That was the first thing that annoyed me.
Victims scurried. They hunched. They projected fear. Raven moved with an unsettling precision. She counted steps. I saw her lips moving slightly as she walked—one, two, three, turn. She mapped the world in a grid within her mind.
As I watched, a drunk stumbled out onto the sidewalk, eyes tracking her cane, then the bag slung across her body.
I was out of my car before I made the conscious decision to move…
By the time Raven's bus arrived, the drunk was nursing a broken wrist in the alley behind the convenience store. But he'd live. Probably.
And she boarded the bus, oblivious to what had almost happened to her.
I followed the bus, keeping a steady distance.
When she got off, she walked two blocks to an apartment building that had seen better days. Pulling over, I watched her pause at the curb, head tilted. Curious, I looked around, and spotted a Tesla approaching that I hadn't even noticed.
