“Consider this,” Ian murmurs. “Right now, they want him dead. But you know there can be collateral damage. There often is. The girls might end up with no parents at all. But if you kill him, you show them you’re willing to do the job. That you’re not scheming with him behind their backs or playing both sides. You show your loyalty, and not only does that keep you safe, they also let you continue doing the job you love. They give you a way to channel your monster.”
He’s right. I either get nothing or I get something. Something is better than nothing. And yet…
I can’t just kill Brian.
“Will you help me?” I ask, hoping desperately he cares enough to say yes. Our gazes connect through the shadows. He gives an almost imperceptible nod.
“Of course.”
“Thank you. I owe you.”
A twitch of a smile. “What do you want me to do?”
“Can you keep them safe tonight? Can you help me…keep us alive? Just while I figure this out?”
“What are you going to do?”
I exhale into the night, look out over San Antonio. “I need to run, need to think. Need to sort out what happens next.”
—
First, I runhome. I sneak back inside and climb the staircase to my girls’ room. I kiss Eliza on the forehead, brush her hair away from her face, pull the blanket from where she’s thrown it off the side of the bed and tuck her in. Then I do the same with Evie, taking an extra moment to inhale her little girl scent that really is probably the smell of cookies and her strawberry shampoo. Whatever I do will utterly transform their lives. I can’t fuck this up.
Back outside, I run.
No, that’s not right.
Itearthrough the streets. The awareness of my own body, my surroundings, fades away, and I have tunnel vision. I can barely breathe because I’m sprinting, but it doesn’t matter. I can barely think because I made this awful situation worse—by doingnothing, by not killing him, I’ve put my whole family in danger.
So now it’s time to do something.
My skin burns as though I might rip at the seams, come apart, shape-shift like a werewolf. The creature wants out. She wants to handle this in her own way, with carnage, killing. Making sure no one can ever hurt her family again.
It would be so easy.
At least, that’s what my inner monster says to me as I fret over the best way forward and how to deal with my employer. The realityis, there is no central location of the agency. As far as I’ve ever been able to tell, it’s a collection of people who all use a Tor network to patch into the dark web. They are untraceable. If one person goes down, they can’t turn anyone else in, because they don’t know who anyone else is. Only assassins are truly known, because they must actually kill a person. And even they go through a point of contact—a handler. The only reason I know who John really is and where he lives is because I’m paranoid; I tracked him down in the nearby college town of Columbia when I happened to be in St. Louis for a job. It’s not terribly difficult to find a classic video game fiend who also manages a pizza place. I’ve watched him enter his pizza shop in a blue polo and smile at the teenagers who work for him and put on his own facade. It was for my safety, for my family’s. But tracking him down now won’t do shit. He doesn’t know who gives out the jobs, just talks to a faceless boss through the dark web.
And he’s been warning me, hasn’t he? Telling me I need to get the job done, that whoever hands them down is asking why it’s not finished yet. He’s done what he can.
I don’t mean to end up at the apartment on the other side of town. It’s miles away, and yet an hour later, I stand in the street, coated in sweat, staring up at the pharmacist’s window.
This one person who is a sanctioned kill. Maybe just watching her, imagining it, will allow me to get my head straight, let this pressure simmering beneath the surface cool.
The lights are all off with the exception of the one in her bedroom. I know it’s her bedroom because the floor above hers seems to have the exact same layout, and that person has left their blinds raised, the edge of their bed frame visible from the ground, even in the darkness.
Technically, I’m working. I need to know this woman’s habits, after all.
Really, though, I’m not doing anything.Sheis in control, that inner being inside me I usually keep the lid shut tight on. It is she who stares through my eyes with a specific kind of lust.
No,I tell her.Go home. It’s not time for this job, not yet. This won’tfixyou.
My phone vibrates.
Ian:I’m at your house. Your family is safe, for now.
For now, he said.
I take a shuddering breath. I imagine someone trying to break into my house, the alarm blaring, my daughters vulnerable to someone likemebut not me, someone likeIan, who has apparently embraced this other side of himself. But maybe someone worse than Ian. Someone who doesn’t have a little girl waiting at home, who doesn’t understand how important children are, how they are off-limits.
