Chapter 3

3

Pain don’t hurt.

—Dalton, Road House

The Bowery

Now

Three times circling the block, watching for tails, then waiting ten minutes so I could slip past the doorman—I’m pretty sure the Russian is gone, but I still feel guilty about coming here. I bang on the apartment door with an eye on the end of the hallway. The pain is fading into a general numbness, so I don’t feel too guilty. There’s only so much blood in my body.

She may not be home. She may not live here anymore. But a shadow passes across the lens of the peephole. A chain rattles, a lock shunks , and the door cracks open.

Astrid is wearing a lavender silk bathrobe, which serves to accentuate her toned, athletic figure. Her long hair, the color of fall leaves, is still wet from the shower. Her face is smooth and makeup-free, so that I can better appreciate the years in it. As always, the sight of her snatches the breath out of my chest. Everyone’s got their own taste and preference, but to me Astrid looks the way a woman is supposed to look.

Not that I’d ever tell her that. Our relationship has always been purely professional, and I’m about to test how far that’ll stretch. It’s been so long it takes her a second to register that it’s me. Then her face twists in confusion. “Mark? I’m meeting a friend in an hour and…”

She looks down at the jumble of bloody rags I’m pressing to my stomach.

“What the hell…”

“May I come in, please?” I ask.

She steps aside, mouth hanging open. I move through the sparse, tastefully appointed living room and consider the couch, but it’s white leather. That could stain, so I head for the bathroom, which is a wreck—makeup scattered, used towels on the floor. I drop the mess of soiled rags into the claw-foot tub. “It’s been a while. What’s the going rate for a drop-in like this?”

Astrid is standing in the doorway, trying to regain her senses. “Six grand.”

“I’ll give you twelve,” I say, pulling my shirt over my head and finally getting a good look at the angry, black gash on my abdomen. It’s still weeping blood, but slower. Whether that means things are improving or I’m running low on gas, I’m not sure. The fact that I’m woozy isn’t a good sign. I lower myself into the tub.

Astrid is standing over me now, clutching her robe tighter. “It’s been more than a year since I saw you last. You can’t just roll up without calling.”

“I deleted your number.” Something that looks like disappointment flashes across her face, but maybe that’s me being hopeful. “I’m sorry. I truly am. But if I go to a hospital, I’ll spend the rest of my life in prison or get killed on the way there.”

She exhales deeply, then taps her phone and puts it to her ear.

“It’s me. I’m sorry, I just had a family emergency come up…No, it’ll be okay, but I have to cancel tonight…I’ll call you soon.”

She slaps the phone down on the sink and roots around underneath, hands me an orange pill bottle without looking at me. “Vicodin. It’s not going to help right now, but you’ll be thankful for it later.”

I dry-swallow two. She makes quick work of setting out a medical kit, placing a clean towel on the floor to kneel on, and then washing and drying her hands. As she’s pulling on a pair of blue latex gloves she asks, “How long was the blade?”

“Three, four inches,” I tell her.

She uses cotton pads to clean the wound, then spreads orange antibacterial solution around it. She follows that with a needle, dosing small pumps to the perimeter of the laceration.

“Lidocaine?” I ask.

She nods. “I need to know if something got nicked. The best I can do is put a finger inside the wound and feel around. It’s not foolproof and I could miss something.” She holds up the needle. “This isn’t going to help all that much.”

“Better than nothing. Don’t worry, I won’t hold you liable if I end up dead.”

She furrows her brow at me.

“And I’ll leave when you’re done, so if I do die, you don’t have to move a body. I remember the drill.”

She holds up her hand, fingers spread. “You ready?”

I open the bottle of Vicodin and swallow two more. It’s going to be a while before they soak in, so no, not really, but what choice do I have? She hands me a small towel.

“Bite down,” she says.

I do, and she doesn’t wait. She slides a finger inside, and my vision explodes into a star field.

There was this boxer who used to say pain is information. Your shoulder hurts, you protect it. Your ribs ache, you cover them up. Process it like that, and you can deal with just about anything.

This, though—this just hurts.

I fight the urge to lash out, to scream, and I focus on staying still as her finger probes inside me. It slips and slides and feels like she’s going to rip something out.

After a millennium of this, she withdraws her gore-covered finger and sniffs it. “Intestine seems intact. Doesn’t feel like there’s a ton of blood in the body cavity. Again, I can’t be completely sure. I’ll sew you up and then you have to go.”

“Sure, sure,” I say. I consider asking for a shot of something—she always has some nice whiskeys on her bar cart—but the alcohol on top of the Vicodin could make the bleeding worse. The lidocaine, at least, takes the edge off the needle and thread she snakes through the folds of my skin. Anyway, the pain centers in my brain are frayed and throwing sparks. At this point anything else just disappears into the din.

“Are you going to tell me?” she asks.

“Tell you what?” I ask, like I don’t know.

The needle seems to get stuck and she resets herself, pushing it carefully through my flesh. “I knew you were in the business of hurting people, but you never said why or how, no matter how many times I asked.”

“Safer that way.”

“Now I want to know. It’s the least you could do after barging in here unannounced.”

“Twelve grand isn’t enough?”

She takes her hands off the needle. “You can finish if you want. Makes no difference to me.”

“I appreciate this, and I appreciate you,” I tell her. “But I’m going to be really honest here: the less you know, the better.”

“Is it going to blow back onto my doorstep?”

“I made sure I wasn’t followed.”

She smirks, seemingly satisfied, and resumes sewing.

“I thought you’d found someone else,” she says.

“I got a pretty bad paper cut a few weeks ago but figured I could handle it on my own.”

“Hmm,” she says. That’s it, “hmm.” I’m left to wonder what it means. Instead of asking, I watch her hands. They’re long and elegant and they work with the speed and precision of a concert pianist’s. A few more minutes and she’s done. The wound suddenly looks a lot less intense.

She pulls off the gloves, tossing them in the tub at my feet. “As long as it doesn’t get infected or show signs of bruising, which would mean internal bleeding, you should be in the clear.” She sits back on the floor, looking at everything in the room but me. I lower myself a little and try to get comfortable in the tub. We both take a moment to breathe.

I dig my boxy black cell phone out of my pocket and, after it registers my fingerprint, plug in my ten-digit access code. Astrid smirks. “Still got that hunk of junk? All the cool kids have iPhones.”

“This hunk of junk,” I say, thumbing through my contacts, “is unhackable and untraceable. Try to break in and the data wipes. You can roll over it with a tank. Now, I have to make a call. Can I have a moment?”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

Astrid fixes me with a hard stare. “I get that the less you tell me the better, but you’re also not keeping me completely in the dark.”

“Fine. I’m calling a friend. If he picks up, I can have him get the money from my apartment and meet us here. If he can’t, I’ll go get it.”

Kenji picks up on the second ring. “Mark? Is everything okay?”

“Not really. Can you talk?”

He doesn’t respond right away. He must be moving to a safe space. Kenji has a normal phone, so even given the level of encryption on mine, it behooves us to keep things short and obtuse. When he speaks, his voice is hushed. “What happened?”

“Got a surprise visitor after everyone left. Russian, tall, tattoo of five dots on his forearm. Very disagreeable. I’m safe for now, but I could use a hand. Can you pick some stuff up from my apartment?”

He pauses. “I’m indisposed. But I’m glad you’re safe. That’s the most important thing. Until we know what’s going on, it’s probably best to keep some distance. Maybe you should get out of town?”

“What do you mean, get out of town? I need to find out what’s happening.”

“You need to be safe.”

“I don’t run from fights.”

“That sounds like something the old Mark would say.”

I try to respond to that, but find I can’t. “Okay, listen, can you check on the others?”

“I’ll put out a draft, and I’ll see if I can find anything about the Russian.”

“Fantastic. Be safe out there, okay? Head on a swivel and all that.”

“You too. Keep me updated.”

I click off the call. Hopefully this is just on me. It has to be, right? It’s either someone looking for revenge, or someone looking to keep me quiet. Could be a family member or friend of someone I killed, could be any number of people I used to work for, or against.

The notebook is the key.

Why did he take the notebook?

“Mark,” Astrid says.

“Yeah.”

“The money? Also, I’d love to get the bathroom cleaned up. I can deal with a little mess”—she looks around and shrugs—“but this is a lot of blood.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” I get up slowly. The stitches tug, but they hold. “Let me get washed up.”

As Astrid exits the room she says, “I have some clean clothes that may fit you.”

“I’ll go to my place, get the cash, and bring it back.”

She reappears with some folded clothing. “I’d offer you a clean towel but I don’t think I have any left. And take my number. I’m not letting you disappear on me again until I get paid.”

It would be hard to impress on her that the reason I deleted her number is that I needed to put all forms of temptation behind me. Not having someone to tend to my more serious wounds made the idea of getting wounded a lot less appealing.

But it was sad, too. She was a big part of my life for a long time. Part of my routine. She saved my life more than once, and sometimes we’d share some laughs while she fixed me. It’s why I’m one of the few clients who has her home address.

I miss the way she laughed: high and energetic, like a pop song.

What’s the use of explaining that? Where would I even start?

“Okay,” I tell her, and read off my cell. She calls me, then hangs up, so I have her number again. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

—

As I approach West Third and Sullivan, even with the windows closed, an acrid, chemical smell creeps into the cab’s interior. That, coupled with the flashing lights, makes me think this night is about to get a whole lot worse.

We turn the corner and black clouds of smoke spill into the night sky from halfway down the block and six floors up.

See also: the approximate location of my living room.

I toss a fifty at the driver, yank the door open, and dive out. I nearly break into a sprint through the snarl of traffic, but the stitches demand I slow down.

I experience an immediate sense of relief when I make it to the crowd of people standing on the outskirts of the emergency response and find Ms. Nguyen holding a gray plastic cat carrier. She sees me approach and hoists the carrier above her head.

“We were afraid you were up there,” she says. “He came down to my fire escape.”

I take the carrier and P. Kitty shifts around inside, crying at the lights and smell and general disturbance. I place him down and throw my arms around Ms. Nguyen. She returns the hug with enough strength to make the wound on my stomach flare, taking my breath away.

I always suspected he snuck through the window and climbed down to hers for treats. I kiss the top of her head and tell her, “Thank you for not listening to me.” Then I lift the carrier to eye level and peer inside. P. Kitty, in all his dumb orange furball glory, looks at me and offers a little hiss.

“Love you, too, buddy,” I tell him. Then I turn back to Ms. Nguyen. “Is everyone okay?”

“Yeah, I think so,” she says.

The other residents are lucky; there’s a firehouse around the corner, so the FDNY must have responded within a minute or two, minimizing the damage to the rest of the building. My apartment may be smoldering ruins, but it’s just stuff. My money is safe, from both the fire and whatever damage ensues. I can always come back for it. But I can’t get another P. Kitty and for that I owe Ms. Nguyen more than she’ll ever know. Once I get into my safe I’ll pay off her rent for the rest of her life.

My perception finally catches up with reality and I know there is no way this can be a coincidence. It must have been the Russian, or someone working with him. So I guess I can say, with some degree of confidence, this is personal. The air is that tight kind of cold that makes it hard to draw a full breath. Plus the Vicodin is kicking in. Within seconds my head is spinning.

Ms. Nguyen sees this and puts her hand to my chest.

“Just breathe,” she says.

Four in, hold for four, out for four, empty lungs for four.

It helps, a little.

“You okay?” she asks.

Nope.

“Yeah.”

“Good,” she says, a smile creeping across her lips. “Because some of these firemen are pretty cute. I think I’m going to go see if any of them are single.”

“Knock ’em dead, sweetheart. I have to take P. Kitty somewhere safe. I’ll be right back, okay?”

She turns to the building, watching a firefighter atop a ladder spraying a burst of water into my apartment. I duck into the corner bar down the street and find that Tom is working. Finally, something works out in my favor.

Tom looks like an extra from a biker movie, with his barrel chest and thick gray beard. Half a life in Boston and half a life in New York has left him with an accent like a cartoon bear, and the Santa hat perched on top of his head makes him look like a dirtbag St. Nick.

He’s also the only bartender in this joint who’ll let me come in with the cat.

The Blinds is a tiny little corner spot mostly frequented by locals. No TV, so it doesn’t attract a sports crowd. Right now, there are a handful of folks, most of whom I recognize, which offers me some level of comfort. No one at all seems bothered by the conflagration happening a few blocks down. I take a seat against the back wall, where I can see the front door but it’s not as obvious that I’m here if you were to look in the window.

Tom ambles over with a glass of rye on the rocks. “That your building down there, Mark?”

“It’s been a night,” I tell him. “Not a good time for booze, but I’ll take some of that jet fuel you pass off as coffee.”

Tom shrugs and places the glass down in front of Mike, a former cop now employed at holding up that one particular barstool. He downs it without any acknowledgment.

“Coffee coming right up,” Tom says. “Bowl of milk for the kitty?”

“He’s good right now, thanks.”

“Seriously, though,” Tom says, “the owner will be back in a bit and she’ll flip her lid if she sees him in here. We can argue extenuating circumstances, but I just don’t need that kind of trouble tonight.”

“I need a minute to get myself situated,” I tell him. “Then I’ll be on my way.”

With the Vicodin in full effect, I’m feeling muddy, my brain full of wet sticks. Tom places a mug on the table and heads out for a smoke. The coffee is blazing hot and blacker than the void of space. Immediately my neurons fire.

So, I need twelve grand. My chief source of money is the pile of cash in my apartment, and that’s going to be tricky to access if someone is watching. I’ve got a debit card for traveling and emergencies, which pulls from an offshore account on the Isle of Man, but I’m limited to a grand a day from ATMs. Which I don’t like using because they tend to have cameras.

And I still need to find someplace to stay tonight. Preferably off the grid, and amenable to cats. I’ve got about six hundred in my wallet. I need a shitty hotel that’ll let me pay in cash. P. Kitty seems to have settled now that we’re inside, but he’s going to need to eat soon.

The door opens and my heart leaps a little, but it’s just Tom. Then again, he’s got a look on his face. The kind of look I don’t like. He comes over holding a folded piece of paper between two fingers and says, “Here’s a weird one. Gentleman outside asked me to pass this to you.”

“Must be mistaken,” I tell him.

He places it on the table in front of me. “Described you perfectly. Russian accent.” He must see the wave of panic that crashes into my face because he asks, “You good?”

“Honestly? I have no idea.”

He tugs at the felt marker dangling from the collar of his sweatshirt and tosses it on the table. “Never leave home without one.”

I take it and point it at him. “Thanks, man.”

He tips his Santa cap to me and heads for the bar.

In his twenties, Tom worked security at one of the most notorious punk bars in Boston, and he said the marker got him out of more scraps than he could count. I’ve always appreciated that—for both the ingenuity, and, after going sober, the concept of a nonlethal personal defense. Something about holding it makes me feel safe.

I take another sip of coffee to keep from throwing up, then unfold the paper. Immediately this incredibly shitty night gets a hell of a lot worse.

In neat, block letters it says: SHE’S PRETTY .

I toss a twenty on the table and I’m gone before Tom even turns around.

—

Astrid is wearing a black turtleneck and blue jeans and a look of abject fury when she opens the hotel room door. She lets me inside and then shuts it behind her before laying into me.

“What is going on, Mark?” she asks. “You told me this wouldn’t blow back. And why do you have a cat?”

“My apartment got blown up,” I tell her, then kneel down to open the carrier. P. Kitty takes a tentative step out and surveys the room, as I’m doing the same. Last time I was here it was bedbugs and bloodstains, but they’ve classed it up since then. Now it’s all soft corners and mirrors. There’s even a complimentary bottle of lube on the nightstand.

It’s the first place Astrid ever fixed me up, and luckily when I called she got what I was going for, telling her to leave immediately and meet me here, and only get the room if they let her pay cash. I figured it was safer to get her out the door than to waste time trying to go back for her.

I had to drop another hundred on the way in, paying off a panhandler to distract the guy working the desk so I could sneak in with the carrier. Which the panhandler did with a little too much aplomb, screaming about the quality of the coffee in the lobby and knocking over a table, but it worked.

“Am I in danger?” Astrid asks.

I dig out of my pocket a can of cat food I picked up at a bodega and place it down on the floor next to the carrier. P. Kitty goes to it immediately, though I’m sure after this he’ll burrow under the bed until he gets acclimated to the new space.

“Yes,” I tell her.

“Well, thanks for that.”

She whisks into the bathroom and slams the door. I gently lower myself onto the bed and stare at myself in the mirror on the ceiling. The coffee only did so much. I’m a little high and very exhausted. Thinking makes the wound in my gut glow red.

I stick my hand in my pocket, feel the six-month chip.

I close my eyes, consider taking a nap, but there’s still too much to do. P. Kitty nestles up to my good side and I stroke his head.

“Thanks, buddy,” I tell him. “Glad someone here still likes me. Though I know that’s only because I feed you.”

He’s a little wall-eyed, so usually I can’t tell if he’s looking at me or something else, but I like to think it’s the former. He drops his head and purrs into my skin.

I click through my phone to the encrypted mail app and check the drafts folder. It’s how the group communicates; emails can’t be traced and read until they’re sent. Leave them in a drafts folder and the only people who can see them are people with the password to the account.

There’s a new draft from Kenji at the top:

Mark was attacked after group. Russian, tall, tattoo with five dots. If this sounds familiar let us know. Meetings postponed until further notice. Respond here to let us know you’re safe. K.

Underneath that:

Don’t know him. He better hope we don’t find him. B.

What are you going to do? Amend him to death? Will ask around on the QT. V.

We got your back. S.

I type out a quick response:

Thanks, fam. M.

Seeing their messages only makes me a little misty.

Astrid is out of the bathroom now—I didn’t even notice the door open—and sits on the edge of the bed. She says, “We need to talk about this.”

That gauzy feeling makes it difficult to multitask. “And I need to figure this out. Pet the bunny closest to the bench.”

“Isn’t it ‘kill the alligator closest to the boat’?”

“Productivity doesn’t have to include killing.”

“Fine,” she says. “I’m hungry. We’re ordering in and I’m adding it to your tab.”

“Sure,” I tell her. She uses the room’s phone and has the front desk connect her to a pizza place, and then she’s asking me about toppings, but I’m already lost trying to figure this out.

I have killed a lot of Russians. If the KGB knew who I was, my picture would be on dartboards all over Moscow. The list of people who’d want revenge is both endless and devoid of any jobs that spring to mind as likely instigators. There’s a certain level where killing stops being personal. Usually it’s just the money that matters, and money can be replaced.

Just because this guy is Russian doesn’t mean he works for Russia. He could be freelance. He could work for the Agency, which has finally found me, and decided their lives would be made easier if I was dead.

So it seems like a stupid move, digging through my phone, searching for the encrypted messaging app that used to pay my bills. The one I should have deleted along with Astrid’s number, and didn’t.

But that’s the closest bunny.

Just seeing the blinking blue cursor on the black screen brings back a flood of memories of what using this app meant. None of those memories are good. This is the kind of triggering action I’d love to talk to Kenji about, but given the circumstances, I have to rely on the tools I’ve got.

This is not who I am anymore.

This is to protect me and the people in my life.

It’s not a slip, it’s the next right action.

I fire off a message that I’m not even sure will be read.

That part of me hopes won’t be read.

Requesting meet

Rev 6:8

With that done, I navigate through the international sections of the New York Times and the Washington Post , looking for leads. When that doesn’t pan out, I open up D@nt3, the secure web browser that anonymizes my presence on the web, and pull up the Via Maris website.

Another thing I haven’t looked at in a year.

I key in my username: GJoubert, after the hitman Max von Sydow portrayed in Three Days of the Condor . I appreciated that he was both professional and kind: pursuing Robert Redford’s Condor until his assignment changed, then offering his former target words of encouragement and a ride to the train station. I used to think the username was a cute reference, but now it makes me feel a little embarrassed.

The Via Maris was an ancient trade route that linked Egypt with northern Syria, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia. Now it’s a darknet marketplace where you can find anything from an assassin to an M777 howitzer to a former doctor who takes cash and is comfortable operating in bathtubs.

It’s how the people in my world communicate. It’s also where I spent a lot of late nights, strolling through the message boards, to see what was really going on in the world, or to figure out where I might get sent next. Sometimes I’d look for local gigs—small-scale stuff that would earn me a little cash and scratch the itch until the Agency came calling.

The feeling of being back on the boards is both warm and cold.

The pizza arrives and I realize I should have said something about being lactose intolerant. Worse, it has olives on it.

“Who the hell puts olives on pizza?” I ask.

“I do,” Astrid says.

“You’re a monster.” She mumbles something as I scrape the cheese off a slice and eat it so fast I can’t even register if it’s any good. I shift and realize P. Kitty is no longer nuzzled next to me. He’s now sitting on Astrid’s lap, and she’s stroking his orange fur while chewing on a slice.

She catches me looking at them. “What’s his name?”

“P. Kitty.”

She laughs. “That’s a ridiculous name for a cat.”

“It’s an awesome name for a cat.”

“How’d you come up with it?” she asks.

I’m about to answer when my phone buzzes and I am immediately beset by a feeling of intense dread. Sending that text was the only thing I could think to do, but I just rang a bell that can’t be unrung, and I have to hope that in the course of figuring out what’s going on, I didn’t just sign my death warrant.

Confirm identity

I comb through my memory for something that only Ravi will recognize. When it comes to me, I crack a smile. He’ll appreciate this—assuming that hearing from me didn’t cause him a stroke.

Gulab jamun

There’s a lingering pause. Probably longer than it needs to be, as I imagine he’s now making frantic phone calls, or checking the windows to make sure they’re locked. The response comes in:

SIN

ASAP

Details TK

Singapore.

Of course.

A little more clicking around on my phone and I find a story from a few hours ago about Cho Jin-Su, a North Korean diplomat drowned in a hotel pool there. I poke his name into Google and find he has ties to their nuclear program. The man is forty-three and, from his picture, looks pretty fit. Pool drowning makes sense. I would have done something similar. Deaths with the potential to start World War III are best made to look like an accident.

I put down my phone and wave at Astrid. “Do you have any friends or family you could stay with? Out of town? Like, very far out of town?”

She shakes her head before taking a few ruminating bites of pizza. “I have a sister in Portland, but we don’t really get along. Why?”

“Because I have to go to Singapore.”

“No, why , Mark?” she asks. “What is going on? I deserve to know.”

She’s not wrong. I don’t have to tell her everything. But I need to tell her something.

“I’m an assassin. Someone’s trying to kill me. I don’t know who, and I don’t know why. I have to figure that out.”

“And the answer is in Singapore,” she says.

“The person I need to talk to is in Singapore. It’s a bit of a haul, but given the current state of things, flying halfway around the world sounds pretty appealing.”

She puts down the uneaten crust of her pizza and strokes P. Kitty’s head. He nuzzles back into her, closing his eyes and reveling in the attention.

“So you’re like John Wick?” she asks.

I don’t bother to contain the eye roll. “Being an assassin is nothing like John Wick .”

“If he knows who I am now, too, wouldn’t I be safer with you?”

I can’t tell how she feels, asking it. She sounds annoyed, but I think I can detect an undercurrent of fear in her voice. At this point, I don’t know how to answer that question. Maybe? Or maybe whoever this is will lose interest if she disappears? There are too many unknowns.

Astrid scratches at a dried piece of cheese stuck to the top of the pizza box. “And I’ve always wanted to see Singapore. I’ve heard the shopping is incredible.”

“Yeah, one of the malls has a river with a gondola in it.”

She picks up another slice, takes a bite, and with a full mouth says, “Whatever’s happening right now is on you. I don’t want to get killed or kidnapped because you darkened my doorstep. So I’m coming with you and you’re going to make this right. And I have conditions.”

I hold my hand up, beckoning her to list them.

“You’re paying me a retainer. Five grand a day.”

“Only fair.”

“And I want you to tell me the truth about who you are.”

“That’s going to be a lot of real heavy stuff.”

Astrid nods. “I get that. But if I’m in this now, I want to know the scope of it.”

The money, I don’t give a damn about. It’s the emotional honesty that feels like too steep a price. Especially because I spend so much time unpacking my past in program, it’s nice to have time where I don’t do that.

But I sense this isn’t a negotiation. Or it is, and I’ve already lost.

“Fine.” I get to my feet and my body feels like a concrete statue come to life. “I’ll tell you more on the plane. Let’s go get us some passports.”

“I thought it wasn’t safe for me to go home?”

“It’s not,” I tell her. “I have a guy.”

She nods, then glances at the carrier. “Is the cat coming, too?”

I look at P. Kitty, now standing in the tub, peeking over the rim. When the smell wafts over I realize I should have gotten a tray and some litter, too, but at least he was smart enough to go in the tub. I peel off another hundred and leave it on the dresser for cleanup.

I could probably leave him with Ms. Nguyen, or at a shelter, but I don’t want to. I want P. Kitty with me, where I know I can protect him. I don’t say that to Astrid because she might be annoyed that I seem more committed to him.

But she’s not the only one in this room who’s saved my life.

“Yeah,” I say. “We’re taking him with us.”

—

The copy store on St. Mark’s Place is easy to miss. It’s below street level, at the bottom of a short but treacherous flight of stairs, the stone grooved by time and foot traffic. The sign is battered, letters missing, and the door is half covered in plywood, someone having kicked in the lower pane of glass.

The inside is a jumbled mess, with a broken copier on the left wall and a counter dominating the rest of the space, behind which there are endless, haphazard stacks of unopened paper and cardboard boxes. The bald, heavyset Hawaiian man behind the counter is munching from a package of Oreos and reading a beaten Green Lantern comic. He barely looks up when we enter.

“Black-and-white copies only,” he says, turning to the next page.

“Actually, I was wondering if you could help me,” I tell him. “I’ve got this old Xerox, model 5052, that I’m trying to fix up. I’m in the market for spare parts. Specifically, the roller attachment. The hinge broke.”

The man puts down the comic and slowly chews an Oreo as he looks me up and down, then Astrid, making sure to take his time on her. Then he glances down at the cat carrier but doesn’t say anything about it.

Satisfied with what he sees, he flips up a section of the counter and squeezes past us to the front door, which he locks. Then he flicks off the lights, leaving us with nothing but the red glowing exit sign to navigate by.

He disappears toward the back, wending through a narrow pathway between the paper and boxes, where he turns on a small lamp. He uses a key to open another door behind him, which reveals a storage room full of more copier paper. He hands me two bundled reams.

“Put them anywhere,” he says.

I place them down precariously on another pile. Astrid joins in and the three of us form an assembly line, moving paper until the man uncovers the edges of a doorway in the floor. He inserts another key and pulls it up, opening to a pool of darkness. Lights click on from somewhere down below, revealing a metal staircase. He turns around to take the stairs backward, bracing with his hands so he can worm his way through the opening, and Astrid asks, “Can we have a moment?”

He shrugs. “Need a few minutes to get set up.” Then he’s gone.

She turns to me and slaps me on the chest. “What is this, Mark?”

“We’re getting passports and IDs. Fake names. Only way to travel.”

She looks around at the stacks of copier paper. “Okay, this is some John Wick shit, though.”

“And?”

“You told me it was nothing like that.”

“Maybe it’s a little like that.”

“I don’t feel good about this,” she says, eyeing the basement.

“You were pretty gung ho twenty minutes ago.”

“The reality is starting to sink in,” she says. “I’m not waiting for the plane. You have to give me something right now.”

She grabs my arm as she says this, digging her thumb into my skin. The look on her face is a mix of anger and—I think—desperation. I get it. This is a lot to ask of a person. I owe her something.

Unfortunately, there’s only one thing I can give her to guarantee she understands the gravity of this.

I tell her: “They called me the Pale Horse.”

She steps back. Her eyes go so wide I can see bloodshot white all the way around green irises. She shudders like she stepped into the cold night air. She keeps stepping back until she’s against the far wall.

At this point I don’t know what else to say, other than: “I’m sorry.”

Her eyes fall to the floor and her shoulders slump. I want to cross the room to her, want to comfort her, but my hands suddenly feel the way they used to: sharp, designed to kill. Not at all appropriate for what she needs right now.

What she needs is for me never to have knocked on her door.

Not tonight, not all those years ago, either.

I say it again—“Sorry”—and head down the ladder, giving her some space to process what I just told her.