2. Brian

TWO

brian

Four days ago.

When the house doesn’t have any trash they need taken out, and when the darkness comes over me too strongly to sleep at all, when it starts affecting my functioning out in the world, that’s when I go on personal jobs.

I usually do private contracts, but when I don’t have a dossier and a due date on anyone, I give back to the world by choosing the most revolting piece of shit I can find, someone who is also a logistical challenge. Solving life-or-death puzzles is one of the many tactics I’ve come up with to help me function semi-normally in life.

I happen to have a contract at the moment, and the money on this one is one of the highest I’ve taken. Two million dollars. Just to kill someone. When the money is high, I’m either dealing with a potential heiress with a vendetta against her husband and a personal allowance she’s willing to risk to get the full jackpot, or a challenge. Someone so hard and dangerous to kill that the money has to be a big enough lure for the risk.

I don’t worry about guilt or innocence. Partly because I don’t care, but also because, generally speaking, if someone puts a big price on your head, you did something to deserve it. But it’s not always true. I didn’t used to care about this, but ever since Mina, I’ve been turning down jobs here and there. I’ve become a little more selective. As a result, word has gotten out that I might not take a job, and the offers have gotten bigger as a result. I’ve suddenly become the prom queen with an overflowing dance card.

I have no real need for this money, but I collect it and faithfully deposit it into my offshore accounts anyway.

I tell myself I turn down jobs because I don’t have the time. I have Mina to think of. Or I pretend maybe the job is too dangerous, and how would Mina cope at the house without me? And what if they tried to sell her to someone else who might hurt her?

But I know that’s a lie. It’s true that I don’t care about the people one way or the other, but I care about her. It matters to me that she thinks there’s something in me worth saving.

Every day I watch her grow darker and darker from exposure to me, like I’m a pathogen infecting her blood, choking out everything that is light and pure and good. I want her to stay in a kind of innocence and goodness for me. When I saw the glimpse of her darker edge, I thought I wanted that, but now I’m afraid it’ll suck us both under. I want her to be like both of us before either of us was broken.

I’m staking out my latest target’s house, learning his routine. It’s the most boring part of the job, but the one that ensures my safety from the law and any surprises that could result in my untimely death. Of course the surprises I’m looking for are those to do with the target or his security detail.

It’s why I’m caught off guard by the unaccounted for person and the pungent smell that surprises me then turns my world to darkness.

When I wake, there’s a black cloth bag over my head and I’m bound to a chair.

Great.

I assume my captor saw my breathing change, because I’m only conscious for a few minutes before the cloth is ripped away. It takes me a moment to adjust to the single bright bare bulb hanging down way too close.

“Sloan,” the man spits out my last name. “We have unfinished business.”

I squint at the Japanese man. No. I can’t be seeing Matsumoto. I killed him. Matsumoto was one of the original bidders for Mina. She was too broken, her contract had too many limitations, and here this piece of shit was bidding far higher than seemed right to me, given those circumstances.

I knew her brokenness appealed to him, and something in my gut said he wanted to do more damage. I bought her instead—my first heroic act in life—and Matsumoto never forgave me for taking away his toy when it was within his grasp. Later when I’d foolishly set her free, he’d been waiting to make sure she paid for it.

But when I went to Japan to bring her back, I know I killed that motherfucker. Maybe I should have shot him before I lit the match, but my sadism demanded the satisfaction of knowing he suffered, that it wasn’t a quick, easy death. Was there some servant I missed? Someone who untied him before I could get Mina to safety and start the blaze? Was there a secret sub basement? Tunnels that offered escape?

“What’s the matter Sloan? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

He chuckles, oh so amused. I finally let go of the breath I’ve been holding, because I’ve just realized this isn’t Matsumoto. It’s his son.

Fuck.

I’m not the guy who does loose ends. But let’s face it, it was clear enough who’d come to clean house, and I should have taken the son of Japan’s most notorious crime boss into account that night. I should have verified where he was and hunted him before he could hunt me. But I was so laser-focused on getting Mina out of there, on ensuring to myself she was still alive, that it didn’t occur to me the son was missing from the house when I went on my raid and burn mission.

I’ve gotten in a few tight spots before, times when I could have died, even once where I got captured and escaped. But back then it was only my own life in peril. And I’ve never really cared that much about that. If I’m dead, my nightmares stop because they live in me. When I’m gone, they’re gone. And maybe the world is a better place.

I never had someone else I had to worry about. Now all I can think about is: if I don’t survive this, if I don’t get back to her, what will happen to Mina? Will the house sell her? Lindsay is just dying to take her out from under my protection. That sick son of a bitch. If I don’t come back to the house, he could get rid of her and make a profit.

The bar is high for what I consider to be a sick son of a bitch, given my own dark proclivities, but Lindsay is the worst kind of dangerous. He’s Good Guy Dangerous. He’s the hero trying to save the world who puts people around him in danger because the mission is all that matters.

The guy who really believes he’s doing the right thing—most of the time, anyway. The guy who thinks he’s doing something for some altruistic greater good. If you ask me, society is only as fucked up as it currently is due to the morality of self-sacrifice. I sacrifice for you, you sacrifice for me. We all do shit we’d rather not be doing for some imaginary greater good of society. And everyone gets manipulated. And we all become slaves in the process.

But what the fuck is society? Just a group of individuals. How can the needs of the group be served when no individual within it is ever happy? I don’t claim to have a real moral code, but if I didn’t have the fucked-up damage I have, the thing that slithers around in my brain demanding retribution in whatever form I can find it… I could see a society functioning just fine on enlightened self-interest. I’m not an idiot, I know what I do isn’t in my self-interest. It’s self-destruction and taking others down with me.

The doc and I are both equally fucked-up psychos. We’re just expressed differently. He’s the good fucked-up psycho, and I’m the bad one. But we’re both dangerous. With him, the consolation you get is… he meant well. Or… how could he have known what would happen? With me? You see me coming. You know what you did. You know why I’m there.

The thing about Good Guy Bad Guys like Lindsay is… they think they’re nice guys. They’re that dickhead who thinks some woman owes him her pussy because he’s such a nice guy . They’re the most dishonest motherfuckers in the universe—especially to themselves—and the world would be better off without them.

If the doc was the overt killing type, he’d be the kind of guy who’d kill you then convince himself he was doing it to save the world because he was reducing the carbon footprint of humanity or some such shit. I don’t give one flying good goddamn about anybody’s carbon anything. If I kill you, it’s because I wanted to. I don’t need a deeper reason.

So whatever Lindsay does to Mina in my absence, he won’t do it because he’s owning his evil. He’ll lie to himself. He’ll concoct some elaborate story about how whatever he’s doing is somehow in Mina’s interest. Because he’s weak.

There’s a reason she trusts me. It took me a while to figure it out, but I get it now. It’s because I never pretended to be the good guy. I never pretend anything I’m doing is in anyone else’s greater good or like it’s some sacrifice I’m making. I might enjoy the mindfuck, but you know exactly where the fuck you stand with me within seconds of meeting my gaze. There are no warm and reassuring platitudes before I go in for the kill.

But with Lindsay, there are. It’s what makes him a more dangerous animal than me.

If I don’t manage to escape, Mina’s got a few weeks before that bastard realizes I’m not coming back, but after that… I shake the thought from my head. I am coming back. Matsumoto’s third rate son isn’t going to be the one to remove me from this world.

The Other Matsumoto observes me like I’m a bug under a glass. I know that feeling well, but from the other side of the glass . I’m pretty sure Matsumoto is the guy’s last name. In the Japanese underworld Matsumoto was known only by the one name and his full and formal identity was hidden behind about a thousand shell corporations. So good luck on finding out his real full name. I appreciate this courtesy the Other Matsumoto has given me to think through all this before he launches into whatever stupid speech he’s prepared to make me sorry I offed his daddy.

“You should be buying me a drink,” I say. “Aren’t you the new shiny crime lord everybody can piss their pants over and tell cautionary tales to their children about so they won’t misbehave? I made you the new legend in your part of the world, and this is the thanks I get?”

The Other Matsumoto clenches his jaw. “I could give two shits about my father.”

I smell the lie and bravado on him as soon as the words are out of his mouth.

“Then why am I here? If you wanted to meet up and shoot the shit about the joys of crime, you could have made an appointment with my secretary.” I don’t have a secretary, but I’m sure he gets that.

“I want the property you stole from my father.”

The house that burned to the ground? No. He means Mina. He wants Mina. The rage boils inside me, and for a moment I imagine that on pure adrenaline alone I could break my bonds and strangle the fuck out of this motherfucker. I take a few slow, measured breaths. No. I don’t want it to be quick. I want to take my time with this one. I didn’t get that chance with his father. This is the opportunity for a do-over. Even if I could escape, if I’m in a full blown rage, I won’t get to take my time with him.

When I trust myself to speak, I say: “She’s protected and hidden.”

If he could get to Mina, he would have already killed me. He doesn’t know where she is. I repeat this over and over in my mind like a mantra. The reassurance is hollow.

Then a cartoon light bulb goes on over my head.

“You’re my client,” I say, finally realizing this thing I should have realized in the first moments of captivity. Motherfucker.

Matsumoto just smiles, as if to say took you long enough . Well, I never claimed to be a rocket scientist. I’m good at torture, death, and the logistics to make those things seamlessly come together. It doesn’t automatically make me a super genius mastermind.

This little piece of shit approached me through back channels on the dark web. I should have known that contract was too high. He sought me out specifically. He knew where I’d be tracking the target while Matsumoto was tracking me. But it also means, he had to lure me out, so he can’t possibly know where Mina is.

“I just needed to get you away from her, so I could lure her out to rescue you. I sent her some mail.”

My heartbeat picks up speed, and it’s all I can do not to have a childhood flashback. There are exactly two things that make me scared: Worry for Mina, and the demons from my childhood. I was too small to kill people back then, and when those memories rise up, I forget that I’m bigger now.

I take another long slow breath. We have a PO box. Matsumoto—the father—would have had that address from doing business with the house. Our true identities and location are hidden behind many layers of privacy, multiple corporations and trusts, God himself couldn’t unsnarl it to find our actual physical location.

But with Mina on the line, that confidence fades a bit.

Gabe checks that box once a week. He always varies the day and time he goes. He varies the way he dresses and moves. He always makes sure no one is watching or following. I should have been in charge of getting the mail. I trust Gabe, but what if he wasn’t as careful as he should be? What if he’s started to drop his guard? What if someone followed him back to the house?