Chapter 14

14

Jonathan

I feel as good as new. Better. I always feel better when I see Mas.

He does not invite me over. He lives in an impossibly chic apartment in Pigalle. His wife, Giselle, is the head of cybersecurity for the EU. She does not like me. She does not know that I am a contract killer; she does not like me because of how I affect Mas. I cannot blame her. Mas and I are tied together by shared trauma, and neither of us can be around the other very long without remembering exactly what ruined us.

I am walking along the cobblestone path beside the Seine, enjoying the feeling of not having a bullet in my chest. The Louvre is to my right; the Eiffel Tower is far ahead of me.

People walk past, but no one is in a rush. We are below street level. We do not come down here to hurry or cut corners. We come down here, mostly, to brood. There are dazed tourists here; we are all lost in a collective dream of Paris. I look out onto the water, where Monet has painted flecks of light.

A woman in a trench coat leans against the railing and gazes over the water. Up ahead, an old man shares a bottle of wine with himself.

I think about Eva. I do not know exactly what it is about her, but she has a quality of sticking in my mind. She was funny. She was up for anything. I find myself imagining what she would do if she were here. What she would say. Which is a strange and, frankly, ridiculous way to feel about a stranger. But maybe it is easier to feel that way about strangers.

Even if I never see her again, if I never find her, I can imagine for us a whole life together. I can place her on a pedestal, and every time that something goes wrong, from now until eternity, I can trace the source back to this very day—the day I lost her. Things would have been better. You could have had everything. If only…

God, I am so fucking depressing sometimes. I do it to myself, so quickly and so convincingly that I sometimes do not catch it until it is too late.

It is not the end. Yes, I should have asked Eva what hotel she was staying at. Asked for her number. Honestly, it was very shortsighted of me not to; I always suspected I would live. But I know that I can find her. It might even be fun. But first, I have to check in with my handler.

Thomas knows I was shot. I tried to convince him it was nothing, but he tends not to trust me when it comes to anything but murder.

He is especially mistrustful because of what happened the last time I was injured. A dog nearly tore my arm off, and I lied about the seriousness of the situation. I did not want to get the dog in trouble. I took another job where I had a Fail to Kill. My first one. I got my mark a week later, but by then I had been taken off the job, so there was less celebration, more yikes .

I have more kills than anyone else in the network, and yet all I ever hear from my handler is Could you take it down a few notches? You're kind of freaking people out.

I call him as I pass through a tunnel. The shade is crawling with tourists boldly drinking red wine and daring the sun to follow them under the bridge.

"I made it to Paris," I say. "I found a surgeon to remove the bullet. It was nothing. I probably could have done it myself." I did try, but in my delirium I only lodged the bullet deeper. Getting a bullet out of your chest is like scratching your back or jerking off: It is better if someone else does it for you.

"We don't have anything for you right now," Thomas says.

"Are you joking? You told me once that the network ran half a dozen jobs a week."

"We don't have anything for you right now." Like I did not catch his meaning the first time. "You were supposed to seek medical attention in Florence," he scolds me. "We had a doctor waiting for you. Instead, you jumped a train with a bullet in your chest, passed out in the loo and—"

"How do you know that?" I tug at my collar, scan the periphery.

"The same way I know everything." Thomas would like me to believe that I am being watched all the time. I know this is not strictly true. I have done a few tests to confirm it—breaking rules to see if I would be chastised—but I still stick up my middle finger, just for the hell of it. "Is someone watching me now?"

"You can assume someone is watching you every time you do something you are not supposed to do." I wonder if the network was watching me have sex with Eva. I hope not.

I hunch against the tunnel wall. I am still feeling a little vulnerable. Nearly dying will do that to a person. "I'm sorry."

"You're sloppy."

"Excuse me?" I practically vault off the wall. "Sloppy" is the worst thing you can call a control freak.

"You need to prove that you can hold it together a bit better."

I laugh in surprise, maybe a little in bravado. "Are you kidding me? I just did a triple in Florence. Who else can do that?"

"It's not just about kills."

"Really? What's it all about, Thomas? "

I hear his hiss of surprise.

He lowers his voice like he does not want to be found, even though I know exactly where he is.

Thomas works from home, in a cottage in the Cotswolds, in England. His office is on the ground floor. His window faces the street. He has a wife, Laura. His name is not Thomas; it is Alfie—as in "What's it all about, Alfie?" And now he maybe knows that I know that.

"Listen, mate ," he says. It is almost always a bad thing when an English person calls you "mate." Trust me on this. "You want me to be honest? You work for a firm. You work for them.

"People like you come into this job thinking: I can be my own boss. I can make my own hours. I'm my own man. Right? Wrong. You are not your own boss. You don't make your own hours. You are not your own man. In fact, you would have more freedom working the checkout counter at Marks and Sparks. Do you understand?"

I know where Thomas lives. I know he oversees the IT department at a UK grocery store. I know his routine and his friends and his family. What I do not know is who we work for. He calls them the network. He says they are everywhere, claims they have a hand in everything, but I do not believe that. Nobody controls the world.

Still, it drives me a little crazy that I do not know who they are. Years ago, I tried to find out. I reconned Thomas. As far as I could tell, he lived a totally ordinary life. He woke up every morning and drank tea with his wife. Then they both went into their separate home offices. They spent the workday on their computers. Every night at six, Thomas went to the pub for three hours, where he talked about football and the terrible fates of all the boys he went to school with.

He did not meet with strangers in dark alleyways. He did not have suspicious telephone calls—except when I called him. One night I broke into his office. I tried to search his computer, but I could not find anything revealing.

Thomas's life was so normal that I considered that this whole operation might be a sham. That he might be sending me out to kill people at random. That nothing was real except the money. And then I considered, maybe the money was the only thing that needed to be real.

Maybe it was better that I did not know. Because I knew I did not want it to stop. So I let it go. It still eats me up sometimes, but then, so does everything.

"Yes… sir ," I add for good measure. I need Thomas. I need to work. I need to kill people, and to do that, I really need to keep it together.

He sighs. "You know I like you. I do. You're a sort of charming psychopath. And certainly there have been times when I've wished for a bit of your… verve . But the problem with you is, you don't think about anyone else. When you're out there running your jobs willy-nilly, with your signature style and your antique weaponry, you are putting dozens of people behind the scenes—with families and loved ones and all the things that you don't want—"

"Cannot have," I remind him, even though we both know I use the job as an excuse.

"—at risk. You put them at risk. And no amount of kills is going to make that worthwhile to the people who want to live."

I say nothing. He interprets my silence as mollification. Maybe it is.

"You are one of the best," he says. "Your record is exemplary, but you were shot less than twenty-four hours ago. You're probably still in shock. Just take a month, one month off."

"A week."

"Three weeks."

"One."

"Start with one. Then we'll revisit." He is about to end the call.

"Thomas?"

He waits.

"I just wanted to say that you are an excellent handler."

He offers a strangled groan and ends the call.

Dusk is approaching. When the world gets dark, I sometimes feel personally responsible, as if I am the cause of all darkness.

I almost wish I had died. I should have considered that option more seriously. When you are dying, it is only natural to try to live. I should have taken the unnatural route. It would have been more my style.

I could kill myself now. I have sewn into the lining of my pants a concoction that would see me dead in three minutes, but for all I know, I would survive that, too. I seem to survive everything. I would probably survive, only with permanent brain damage or shattered nerves or auditory hallucinations.

Death is another one of those things that is better if someone else does it.

In some ways, this job is like suicide by cop. I cannot kill myself, but maybe someday, if I am lucky, I will find the right person. The person who can kill me.

The man with the wine bottle is watching me. I meet his eyes. He pulls his bottle closer, like I might ask him for it. Like we are that close.

I walk toward the Seine. I stand at the edge of the path, lean over the wall. The water is too slow and too shallow and too filthy to kill me. Maybe today is not my day for dying.

I still have to find Eva, to make sure she knows I did not abandon her on purpose.

I turn away from the river. I walk toward the nearest stairwell.

I start toward Les Puces, the flea market. She said it was magical. She said I would find everything I need.

I need her.