Chapter 79

79

Eva

We don't take a train this time. Or a car. Or even a taxi. We can walk to where this all started—to where this will end. The address is disconcertingly near Les Puces.

We wait until well after midnight, when the streets are mostly clear, when the city is mostly silent, waiting. We arm ourselves before we leave. Nothing fancy—two matching Glocks stowed under our jackets. The streets are not completely deserted, but they are empty enough for us to feel like they belong a little to us.

Jonathan is quiet. I try to convince myself it's because he was scared about Mas. That he's still in shock. That when all of this is over, he will go back to normal—but what is normal?

I've spent seven days with Jonathan. We've been to four countries and killed three people. You might think it's impossible to really get to know someone in that amount of time, but knowing him isn't the problem. I knew him from the start, because he's just like me.

We love hard, but we fear harder. We scare easy. We run, and we never look back.

"What are you thinking?" I ask him.

"I don't know…," he says as we walk through dim, charmed streets.

I feel inside me this swelling urge to leave first, to run first, to break his heart first . Like that would turn losing into winning.

"I can't believe you're doing this," I say.

He almost doesn't take the bait. Almost. "Doing what?"

"Like you don't know."

He makes a groan-like sound.

"What, so you're just not gonna say anything? You're being a prick." He flinches.

"Oh. Okay. We're doing this now?"

"Well, we're headed toward certain death, so I don't know how we can possibly fit it in later."

He scoffs. "I have a lot going on right now."

"No shit. Me, too. Up until last night, I thought we were both in the same situation. Contract killers. Trying to leave the business. Everyone wants us dead. Sound familiar?"

"I think we should do this later." Jonathan lengthens his stride.

"You're gonna break up with me, aren't you? Just tell me, so I can break up with you first."

He cocks his head. "If I tell you, then wouldn't I be breaking up with you first?"

"Fine. I break up with you. Preemptively."

"Okay."

" Okay? That's your response. After everything we've been through?"

"We're hunting down a person who has facilitated hundreds of murders across Europe, possibly the globe."

"And you think that's more important?"

His face cracks. "Don't make me laugh."

"Jonathan," I say. "If we make it out alive, what then?"

He sighs, and I can tell he's as lost as he ever was. "That's the thing about the future," he says. "It hasn't happened yet."

"Don't you want me anymore?"

He rests a hand on my good arm. "I want you alive."

"Well, I want more than that." I shove his hand off, storm around the corner.

Jonathan starts to follow me, but then he stops in his tracks. "Oh shit ."

"What ‘oh shit'?" I search the tired streets but don't notice anything amiss.

"I've been here before."

"What? When?"

He looks at me. I've missed his eyes so much that I step back in surprise. "After we met on the train, I tried to find you. Your name wasn't on the passenger list, so I tracked down every person in our car, in case one of them would lead me to you."

"The American. The one who didn't leave." The one who watched me open the suitcase.

Jonathan takes a step forward, then stops again. "His name is Bruce. He taught me in a fencing class. He hates me. He lives in a penthouse—three penthouses actually, one on top of another—at the corner of Rue du Parc."

"Lucky guy." I wait for Jonathan to say more, but he doesn't.

We told Mas and Giselle that we were just going to look around. We swore this was reconnaissance. We pretended we would be right back. I don't think any of us believed it.

The thing is, we don't have an easy out. Jonathan and I gave our lives to someone, and now they get to decide what happens to them.

"There's no way we can just walk in and kill him, is there?" I ask.

"It seems unlikely."

"Do you think he knows we're here, right now?"

"Maybe."

I scan the streets, looking for direction, a sign, anything. But I have been an assassin long enough to know there is never a foolproof plan. There is never a job that goes completely right. Murder is unpredictable, any way you slice it. The one thing I have, the one thing I have relied on, the one thing that has gotten me here alive, is my ability to do things without thinking.

I cross to a trash can. I slip my Glock out from under my jacket, wipe my prints and drop the gun into the bin. Jonathan watches me. I start toward Rue du Parc.

"Where are you going?" he asks.

I spin around, walk backward a few steps. "Forward." I spin away from him and walk faster.

Not to be dramatic, but I don't want to go back to the life I had before. I can't go back, so the only way is forward.

To my death, maybe. But at least I have a destination.

—

I have no idea what to expect as I approach the tall glass doors with my hands where the guards can see them.

A doorman steps out and holds one of the doors open for me. I did not expect anything, but I really did not expect that.

Jonathan is right behind me, hovering over me, like he could save either of us if things went wrong.

We step into the building. It's classically French. It has a leafy courtyard, with marble fountains gurgling. It smells like dust and lavender and it looks ancient and it makes you feel insignificant and romantic at the same time.

A guard stands at the door, pointing a gun at our heads. Another guard pats us down in the entryway. He finds a knife around Jonathan's ankle.

"I completely forgot I had that," Jonathan says.

The security guard sighs and says, "Empty your pockets."

Jonathan hands over fistfuls of pills, a multitool and a switchblade. The guard finds nothing on me, because I am an actual badass.

"He's waiting for you." The guard leads us to an old-fashioned wrought iron elevator inside a metal cage.

An elevator operator waits inside. The guard follows us in, keeping his gun trained on us.

"He doesn't want us dead," I say as the elevator rattles beneath us. "At least not yet."

"He probably wants to watch us die," Jonathan hums under his breath. "To make sure it happens this time."

The door pings open on an ordinary penthouse—not ordinary, maybe. Don't get me wrong; it's big and it's expensive and it's impressive. But it could belong to anyone. A real estate magnate, an oil baron, old money or new. There is nothing in the textured rugs or the floor-to-ceiling windows that screams Murder-for-Hire Empire .

The guard directs us into a great room with a low view across Paris: the point of the glass Louvre Pyramid, the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. The sun is just starting to bleach the sky. I have this sudden memory of my first day in Paris—I guess because this might be my last—how I walked along the Seine and observed all the pieces of Paris laid out like toys. I was a tourist, and life was a game.

Bruce enters the room. I recognize him immediately, but he looks stronger, sharper, more dangerous. Probably because I know he's a villain.

"How nice of you to stop by," he says in English. "Do you want a drink?"

"I'll hold off until we establish whether you want us dead," I say.

He laughs boldly. "What I like about you, Annika, is that you're such a joker. I think people in peril are just so much more humorous than other people. You really have to suffer, I think, to be truly funny."

"Thank you for contributing to my sense of humor."

He blinks at me. "Exceptional," he says, like I'm his pet. I guess I was. He turns to Jonathan. "Do you want a drink? Frank, is it? No, that's not right. It's Ethan. Don't look surprised. I know your real name. I know everything about you, now that you led me to your brother."

"I'm good on the drink," Jonathan says.

Bruce wanders to a drink cart and makes himself a martini. He's very clearly living in a fantasy world where he is James Bond. I know because I used to live in one, too. Underneath his facade is probably a very damaged, troubled person, but that doesn't really inspire sympathy when someone wants to kill you.

I scan the room—force of habit. I find all the escape routes, the best positions and the weapons. There are weapons everywhere: an umbrella stand full of swords, a rackful of guns, antique sabers mounted to a wall. They are so immaculate that I think he must never use them, but I've been wrong about that before. There are also four armed guards, one in each corner of the room, pointing guns at Jonathan and me.

"You can call me Bruce," he says. "That's not my real name, of course, but it's so much more fun pretending, isn't it?"

"Are you planning to kill us?" Jonathan asks. "Because if you are, I don't want to die having small talk."

"You see what I mean?" Bruce says to me. "Funny." He lifts his martini and takes a sip. Then he walks along the glass wall, observing the city below. "We met on the train, you may remember. That was a bit of a fuckup. Neither of you was supposed to be on that train. Neither was I. I was in Florence to keep an eye on you, Ethan. You'd had too many close calls and your performance was under review. It was completely by chance—or should we call it fate?—that Annika showed up to bury her living boyfriend."

My heart drops. "You know about Andrew?"

"Of course I know," Bruce says. "Don't worry. He's not dead. Yet. I did want him dead. He turned against the network—you remember. He went to the police—not that they believed him, of course. But you get enough people saying crazy things, it starts to sound rational.

"Lucky for me, getting shot off that bridge woke Andrew up. He ran away to Brazil. A year in the Pantanal and he was begging to come back. He works for me now, in a different department. He knows who I am and where I am, but he never told you, did he? But he told me that you stopped by, and all about your plan to fake your deaths." God, my ex really sucks.

"What do you want?" I ask.

"That is such a good question," he says. "It is a very important one, don't you think? It determines who you'll be in a way nothing else does. Whether you'll be satisfied with the world everyone else lives in. Or whether you want more.

"I'm a lot like you." He addresses Jonathan—no surprise. He clearly doesn't see me as a threat, which makes me want to kill him even more. As he speaks, I let my eyes wander, analyzing the room: the elevator, the stairwell, every door and window.

"I was always treated like a freak," he continues. "Even though there was nothing evidently wrong with me, people could tell I was different." I used to think it was funny that the villains in movies always took a moment to monologue their origin stories, but it's clear that Bruce has been dying to have this moment, to tell someone everything . It's no fun being the bad guy behind a curtain. "There are benefits to being an outsider. You see things from a distance." I startle, thinking he's caught me calculating the distance from the axe on the wall to the elevator—but of course he hasn't. Women are the true outsiders.

"And there's a certain degree of detachment, and that detachment allows you to separate yourself from consequences, from devastation—even devastation you caused." I hate that I kind of understand what he's saying. There's nothing worse than a villain who's a little like you.

"I came from a good family—by ‘good' I mean ‘rich'—and I used my family's wealth to create more wealth. It was easy making money but it wasn't fun. For something to be fun, it has to be dangerous. I was searching for just the right opportunity. The opportunity to have more ." He gestures across the window, as if he owns all of Paris.

"Did you order the hit on me?" Jonathan asks, getting straight to the point.

Bruce shrugs. "You were getting sloppy. I've been in this business for years; you see a lot of people crack up. Better safe than sorry.

"I could have had you identified as a defector, but I don't know if I have a man on my payroll who could take you out. I like efficiency, and after what I saw on that sleeper train I knew you liked this one, so I contacted Laura directly with the job. But as you know, Annika proved inefficient. I should never have trusted a woman." Ick. "The situation got a little out of control, but I think, ultimately, we can come together and make sure that everyone walks away happy."

"You said ‘walk,'?" I point out. Walk , as in not in a body bag.

"We don't want you dead. You've made us a lot of money. You've made yourselves a lot of money."

"You sent your assassins after us," I point out. Jonathan says nothing. I don't know what he's thinking. "You killed Laura," I say, because somebody should.

"We've all made mistakes," Bruce says. "Both of you have killed a lot of people."

"What made you change your mind?" I ask. "I mean, yesterday—even hours ago—you wanted us dead."

He's still looking at Jonathan, who is suspiciously silent. "Can you tell her what has changed, Ethan?" Bruce slips his phone out of his pocket and holds it up. Fuck. Maybe both of my exes suck.

"I told him I want to go back to the job." Jonathan was texting furiously on the train, calling someone over and over. It wasn't Mas. It was Alfie's old number. It was Bruce.

I can't believe Jonathan offered to go back without even telling me—except he did kind of warn me last night in Bordeaux. I thought I had convinced him. I thought we were in this together, but I was wrong. He doesn't want to change. He doesn't want me.

I turn to Bruce. "He offered to join you and you still went through with the assassination attempt on his brother?"

Bruce sips his martini, then answers me. "It's hard to call these things off at the last minute. We sent ten men to kill Mas. Not all of them got the message in time."

Jonathan steps forward. "I want to go back, but she doesn't have to."

"That is fine with me." Bruce shrugs. "We can make a deal. Everyone you love will be safe as long as you are ours."

"I thought we were in this together," I tell Jonathan.

"Can we talk privately?" Jonathan asks Bruce. "I mean, with the illusion of privacy?"

I can't imagine he will let us go off alone together, but he seems completely confident in his control of the situation. I can't exactly blame him. We've always been his pawns.

"Sure." He gestures to one of his guards. "Take them into the Louis XIV room." The guard starts toward a door. "No," Bruce corrects. "All of you."

All four guards lead us into the adjoining room, guns still trained at our temples.

—

It's hard to have a personal conversation in front of a firing squad, but as usual, I have to do what I have to do. I can see why Bruce chose this room—there are no weapons on the walls or anywhere else. The decor actually reminds me of our hotel room in Versailles; it looks like it has a floral communicable disease.

Jonathan is avoiding my eyes, choosing instead to watch the city below through a tall, narrow window. He was the one who requested a private audience with me, and yet he seems to have nothing to say.

I honestly hoped that he had a plan. That he thought we could take out the four men with guns trained on our heads, but he knows as well as I do that we can't. Maybe if we were armed, or had the benefit of distraction, or the playground of the city. But we're trapped in a flowery French room, and even if we could escape these four men, we could never get out of this building alive.

Most importantly, Jonathan doesn't want to leave.

I approach him at the window. "I understand why you're doing this," I say.

"No, you don't." He keeps his eyes fixed on the street below.

"Um. Yes, I do." My gaze flits over the armed guards. I wish I could kill them, just so they wouldn't be listening. I lower my voice. "You want to protect me."

"No, I don't." Jonathan exhales, then turns to face me. His face is cold; it's an expression I remember. I've seen it a few times: It's his kill face. The one he makes when he's about to take your life. "You don't need me to protect you. You're stronger than I am. That's why I'm doing this. Not to protect you. To protect me."

"I don't understand," I say, but I think I do.

"Bruce is right. I'm not like everybody else. I don't want to be. I want more."

"More what ?"

He shrugs. I guess because he doesn't want to admit: more blood, more danger, more death. What he said last night was a little true, even if I don't want to admit it. There's no place for us on the other side of all this. There's no place where we would fit or make sense. He couldn't hold a job; I wouldn't want one.

Where would we live? How would we pay for it? What would we do when we woke up to another nightmare? When we felt that terror and had no way to escape it?

We would turn on ourselves. We would turn on each other.

I know that and I knew it. From the very first day on the train, when I thought we should hook up and walk away. He knew it when he said we should have sex and separate. We could pretend for only so long before we had to admit that the biggest lie that we ever told ourselves was that we could be together.

"Eva," he says gently. "I don't choose you. I choose this."

I open my mouth to protest but find myself saying, "I understand. I wish I didn't, but I do."

He shudders a little, but he doesn't argue. He doesn't try to stop me when I walk away.

A single guard escorts me out of Bruce's penthouse. He doesn't even keep his gun trained on me. It hangs limply at his side while he checks his phone in the elevator. That is how little he considers me a threat.

I could take him so easily. I could use his gun to blow his brains out. I could go back. But then what? Even I can't take out three armed guards and a supervillain. And Jonathan doesn't want me to.

The elevator falls. I watch Paris drop out from under me, crashing like my heart.