Page 55 of Assassin Anonymous

I take a sip of my cocoa and she’s right; like drinking a melted chocolate bar. This might have been a mistake, but I have some Lactaid in my coat. I nod up toward the skyscrapers looming over us. “And you sort of work in a castle.”

“Right, but no scepters or fancy dresses,” she says. “Astronauts analyze data, you know?”

“Yeah, but I don’t get to go to the moon,” I tell her. “It’s fine.”

“Stressful?”

“Some days. A lot of the time it’s just, you know, killing the alligator closest to the boat.”

She makes a face. “I hate that phrase.”

“Some days are like that, though.”

“Right, but why does productivity have to be about killing things?”

“What should I be doing to the alligators instead?”

“Petting them?”

“I’d lose a hand.”

“Then make them…I don’t know, bunnies.”

“Bunnies?”

She nods. “Pet the bunny closest to the boat.”

“Wouldn’t the bunnies drown?”

She sticks her tongue out at me. “Pet the bunny closest to the bench.”

“That’s cute. I like it.”

She places the hot cocoa in front of her and puts her legs in my lap. Immediately I start massaging her calf muscles. “What about family?” she asks.

“Don’t have much of one. No siblings. Parents passed when I was a kid.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I tell her. Seeking to put a period on the topic, I ask, “What about you?”

“My parents live in Phoenix, which is where I’m from. I have a brother who lives upstate. He’s a prison guard. We’re pretty close, but I don’t see him as much as I’d like.”

“Prison guard. He must be tough.”

“He likes to think he is. If you ever meet him, he’ll probably threaten you, do the whole ‘big brother’ thing, but don’t worry, he’s harmless.”

I laugh at the thought, but also, the idea that I might meet a member of her family. That’s new. I take a deep sip of my cocoa, racking my brain for something other than family to discuss so we don’t stumble back onto my lack thereof, when I catch sight of a familiar face behind her.

Antonio Amato.

“Tell me a little more about how you got into the food bank thing,” I say.

And I listen with one ear while I run the math in my head.

Sometimes I flip through open contracts on the Via Maris. Just something to pass the time between Agency gigs. Local jobs don’t tend to pay as well, but they’re way easier to pull off because I’m not infiltrating a government building or figuring out how to eliminate a major security system. Some of it is bullshit; a guy wants his wife killed because she’s having an affair, someone wants their neighbor killed for mowing the lawn at seven a.m. every Sunday. I don’t mess with stuff like that.

But two nights ago, I saw a contract for Amato and filed it away in the back of my head.