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Eva

When I wake up in the morning, Jonathan’s asleep beside me: arm thrown back, chin tipped to the sky. He doesn’t even stir when I get up. So much for never sleeping.

I almost want to yell Gotcha! But I have better things to do, just marginally. I need to check in with Sherri. I should’ve checked in last night, but I was half asleep when we got here.

I left my phone hidden under the front seat of the Bugatti. I get dressed quickly and grab the car key. The lobby is empty. Hemingway’s piano is tucked silently into a corner, being pretentious.

I unlock the car and pass my hand under my seat. The space is empty. The phone is gone. Jonathan must have taken it. He knows.

I plunge my hand farther and my fingers brush against plastic. Thank fuck.

I yank the phone out from under the seat.

Sherri is calling me. She’s called me seventeen times. Fuck.

I scan the sleepy little village. It’s deserted at this early hour but I still head out toward the pasturelands, just to be extra careful.

“What’s going on?” I say when I’m far enough away to feel safe.

“Did you sleep with him?” Sherri asks. Double fuck.

“No. I mean, we slept in the same bed, but we barely even—”

“At Versailles.”

“Oh, that .”

“Yes, that.” Sherri is pissed.

“How do you even know that?” I ask. I spoke to one guard. He said he would turn off the cameras.

“The agency has access everywhere.”

I feel my chest contract but I remind myself that I told Sherri where we were going. She even helped me break into the Hall of Mirrors. It’s creepy to think that someone was watching, but it was probably for my protection.

Besides, I didn’t do anything wrong. She never said I couldn’t sleep with him. Again. “Yeah, I slept with him. I’m trying to find out his weaknesses—remember?”

“Not in bed,” Sherri points out.

“James Bond does it all the time.” It’s true. It’s part of the fun of being an assassin. Sex and death just go together.

“They asked me if we should take you off the job.”

“Wait—what?”

“They think you may have been compromised.”

“That seems a little puritanical. Besides, you knew I slept with him before, on the train.”

“They think you might fall for him.”

“How misogynistic. I’m a professional. Even if I did fall for him, I could still kill him. I’m trying to create intimacy .”

“All right, have you got any new intel?”

“…Not exactly. Not yet.” Sherri’s concern is a little justified. Not only do I not have new intel, but I’ve also shared my secrets with Jonathan. I’m the only one revealing their weaknesses.

This is starting to get messy. Maybe Sherri is right to be concerned. Maybe I should just let the agency take me off the job. I don’t want a Fail to Kill on my record, but maybe I’ll fail no matter what. Maybe I can’t do this.

“Are you sure you want to stay on?” she asks, reading my mind. “I’m starting to feel a bit guilty. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked you to do this.” She switches from boss to friend so fast, it makes my heart lurch. “I know how lonely you’ve been, especially since Andrew. Maybe you’re too vulnerable. Maybe this isn’t a risk worth taking.”

It’s funny how she’s asked me to risk my life time and time again but she wants to draw the line at me risking my heart. Still, she does know me, better than anyone else in the world. Maybe she’s right. Maybe a heart is not something to risk.

I think through what will happen if I stop now. I’ll leave. I’ll never see Jonathan again. Someone else will kill him. No matter what, he’s going to die.

Meanwhile, I’ll lose all the goodwill I’ve built up at the agency over the years. I’ll be back to smaller jobs and smaller paydays—I might not even be assigned new jobs. Things have always been stacked against me. I’m a woman. The powers that be are always looking for excuses. She’s too moody! She’s too sensitive! What if she gets her period?

If I Fail to Kill after fucking my mark, the agency will one hundred percent believe that it’s because I fell for him. They’ll think, Never should’ve hired a woman to do a man’s job! Which will only make it harder for all future aspiring female assassins to get work. If I don’t kill Jonathan, it’ll discredit my entire gender.

And what if the agency really does stop giving me jobs? What’ll happen to me then? It’s not something I’ve ever thought about—although I really should have thought about it. Will they just let me go back to my normal life when I know so many of their secrets? How will I explain the gap in my résumé?

There’s a very real chance that if I don’t kill Jonathan, my life as I know it will be over.

I shake all the icky thoughts from my head. I realize I’m standing in a cow field.

“Of course I want the job,” I snap, like I can’t believe she’s asking.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Because it’s a green light.”

“What?” I say, startled, but I know what a green light is. Red means stop. Yellow means reconnaissance. Green means go.

“It’s a green light,” she repeats.

“Great!” I say, too fast. “It’s probably better that way. Just get it over and done with. In and out.”

“Eva,” Sherri says.

“It’s fine. He’ll be dead in an hour.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

I pull myself together. I stand tall. “You believe in me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” she says.

“Consider it done.” I need to kill Jonathan. I need to kill him now. Before I change my mind. Before I fall too hard. Before I’m in too deep.

I’ve killed thirty-six people; what’s one more?

—

I start planning as I head back toward the hotel. Not the kill but the escape, which is the most important part. Killing is usually easier than getting away with it.

Sherri told me that I don’t need to worry about the body.

“Just leave it in the room. Checkout is at eleven. We have plenty of time to get a cleanup crew in there, if you do it as soon as possible.”

This makes me curious about how close the other agents are, how closely I am being watched. Sherri knew about Versailles, which means someone was watching me there. I remind myself that I don’t need to know who or how. It’s not my job. My job is simple: Kill.

“Just worry about getting yourself out of there,” Sherri cautioned me.

Our room is at the top of the hotel, which gives me privacy but not escape. The hotel is an old one, and there are only two exit doors: one in the lobby and one in the café. I went out through the lobby this morning, so I enter through the café.

I pass by a storage room where there are backpacks and dirty sneakers—dozens of them. I’m not sure why so many hikers would be passing through a tiny village until I realize: the Santiago Trail. It’s a five-hundred-mile religious pilgrimage across Spain, and the French route starts near here, in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port.

It’s the perfect escape. I can just walk away.

I scan the hallways. There are no security cameras, no other guests in sight. I scoop up a backpack—I’m sure the hiker gods will bless the previous owner for their generosity. I slip the straps over my shoulders and head toward the lobby restroom.

Unfortunately for me, the backpack belongs to a man who sweats a lot. I hold my nose and change my clothes. I even find a hat to hide my hair. I stuff my old clothes inside the backpack, stick on a pair of cheap sunglasses and start up the stairs.

Jonathan left a gun and a knife on the table. Hopefully he’s still asleep. The gun is the obvious kill weapon but I need to grab them both. Fingers crossed that he doesn’t have access to any other weapons if he wakes up before he’s dead.

I will use my pillow to muffle the gunshot and I will shoot him in the head. It’s practically mercy. It’s the gentlest way to go, to die in your sleep. To die before you know you’re dying. He’ll probably be dreaming. He might even be dreaming of me.

I can do this. I can wash my hands and walk away. I’m not attached to this stranger. Even if he seemed to understand me. Even if he wasn’t afraid when I told him my truth. Even if he’s hot and adventurous and seems to genuinely like me. So what? I’m sure I’ll find someone else. It took me thirty years to find him, so if I live to be sixty, I should come across somebody just as compatible. Everyone knows that dating is just a numbers game.

I might have loved him in another life, but in this one I’m going to kill him. I’m going to walk away from whatever this thing is and go back to my life as an assassin. The exact life I want. Where nothing matters and nothing feels real.

Perfect.

I push back against the door as I open it, to keep it from making a sound. I crane my head into the room. His body is as I left it—arm thrown back, shut eyes facing the sky, chest rising and falling with the slow regularity of sleep.

It’s now or never.

I deposit the backpack in the hallway, to pick up on the way out. I slip off my shoes to quiet my footfalls. I leave the door slightly ajar, preparing my escape.

I let the rhythm of murder fall over me like a veil. I notice things I never saw with my nonkiller eyes: the grade of the floor, the thickness of the pillow, the make of his gun, the length of his knife relative to the depth of his heart, at an angle between his second and third ribs. Everything speaks to me; everything encourages me; everything in this room is a pathway to a murder.

I follow that path to the bed.

And just like that, I’m standing over him, looking down on his now-familiar face and telling myself:

Here is your villain.