Page 50

50

Eva

I leave his sword in the wall. It’s not my job to clean up after him. He ran, like they all do eventually, but for a different reason.

I walk out of the hotel, moving without thinking, the way I sometimes do. The sun is high in Barcelona. The city moves with the music of itself. I hail a cab and tell the driver where to take me. I know where I’m going. There was never really any question of that.

Jonathan told me he’d been staying in Paris. He took an overnight train to see a doctor there, as if there were not doctors between Florence and France. It doesn’t make sense. Unless the doctor is someone he trusts. Unless the doctor is someone he knows. Unless the doctor is family.

I head to the train station. I book the high-speed train to Paris. I’ll be there in six hours. Assuming Jonathan is driving, I’ll probably beat him there. Probably. He is driving a Bugatti.

I know that Jonathan likes me, but I also know that part of him doesn’t like liking me. I remember his expression when I told him why we kill, his terror at being seen, at being understood.

Jonathan likes his darkness. He likes his weapons and his tragedy and his unhappiness. He likes being a killer. I know because I’m like him. I’m married to my trauma, and one day I will be buried by it.

I take a seat next to a window. I watch the city flatten into fields that then undulate into hills. I have six hours to decide what to do—not just with Jonathan but with the rest of my life.

—

Sherri’s been calling for hours. She’s left me dozens of messages coded “SOS.” I’m not sure if she lied to me. I’m not sure of anything just now, but I can’t keep avoiding her.

When I’m halfway to Paris, I lock myself in a bathroom and call her back.

“We need to ta—,” I start, but I can’t finish, because Sherri interrupts.

“Thank fuck! Oh my God! Thank fuck!” She’s in a panic.

“Are you okay?” I say, forgetting my anger and confusion. I’ve never heard her sound so distressed.

“Do you not understand the meaning of ‘SOS’? Where the hell have you been? I was sure you’d been killed!” I honestly feel a little warmed by her fear. Maybe I can trust her. Maybe she can explain everything.

“Sorry,” I say. “It wasn’t safe to talk.”

“Is he there? Please tell me you’re not anywhere near him.” This feels like a major turnaround considering I’m supposed to be killing him.

“No, he’s not here.” I take a deep breath. “To be honest, Sherri, I’m not sure if I want this job anymore…” This is a pretty big admission. I’m testing the waters. I don’t tell her that I’m not sure if I want any jobs. That’s a problem for future me.

“I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.” She starts to cry. I’m shocked. Sherri and I have been through a lot together: murders and missions and midnight chats. She has kept her cool through some extremely hairy situations. I didn’t even know she could cry. She must really not want me to quit.

“Hey! No. Don’t cry. Look: It’s a good thing. I think maybe I should just take some time off, try something else for a while.” She cries harder, so I try harder to comfort her. “It’s okay. We’ll still see each other. We can go for drinks anytime.”

“I lied to you.”

“You—” Fuck. “What?”

“I’ve lied to you about everything. The agency—it’s not some benevolent organization. It’s not even an organization. I made it up.”

My heart goes cold. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s a forum on the dark web where people order hits. It’s called Hire-a-Hitman.”

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“I wish I were,” she says.

“I don’t believe it,” I say. I am so far from believing that I don’t even know where to begin. My brain is trying to convince me that she’s lying now. That my life as I knew it was real. That this isn’t happening. Sherri was my “M.” She was smart and brave and moral —even when she was instructing me to commit murder. “Why would you ever be on a website called Hire-a-Hitman?” I don’t mean to focus on an unimportant detail, but the name is distracting.

“My husband—remember I told you I found out about the agency through him? That was partly true. Roughly seven years ago, he suddenly started making bundles of money. He said it was bonuses at his job, and then investments, but as the years went by, I started to get suspicious. I had a look at his computer when he was at the pub and I found out what he was up to.

“I was going to confront him, but then I thought—I quite like the money. And I’m just as good on a computer as he is, so why not have a go?”

“But…what about Andrew?” Andrew was the one who sold me the agency story. He wouldn’t have lied to me.

“I knew Andrew from school. He’d been in and out of prison for assault, all sorts. He used to be very troubled. I invited him to meet me, said I had a job he might be interested in. I was going to tell him the truth, but I panicked. I didn’t think he’d want to work for a housewife pulling jobs off some dodgy forum. So I made up a whole story, told him I was part of a branch of MI6. I don’t even really know what MI6 does. I’ve just seen them on telly. Luckily, Andrew didn’t really know either. I never thought I’d convince him until I told him about the money. I even borrowed from my husband and paid him in advance.”

“Why?” I ask. “I don’t understand why you would want to do this.”

“But you do understand. That’s what I liked about you from the very beginning. From that night we met at that club in Chelsea. You understand what it’s like to want something more. Before I met my husband, back when I was a dominatrix, my life was chaotic and exciting. Then I got married and it was like I buried that part of myself. I think I wanted to go back. To feel that powerful, yes, but maybe even to feel imperiled. This job made me feel like I was more than just a wife. Like I was something dangerous.”

I feel so fucking stupid. Hearing Sherri spell it out makes me realize how naive I was to ever believe it was real. A benevolent organization that takes out bad guys? I can’t even fault Sherri for getting her MI6 information from TV, because I’m pretty sure I bought into this whole assassin thing because I’d watched movies play out this way: with heroes and villains and omnipotent assassins.

“You told me we were killing the bad guys,” I say weakly. I trusted her. That was my biggest mistake. To ever trust her or anyone.

“I did independent research to make sure we were only taking the villain hits, but…,” she says. “I’m so sorry, Eva. I’m a terrible person. I convinced myself that if it wasn’t us, it would be someone else taking the jobs. And you were so good at it, just as good as the men. I think I felt like we were winning somehow.”

“You were my only friend,” I say before I can stop myself. I’m embarrassed by it.

“I’m so sorry.”

The train rattles and I brace myself against the sink. The world steaming by out the window is the same world as before, but it feels different. My stomach is sinking, and it’s not just because of what Sherri’s told me. It’s because of what she hasn’t told me. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because it’s your only chance.”

I grip the counter. “My only chance at what?”

“You’ve been identified as a defector. They think you’re an enemy of the organization.”

I laugh in surprise. “How can I be an enemy of an organization I didn’t even know existed?”

“Because you’ve failed to kill Jonathan. They think you’ve been compromised.” I want to argue, but she’s not wrong. I don’t want to kill Jonathan. I want to quit. I kind of am a defector, even if I didn’t know what I was a part of in the first place.

“What happens to defectors?” I remember what Jonathan told me about Andrew.

“They’re terminated,” she says.

“Fuck.” I sit down on the toilet. I don’t even put one of those paper things down. “Fucking fuck.” What am I going to do?

“Where are you right now?” Sherri asks.

“I’m in a bathroom on the fast train from Barcelona to Paris.”

“Why Paris?”

“Because that’s where Jonathan is going. Fuck. ” I have no idea what happens now. A global forum of contract killers wants me dead. I’m going to die. It’s so weird.

You would think that, being surrounded by death all the time, I would’ve contemplated my own mortality, but I’ll be real: I’ve hardly thought about it. When I have, it’s been in passing, thinking about how no one would come to my funeral, or how I shouldn’t adopt a cat because I’d have no one to leave it to. The important stuff.

The truth is, when you’re faced with your impending death, you think about death in a whole new way. I don’t want to die, it turns out. I really, really don’t.

“Where are you?” I ask Sherri. “Are you okay?”

Her breath hitches in surprise. “Please don’t worry about me. I’m the one who got you into this mess.”

I am angry at Sherri, but I’m worried about her, too. I am a woman of many contradictions. “I am worried about you. You’re still my friend. You were also my handler, and it just happens to turn out that you were really fucking bad at that.”

She chokes down a chuckle. “Please don’t make me laugh.”

“We’re going to get out of this,” I promise, like I have promised before. “You and me. And then we’ll meet up for drinks to celebrate. On you.”

“Of course,” she says. I can tell she feels unworthy. I can tell because I’ve often felt that way myself. “Don’t go to Paris, Eva. You need to run.”

“Run where?” I say, and when she doesn’t answer, I repeat it. “Run where , Sherri?” The agency is a forum on the dark web. The internet is everywhere. I’m fucked. I am totally, wholly fucked. But I can’t give up. “What do you know about this forum?”

“Not much. I know that it’s existed in some form since the dawn of the internet. It was a place where people could order hits, and it used to be completely unregulated. People paid deposits to criminals, and there was no incentive for them to follow through with the job. It was the Wild West.

“Until the administrator took over. They make sure that the payment is held until the job is completed, for a fee. They make sure everything runs smoothly. There’s a cleanup crew and a reconnaissance team and a department for dealing with local and international governments. And there is a strict policy of terminating anyone who doesn’t follow the rules.”

“Who’s the administrator?” If I could track this person down, maybe I could convince them to let me go.

“I don’t know. It’s the internet; everyone is invisible. Whoever they are, even you wouldn’t stand a chance against them. They command dozens of skilled assassins all over Europe.” She has a point. Even if I could identify this person, it wouldn’t be as if I could just talk sense to them—with or without my Glock. They run a murder-for-hire empire.

I find my face in the cloudy bathroom mirror. It looks deader than normal: pale, haunted. The train rattles around me, hurtling toward my destiny. Always forward, no matter what happens. Never look back.

I take a deep breath. I remind myself that I have been fucked before. I have been in situations with no way out. I got out. I can do things other people can’t do. I can do this .

I need a plan—that’s all I need. I’m used to making plans on the fly. The secret is to play to your strengths, and I know mine: I’m really, really good at killing people.

I set my jaw. “What if I don’t run?”

“You have to run.”

“What if I face Jonathan? What if I kill him? Won’t that prove I was never compromised?”

“I’m not sure…”

The train seems to be moving faster, steaming toward the inevitable conclusion. It’s a day like any other, so someone has to die.

“I don’t really have a choice, do I? I have to face him. I have to kill him.”