Page 100 of Assassin Anonymous

A chasm of silence opens between us, and it’s hard to tell from the vibration of it what kind of silence it is. There are too many emotions swirling inside my chest for me to have any hope of untangling them.

Astrid’s eyes are sunken, her body concaved. She looks like she hasn’t slept since the last time I saw her.

“You still in the city?” she asks.

“Got a little cabin up in the mountains. Off the grid. I come in for the meetings, but otherwise, there are way too many people around here who want to kill me. It’s pretty nice, besides the mice.”

“P. Kitty must be in heaven, then,” she says.

“Oh, no, he has no predatory instinct whatsoever. The mice have the run of the place.”

“Why don’t you kill them?”

“I don’t work for free.”

She nods. “Speaking of, happy anniversary.”

“Anniversary?”

“Last year, didn’t you say you were at a year? You’d be at two years now.”

“Ah, that.” I laugh, and it starts small but then grows bigger, and her face twists in confusion. “Actually, I’m back to a year. After what happened, I started from scratch. Went back to counting days. Square one on the steps.”

“Was it because of what I did?”

I shrug. “I needed to do it. I decided being in the program wasn’t as simple as killing or not killing. The second shit went sideways, I went right back to how I used to be. Riding on my reputation, using fear to get what I wanted. It scratched the itch.” I turn my cup of coffee on the heavy wooden tabletop, hoping the words I’ve been struggling to find for the past year will suddenly reveal themselves, written on the surface of it. “Turns out there was one last person I needed to kill.”

“The Pale Horse,” she says.

I bow my head in affirmation.

Astrid’s eyes drift to the corner. She picks up her coffee but doesn’t drink from it.

“What was the thing that pisses you off the most?” I ask.

“What?”

“When we were in the van. Before Kozlov rammed us. You said that.”

She nods and places down her cup of coffee. “Sticking with you wasn’t just about Kozlov. I wanted to understand you. To be honest, I resented you. You were the go-to guy. I was second string. And it pissed me off when you said you quit. Like you were wasting your potential.” She pauses. “Like you weren’t just physically better than me, you were suddenly morally better, too.”

“I was good, Astrid,” I tell her. “But so are you. Speaking of, how are things at the office?”

“Messy. That guy Stuart, he kicked over the apple cart and then stomped on all the apples. There was a lot to clean up. They’ve got a new golden child in, too. He’s been getting most of the work, so I’m back to the B squad. People call him the Viper.”

“If Ravi were around, he’d be called Leviathan or Nephilim or something.”

For the first time since I sat, Astrid smiles. “The guy did love his biblical references, didn’t he?”

“I wonder if he was religious.” I take a long drag of the coffee. It’s still a little too hot, but it feels good to do something to fill up the sharply awkward edges of the space. “Didn’t know him well enough to say one way or the other, I suppose.”

“You were right, by the way.”

“How’s that?”

“Drinking the poison.” She cranes her neck to look around me, but Maritza is in the process of wiping down the counters, preparing to close—out of earshot. “For years, all I thought about was killing Kozlov. Then he was dead and I didn’t feel any better.”

“That’s the way it tends to go.”

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