Page 52 of Assassin Anonymous

“Right, sorry.”

Gaius glances up from his screen. “Even with the signal dropped, he’ll know you’re somewhere in the vicinity. You can go to the roof, climb across the buildings, exit on the other side of the street. Probably the safest way.”

I sit down on the couch next to him and put my head back on the cushion. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, bruv, I’m not gonna lie, this is pretty cool, though.”

“I’m happy you’re impressed. Meanwhile I’m probably going to end up with some kind of rare metal poisoning. Back to what you’re saying about the site?”

“Right, right.” He shakes his head and sighs. “So, there’s this thing called god mode, where I can access pretty much anything as long as it’s on the site itself. Can’t really look up where posts came from, but I can see if people are trading private messages.”

“How does that help?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Give me some users to look up and we’ll see.”

I whip out my phone and pull up D@nt3 and go through the forums. Astrid does the same. Gaius, presumably, does as well. We all get lost for a little bit, looking for something that might be useful.

There’s an entire forum now dedicated to talking about the Pale Horse, so I start there. Lots of people saying a lot of things. That they’re coming after me. That I must be off my game to slip like that. A lot of talk about revenge. Some folks who want to meet me. A woman who wants to sleep with me. Nothing useful. Nothing encouraging.

Nothing that makes me feel very good about myself.

The whole time we’re doing this, it feels like there’s a sword dangling over our heads. I still want to go out there and confront the Russian. Except I’ve taken a few beatings in the last couple of days and I have a gaping wound in my stomach that Astrid has already had to repatch once. I’m not on the top of my game. And I’m still in the dark about exactly what’s going on.

There’s something else. This feeling I never really felt before. So brand new it took me time to feel out the edges and find a definition for it.

I’m afraid.

Because I don’t know how to beat this guy without killing him.

“Hey, I found something,” Astrid says.

She passes over her phone. It’s a post from someone with a randomly generated username, a string of letters and numbers, that says:

The Pale Horse was not nearly as tough as I thought. I left him bleeding on the floor. Just a scared little kitten. Wait until you hear where I found him…

Kotenok. Kitten. That’s what the Russian called me. At least he’s keeping the recovery angle to himself for now. Once word gets out on that, I’m dead for sure. I have to figure he assumed I would see this.

Mind games. He’s playing mind games. Maybe he doesn’t even want the notebook. Maybe he just took it to screw with me.

“How’d you find that so quick?” I ask.

“There’s a search function,” Astrid says.

“ ’Course there’s a search function,” Gaius says, a little insulted.

“Okay, guys, cool. Thanks. Gaius, who posted that?”

He looks at the phone, then turns to his computer. “That’s the user’s only post. Give me a minute…” He taps a little more, watches the screen, then says, “The account is new, created a month ago. But there is some activity. Messages traded with another user recently, too.”

“Doesn’t seem very ethical that you can track private messages,” Astrid says.

Gaius offers a long stare and a little laugh. “This is a criminal enterprise.” He pokes at the keyboard and says, “I can’t read the messages. But I can see that they were delivered, and to whom. He’s been swapping love notes with a user named Sanjuro. Want me to see what I can find on him?”

The room spins. I lean forward and put my head in my hands. The two of them, Astrid and Gaius, fall silent. I’m searching for something to say, anything to say.

“Should I…” Gaius starts.

“No,” I tell him. “I know who that is.”

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