Page 78 of Assassin Anonymous

There are still a few pieces of clothing intact at the back of the closet, but they reek of smoke. I get down on the floor and feel around between the floorboards until I find the finger latch, and pull up. The safe underneath is still intact. I key in the combination and open it. There’s a duffel bag crammed into the corner of the closet. I drag it over and load wrapped stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Each stack is ten thousand dollars, so I count off fifty of them. Not too heavy, and enough to get me started.

I’ll earn it back once I get into the groove of working again. Maybe I’ll take the rest down to Ms. Nguyen. Give her a crash course on how to spend it without attracting the attention of the IRS.

Once I’ve got my money situated, I keep digging, to the bottom of the safe. To the thing I told Kenji I got rid of, and didn’t.

But hey, he kept his katana.

My SIG Sauer P365.

A beautiful piece of death-dealing machinery. Striker-fired subcompact, tritium X-RAY3 day/night sights, and a ten-round magazine. Stainless-steel frame with a polymer grip module. I dig a little deeper and find a box of 147-grain hollow-point bullets.

It’s not flashy, but it’s reliable.

It’s also ended a lot of lives.

Just holding it makes me feel like I can take on the whole world.

This is always the way things were headed. I’m not a man. I’m a tactical drone with a heartbeat and a dairy allergy. It used to be that weapon was aimed and fired by someone else, and I allowed it to happen. The only difference now is I’m going to aim it for myself. Find my peace, and then maybe a farm, and woe be unto anyone who dares try to take that away from me.

I am the Pale Horse.

It was silly to pretend otherwise.

I dig around in my pockets until I find both the one-year and six-month chips, and I toss them into the safe. Then I dig out the urban carry holster stashed with the gun and get it set up on my hip.

There’s not much else to do at this point. I go to the bathroom to take a piss. Wonder where Astrid is. Why she disappeared like that. Maybe the gravity of all this sank in. Taking the tracker felt like she was making a point, but I don’t know what.

Whatever. It’s not like I was falling for her. Not like opening up to her was a last desperate attempt to save myself through truth and vulnerability.

P. Kitty meows at me.

“I’m fine,” I tell him.

There’s a commotion from outside: horns honking, someone yelling, so I move to the window and peek my head out. There are four black SUVs blocking the street, and a bunch of cars lined up behind them. I don’t need anything to confirm that this must be for me, but when Ravi pops out of the lead car, I duck back inside before he can look up.

I grab P. Kitty’s carrier and sling the duffel bag over my shoulder and make for the building’s air shaft, which is between this building and the one behind us.

The Agency troops will eventually get around to checking the shaft and they’ll find the handholds I installed, as well as the door at the bottom, which I can slip through to get into the building behind mine. Then they’ll find the unmapped door to a utility tunnel, inside which I carved out enough room to let me slip into the sewer system.

If that door were on a map, they’d have someone stationed down there, but lucky for me, New York City is a maze of shit built on top of shit. Spend enough time looking around and you can find a decent escape route. I’ll be long gone by the time they find it.

I lower myself out the window, holding tight to P. Kitty’s carrier. He doesn’t make a sound. Probably too scared. Thank god. Last thing I need is for someone to look out a window and see me. But given the proximity of the windows between the buildings and the lack of privacy, most people have curtains or blinds.

I make it down about ten feet when I hear “…caught him on a camera around the corner, not ten minutes ago.”

It’s coming from Ms. Nguyen’s apartment. I stop and brace myself, just to make sure she’s going to be okay. Ravi wouldn’t hurt her, probably, but I want to be sure of that.

“I was out running an errand,” she says. “I don’t know if he even came here. I haven’t seen him since the fire.”

“Damn it, Fran, I pay you a lot of money, and you have one job. Keep an eye on him. And you couldn’t even do that…”

“First off, don’t speak to me like that,” she says. “Second, I retired. I was done. I agreed to do this because it was low impact. No chance of getting hurt. I worked too hard to risk my life like this.”

What?

“We’re going to search the area,” Ravi says. “If you see him, you know the drill. Call me ASAP.”

A few moments of silence, and then Ms. Nguyen asks, “What kind of mood is he going to be in?”

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