A limp body in a bathtub full of blood. A broken mirror. A burning car and a twisting scream.
Twenty-one. Thirty-four. Fifty-five. Eighty-nine. One hundred forty-four.
Turn it all off and don’t feel anything.
“It’s about time,” said Potash, spotting us from his window as Kelly pulled into the apartment parking lot. There were two rows of buildings and a parking lot between them, with crumbling, open-air walkways, and stairs leading up to the apartments. It was winter, and the curbs were crusted with dirty, jagged ice. Kelly pulled to a stop behind the high, cinder block wall around the Dumpster, concealing us from anyone who might be looking out of Cody French’s window. Diana got out without a word, carrying the duffel with her disassembled rifle. “Give Diana five minutes to get in place,” said Potash, on the radio, “and meet me at the door.”
“Three minutes,” said Diana, her whisper barely audible on the shared frequency. “How incompetent do you think I am?”
“Radio silence,” said Kelly. “Go.”
We all had our jobs and we’d gone over them a dozen times at the rented office space, getting ready for this exact situation whenever the opportunity appeared. Kelly would stay in the parking lot, her badge in hand, ready to deal with any questions or nosy neighbors. Ideally we wouldn’t need her at all. Diana would be perched in the other apartment we’d rented, directly across from Cody’s, with her rifle aimed and ready to shoot anyone who chased us out his door. Ideally we wouldn’t need her either. I had a stolen key to Cody’s door, and as the one who’d planned the hit, it was my job to observe the situation and make the call to proceed or pull out. I’d go in, make sure he was as helpless as we needed, and then …
… and then I wouldn’t kill him. Potash, with a stainless-steel machete, would wait for my signal and take off Cody’s head in one clean stroke.
I could feel that machete in my hand, feel the grip and the heft and the sudden, perfect resistance as it severed the spine. This was my plan. I’d practiced it a hundred times in my head. A thousand times. Sometimes in my head I had to kill the girl, too. You never knew what complications might arise.
But I never got to do it for real.
I got out of the car and walked to the stairs, pulling the key from my back pocket. Albert Potash timed it perfectly, arriving at the door from the other direction exactly as I got there. He was an older man, lean and fit, his graying hair still trimmed to the short, military cut his kind never seemed to let go. I didn’t know exactly where he’d gotten his training, but he was some kind of ex-special forces supersoldier, the kind of man a government creates, uses, and then denies all knowledge of forever. I wasn’t surprised, when I’d looked in his file, to find it completely empty. I’d spent my short life dreaming of death, of ending one life after another, stabbing and choking and poisoning and more. He’d spent his life actually doing it. I hated him passionately.
I raised my key to the lock, but he stopped me with a sudden gesture, listening to something I couldn’t hear. After a moment he looked back at me again, rolling his hand to signal me to hurry. I unlocked the door in a rush, pushing it open as soon as the bolt scraped free of the frame, and stepped inside. Potash moved in behind me, silent as a ghost, pulling the machete from its black vinyl sheath so quickly I didn’t even see him do it—it was covered one second and gleaming faintly in the dim light the next.
The front room was dark, the windows covered with blankets, and I could hear the noise now: a muffled grunting, like someone was struggling to speak. The layout of the apartment was essentially the same as mine: a small living room with an attached kitchen, which is where we stood now; a short hallway that led to two closed doors, with a bathroom on the left and bedroom on the right. I pointed to the bedroom door, and Potash stepped forward silently. He rested his hand on the doorknob, paused a moment, then quietly pushed it open.
The room beyond wasn’t a den of horrors. No bodies hung from the ceiling, no eyes peered out from cracks in the wall. There was a simple wooden bed with a thin mattress, and Cody asleep facedown in the middle. Nearby, on the floor, bound and gagged and tied to the bedpost, was a teenage girl. I estimated her to be about fifteen years old, fully clothed, eyes haggard, but wide awake and terrified.
“Listen to me,” said Potash firmly, crouching down beside her. “I can’t untie you yet, but I need to know what’s happened here. Did this man bring you in?”
The girl squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head violently.
Potash glanced at me. “Is she saying no or is she already crazy?”
“He gave her his supernatural awareness,” I whispered. “She could hear us outside before we even unlocked the door; it probably sounds like you’re screaming in her ear.” I lowered my voice to the barest breath. “We’re here to help you. Did this man bring you here?”