Children of Paranoia

It was early in the day when I landed in Montreal. As instructed, I took a cab to a small arcade on St. Catherine Street. I was supposed to pick up the keys to the safe house there. The name of the arcade, Casino Royale, blinked in bright neon lights above the door. I walked in and headed straight to the back of the arcade, past all of the kids with their baggy jeans, past all of the flashing lights, past the bells, the whistles, and the sounds of fake gunfire. I walked to the counter in the back where a couple of teenage employees doled out coins so that the other kids could keep dropping their allowances into the machines. I told the girl working behind the counter that I was there to pick up keys to an apartment and she passed them to me silently. The safe house was going to be empty throughout my stay. My mark was apparently too dangerous to risk anybody’s life but mine. If I blew my cover I was a dead man, but this way, the ripples wouldn’t stretch out any wider than that. I walked the two miles from the arcade, up a long, store-ridden street, to the safe house.

The safe house was a small, sparse one-bedroom apartment with a balcony overlooking the street below. I checked out the contents of the fridge. I was hungry. Inside was some soda, a block of cheese, and some leftover Chinese food. There was a frozen pizza in the freezer and a wine rack with a few bottles of red wine against the wall. Either my host kept a sparse home or he’d emptied the place out before I got there. I put the frozen pizza in the oven and sat down on the couch. This was going to be a lonely job. There, on the coffee table in front of me, was a thick manila envelope. I had noticed it immediately when I walked in but did my best to ignore it while I got a feel for the place. I simply stared at it for another minute or two until the scent of mediocre frozen pizza began to fill the apartment. Then I tore the envelope open.

My mark was a Canadian scientist turned businessman. Apparently, he ran a large pharmaceutical company. He was loaded. He used his wealth to funnel money to our enemies’ operations all over the world. Africa, Asia, Europe, he had money going everywhere. He also developed chemical and biological weapons for use in the War. These weren’t the mass-destruction, gas-the-enemy kind of weapons. He developed targeted, precise poisons that were rarely traceable. We knew he did it. We had no idea how many of our people had died, choking on one of his inventions. Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Almost anything was possible.

My target generally traveled with two bodyguards. The first bodyguard had been born into the War. He was one of them. He was a trained Ranger in the United States Army. On paper, and in photos, he appeared to be a serious badass. Still, he was fair game. The second bodyguard was a bigger problem. He was a civilian. Everything in the paperwork that I was given said that he was clueless about the War. He’d basically been shanghaied. He thought he was simply being paid to protect a paranoid Canadian businessman. The second bodyguard was formerly of the Australian navy and, being a civilian, was untouchable. It was just like these bastards to use a civilian shield.

My pizza was ready. I found a plate, threw the pizza on it, and began to read about my mark’s daily routines. Two days a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, he taught chemistry classes at McGill University as an adjunct professor. Every Monday, he had lunch in Chinatown with various out-of-town guests. Wednesday afternoons were spent at a strip club on lower St. Laurent Street, again with out-of-town guests. These weren’t pleasure trips, they were business meetings. Deals were struck during these meetings. Sometimes the deals involved our War, sometimes they involved other wars. The meetings were closely guarded. Evenings were normally spent at home.

I decided that I would start my recon work tomorrow. I would follow the mark for a bit and try to find some chinks in the armor, to see if the bodyguards got lazy. My plan—the only one I could come up with at the time—was to tail him for three days and then develop a better plan. Tomorrow was Wednesday. It looked like the agenda called for strip clubs. I had no idea that you were about to change my life.

The sun was just beginning to rise when I reached the house. I had a floor plan of the house in my bag and when I got there, I pulled it out in hopes of finding a good spot where I could spy on the morning revelry without being noticed. The place was huge. The floor plan didn’t do it justice. Every room was gigantic. The front of the house faced the street while the back had a picture-perfect view of the park. My mark’s bedroom was in the back, so I headed into the park. There, I climbed into a tree that still had enough leaves to hide me. I settled myself in the crux of two branches and pointed my binoculars at the bedroom window.

I was a little late. I could just peer through the slats between the vertical blinds in the bedroom. The bed was empty, unmade but empty. I scanned the other windows. None of the other windows opening onto the park had shades. Two windows over from my mark’s room was the bodyguards’ room. I peered in to see one of the bodyguards doing push-ups on the floor of the bedroom. I stopped counting at eighty-five. After what seemed like about twenty uninterrupted minutes of push-ups, the bodyguard flipped over and began doing sit-ups. This, too, went on for what seemed to be an eternity. Just like it was written in my notes, this bodyguard had a tattoo on his right bicep of the symbol of the Australian navy and a tattoo on his back of a surfer being eaten by a shark. This was the civilian. You’re a long way from home, my friend, I thought to myself. I took out a notebook and wrote down the schedule. According to the Intelligence report that I’d received, the two bodyguards alternated nights. So the civilian was scheduled for Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday of this week and Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of the next. The other nights would be covered by the bodyguard that I could actually do something about. After the sit-ups the Aussie began doing dips, using a chair for leverage.

I scanned the other windows. There was my mark. He was downstairs in the exercise room. He was on the StairMaster and was wearing an earpiece and talking on the phone as he exercised. He was animated as he spoke and it was ruining his rhythm on the machine. A couple of times, I thought he might fall off. My mark was about five eight with dark hair and a beard that was showing early signs of going gray. He wasn’t in bad shape for a businessman, but his gut still hung slightly over his exercise shorts. His eyes were a dark brown, bordering on black. I had a visceral reaction to the sight of him. I knew that I wouldn’t have second thoughts taking him out.

I looked over the rest of the house. Next to the exercise room was a den with a purple-felted pool table. The kitchen and a gigantic living room opened onto the backyard. The entire yard was surrounded by a white metal fence. On top of a post at each of the corners of the fence was a video camera. I picked a large piece of bark off the tree I was sitting in and threw it into the backyard. At the instant the piece of bark entered the yard, both of the video cameras turned to follow it until it landed, motionless. Laser motion detectors. I looked back into the bodyguard’s room. Just as I’d thought, the movement set off a small alarm in the bodyguard’s room and the Aussie turned to look at a computer that was set up on his desk. He saw whatever the cameras saw. I focused my binoculars on the cameras and I wrote down their make and model so that I could research them later.

At seven A.M., the maid showed up, in full maid regalia. She wore a powder blue dress, cropped just below the knees, with a white apron with ruffles on the side. Who still dressed their help like that? This guy was a real piece of work. The maid came in and began cooking breakfast. My mark had bacon, eggs, toast, and melon for breakfast. He sat alone at the table reading the morning paper. The Aussie had eggs, potatoes, melon, and a bowl of granola. He sat alone at the counter. Not a word was spoken by anyone. Then, as the maid began to clean up the kitchen, both men headed back to their respective bathrooms, showered, and got ready for their day. The Aussie wore a dark blue suit with a solid dark-blue tie, typical bodyguard gear. He also wore an earpiece through which he could communicate with the other bodyguard. My mark wore a dark charcoal gray suit, with a yellow shirt and no tie.

At exactly eight A.M., the other bodyguard showed up. He and the Aussie were dressed identically. In their work uniforms, the only way to tell them apart was that the American had darker hair and wore a goatee. The two of them joked around a bit as my mark went back to his bedroom to get his briefcase. I could see them taking turns, talking and laughing. As soon as my mark returned, they were as stoic as statues. At eight-fifteen, the three of them were off. I made my way around to the front of the house to see them pull away in the car. The civilian and my mark sat in the backseat. The other bodyguard drove. I obviously wasn’t going to be able to keep up with them in the car. According to the information I’d been given, however, they should be heading to his office for the next few hours. I hailed a cab and followed them downtown.

I spent the next four hours at a café across the street from my mark’s office building. I didn’t dare go inside. Going inside most likely meant putting my face on camera. I wasn’t ready for that. Instead, I just sat across the street in the café, reading the newspaper and watching the door and the garage exit to see when my mark would come out. I learned almost nothing over those four hours.

Finally, at around twelve-thirty, my mark came walking through the door with his bodyguards in tow. I had already gotten the check, so I paid and walked outside. Apparently, they walked to the strip club. I had to assume that this was weather dependent, but it was fine with me. I wanted to stretch my legs. The mark walked with the civilian bodyguard at his side and the American two steps behind them. The bodyguards were very diligent. They could have been trained by the secret service. The bodyguard at the mark’s side looked straight ahead, making sure that no one was going to obstruct their path, making sure that nothing was coming straight at them. The bodyguard in the back did continual eye scans of all the other areas, the street, the sidewalks, even the skies. I was walking across the street from them, but even then, I had to make sure that the trailing bodyguard didn’t catch me staring at them. I walked casually, making only the random glance over to see if the bodyguards ever slipped, if they ever let their guard down. They didn’t.

We walked down René-Lévesque until we reached St. Laurent and then we took a left. They crossed the street and continued to walk on the right side of the street. I stayed on the left. In two more blocks we hit the strip club. The facade was pretty straightforward, blinking neon signs advertising “Live Nude Girls” and “Completely Nude” and “24/7.” It was impossible to see inside from the street. There weren’t any windows. One door led to a staircase. The stairs led up to the club. A large bouncer stood just inside the door. My mark walked up and shook the bouncer’s hand. They spoke for about thirty seconds. The bouncer smiled and laughed and patted my mark on the shoulder. Then my mark slipped him some money and headed up the stairs with the American bodyguard in tow. The Aussie stayed downstairs, standing on the opposite side of the door from the bouncer. They, too, exchanged some words and smiles before getting back to the quiet business of guarding the door.

This was too much. There was no way that I was going to stand here and wait for another three hours. I didn’t want to go into the strip club, though. First, if the American bodyguard saw me inside and recognized me from the street, he was sure to get suspicious. Second, the guy in the strip club looking at the other guys in the strip club instead of at the strippers stands out like a sore thumb. I decided just to walk up to the door and get a closer look at the bodyguard. I swear that’s all I was doing. I knew that he hadn’t eyeballed me yet so didn’t worry too much about being inconspicuous. I walked across the street. Just inside the doorway to the strip club there were some action shots of the strippers in various poses, all completely naked. I was taken aback. You didn’t see that sort of thing in the States, not right there on the street like that. I did my best to act casual, looking at the pictures of the girls while also trying to size up the bodyguard. The Aussie had a good four inches on me. He had a friendly face. I asked the bouncer which of the girls was working today. He told me that the pictures were mostly of their night-shift girls, but that the girls who worked during the day were pretty too. I’d played my role so far almost perfectly. That’s when you nearly blew my cover.

I saw you walking down the street about half a block before you reached the doorway. I remember first seeing you coming, with the hood to your sweatshirt pulled up, covering your mass of dark curly hair. Your hands were jammed deep inside the pockets of your green sweatshirt. You looked cute. I was getting more of a thrill looking at you all bundled up like that than I did looking at the naked pictures of the strippers on the wall. You must have caught me staring. For a moment, we made eye contact. When we did, the skin around your big blue eyes wrinkled as you broke out into a mischievous grin. I forgot where I was. I forgot what I was doing. I forgot everything for that moment.

Before heading back to the safe house, I went back over to the other side of Mount Royal to canvas my mark’s fortress. I thought that maybe, without professionals there guarding it, I might be able to find some sort of loophole that I could fit through. I investigated the house for a couple of hours, watched the maid move from room to room cleaning the place, watched her leave, and then headed home for the day. My job would start up again tomorrow. It would require extra diligence now. “No more flirting with strangers,” I told myself. Just you.

My mark taught a class at McGill University the following day. The class was big enough that I figured I could sit in the back of the lecture hall without being noticed. I put on a Montreal Canadiens hat that I had purchased and pulled the brim down low enough that, when looking down at a notebook, my entire face would be hidden. I packed my backpack and headed off to class. I knew that if everything went according to plan, this stakeout should be easy. It was rare that taking notes actually enhanced your disguise.

By the time I reached McGill’s campus, it was already brimming with life. There were students everywhere. Thousands of students, most only a few years younger than me, were drifting in and out of buildings, carrying books, wandering from lecture to lecture. I stepped through the gates on University Street and felt, for one of the few times in my life, like a normal person going to my first college lecture. I had my notebook, my backpack, and my pencils. It felt surreal. I felt good. The only difference between me and the other students was that I planned on killing my professor.

I headed over to the lecture hall where my mark would be teaching and waited outside as the students began to shuffle in. I counted the heads as they walked through the doors. The class had over 150 students in it and I assumed at least 75 would attend. I waited until 50 other students entered the classroom and then I walked in. I chose my seat carefully, picking a row two rows in front of the students who were sitting the farthest back. I took a seat just off center, doing everything I could to not stand out. I did a quick visual scan of the lecture hall. It had the capacity to hold about three hundred students, and as I found my way to an empty seat, it quickly filled up to near half capacity. Apparently, my mark’s lectures were popular. He was already standing at the podium, rifling through his notes and talking to another member of the faculty. I scanned the room for the bodyguards. It didn’t take me long to spot the first one. He was standing in the front of the lecture hall, in one of the corners. No suit today. If he weren’t so big, he might have blended in with the students. He was wearing khakis and a blue sweatshirt. He stood with his back to the front wall. From where he was standing, he could quickly survey the entire room. It took me a bit longer to find the Aussie. He was stationed in the back of the room. The positioning was logical. From their vantage points, the two bodyguards could easily catch any suspicious movements and put a stop to them before suspicious became dangerous. Still, I was relieved to know that the Aussie would be staring at the back of my head for the next hour and half. He might remember my face from the day before, but that wasn’t going to help him from where he was standing.

I watched the students around me and aped their behavior. When they began to take out their notebooks, I did too. Once everyone had reached into the bags and the collective shuffling of the student body died down, my mark began his lecture. He wore a small microphone that wrapped around his neck, making it possible to hear his voice clearly no matter where you were seated in the lecture hall. The class was a second-year chemistry course entitled “Drugs and Disease.”

“Toxicology,” he began. “Toxicology is a subject that each and every one of us practices every day. In fact, I shouldn’t be so limiting, it’s a subject that each of the members of your family, each of your neighbors, nearly everyone on this continent and most of the people on this planet, practice every day. Yes, even your uneducated, out-of-work uncle.” There was a sputtering of laughter from the class. “In fact, that uncle, depending upon how much time he spends at his local pub each day, may practice it the most.” Again, muffled laughter. “No matter what we do, we are constantly evaluating what we put into our bodies, be it medicine, drugs, alcohol, even food. Why? Because we know that the wrong amount, the wrong dose, can have toxic effects and these toxic effects can lead to myriad results. From euphoria to agonizing pain; from complete but comforting numbness to debilitating disease; from a feeling of raised awareness to death.”

He went on. My classmates followed along, clicking away on their keyboards and writing furiously in their notebooks. It didn’t take long for the science to be lost on me. Since I was having trouble following the lecture, I began to simply watch my mark to see how he moved, to see how he held himself, to see if there were any idiosyncrasies that I might be able to use to my advantage. To this point, I had paid more attention to the bodyguards than to the man himself. But now, in my disguise, I could sit back and watch the man who had already caused so much death.

He wore a dark suit again, perfectly tailored. Though not tall, he carried himself as if he were the tallest man in the room. His movements were fluid and graceful. He generally spoke with one hand at his side and one on the podium. He moderated his voice to match the lecture. At times, it would rise and he would hold his hands about shoulder length apart, clutching his fists for emphasis. However, during the moments when he truly wanted attention, the volume of his voice would actually lower to just above a whisper and he would stand motionless, holding each syllable for an extra beat. During those times, the students were rapt with attention. The large lecture hall would get so quiet that if a pin dropped I would hear it and the bodyguards would hear it but the students probably wouldn’t notice. If circumstances were different, he might have had a lot to offer the world. These students of his, rising and falling on his every word, one of them could cure cancer. It was almost a shame I had to kill him. But he understood the War and still embraced it. He understood the ramifications of his actions. He would have no one to blame for his death but himself.

The hallway was crowded, so I simply walked in the direction of the flowing crowd. When I got to a small set of stairs, I turned to take a quick look back. I saw my mark exiting the lecture hall through the same doors that the students had just used. He was in an intense conversation with one of the students. The two bodyguards were walking about two steps behind them. The American kept a stern eye on the student. He looked ready to rip the poor kid’s head off if the kid were to make even the slightest awkward move. The student didn’t seem to notice. So much for educating the youth. The kid might one day become a brilliant scientist, but he wouldn’t have survived one day in my job.

“Hey, Perv!” you shouted, stepping toward me, standing on the stairs about three steps above me. As you spoke, you flicked the brim of my hat. Before I even had a chance to look at you again, my reflexes kicked in. I looked back at the big Australian to see if he’d heard you. He had. His head popped up and he began to scan the hallway looking for something, anything. I was certain that he was looking for me, even if he didn’t know it. He recognized your voice too. I turned, grabbed you under your armpit, nearly lifting you off the ground, and pulled you down one of the side corridors. I didn’t have time to be gentle. I couldn’t afford to have the bodyguard recognize me.

So we went for coffee, despite the fact that I didn’t drink coffee. I just figured that’s what regular people do. I was trying my best to be normal. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t scare you away. You led me to a coffee shop just off campus. That was good. It made it less likely that I would suddenly have to hide from my mark’s bodyguards. We chatted as we walked. You asked me how my trip to the strip club had gone. Eventually, I think that I convinced you that I hadn’t gone inside. It was strange talking to you. You seemed to have no poker face. Everything was out in the open. I wasn’t used to that. In my world, everyone is covering up something. Everyone’s a liar.

We sat down for coffee, although I ordered hot chocolate, which you made fun of me for, and continued to talk. You pulled the hood of your sweatshirt off and unleashed a wild torrent of dark hair. The crazy mass of curls made you seem even more alive. Twenty minutes into our conversation and I had told you more about my life than I had ever told any woman before. I told you about growing up in New Jersey. I told you what I could about losing my father and my grandparents. I told you about my life, traveling around the world for business.

“I take classes when I can,” I replied, trying to cover my tracks, realizing that being too truthful too soon might scare you away. I turned the questions back on you. How old were you? “I’m a second-year.” What were you studying? “Debating between Psychology and Religious Studies. I’m really interested in what makes people tick.” What do you do for fun? “Pick up strange Americans in front of strip clubs and start wild, torrid affairs.” I nearly choked on my hot chocolate. You just giggled at my reaction. Where did you grow up? “Outside of Toronto in London, Ontario.” Family? “Typical cookie-cutter family. I’m an only child.” The conversation went on like that as the afternoon slipped away. I completely forgot about the job that I was supposed to be doing. You completely lost track of time too. You suddenly looked at your watch. “Oh, shit, I’m late for class.” You jumped up, swung your backpack over one shoulder, and headed for the door.

I spent that night alone at the safe house, heating up frozen food and poring over my notes from the past few days. I was about a day and a half behind on my surveillance but I’m not sure if the extra day and a half would’ve helped. There didn’t appear to be any holes in my mark’s routine. More surveillance would have just led to more frustration. Meanwhile, while trying to develop a plan that wasn’t going to get me killed, I kept getting distracted thinking about you. I spent random moments trying to remember details from our conversation. I had to try to chase you from my mind because I was beginning to drive myself crazy. Eight o’clock tomorrow night, I’d remind myself. Then I’d tell myself to breathe.

I needed to do some more work before rushing in and trying to kill the professor if I was going to have any chance of walking away from the job alive. I started to devise the only plan that I could see working without getting me killed. It would require a full day of surveillance of my mark’s house. I wanted to see when the maid came, when the maid left, the tasks that she did, and the order in which she did them. I needed to find out how much time she spent in each room and when. I needed to find out everything I could about the motion detecting cameras surrounding the house. I knew their brand and their model number. I knew that they were state of the art, attracted to both movement and heat. If there was one thing moving in the yard or one thing giving off heat, all the cameras would zoom in on that one thing. If there were multiple variances, like two moving bodies or a moving body and something giving off heat, the cameras would each zoom in on whatever was happening that was closest to it. It was an intricate system, but it was beatable.

As planned, I spent the entire next day casing my mark’s home. I noted when people came and went. I wrote down the exact times when the maid went from room to room and how much time she spent in each room. I created a chart noting how often the cameras moved as they picked up various random movements, such as squirrels or falling leaves. I began to develop a plan. I’d need to do another day of surveillance on Monday to confirm a few things. I assumed that the whole weekend was a lost cause. The weekend would likely be patternless and useless to me. I could do some research on these cameras and obtain the equipment that I needed but beyond that, I was going to have to give myself the weekend off. Normally, I’d dread the downtime. This time, there was at least some promise that I wouldn’t spend the whole weekend alone.

It felt like the day would never end. At seven o’clock in the evening my mark came home. Only one bodyguard came in with him, the other being dismissed for the day at the front gate. Today’s bodyguard was the American, who would be spending the night. It was Friday, they were right on schedule. That was the last note I needed. I marked that down and then I hauled ass back through the park. I needed to get ready to see you.

I got to the theater five minutes early. When I got there, you were already waiting in front of the theater. The sky had grown dark, a deep purple color, but the street and the sidewalk were bright from the lights of the surrounding shops and restaurants. You were standing in front of the theater, looking out at the faces of people as they passed you. I snuck up behind you. I stepped quietly toward your back until my mouth was just a few inches from your ear. “Anything good playing?” I whispered. You didn’t jump. You barely reacted. It was as if you’d expected me to come up behind you like that. You simply stood there, your arms crossed, a smile radiating out from the edges of your lips.

That night, after the movie, I walked you home. The night had grown cold and you walked with your hood pulled up around your face, just like the first two times that I saw you. It felt good, already having memories of you. It had only been three days and I knew that you would live in my mind forever. The cold didn’t bother you much. You teased me about my thin American blood. You talked about the movie, about the things that you saw that you hadn’t noticed the first time. You said you liked the movie more the second time. You nearly danced around me as we walked, moving in circles, light on your feet. I barely spoke, already dreading saying good-bye to you. When we finally got to the front of your apartment building, snow had begun to fall. You stepped inside the doorway and slipped your hands inside the back pockets of your jeans. You leaned back against the doorframe and smiled at me. I tried reading the signals. Then I leaned in to kiss you for the first time. We held the kiss for a moment, barely moving, and I lifted a hand and placed it against your cheek. The kiss was sweet and innocent but sensuous. It was an old Hollywood movie kiss. When our lips finally parted, I spoke. “By the way,” I said, “what’s your name?” Maria. You told me your phone number. Despite the fact that you claimed to be quite fond of the nickname “Perv,” I told you my name. Then we said good-bye, seemingly for the night, although I’m not sure that either of us wanted to let the night go yet. I know that I didn’t. I watched you until you were safely in your stairwell, moving my eyes away only after I couldn’t see you anymore. Then I started the lonely walk home.

When I got back to the safe house, I climbed into bed and, as usual, couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t anxiety or guilt keeping me awake this time. It was loneliness. I missed you already. Only moments after seeing you disappear behind your apartment door, I missed you. After an agonizing hour or two, armed with your name and your phone number, I picked up the phone and dialed. You answered after only a ring and a half. You weren’t sleeping either.

There was a pause on the line. I heard everything I needed to hear in that pause. “I’m afraid, Joe. This is going too fast.” I should have told you that I was afraid too. I was afraid that if it didn’t go fast enough, I’d lose my chance. Days would go by and I would be gone. I wanted at least this moment—at least this night. Good things can’t happen too fast where I come from. They can only happen too slowly, and if they happen too slowly, they are lost.

I dressed again. Then I sat on the sofa and waited. Despite the cold, I opened a window, hoping that I could hear you as you approached the building. Fifteen minutes went by. I spent those fifteen minutes watching the clock tick time away. Then the buzzer rang. I didn’t stop to ask who it was. It had to be you. I pressed the button to let you in. I stood by the door listening to the footsteps in the stairwell as you bounded up the stairs. You moved quickly until you were right outside the apartment door. Then there was that moment. It was that moment when anticipation and reality caught up to each other. It felt like a cosmic event. I could feel you on the other side of the door. You hesitated before knocking. I decided not to wait for you to knock. I wasn’t going to give you a moment to doubt yourself. I opened the door and there you were in front of me. You looked scared but excited, excited that you were ignoring your fears, and scared about how excited you were. I waited a moment. Then I grabbed you by the hood of your jacket and pulled you close to me. I kissed you hard on the lips. I still remember how you tasted. You tasted different than you had just hours before. There was a musky flavor on top of the sweetness that I had tasted before. It was the flavor of whiskey. You must have downed a shot before getting the courage up to venture out of your apartment. The flavor was enticing. We moved together as we kissed. You took the lead. Without our lips separating, you led me slowly into the bedroom. You kept your eyes open. We fell onto the bed, clutching each other. I reached down between your legs and pressed my hand into you. You gasped, slightly, quietly. Then you pushed me away from you for a moment.

“Wait here,” I said. I looked down at you lying on the bed. Your lips were red and glistening. I could see your chest rise and fall with each hard breath. “Don’t move.” I ran into the living room to shut the open window. I was back in the bedroom in a moment. You had moved. I should have known better than to believe you’d wait passively. I returned to see that you’d already ventured under the covers. My eyes drifted to the small pile of your clothes sitting next to the bed. I stood in the doorway for a second, dumbstruck, watching the covers move on top of you as you slowly pulled off your final piece of clothing. With that, you dropped a tiny pair of pink underwear on top of the pile of discarded clothing.

Then you smiled. The fear was gone. It had been murdered by excitement and whiskey. “So, you going to come under here and keep me warm or what?” I stepped to the side of the doorway and turned off the bedroom lights. Only the illumination from the window, a mix of soft blue light coming from the moon and the distant streetlights, was left. The soft light made everything glow. It was like a dream. I slowly slipped off my clothes as you watched me. Then I joined you under the covers.

We woke up the next morning curled up in each others’ arms. I felt hungover, like I had just awoken from a long slumber, confused as to what had happened the night before. The sun was shining brightly in the window. Your hair was disheveled, your eyes sleepy, but you looked beautiful. I woke up before you. While you were asleep, I lay there, gazing down at you. I wasn’t sure what to make of what had happened. You opened your eyes and caught me staring at you. You smiled. I could feel my life changing. For a moment, I was torn. I knew that I couldn’t be good for you. I should have chased you from my life right then. It would have been the right thing to do. I should have protected you from me. Instead, looking at you in the bright morning sun, I began to believe that maybe you could save me. I just didn’t know what from.

We each had things to do that day. You had a paper to write. I had a gun to purchase. I think we were both relieved to be apart for a little while, to take stock of things, to try to understand what was happening, but we didn’t dare be apart for too long. We agreed to meet again for dinner, near the apartment. It was the first time that I had ever really felt at home in a safe house.

After you left, I went out in search of a pay phone. I could have called from the landline at the safe house, but knowing that you’d be spending more time there, I decided not to take any more chances. I didn’t want anyone to be able to trace anything back to you. Finding a working pay phone was a major pain in the ass. I was on a short list of people whose job was made more difficult by the fact that everyone was getting cell phones. Eventually, I found a pay phone. I dialed. After a few rings a woman answered. “Global Solutions. How can I help you?”

“You know that we don’t like to use guns, right?” This was standard policy. Guns were to be used on a need-only basis. Guns were traceable. Guns aroused suspicion. You strangle someone, knife someone, bash someone’s head in with a bat, and people get scared but no one thinks that there’s something bigger going on. Hate crime, crime of passion, no way there’s an organized war going on where people are killing each other with kitchen knives. Anyway, standard policy or not, for this mission, I needed a gun. I wished I could call Jared. He’d know where to get one, but I’d already cashed all those chips in. I was on my own.

I told Brian what I thought of his policy. “Yeah, well, you want to explain the policy to my mark’s bodyguards, because I’m not sure they care. You know, I’d prefer not to die taking this guy out. So can you help me out or not?” In the past, I might have tried to pull this off without the gun. Death just seemed like an especially bad idea at the moment.

“Yeah, that silly reason’s called pity. Who do I need to see?” Brian told me to hold on while he checked some things on his computer. I could hear him clicking away on his keyboard. Then he put me on hold while he made a couple phone calls. I had to drop a few more coins into the phone. Finally, he clicked back on and gave me an address not far from the safe house. I was to go in, ask for Sam, give Sam a password, and then get down to business.

I went to the address that Brian had given me. It was a shop that sold sex toys down near Chinatown. Sex and guns. It was just like being in the States. I thought for a minute that this might be Brian’s idea of a joke. I walked into the store, through the aisles of dildos, novelty lingerie, and porn DVDs, and up to the counter. At noon on a Saturday, the store was empty except for a woman standing behind the counter. I walked up.

“Can I help you?” she asked, sounding nothing like the receptionists at Intelligence. Even though she was young, her voice had the raspiness of a longtime smoker. She wore leather pants and a sleeveless, army-green top. She had tattoos running up and down both of her arms, angels and devils in some sort of battle. The devils seemed to be winning on her right arm but the angels had the upper hand on her left.

“I’m Sam,” she answered. I gave her the password and she told me that she’d been waiting for me. She walked to the front of the shop and locked the door. She flipped the sign on the door to Closed. Then she walked past me again and motioned for me to follow her. We walked up a flight of stairs. We passed a bunch of video booths where you could plunk in a couple of bucks and watch five minutes of porn.

“Wouldn’t want to be the guy who has to clean these floors,” I joked. Sam glared at me. It dawned on me that she might be the guy who had to clean the floors. Past the video booths was a door labeled Staff Only. We pushed through the door into the stockroom. The stockroom was nearly as big as the floor. It was immediately obvious that they weren’t just selling sex toys.

“Okay.” Sam walked over to a shelf about three rows from us, climbed a few steps up a ladder, and opened a big cardboard box. She lifted a few boxes of lubricants out of the box and set them aside. Then she reached deeper into the box for something that was buried beneath the other products and pulled out a small black handgun. “This should do the trick.” She handed me the pistol. “Lightweight. Can carry a silencer. Can kill a horse. You’ll get twenty-five shots before you need another cartridge, and with a little practice, you can reload a cartridge in about a second and a half.” For the first time since I had entered the store, Sam seemed to be enjoying herself. I took the gun in my hand. I held it out in front of me, aiming it. It would do.

Once the sale was completed, I put everything—the gun, the silencer, and three cartridges—in my backpack. Three cartridges, but if I needed more than three shots, then something went drastically wrong. After we got back downstairs, Sam unlocked the front door and reopened the store to other customers. I walked toward the door but stopped before I was halfway there. Sam was on her way back to the counter. I turned toward her. There was a question that had been burning in my brain since I first laid eyes on her. “Sam?” She looked up at me. “I was just wondering. Are you in this for the cash or are you one of us?” It wasn’t a question that you were ever supposed to ask. I didn’t care. I couldn’t help myself.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam answered, her voice even, her eyes emotionless. She walked back behind the counter. I turned again and headed toward the door. Before I could open it, Sam spoke again. This time her voice wavered slightly. I turned and looked at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she repeated, “but I’m rooting for you.” Before I walked out the door, I took one last look at the tattoos on her arms. Angels and devils. I wondered which side I was on.

You paused to consider my comment, still trying to figure out my secret. I knew that my secret was safe, too unbelievable, to be guessed. “So, are you sleeping with your mother?” As you laughed I pulled your face toward mine, catching your head in my hands and kissing you again. I knew then that I would never be tired of kissing you. I wanted to stop you from asking any more questions that I couldn’t answer. I was hoping the kiss would be answer enough. It wasn’t.

You thought about it for a minute, seriously thought about it. Then you looked me in the eyes. “No. I don’t want you to lie to me. I don’t ever want you to lie to me.” Then you kissed me. I could feel the kiss in my toes. The questions stopped for the time being. I knew that one day I would have to answer them. I thought that on that day, you would be able to choose whether or not you wanted to stay with me. I guess sometimes life makes decisions for you.

The next morning, Sunday, you snuck me into one of the school libraries. You had some research to do. I took the opportunity to use one of the library computers to do research too. I looked up security cameras and took note of everything that I could find—coverage angles, heat sensors, everything. We spent Sunday afternoon in the park. I tried to steer us as far from my mark’s house as I could. I tried not to think about tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. We walked through the park to the top of Mount Royal. We stood there and looked down on the city, our city. Standing there, that day, Montreal was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen. You stayed over again that night.

On Monday morning, you left early to go to class. I left early too. I didn’t like how the apartment felt when you weren’t there. I spent the day staking out my mark’s home for the final time. Everything ran like clockwork. My mark woke up at the same time as he had on the previous two days, dressed at the same time, left for work at the same time. The extra bodyguard arrived at the same time. The maid arrived at the same time. The maid’s daily schedule was the same. She moved from room to room in the same order every day. First she cleaned the kitchen, then the bathrooms, then she dusted and vacuumed. Once the rooms were clean, she’d go out to the end of the driveway to get the mail. When she returned, she’d change the sheets and do the laundry. It seemed that the expert toxicologist was a bit of a germ freak.

We saw each other again that night. I told you that I thought I was falling in love with you. You told me that I was being a fool, that it was too early for talk like that. What you didn’t know was that, if everything went according to plan, I’d be leaving Montreal in two days. I didn’t know how to tell you that. So I didn’t. All I told you was that I had to work all day Tuesday and that we wouldn’t be able to see each other. “Wednesday, then,” you said, and kissed me on the cheek.

The plan was simple. Jared always tried to teach me that all good plans are simple. This one was good. The fact that things got so messy wasn’t the fault of the plan. Sometimes things just get messy. There were two phases to the plan. First, I needed to get inside the house without being caught on the surveillance cameras. Once inside, I’d hide out until my mark and the American bodyguard returned. Then phase two would begin. I needed to avoid being caught on the surveillance cameras because the first thing the bodyguards did when they returned home was to review that day’s video from all four cameras. They’d watch it in high speed and slow it down for anything suspicious. I was sure that if the cameras caught me, not only was the whole plan sunk but I’d be trapped inside the house.

I had learned a few things about the surveillance system through my research. At first I was hoping that the cameras would have an exploitable blind spot, an area in the yard that I could safely move through without being taped, but that was a dead end. Whoever installed the cameras knew what they were doing. I had to find another loophole in the surveillance system. What I came upon was reaction time. The cameras were thorough and they were accurate, but they weren’t fast, or at least they weren’t so fast I couldn’t stay ahead of them. Really it seemed that asking any set of surveillance cameras to be all three, fast, thorough, and accurate, was nearly impossible.

During my stakeouts, I had timed and mapped out the movement of the cameras. Each camera stayed on its target for at least five seconds. When something moved, all cameras that could get a clean visual on the movement would turn toward the movement and focus. The cameras would then stay focused on the moving object until it stopped moving or until something else diverted it. If two things moved in succession in different parts of the yard, the cameras would first focus on the initial moving object for at least five seconds, and then, while one camera stayed locked in on the initial moving object, the other cameras would begin to chase the secondary movement. It often took the cameras as much as two seconds to find and focus in on a moving object. That meant that as long as there was a primary diversion, I could move within certain areas of the yard for eight seconds before being caught on camera. The weekday routine at the house provided me with four usable diversions before my mark made it home at night: First was the arrival of the maid; then the arrival of the second bodyguard; then the departure of my mark and the bodyguards for the day; and, finally, the maid’s journey to the end of the driveway to get the mail. Because it would be impossible to make it from the front gate to the front door in under eight seconds, I would need each of those four diversions.

Even sitting here, watching the house, waiting for the right moment to put my plan into action, I couldn’t help but think about you. I just wanted to get this done. I wanted to finish this job so I could see you again. I tried not to think about what would happen after that. The only part of my future that I cared about at that moment was the next twenty-four hours, and fourteen of those would be wasted on this son of bitch. It made me hate him even more.

I lifted the binoculars to my eyes and continued making mental notes about the patterns inside the house. Everything seemed to be in perfect order. The mark was exercising in the exercise room, bouncing up and down on a StairMaster while reading the business section of the newspaper. The big Aussie was in the bodyguard’s bedroom going through his set of exercises—push-ups, sit-ups, then dips. My timing was perfect; I had a few minutes to get around to the front of the house before the maid arrived. I spent a minute or two stretching; knowing that for much of the rest of the day I was going to have to be completely still, at times in cramped, awkward positions. When I was done stretching, I made my way over to the front of the house and hid behind a bush near the front gate. I waited there for about five minutes before the maid arrived.

The maid, as always, arrived in her own little silver car. She had an electric door opener in her car that opened the front gate. She activated it and pulled into the driveway. The driveway led up a small hill toward the house and then circled around a large fountain. In the middle of the fountain stood an angel, wings spread as if about to take flight, one arm pointed up toward the heavens and the other holding a large scepter that pointed toward the front gate. A stream of water shot out of the end of the scepter as if the scepter were a weapon.

When the maid’s car pulled into the driveway, the cameras immediately focused on it. They focused on the car and followed it up the small hill toward the house. I waited as long as I could, allowing the cameras to move farther and farther away from the front gate, away from me. Then I slipped through the gate before it had a chance to close and lock again. Once inside, I had only a few seconds to make it to my first hiding spot. As with much of my life, all I cared about was being invisible. I ducked quickly behind a few bushes planted just inside of the front gate. They’d been planted there to hide the gate’s engine from view. I carried my backpack in my hands, quickly crouching down and pressing my back up against the engine. I could still feel the motor purring against my back as the gate finally finished closing. I heard the gate click again as it locked itself back in place. I could feel the engine warming my back. The heat was as important as the bushes. The bushes hid me from the people in the house. The heat hid me from the cameras. The cameras were programmed not to recognize the heat from a few locations. The gate motor was one of them. The areas directly surrounding the house were another. The cameras were programmed that way so that they wouldn’t stray toward the gate’s engine every time the gate opened or closed. As long as I made no sudden movements, I was safe from the cameras here, all 98.6 degrees of me. The first and easiest leg of phase one of the plan was successful. I was inside the gate. I sat, consciously slowing down my breathing, knowing I would be in that position for a while, preparing for leg two.

Inside I knew that the maid was cooking breakfast for my mark and the big Aussie. In another hour or so, the American bodyguard would show up. Like the maid, he would come in a car equipped with an electric door opener for the gate. He would pull up to the front of the house and park the car before going inside to retrieve my mark and the big Aussie. The three of them would then leave together in the same car.

I heard the car outside the gate before I saw it. Then I felt the motor against my back begin to purr again as the gate began to open. I fixed my eyes on the camera that I was facing, a camera that I could see through the leaves of the bushes but that never pointed itself at me. Once I started moving, there would be no time to look at the cameras again, no time to double-check that the cameras had waited the requisite five seconds before chasing me. I simply watched and waited until the lens of the camera began to follow the bodyguard’s car up the hill toward the house. In one more second, I’d have to make my second move. I took off my sneakers and placed them in the backpack I was holding in my lap. It was time to move. I tensed up, got to my feet, and sprinted directly up the center of the driveway. By running in my socks, I made almost no noise. I counted the seconds in my head as I ran. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. I realized that I hadn’t exercised since I was in Georgia. Four seconds. Five seconds. I was going to be cutting this one closer than I’d hoped. Six seconds. I dropped my backpack on the ground. Seven seconds. I was nearing the fountain with the avenging angel. I leapt. I placed one hand on the fountain’s concrete ledge and swung my legs over the side. I made a small splash as I entered the water but the sound was easily washed out by the sound of the torrent of water shooting out of the angel’s scepter. Without a second’s thought, I submerged my whole body in the water with the exception of my mouth and nose, holding them just high enough above the surface of water to breathe.

The water was shockingly cold. My heart rate seemed to double as soon as I hit the water. If my heart was weaker, it might have stopped completely. I stayed as still as possible, doing everything in my power to avoid going into shock from the cold. If everything moved on schedule, I’d only need to be in the water for five to ten minutes, until my mark and the bodyguards left the house. I only hoped to get out before hypothermia began to set in. I stayed as motionless as I could in the cold water, trying to will my body from shivering. I wasn’t visible from the house due to the high concrete walls of the fountain. As long as I didn’t move, I knew that the cameras wouldn’t be attracted to me. The cold water would effectively cover up my thermal signature. As cold as it was, the water was keeping me safe.

As I floated I visualized the next leg. I had thrown my backpack to the right of the fountain, away from the direction that my mark and his bodyguards would drive their car. I lifted an ear out of the water, waiting to hear the car engine rev up again. My body began to become numb in the water. This made lying there less painful but also worried me. I feared that I wouldn’t be able to move quickly enough once I got out of the water. I still needed to outrun the cameras. Without generating enough movement to attract the surveillance cameras, I began to massage my legs with my hands, trying to keep the blood flowing through them. After what seemed like an hour, I heard the engine of a car start. I lifted my head farther out of the water, getting both ears above the surface so that I could better position the sound of the car. I listened as the car went down the hill and pulled farther and farther away from the fountain. I heard the electronic gate begin to open and I eyed the one surveillance camera that I had a clear view of. It was pointing toward the bottom of the driveway, aimed directly at the moving car. I climbed over the fountain wall, stumbled toward my backpack, picked it up, and began running toward the front door of the house.

At first, my legs were clumsy and heavy, like I was wearing two concrete blocks for shoes. My mind moved faster than my legs could go and I nearly fell twice. Fortunately, it wasn’t a long run. My blood began flowing again, pumping oxygen to my leg muscles. I bounded up the stairs leading to the front porch and then quickly ducked behind a love seat that was set diagonally across one corner of the house’s expansive front porch. Once seated, I quickly eyed the camera that I could see from that vantage point. It hadn’t chased me, still pointing toward the front gate, toward the sight of the last moving object. Slowly, as to not attract the attention of the surveillance cameras, but as quickly as I could, I stripped off my wet clothes and replaced them with dry ones; a dry sweatshirt, sweatpants, socks. I put my sneakers back on. I pulled the ski mask over my head in an effort to warm myself back up. Then I pulled my knees up and hugged them against my chest and waited. I was close enough to the house now that the surveillance cameras wouldn’t be attracted to my body heat. It was approximately an hour and a half since I had first reached the house. I would be crouched in a ball in the corner of the porch for another two and a half hours, before I had a chance to make another move.

Two and a half hours. For those two and a half hours, every movement I made, I made as slowly and deliberately as I could. I took a few drinks of water, ate a power bar, and waited. Waiting had always seemed to be eighty percent of my job—waiting for planes; waiting for buses; waiting for orders; waiting for the right moments to act; waiting for the right time to kill—but rarely had the waiting been so literal. I counted the seconds. I watched the cars that drove by on the street. I tested to see how long I could hold my breath. I ran over the plan again and again in my mind. I thought about you. I thought about what it would be like trying to say good-bye to you. I tried to stop thinking about you. It didn’t work.

The time passed. Eventually I heard the knob on the front door begin to rattle. The maid had finished dusting and vacuuming and cleaning the bathrooms and was now about to venture out to get the mail. The door opened and she stepped outside. She didn’t even glance in my direction. She simply wiped her hands on her apron and started walking down the driveway. I watched her as she walked, watched the surveillance cameras follow her down the hill, and then, once she reached the other side of the water fountain, I stood up with my backpack, walked quickly to the front door, opened it, and stepped inside. I left my wet clothes on the porch. I wouldn’t need them again.

Once inside, I made my way downstairs to the exercise room. The maid always cleaned the exercise room right after breakfast. She had no need to visit it again. There were no linens to change there. I’d be safe. Once in the room, I ducked into the closet and sat on the floor. I took the gun out of my backpack, attached the silencer, checked to make sure that it was loaded, and then placed it back in my lap. I drank some more water and ate my second power bar. I congratulated myself. I was still cold and a bit tired, but the plan was working perfectly. It was time to wait again. It would be another nine hours before phase two of my plan went into action.

Eventually, I fell asleep. I don’t know how long I was out for. Falling asleep wasn’t part of the plan. The five minutes lying in the cold water must have taken more out of me than I’d expected. When I woke up, I was slouched down in the dark corner of the closet, leaning against the walls. I opened my eyes and lifted my head. There was a spot on my shoulder from where I’d been drooling in my sleep. The air in the closet was extremely warm. I don’t remember what I was dreaming about but I woke up with a crick in my neck and a raging hard-on. Falling asleep like that had been dangerous. I could have snored. I could have flinched, banging against the wall. I could have mumbled or screamed in my sleep. It was that type of recklessness, those small mistakes, that got people killed. If they had found me, asleep in the closet, with a gun in my lap, it would not have ended well; not for me, anyway.

I was lucky. Everything was okay. I hadn’t screamed or snored. I checked my watch. It was five-thirty in the evening. I had gotten away with napping. The sleeping was dangerous but it probably did me good. I just wanted to get it all over with. I checked the gun again. I stopped and listened. I held my breath for a moment, trying to make as little noise as possible so I could hear any other movements in the house. There were sounds of footsteps on the floor above me. They were faint but I could hear them. The maid was still at work. Had the footsteps been the American bodyguard’s or those of the mark, they would have been louder.

I visualized the rest of the plan again in my head. I’d wait in the closet until my mark and the bodyguard got home. I’d have to act sometime between their arrival and when they armed the night sensor. They generally armed the sensor right before going to sleep. The night sensor would set off an alarm if it detected any movement. They would effectively trap me in the closet. I’d have to get upstairs before the bodyguard turned it on. The bedrooms were on the third floor. That’s where the hits would go down. At the top of the stairs, the library was on the left and the bedrooms were on the right. The plan was to take the bodyguard out first. That’s why I needed a gun. I’d kill the bodyguard on the way in so that I wouldn’t have to worry about him on the way out. It should have been easy enough—open the door to the bodyguard’s bedroom before he suspects anything, pop two shots into him, and then move on to the true target.

At around seven-thirty, right on schedule, my mark and the bodyguard got home. From my spot in the closet, all I could hear was the sound of footsteps on the floor directly above me. I couldn’t hear voices. I could, however, make out three distinct sets of footsteps. Not long after the footsteps became a trio, they were reduced to a duet when the maid went home. As long as I could hear the footsteps directly above me, I could track what rooms my targets were in, and by looking at my watch and checking their usual schedule, I could track what each person was doing. The mark was like a robot. He didn’t deviate from his nightly schedule at all. The bodyguard’s schedule was less fixed. He went upstairs once to check the surveillance video but other than that, I was able to follow his footsteps and feel safe. Just in case something showed up on the surveillance cameras, I readied myself for a sweep of the house. I sat with my back upright, pushed up against the back wall of the closet, and pointed the gun at the closet door, ready to pull the trigger. The sweep never came. When my mark went into his office after dinner, the bodyguard simply went to the den to watch television.

Finally, at around ten P.M., both sets of footsteps disappeared up the stairs. With that, it was time for me to put phase two into action. I ate the last power bar and drank the rest of the water. I pulled the ski mask out of the backpack and slid it back over my face. The mask was for the getaway. After the job was done, I intended to walk right out the front door, surveillance cameras be damned.

I slung the backpack over my shoulders and quietly pushed the closet door open. The exercise room was nearly as dark as the closet. I tried to remember where all the equipment was located so that I wouldn’t trip over anything. I could see just enough to make my way through the shadows. Slowly, I walked toward the stairs leading up to the second floor and climbed. At the top of the stairs, I turned, holding the gun out in front of me with two hands. I had never been formally trained to handle a gun so I moved like I had seen actors in television crime dramas move, turning the corners of the dark house quickly with my arms outstretched, leading with the gun.

When I came to the base of the second flight of stairs, I could see the light coming out of the spaces beneath the two bedroom doors, cutting into the darkness. My targets were still awake. I listened. I couldn’t hear any sound coming from my mark’s room. I could hear the bodyguard playing some sort of video game on his computer. There were sounds of screeching tires, gunshots, and general mayhem. The real mayhem was going to be quiet by comparison.

I made my way up the stairs. I walked with my back against the wall and kept my eyes on the bedroom doors. If someone came out now, I was ready to shoot on sight. The doors didn’t budge. I made it to the top of the staircase without incident and was able to duck back into the shadows. Not a single stair squeaked. My targets stayed in their rooms. As I reached the top of the stairs, the sounds coming from the bodyguard’s bedroom grew louder. When I got to his door, I reached out and touched it, the same way I would have if I were testing to see if there was a fire in the other room. It was a reflex. The door was cold.

I took a deep breath. I held the gun in my right hand and reached for the doorknob with my left. I twisted the doorknob. Two shots—that’s all it was supposed to take. I pushed the door open. As it swung, it let out a faint squeak. I stepped through the door and aimed my gun at the bodyguard. Somehow, over all the noise coming from his computer, he had heard the door. He reacted quickly. He looked at me, then the gun. His eyes grew wide with fear. He dove off his chair, trying to reach a safe place behind the bed. I fired. My aim was good. If he hadn’t dived so quickly, I would have hit him right in the chest. If he hadn’t heard the door squeak that one shot would have probably killed him. Instead of hitting him in the chest, the bullet lodged in his shoulder. Even with the silencer, the gunshot was loud. I got a little flustered and fired again quickly, aiming for the widest part of him and shooting him in the stomach. As the bullet entered his gut, the bodyguard let out a grunt. He fell to the floor, already bleeding heavily from his stomach. Then he made another move. He lunged for the bedside table. He kept his gun there. I’d seen the bodyguards put their guns there. I took aim again. This time I aimed for his head. I just wanted to take one more shot and end it. I wanted to take one more shot and move on to the man that I was supposed to be killing. I had to hope that he hadn’t noticed the gunshots, that they were lost amidst the sounds of the video game. I lined the handgun’s sight up with the bodyguard’s hair but his hair was wrong. His hair wasn’t supposed to look like that. His hair was blond. It should have been brown. It was the wrong bodyguard. I wasn’t about to kill one of the enemy. I was about to kill an innocent man.

I took my finger off the trigger. I looked down at the trail of blood on the carpet that the Aussie left as he crawled. I froze for a second. I felt like I was seeing a stranger’s blood for the first time, like his blood was a different color than all those people I’d killed before. My stomach turned. I started to sweat. The Aussie took another lurch forward toward the nightstand. He reached up to open the drawer. His hand neared his gun. Instinctively, I took a step toward him and kicked him in the stomach as hard as I could. I kicked him right where I had shot him. He cried out in pain and doubled over before he could reach his gun. I pulled my foot back. It was covered in blood. I leaned in closer to the Aussie, holding the gun inches from his head, and spoke to him in a whisper. “You’re not the one,” I said to him, my voice full of anger. The bodyguard didn’t move. I walked over and shut the bedroom door so that I could think.

I lifted up the ski mask so that my mouth was no longer covered. “You’re not the one,” I repeated. “But if you keep fighting me, I’ll blow your fucking brains out.” That registered. The bodyguard turned over, sprawling his legs out in front of him, and leaned his back against the bed. He looked down at the two new holes that I had created in his body. Blood was pumping slowly out of the hole in his shoulder, dripping down his chest and getting caught in the ribbing of his white tank top. The blood there was nothing compared to the blood coming out of his stomach. He held his hand over the hole. His hands were huge, at least twice the size of mine, but his giant hand didn’t come close to covering the ring of blood that was growing out of his stomach. The stain on his shirt was already as large as a globe. He studied his wounds for a second. Then he looked back up at me, standing over him with a gun. He started to cry. “Shut up,” I said to him, wanting to punch him in the face just for being there. “You weren’t supposed to be here,” I mumbled under my breath. He couldn’t hear me over his own sobbing. My mind raced. My mark was twenty feet away. I could go over there and plant two bullets in his head and be done with this in less than thirty seconds. I looked down at the Aussie again. His sobbing had stopped. He was staring up at me, trying to look at my eyes through the ski mask. His face now was a mix of confusion and anger. If I left the Aussie alive, I knew that he’d go for his gun. He’d try to be a hero. Leaving him alive was not an option. I couldn’t kill him either. I wasn’t a murderer. I was a soldier. I decided that I had to save him. I couldn’t have innocent blood on my hands. I just couldn’t. Fuck it, I thought. Fuck the mark.

“I’m not going to kill you,” I said to the bodyguard, speaking barely above a whisper. “I’m going to get you out of this house and I am going to save you. But if your boss sees us or hears us or calls the police, I am going to kill you both. Do you understand?” The Aussie nodded. The anger began to drain from his face. All that was left was confusion. I’d just shot him and now I was trying to save him. There was no way for him to understand. Still, if I was going to save him, I had to act quickly.

“Can you walk?” I asked him. Without saying a word, the Aussie grabbed the post on the corner of the bed and tried to stand up. He made his first effort using his left arm, the one with the hole in the shoulder. The attempt didn’t take. When he tried to pull himself up, his bloody hand slipped and he fell face-first onto the floor, his nose pushed into the carpet. I stepped forward and rolled him over. “Can I trust you?” I asked, looking in his eyes for the answer.

I took his good arm and wrapped it around my shoulders. I stood up, propping the Aussie against me and pulling him to his feet. I wrapped my other arm, the one holding the gun, around his waist to help his balance. “We’re going downstairs,” I told him. He nodded again. We took two steps toward the door. The Aussie was already weak. He dragged his feet with each step, barely lifting them off the ground. “Stronger,” I said to him as we reached the door. Before opening the door, I turned to the bodyguard. “The motion detectors. Do you have control over them or does he?” With his free hand, the Aussie pointed to his chest. “And they’re not on?” I asked. He shook his head. It was clear now. We were on the same team. We had the same goal.

I opened the door and we stepped through it. The Aussie was walking more confidently now, getting used to standing on his feet. He continued to press his good hand against the hole in his stomach, applying pressure to try to lessen the bleeding. We took a step toward the stairs. Then I heard something coming from the mark’s bedroom. A rustle of movement and then a voice. “Close your goddamn door, jackass!” the boss shouted from his room. I swung my foot back and kicked the Aussie’s door closed. I listened. Nothing else. The boss didn’t suspect anything.

When we got to the top of the staircase, I looked down at the stairs. The Aussie wasn’t going to make it down the stairs under his own strength. I turned my face toward his. Our noses were no more than an inch apart. He was breathing heavily and his eyes were beginning to glaze over. “I’m going to carry you down,” I said to him. He nodded. Then, in one quick motion, I bent my knees and threw his body over my shoulders. He was heavy. I started down the stairs, trying to walk quietly without losing my balance. About halfway down I began to feel the Aussie’s blood seep through the back of my mask. It was warm and sticky.

“Don’t worry,” I said to him. “I’m not going to kill him. Not tonight.” That’s all I could get out. I should have killed him. It would have been easy, easier than it ever would be again. It would have been quick. I wasn’t thinking straight. If I couldn’t save the Aussie, I was going to have innocent blood on my hands. My stomach was churning. It had held together until I hit the bottom of the staircase but now it let loose. I stepped away from the Aussie into the darkness and bounded into the closest bathroom. I lunged forward and vomited in the sink. I had never thrown up on a job before. I had nearly thrown up after my second kill, a thirty-three-year-old man, an instructor. He trained their killers. I slit his throat with a knife while he was trying to get into his car. It was messy. Blood spurted everywhere. That’s when I started strangling people. It was usually more of a struggle, but it was much cleaner. I wiped the remaining chunks of vomit from my lips and flicked them into the sink. That was done.

I walked out of the bathroom and headed toward a phone. I picked up the phone and turned it on without thinking. I was lucky that the boss wasn’t on the line. I got a dial tone. I dialed 911 and hoped that this was the appropriate number in Canada. I quickly got an operator. She said something in French and then, in English, said, “Nine one one. How can we help you?”

“No.” I hung up the phone and headed back toward the front door. The Aussie was right where I had left him but his head was dangling loosely on his neck. His eyes were closed. He was out cold. Still, I could see his chest moving slightly up and down as he breathed. I stepped forward and slapped him as hard as I could. His eyes shot open and were, for a second, full of life. “Stay awake,” I ordered. Then I swung his good arm over my shoulder again and headed out the front door.

We didn’t have much time. We had to manage the driveway, the front gate, and another couple of blocks before we got to the corner where I had directed the ambulance. If we were too late, they would assume it was a prank. We had to move. I turned toward the Aussie. “Speed. We need speed.” He was struggling but still attentive. He nodded and our pace quickened. With effort, we made it down the driveway, through the gate, and along the street. We left a trail of blood behind us as we walked. After about ten minutes, we had gone all of about half a mile. When we turned the last corner, I could see the flashing lights from the ambulance. The ambulance wasn’t alone. There were cops there too. That was more than I’d bargained for. It was the end of the road for me.

I took the Aussie’s arm off of my shoulder. I tried to steady him by placing one of my hands on his still good shoulder. I stepped behind him. “Walk,” I said, and I gave him a firm push with my free hand, the one in which I held the gun. He took two weak steps forward and fell to the ground. Then he got on his hands and knees and began to crawl toward the blinking lights. He looked like a cartoon of a thirsty man crawling through the desert toward water. He made it about two more feet and then he collapsed under his own weight again. He rolled over on the sidewalk and looked back at me, tears flowing from his eyes. If I left now, he was going to die in the street, thirty feet from help.

The paramedics and the police were chatting away, assuming by now that the call had been a prank. The first paramedic noticed me when I was only about twenty feet away. As soon as his eyes fixed on me, I aimed the gun directly at him. He froze. He didn’t say a word. He was paralyzed with fear. Even at that distance, I could feel his fear. I must have looked like the grim reaper, walking the streets at night, dressed all in black, a ski mask covering my face, a gun stretched out in front of me and a corpse draped over my shoulders. At about ten feet, the cop and the paramedic who had been chatting away finally noticed me too. The cop went for his gun. He was out of practice, his movements were clumsy and slow. “Don’t even think about it.” I shouted. “Anyone pulls a gun, and people die. Lots of people.” The cop took his hand away from his belt. I yelled at his partner to stand next to him. I wanted everyone with guns to be standing where I could see them. The partner, who looked to be about fifteen years old, quickly obliged.

I bent down and placed the Aussie on the ground without taking my eyes off the cops. The Aussie made an audible gasp when he hit the ground. By now he was completely covered in blood, but he was still conscious. I looked at the paramedics. “Take him to the hospital. Fix him,” I ordered. They didn’t move. I took two steps backward. “Now!” I shouted. Their daze broken, they went into action. They pulled the cot off the ambulance, got the Aussie on the cot, and loaded him inside. They moved quickly and with purpose, suddenly realizing that the faster they moved, the faster they would get away from the psychopath with the gun. The cops watched with envy.

As soon as the ambulance drove away, I knew that the paramedics would be radioing for backup. Within minutes, the area would be inundated with cops. This wasn’t protocol. I wasn’t trained for this. I looked at the two cops in front of me. They were as white as ghosts, scared shitless. They were probably even more scared than I was. “You saw me save that man, right?” I yelled. I was standing close to them. I probably didn’t need to yell anymore. They nodded in unison. “I don’t want to kill anyone,” I yelled again. They shook their heads in agreement. “I’m going to run away,” I said. They nodded again. “But if I hear a single gunshot, I’m coming back and there will be hell to pay.” More nodding. I turned and ran. There was no plan anymore. I just ran as fast as I could. I ran for the park. There were no gunshots. Soon, the sounds of sirens began to pierce the night air. I threw the ski mask away. I kept running. I needed to get back to the safe house. Until I changed clothes I knew that I wasn’t safe. That was the fastest I ever ran, probably the fastest I ever will run. I didn’t slow down. I burned off the fear as I ran. It was just after midnight when I made it back to the safe house.

The rest of that evening went by in a blur. Even thinking back on it now, I only remember disparate moments and nothing in between. I don’t remember how I got from place to place. In my memory, I simply drifted from one place to the next as if in a dream. I do remember calling Intelligence and talking to Brian. At first he was pissed off that I had blown the hit. That changed, however, when he realized what a mess I was. I treated the call with Brian as a confessional. I cried, blabbering. “I almost killed someone,” I muttered through trembling lips, repeating the phrase over and over again. Brian just sat there and listened, waiting for the purge to end. When it did, Brian simply responded, “Just get out of the city. Hell, get out of the country. Do it tonight. Find a place to lay low in Vermont. Just get out. Call me in three days.” Then he gave me the code. I broke protocol and wrote the names down. I was worried that my head was too messed up to remember them. Stephen Alexander. Eleanor Pearson. Rodney Grant.

Next, I did the one thing that you are never supposed to do. I did the unthinkable. I went to the hospital to see my victim. I knew that I couldn’t move forward, couldn’t leave this city, and could never face you again unless I knew that he was going to be okay. I wasn’t a murderer. You wouldn’t have fallen in love with a murderer. You were too good for that.

Sneaking into the hospital was easy, even in the middle of the night, even to visit a man who had just been shot. The hospital staff’s job was to keep people healthy, not to run surveillance for them. I went into the Aussie’s room and sat down in a chair across from the bed. I didn’t dare turn the lights on. The big Aussie was asleep. He had an IV sticking in his arm. His shoulder was bandaged. His stomach was covered by the sheets, but it had to have been bandaged pretty heavily too. The bandages covered the stitches that closed the holes that I had made only a few hours earlier. He was attached to a heart monitor. The heart monitor let out rhythmic beeping sounds. It was soothing. I nearly nodded off in the chair. I remember wondering if my heart would ever beat that evenly again. I doubted that it would. The Aussie woke up after about fifteen minutes. He turned his head and looked at me, slouching in a chair in the darkness. He looked in my eyes and recognized me. “It’s you,” he said. I nodded. He knew I was the guy who had shot him. “In front of the strip club?” he asked. He remembered that too. I nodded again. Then he asked, “Why?”

I wanted to answer him. I wanted to tell him about the godforsaken War that I was trapped in. I wanted to tell him that he was actually the lucky one and that I was the unlucky one—that I would gladly take two bullets to be in his shoes. I wanted to explain to him that I was a good person. Even more than that, I wanted him to assure me that he knew that I was a good person. But there never seemed to be enough time for anything. “It was a mistake,” I told him. I don’t think he would have understood anything else. Then I got up to leave.

I had one more stop to make before leaving Montreal. It was about three in the morning when I finally made it to your apartment. I woke up your roommate when I hit the buzzer but you didn’t mind. When I got up to your apartment, you pulled me into your room and, before I could speak, kissed me deeply. “I have to leave,” I told you once you released me from our kiss. My entire body shaking as I spoke.

I took a cab to the airport and from there I rented a car. I drove through dawn. I saw the sunrise out of my car window. I crossed the border sometime in the morning. I listened to French talk radio during the drive. I don’t understand a word of French. For some reason, the sound just soothed my nerves. Eventually, I stopped at a small roadside motel in Vermont. The parking lot was full of cars with ski racks and skis. Vacationers. I stumbled into my room and dropped onto the bed. Over the next twelve hours, I may or may not have slept—I can’t be sure—but I know that I didn’t move, not once. I just lay there, slowly trying to forget everything about my life except for you.