Dead and Gone

“There was a kidnapping. It was in the papers. And the transfer-money was all there. Every dime.”

“How many were on the set?”

“At least four, counting the kid. If he was a kid. I think he was. But it was dark, and I wasn’t that close.”

“Just you. And four of them. And still you …?”

“When the kid popped me, I took the rounds in the Kevlar … and whatever that stuff was that the Mole wove over it. I dropped. Pansy charged out of the car. She went for the kid. The guy behind me, the one picking up the money, he shot at her, but he missed. Pansy got the kid. Brought him down. Two others came out of their truck. My people opened up. The leader—the guy with the money in his hand—he told them to clear out. But to finish me first. That’s when I got … this,” I said, touching the right side of my face.

“So they John Doe’ed you at the hospital?”

“Yeah. Only this happened in Hunts Point, right? But I was transferred. When I came to, I was in Manhattan.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did your people drop any of them?”

“Pansy got one,” I said, my voice strangling on pride and pain. “She got the kid. They … killed her. Right there. Right in front of me. They killed her and there was nothing I could …”

My face was leaking. Just on the right side. I wiped it away with my palm, hard.

“Another one of them got it, too. But they took their dead with them. And my people took Pansy. There’s nothing left there but blood in the ground.”

“So you went back to … the person … to find out … what?”

“A lot of stuff. But once I found out that the people whose kid was taken made it part of the deal that I be the transfer-man, all I wanted was how to find them.”

“And he wouldn’t—?”

“He killed my dog,” I cut her off. “He killed Pansy.”

Wolfe took a sip of her coffee, her pale eyes steady on me. “People say things like that all the time. ‘If anyone ever hurt my dog, I’d kill them.’ But they don’t mean it. It’s just their way of saying how much they love their pet.”

“Pansy wasn’t my—”

“I know,” she said, gently. “But what do you have now?”

“You mean, without that … person, right? Here’s what I have: The names and last known address of the people who hired him. And the knowledge that somebody wants me dead bad enough to pay a whole ton of money to get it done.”

“You’re well away,” she said. “It’s been months. Whoever wanted you, they don’t know how to find you. If they could, they would have made their move already.”

“I’m not going to spend the rest of my life as a target.”

“What’s the difference, if you’re a target they can’t hit?”

“Because there’s other things I’d rather be.”

“For instance?”

“At the other end of the sniper-scope,” I said.

She looked into me. I wanted to reach across the table and just … touch her hand, maybe. But I froze. It was her call.

“I need a few days,” she said. “And your passport.”

I handed it over. Wolfe got up and walked away. Pepper flashed me her trademark grin, telling me to stay where I was. I could feel someone standing just behind me. I sipped my cold hot chocolate, alone.

When I was a kid, I thought there was a way not to hurt. I wanted to be like Wesley. Ice. So cold inside that I wouldn’t feel a thing. Wesley was the only one I ever knew who actually got past it all. He had no hate in him. Nothing made him angry. All he wanted was to get paid.

But he got tired. So tired that he checked out.

Wesley taught me the difference between sad and depressed. People never get that one. I was born sad. I probably knew my mother didn’t want me even before she climbed out of that bed in the charity ward and strolled back to wherever I’d been spermdonored. I’m what happens when the trick tricks the hooker.

My birth certificate may not have had a full name on it, but it did have a number—and I’ve had one or another of those ever since. I’ve been a file, a case, a subject, a foster kid, a mental case, a JD, a convict. None of the endless agencies ever knew me. They always got it wrong. But that didn’t matter to them—they always had my number.

When you’re depressed, it all slips away. You stop caring, about anything. A depressed person, he can’t feel anything for anyone else. Empathy dies first.

That’s the way they labeled Wesley. Killer sociopath. He wasn’t a man; he was a machine. You gave Wesley a name, you got a body. And Wesley got paid. A never-miss, platinum-proof perfect assassin. No friends, no family, no lover, no pets. No apartment, no house, no home.