Roman

"Have you ever killed a man, Ellie?" I asked. My voice sounded dead, even to me, and I hated myself for it. I couldn't even sound reassuring if I tried, it wasn't in my makeup. My childhood took that away from me, and so much more. Words have never been kind to me, nor me to them. I'm no good with them, not like I am with a knife, or my hands. One word can mean two things, and I can't handle that. I value simplicity, not complexity. There is simplicity in life, and beauty too.

The muscles on her face flickered in a riot of indecision, as if she wasn't sure whether I was about to reach up and take her life. I'd seen that look before, more times than I care to remember. It's what happens when the body pumps enough adrenaline into a person's system to kill a small animal. The mind has checklists, instinctual checklists that it runs through. Fight or flight. It's the instinct that carried the human race out from the wild and into civilization, the reason we survived long enough to turn flint and stone into fire, to build walls and homes, wheels and cars. But in the few seconds before the mind makes its decision, all is still. And for a man like me, those few seconds are all it takes to end a life. As I looked up at Ellie's terrified face I saw two things: that she was brave, but that she was no killer.

But I was.

"No," she croaked.

I started talking, but I didn't recognize my own voice. It sounded like someone else was talking, and a cold, dead tone of voice filled the room. It was like my body was merely a puppet, and some other consciousness was animating my brain and limbs. "I have. Never a woman, though."

Her face blanched. I kicked myself. I'd meant to reassure her, but the second the words escaped my lips, I realized what they actually sounded like. A threat. I kept going, cursing my upbringing for failing to equip me with the skills I needed to dig myself out of this whole. I wanted to reach up and hug her, but she was more likely to think that I was trying to kill her. I reached up and touched her neck lightly, with two fingers. Her skin was as soft as it looked, maybe softer. It felt like a fine silk, or the best Egyptian cotton. I could have rested those fingers there for days. I tapped her on the neck, either side. "These are your carotid arteries." I pulled the knife out of her hands, transferred it to my left and raised her right with mine to her neck. "Can you feel that?" I asked.

She nodded, terrified, her eyes fixated on the knife. I relaxed my face, desperately hoping to direct her attention to me. I wanted her to see that I wasn't a threat. I cursed my words, they sounded so clumsy, so ineffective, so unequipped to convey my meaning.

"They lie just below the surface." I raised the knife, resting it on Ellie's left carotid with my left hand. It would only take a slip, a sudden movement, and she would die as easily as if I'd shot her in the head. I blinked. I didn't want to imagine her death. "Ninety percent of your brain's blood goes through them. If I made an incision, you'd parse out in two seconds, maybe three. You wouldn't even feel yourself dying. There is no surviving it."

"Please," she begged. "Kill me, or don't, I don't care. Just please, stop."

I let go of her hand, and her eyes flickered to the door. I knew what she was thinking. Fight, or flight. The thing is, if she left, she was as good as dead. Victor's men were all over the city, and with the bounty she had on her head, she didn't stand a chance of surviving. I reversed the knife, holding it by the blade. It was Japanese, made with a high carbon steel, only the best, and sharp too. It's a myth that cooking with a sharp knife is more dangerous. The sharper the knife, the less likely you are to hurt yourself, but a bad workman always blames his tools. I raised the blade to my neck, angling the point so that it rested gently on my right carotid, and motioned for her to take the handle. "Grab it," I ordered. This was it, the moment of truth. Either this worked or… Or the truth was, I didn't know. I didn't have a plan B.

"What?" She said, as if terrified it was all a trick, like I was a cat playing with a mouse, giving her enough rope to hang herself with before reeling it back in. I could understand that. I'd watched the same movies as her, read the same books, and heard the same songs. But then, I'd lived a very different life to her. Not easier, necessarily, but different. I'd taken lives, hurt people, murdered people. I was the enemy. I was the thing that went bump in the night. The darkness in everyone's soul, but I was there, sitting right in front of her, not in a movie, or the pages of a good book.

"Take it, the knife," I repeated. I held it steady, my hands void of trembling. I knew that I would never be up to persuade Ellie that I didn't want to hurt her, not using my words, anyway. I bet if she were in my position, she'd be able to do it. I read her pieces in the paper, I know what she can do with language. And I know I'll never have that skill. But when you've killed, like I have, you realize that life doesn't hold any value, not in itself. Not even your own. Ellie glanced at the door once more, and then the knife, as if deciding whether to dash for it or to play my game. I hoped that she wouldn't run. I didn't want to keep her here against her own will, and I wouldn't do it. I couldn't save her life by myself. I needed had to be my partner, not my captive. I pressed the knife into her hands and she took it. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

"I won't stop you, if killing me is what you want to do. The knife's sharp, I did it myself. It'll slide in, like a shovel through fresh snow. I won't feel it, and it will be over before you know it." What I didn't say was that I wished she would kill me. I wished that she would do what I couldn't, take away my pain, and take away the memories of every evil thing I'd ever done. For all the people I'd killed in my life, there was one person I could never hurt. Myself.

The blade trembled against my neck, almost vibrating with Ellie's nervous energy. I was putting my life in her hands, and I fully accepted that it was a toss of a coin. I could see this from her perspective. I'd broken into a hospital, killed people, taken her to a safe house that might as well have been a prison. Hell, if it was me I'd be dead already. I had to hope that Ellie was made of better stuff than I. "Why?" She croaked, through a throat that was clenched with anxiety. "Why are you doing this?"

I paused for a second, then answered simply, honestly. "Because I can't."

There was nothing holding me to this life, not now, not after everything I'd done. By saving Ellie's life, I'd crossed a line in the sand, a line that could never be uncrossed. Once a hired killer takes a commission, there's only one golden rule – finish the job. If the client ever finds out that he failed, or worse, that he intentionally ignored his orders, then that dereliction of duty was like signing your own death warrant. If she killed me, then so be it. All of my pain would be over, and I'd face my judgment in the next life like a man. But if she didn't… perhaps I could find some redemption in this life.

The tip of the razor-sharp kitchen knife pressed against my skin. It yielded slightly, then tore, and a single, tiny droplet of blood started to dribble down my throat. Ellie looked at it, entranced, following its path down my white skin, until it disappeared into the murky blackness of my cashmere sweater. I almost smiled. It wouldn't be the first time my drycleaner had had to wash out the blood. He was a good man. Well, maybe not good, but he was at least discreet.

"Who the fuck are you?" Ellie screamed. It was an inchoate, cathartic unloading of rage, as if every muscle and every cell in her entire body was uncoiling like a squished spring, and all that energy, all that rage was pouring out in the form of a torrent of anger. I held still, absorbing her frustration like the pillar of a bridge parting the river on either side of me. "Why the fuck am I here?" She screamed. " What is this, all a game to you?"

Her words echoed around the high-ceilinged living room, bouncing off the hard walls and the uncarpeted floors. I wasn't worried about her attracting any unwanted attention. This deep in the Industrial District, life only started to move at night. Still, just for the sake of liveability, I thought, it might be worth investing in some soft furnishings.

"No game," I said simply, and quietly. Ellie had to strain to listen. "I could have killed you at the hospital," I said, fixing my eyes on hers, burying myself in those peanut-butter brown depths. "I didn't. I could have killed you on the way to my apartment. I didn't." I leaned forward, invading her personal space to make a point. She didn't back off, not in the slightest. I liked that. It took a brave girl to show that kind of courage to me. "And I could have killed you when I held that knife to your throat. But I didn't."

"Then why the hell am I here? Who are you?" She said flintily. Her eyes acquired a cold, calculating look, the kind of look I'd seen a hundred times before. It was a shock to see it in Ellie's eyes. "And can I go?"

The three questions had my mind whirling like a hamster ball on a tidal wave. I hadn't wanted to believe it, not after I'd put all this effort into saving her life, but it was true – she had no idea who I was, no memory of the night we'd shared , perhaps even no memory of who she had been. I sat back on the couch and pointed at the door. "You know where the door is," I said, trying to hide my shock. "But if you leave…"

"If I leave, what?"

"You have no idea who you are, do you?" I asked incredulously. I understood it, rationally. She'd been through some kind of trauma. No one just survived a coma and walked out unscathed, and especially not someone who lived through the kind of things that she'd had to. I'd seen the scars that littered her body twice, and they weren't all because of whatever accident she'd suffered. Whatever the fuck happened to her, or perhaps I should say, whoever, had done a number on her, that was for sure.

The slim strands of self-assurance that Ellie had slowly started to assemble fell away, and suddenly she looked exactly what she was: a lost, scared little girl. Her shoulders slumped forward, as though my comment had knocked the life out of her, and when she sat down next to me, it was more like a collapse, as if all the energy had been sucked out of her legs and left her tottering. "No," she confessed haltingly. "They were going to tell me today… Or yesterday, when?"

"It was today." I said, answering her half-asked question. "Why didn't they tell you before?"

Ellie started to talk as though her emotional floodgates had finally been unlocked, and she was just happy to have someone listen. I didn't want to say a word, lest I remind her who I was, and how she'd got into this situation. I hope that somehow, deep down, she must still remember who I was and how we'd met, remember that I'd protected her once and that I would do so again. "Like I said, they were going to. They said they didn't want me to have to handle too much at once, that my mind was still fragile.

"You were an important person," I said softly, trying not to startle her. "You still are, you know."

"I thought," she whispered, "I thought I was a reporter."

My hands took on a life of their own and gestured wildly at an imaginary city. "In this town? I can't think of anything much more important than that, can you?"

"So what?" Ellie spat bitterly. "I wrote Internet click bait? List of ten things you'll never believe!"

I grabbed my black rucksack, noticing the brown manila folder that I grabbed at the hospital, but bypassing it and going straight for a bundle of newspaper clippings and Internet printouts. I hadn't wanted to show her what they were, because if you thought about it too deeply, it was kind of creepy. More than kind of creepy, I'd printed them out well before I ever got her kill order, but after I'd slept with her, like some kind of bizarre trophy. It was a type of stalking, I guessed, but of her mind, not her body. I pulled them out and thrust them into her hands. "Here, read them," I said.

She devoured the pages, reading quicker than I could think. It had taken me hours to make my way through them the first time, though I thought I pretty much had them memorized word for word by now. "I wrote these? Really?" She said it with a look of almost childlike excitement in her eyes, as though she could scarcely believe the truth of it, as though simply by reading about who she'd once been, the fire and drive of the woman who wrote those articles was being reawakened within her.

I nodded.

"I don't want you to think I'm weak." She croaked, wiping away a tear from the corner of her eye.

"Weak?" I laughed, showing a glimpse of my true emotion for the first time. "How could I think that? I don't know many people would write a takedown piece on Victor Antonov. That takes balls, lady, and I know one thing, you got 'em."

She looked at me sadly. "I'm not that person anymore. I don't even remember who she was."

"Oh," I chuckled. "I think you are. You could have run, before, but you chose to try and stab me."

"I failed, didn't I?"

"I've killed more men than I can count." I said grimly. "You're not weak, you're lucky."

She gave me a strange look. "You didn't kill me, though, did you?" She said softly. "You can't be so bad." All the fight and all the flight seemed to have drained from Ellie now, and she seemed tired and sad instead. I wasn't sure, but I felt as though she had somehow, strangely accepted my presence, and decided that I wasn't a threat. It was as though, after all the stress in her life she'd simply decided that I was the lesser evil.

You'd be surprised.

I was, too, but not by anything she said, but by something she did. She leaned over to me and put her head on my shoulder. Before long, her breathing gave way to a shallow, unhurried sigh, like the whispering of the wind through the summer grass. She felt warm against me, and right. It had been a long time since I'd felt a woman's body against mine. Women don't tend to flock to men in this line of work. Hell, Ellie was the last woman I'd touched, and now I was doing it again.

When I was sure she was asleep, I leaned forward and whispered into her ear. "Weak? No, I think you're stronger than you know."

Ellie

I woke up, startled, to sirens blaring in the distance and found myself cold and alone. I reached over to the other side of the couch, but Roman was gone. The living room was dark as night, illuminated only by the city's night time glow being reflected off a carpet of fluffy white clouds and through the shuttered windows. The siren disappeared into the distance and my heartbeat returned to normal. For a second, my mind considered the option of running. No matter what way you slice it, this was a crazy situation. I should be in hospital, not shacked up with a killer. Shit, there was probably a kidnapping task force looking for me.

I sat up, and as I did a soft blanket toppled off my shoulders and pooled on my lap. I blinked, I couldn't remember having put it there, or even think where it might have come from. Roman.

I stood up, needed to get moving. I'd been a passenger all this time, in hospital, then saved by someone else, and I needed to regain some small measure of control. I found a shiny silver Apple laptop lying on the black marble breakfast bar. As I opened it up, the illuminated Apple logo lit up and the light sparkled back off a thousand white specks in the black stone. I found myself transfixed, then wondering whether I was doing the right thing.

But I had to know.

I typed in the web address for the Alexandria Herald website, my fingers clucking across the keyboard like I had made this journey a hundred times and it loaded up in a flash. I don't know what I'd expected to see, maybe a giant headline with the title: Murder at the Herald, or perhaps a picture of my face. I saw none of that. There was a story on the city elections, hell, about the anything that wasn't a story on was the proverbial cat stuck in a tree. And me. I beat my palm against the counter in frustration.

A voice echoed from the darkness. "You're awake."

I jumped, and as I did my hand accidentally knocked against the laptop, sending it clattering to the floor. Well, it would have gone clattering to the floor, except for the fact that Roman had the reflexes of a cat. He closed the last couple of yards between us in half a second and caught the expensive device before it hit the floor and smashed into a thousand pieces.

My heart was in my mouth. "Don't you use lights?"

I felt irrationally guilty, as though he'd caught me in the midst of a heist. I wasn't doing anything wrong, but I realized why I felt the way I did – I'd been looking for some proof that he was telling me the truth about who I was and why he'd had to save me. If he'd had to save me. I still wasn't entirely sure that this wasn't some kind of crazy, sociopathic game. Trust, I thought to myself, but verify. It was a motto that had served me well as a reporter, or at least I assumed that's where the phrase had jumped into my head from, and I could only hope that it would save me now.

"Find what you are looking for?" He asked, sidestepping my question as he returned to the laptop in front of me, without even looking at what was on the screen. I could have been emailing the police, for all he knew, yet he didn't seem to care.

"No," I answered honestly, and slightly angrily. I didn't know who I was more upset about – him, or the corrupt town that thought it was okay to ignore a murderous break-in at the city's only hospital. "There's not a single story about what happened at the hospital, you know that? And why don't you turn on a light, sometime?" I added, for good measure.

"Because I don't need to," he replied. "I see better at night."

"Better?" I asked skeptically.

"I'm not used to having people over." It wasn't an answer, and it was, all at once.

It irritated me. I'm not ashamed to admit it, either. "So what's the plan?"

"Plan?" He repeated, looking stupefied. "What are you talking about?"

The first tendrils of dawn began to creep into the room, and I realized I must've slept through the night. I'd slept off whatever drug had knocked me out to the hospital, I'd slept all night and I still felt dog tired. "This is it?" I asked, surprised. "Saving me and just bringing me here to do, what? Where even is here, anyway"

"We're about three blocks from the old Ford factory," he said. "In an old warehouse. I've been turning it into an apartment, but it takes time, doing it alone."

I was secretly impressed. The place was unfinished, that was clear, but where the work was complete, like the bedroom, it was finished to perfection. The marble was seated so precisely that if I had to guess I'd estimate that it was mounted at precisely ninety degrees to the wall, without even a smudge of sealant betraying where it was joined. The apartment bore the hallmarks of a craftsman, an artisan: someone who was positively obsessed with perfection. Or a control freak…

"But you must've had a plan," I repeated. "Okay, not a plan, but an idea of what was going to happen after you brought me here? I can't to stay in your apartment for the rest of my life, can I?"

He shook his head. "No."

Is that it?