The bathroom was a single stall with a lock on the door. Thankfully, it was empty.

“You did not complete your mission,” Mr. Nelson said.

I bolted the door behind me and leaned back against the cool tile wall.

“Not exactly.”

“Not at all,” he snapped.

“Gordon Sanchez is dead, though,” I said, knowing that wouldn’t make a difference.

“That does nothing to rectify the imbalance between us, Mia. You owed me a debt, and twice now you have not paid.”

“This situation was different than last time,” I said, hating that it sounded like I was begging. “I was attacked from behind by someone else trying to take out Gordon Sanchez. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. I was attacked, and I missed my shot. I would have found another way to take him out, but someone beat me to it.”

“I did,” Mr. Nelson said.

I held my breath, waiting for him to explain. Finally, I asked. “You took out Gordon Sanchez?”

He sighed. “Do you think I hire contract killers for the fun of it? Do you think I am a man who wastes my money on unnecessary expenses and takes unnecessary risks?”

I stammered a gibberish sentence, not sure what to say.

Mr. Nelson continued. “Of course, I did not take the target out myself. After your failure to complete the previous task you were given and your attempts to lie to me about the nature of your failure, I had reason to doubt you would complete this mission. So, I hired another killer.”

“You hired someone else to take out my target?” I asked. “That isn’t fair. I would have taken care of Gordon Sanchez. I would have completed my mission and made myself just as culpable as you. But you made it impossible for me to do that.”

“You had every opportunity to complete your mission properly,” he said. “You were to kill your target while he was on the parade float prior to the final turn. That was the agreement you made, and you failed to make good. I can think of nothing more fair than your punishment.”

“Did you hire the same person to kill me, too?” I asked.

My question was met with silence, so I repeated it.

“Your silence is an answer,” I said finally, becoming angry. “This isn’t fair. I would have killed Gordon Sanchez. He deserved it. I would have killed him, and you know that, but you don’t care.”

Still more silence. I kicked the tile wall, hoping no one in the coffee shop could hear me. Frustrated tears were gathering in my eyes and I blinked them away.

Finally, there was a long sigh on the other end of the phone. “I’ve always found it is best to leave the past in the past. The only thing we can do is look to the future. Unfortunately, your future will be rather short.”

The phone clicked, and the conversation was over. I wanted to break the mirror above the sink and throw my phone, but neither action would change my very shitty circumstances. So, I took a deep breath, shoved my phone in my pocket, and walked back into the coffee shop. Jack was still at our table, but now his phone was sitting on the table in front of him. He was staring at it like it was a bomb he needed to diffuse. He looked up as I sat down, but quickly looked away.

“What did your boss want?” he asked.

“To tell me I’ll be dead shortly,” I said with a shrug, trying my best to shove my fear and rage down deep.

Jack’s head snapped up. “He sent someone after you?”

I nodded. “The shots fired in our direction at the parade were not an accident. He hired someone to kill Gordon in case I didn’t follow through. And then they were supposed to kill me. They missed, but my client is certain they will not miss a second time.”

Jack pursed his lips and then pounded his fist into the table, shaking our half-empty coffee cups. “Shit.”

“It’s not like this affects you,” I said. “You don’t have to stay with me. You are free to leave whenever you’d like.”

He shook his head.

“Jack,” I said more firmly. “I don’t need you to be my hero. You’ve done enough damage as it is.”

He laughed. “You have no idea.”

“What does that mean?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”

Jack sighed and finally looked up at me, his lips set in a flat line. “My boss called while you were in the bathroom. He isn’t happy with me.”

“Well, duh,” I said. “We already knew that, right?”

He nodded. “But I didn’t know he’d put out a burn notice.”

“Oh, shit,” I said, falling back against the backrest of my chair. “I’m sorry.”

Jack chuckled again, but this time there was no humor in it. “No, I’m sorry.”

I sat up slowly, eyes narrowed. “For what?”

“The burn notice is for both of us,” Jack said. “My boss knows I’m with you, and he wants you dead, as well.”

The panic I’d been repressing began to rise to the surface. My fingers trembled on the table top. “You’re serious?”

“I wish I wasn’t,” he said softly. “I tried to tell him you weren’t a threat to him, but he has always believed in being thorough. Every hitman he employs is out right now looking for us.”

I had a contract killer and a small army of mafia hitmen coming after me. If I hadn’t been so scared, I would have laughed.

“What are you thinking?” Jack asked.

I realized I’d been silent for a few minutes, lost in my own thoughts. “I think we should split up,” I said. “We are easier to spot when we are together. If we split up, at least one of us has a chance of escaping.”

Jack was shaking his head before I even finished the sentence. “No way.”

“You can’t force me to stay with you,” I said.

“I know I can’t, but I think you have a better chance of surviving if you stick with me.”

I furrowed my brows. “What are you trying to say? You think you are better than me?”

He shrugged. “Not better, just different.”

“If I recall,” I said. “You are the reason we are both being pursued anyway. You ruined my shot and lost your own chance at killing Gordon Sanchez.”

“Only because I easily spotted you and your gun,” he fired back. “If you had been more discrete, I wouldn’t have noticed you at all and we both would have fired at around the same time and Gordon Sanchez would be dead. So, really, your inability to avoid detection is the reason we are both in this mess right now.”

I didn’t want to admit that he had a point. Because, if I was being honest, I’d thought a lot about the fact that I’d seen Jack on the set of stairs next to mine as I was setting up but had assumed I was hidden enough to avoid notice. I had taken a risk, and it hadn’t paid off. I held partial responsibility for how everything had played out.

“If I’m to blame for not being better hidden, then you are to blame for not killing me faster,” I said.

He opened his mouth in shock and wagged a finger at me, reminding me a lot of my grandma the few times I’d cursed in front of her. “Are you seriously upset with me for not killing you quicker? Because I promise you, that can be rectified if you’d like.”

Jack was leaned across the table, one eyebrow raised in a kind of threat.

“You wish,” I said, rolling my eyes. “What I’m saying is that if you had killed me more efficiently, you would have had plenty of time to use my weapon to kill Gordon Sanchez and save yourself. I may be here because of my own faults, but so are you. If you knew how to properly strangle someone, you’d probably be in the next state over by now.

Jack opened his mouth to respond and then closed it, shaking his head. “This is pointless. No more arguing, okay?”

I reluctantly nodded in agreement.

“I vote we stick together,” he said. “We work better together, and I believe I can help save you just as much as I believe you can help save me.”

I suppressed a small smile, privately pleased that Jack respected at least some of my abilities. Also, I didn’t want to face a long line of murder attempts by myself. Even if Jack and I both ended up dead, it would be better than dying alone. Though, I’d never tell him that.

“Fine,” I said. “We’ll stay together.”

Jack nodded his head once as if to settle the matter and then shoved his phone in his pocket. “We need to get out of the public eye and find somewhere to regroup and formulate a plan.”

I scooted away from the table and dumped my coffee cup in the trashcan a few feet away. When I walked past the table again, however, Jack quickly grabbed my arm and squeezed. His hand was so tight around my elbow that I knew I’d have bruises later. I winced and looked up at him, preparing to complain, but then I saw his wide eyes. Something was wrong. He flicked his eyes to the front corner of the restaurant.

I slowly followed his gaze and saw a tall man in a long white cape and a matching mask sitting next to the windows. The mask came to a point in the center of his face, like a bird’s beak, and hooked downwards. His outfit would have been strange by normal standards, but during Mardi Gras he looked perfectly in place. Except that I could feel the tension coming off of him. His hand was hidden beneath the cape, frozen on something near his hip. I knew it was a gun. The caped man was a hitman. Or the contract killer. I didn’t know whether he was there for me or Jack or both of us, but there was no doubt in my mind that he wasn’t in the coffee shop for their lattes. And if it hadn’t been for Jack, I would have walked right past him, which could have proven fatal. Jack was already proving himself more useful than me, and I hated being beat.

Jack turned so I was standing behind him and then slowly began to navigate the small square tables towards the front door, taking measured, careful steps. The man in the corner tracked us from the edge of his vision, and I could see the muscles in his arm flex as his hand tightened around the handle of his gun. Jack’s left hand—the one not visible by the man in the corner, snaked up towards his hip. He was going to draw his gun. He was going to shoot the man before he could shoot at us, but how would that look to the other patrons in the shop? They wouldn’t know that the man Jack shot was moments away from shooting at us. They would only know that Jack pulled his gun first and fired. Someone might even decide to be a hero and tackle Jack. Or the man in the bird mask would survive the first shot and pull out his weapon, firing back at Jack out of “self-defense.” I knew Jack thought it was the only way, but I knew better.

“He has a gun!”

I threw all of my breath into the scream, projecting my voice so it filled the entire shop. I waved my arms and stumbled backwards, knocking over a few chairs. Everyone turned and a few people instinctively ducked under their tables. I repeated it over and over again, my finger pointed at the now stunned caped man in the corner.

Thankfully, Jack wasn’t stunned. He lunged across the five feet that separated him from our would-be killer and knocked the gun from his hand. Jack and the man both scrambled for it, but Jack was quicker. He grabbed the handgun and brought the handle of it down on the man’s head. He froze for a moment before thudding to the floor in a costumed heap.

“Call 9-1-1!”

“I already am!”

“Is everyone okay?”

“Was he with the shooters at the parade?”

“Someone grab his gun before he wakes up.”

The small shop was filled with voices and commands and soft cries, but I tuned it all out and focused on Jack. He bent down and lifted the man’s mask, revealing a middle-aged man with brown hair, tan skin, and a square face. I stared at it, memorizing it in case he somehow managed to escape the shop and come after us again. Then, Jack stepped over the man, set the gun on a table, and then moved towards the door with a sly look in my direction. I followed him.

A few people shouted after us as we left, but we didn’t slow down or turn around.

We were at the end of the block when I saw police officers on foot talk into their radios and then turn to jog towards the coffee shop. They ran right past us without a second glance.

“If we stay with the crowd we should be okay,” Jack said.

There was a surprising number of people still meandering around the street considering a man had just been assassinated less than a mile away. But that worked in our favor. It kept us from standing out.

“That was a smooth move back there,” Jack said, looking over at me, his mouth lifted into a lopsided grin.

“It worked for the woman back at the parade, so I figured it would work for me. Did you see the way he froze up?” I asked, allowing myself to even laugh a little bit.

A group of people turned the corner in front of us. They looked young—most likely college students. They also looked incredibly drunk.

“Fuck the police, man,” one of the men shouted, putting an extra emphasis on the po. He had a string of poorly drawn cartoon characters tattooed up and down his arm. Most of them were too misshapen to recognize, but of them was a sailor with a can of spinach that had to be Pop-Eye. “I didn’t do nothing wrong.”

Jack moved slightly closer to me, and I couldn’t tell whether he was simply sliding over to make room for the group of people or whether he was shielding me from them.

“Fucking barricades,” a red-headed man said. “They are trying to catch a murderer, so why do they care about my public drunkenness?”

His voice was slurred, but I had to admit he had a point. The police had better things to do than monitor whether this likely college dropout had had too many drinks. But then I registered what he’d said. Barricades. Jack seemed to have caught it at the same time I had. He looked over at me, then he stepped in front of the drunk group. Each of the men looked up at him.

For a moment, their eyes were narrowed, fists clenched as if ready for a fight, but then they saw Jack. Really saw him. He wasn’t a mountain or anything, but he had a quiet kind of strength that hinted towards a familiarity of fighting and winning. They eased back a bit and stopped walking.

“What’s up?” the ‘fuck the po-lice” guy asked.

“Did you say something about a police barricade?” Jack asked.

The redhead nodded. “If you want to go home, you have to talk to the police. And apparently drinking too much is a crime now.”

A guy in the back snorted. “Drinking too much isn’t, but threatening to fight a cop is. You deserved it you idiot.”

The redhead shoved his friend.

“I thought we already had a talk about your fighting,” a mysterious fifth voice said. I turned around to see a police officer walking towards us. He was staring at Pop-Eye, a warning in his eyes.

The man straightened up immediately. “Did you follow us here? I told you I was only joking. I’m not going to fight anyone.”

“Leave these people alone,” the officer said, waving the man away from us and then winking at me.

“They stopped us first,” Pop-Eye grumbled, but he did as he was told. The group crossed the street and disappeared.

The officer moved closer, and Jack and I both kept our faces turned towards the ground. We knew there was a chance we could be recognized. If someone at the parade got a good look at us, then they could have given our description to someone. Not to mention our little run in a few minutes back at the coffee shop wasn’t helping matters. Even though we hadn’t done anything wrong, giving eye witness accounts at the precinct for the next few hours would not be a very good use of our very precious time.

“You two doing okay?” the officer asked, slipping his thumbs beneath the belt loops on his tan pants and stretching his hips forward in a power pose. “Do you have a place to stay? The streets aren’t the safest place right now.”

“Yeah, crazy day,” Jack said, nodding and wrapping an arm around me. “We are heading indoors right now.”

“Where would indoors be?” he asked, head tilted to the side.

Something about the question felt invasive, and while the stress of the day was enough for me to find a possible threat in everyone and everything, something about the officer’s demeanor seemed especially threatening. I definitely did not want him to have any clue which direction we were going.

“The large hotel on Canal Street a mile up,” I said, pointing straight ahead. “The one with the marble façade and iron railings.”

“Swanky place,” the officer said, narrowing his eyes at me and then looking Jack up and down, no doubt taking notice of his grass-stained jeans and sweaty undershirt. “And lucky because as far as I’ve heard, every room around here is booked solid, and every sane person who lives in the area has left until the bulk of the festivities are over.”

I pressed myself against Jack’s side and wrapped an arm around his elbow. “We’ve had it reserved for months. It’s our anniversary. The day has gone south, but we have a great view of canal street. Fourth floor, corner room. Very romantic.”

Jack stiffened at my touch, but I prayed the officer wouldn’t notice the awkwardness between us. And based on the smirk on the officer’s face, I figured he hadn’t.

“Well, you kids have fun. And be safe.”

“Thanks, officer,” I said, pulling Jack down the sidewalk and turning to wave.

“Thanks,” Jack mumbled. Then, as soon as we were out of earshot, he leaned down. “What the hell was that about?”

“Just being cautious,” I said. As soon as we turned the corner, I unwrapped my arm from around his and moved away, keeping a solid two feet of space between us. “What do we do now?”

“While you were lying to the cop, I had an idea,” he said, moving to the curb and looking both ways, even though all thru traffic had been blocked by the barricades. “Follow me.”