We walk into the room and I pull out two chairs, placing them down in the center to face Norm; another murderer with a spongy brain who is just waiting to be wrung out. With his arms and legs tied to the chair, he’s detained enough to start the process.

There are days I feel like I've been conducting business like this for most of my life even, though it has only been a year and a half since Agent Roberts sought me out, offering this grand opportunity as a barter to clear my name. While grateful to have my freedom, I often wish there wasn't a stipulation to maintain what I should never have lost.

It took a while to get to the point where I’m able to conduct actions without a twitch in my heart or an ache in my stomach. I believe I'm now officially soulless and numb.

"¿Dónde estoy?" Norm groans, sounding distressed and confused, just how I want him. "What da fuck is dis? You prison guards were supposed to kill me. You idiotas fuck dis up too?" More groans bellow from his throat as he tries to shift his body around.  "Fuck you, mannn." Norm's words come out in long forms of slurs like he's wasted, but I'm thinking it's more likely from the concussion Everett gave him a couple of hours ago.

I glance over my shoulder to check on Harley. She’s pacing, holding her hands up to the sides of her face—clearly upset or angry—both probably. I think she can handle herself when necessary but this might be overkill for tonight.

I turn back toward Norm and laugh. "Norm, mi amigo, tendrias suerte si fuera guardia de prisión." In his native language he was speaking when we picked him up, I tell him he'd be lucky if I were a prison guard.

I walk toward him and kick his chair backward, watching as his head crashes against the cement. The impact isn’t enough to knock him out so I lift my leg and plant my heel into his face, hearing a crack echo through his jaw. The short growl he manages to emit stops before I can lift my foot. He’s out cold, but I’m sure the crack sounded worse than it was.

I finally see a reaction poking through the blank canvas Harley’s face has portrayed for the last few hours. Her eyes are wide, and she swallows hard while observing the blood from Norm's left ear pool into a perfect circle beneath his cheek.

"You told me you weren’t hurting anyone," she grunts. "Is this just for recreational purposes or is there a reason for your madness? Oh, and your Spanish accent could use some help—it’s barely intelligible." Wow. This chick has no bounds. I fucking learned Spanish, Mandarin, and Arabic in less than eighteen months and she's going to correct my pronunciation?

"I wouldn't refer to our job as recreational fun, but thank you for the linguistics tip. I will certainly take that into consideration the next time I'm torturing someone who speaks Spanish."

Harley's lip curls into a snarl as she crosses her arms over her chest. "Just tell me where I’m sleeping," she says.

Regardless of the lack of reasons I have to smile, I can't help the one fighting against my mouth, knowing I'm getting under her skin, which shouldn't be part of my goal here. However, until I figure out who the hell she is for sure, this is how things are going to be. "I'm sorry. Are you upset that you didn't feel like you were being wooed by a hot date while dining in an upscale Mexican restaurant somewhere?"

The normal pale complexion of her face warms into a soft pink, and it feels almost like a game now that I think I know how to bring her attitude down a notch.

"Yeah, Axel, a hot date who just stuffed his foot down some guy’s throat, causing blood to spew like spray paint all over the white walls," she retorts.

That didn’t last long. Whatever.

While admiring my handiwork, I lean over and pull Norm back up, righting the chair he's still tied to. "You'll learn everything you need to know as time passes," I tell her. "Right now, just think of it as your first day of training ... with many more to come." Or however many it takes for me to find out if you’re Isabelle Hammel.

She pushes away from the wall she was leaning on and takes a couple of steps toward me with rage radiating through her blue eyes.

I nod my head to the hall, silently commanding her to leave the room. We head out into the hall, closing Norm in the room alone. Harley repositions herself against the hallway wall and sighs. "Look, I already told you ... I'm not in this to beat, kill, and do the rest of your dirty work, all while wondering if I'm really going to make it out of whatever this is, alive," she says. "I’m a good person."

Is she, though?

I want to laugh, but resist the urge and make my way over to one of the storage closets a few feet down the hall. I reach in and grab a clean towel to clean the excess blood off my hands since I can’t get a thorough soap bleach wash in just yet. I glance down at my white shirt, hoping the blood splatter went in the other direction. Maybe I shouldn’t be proud of how good I’ve gotten at preventing those stains. I suppose it's just another skill I've obtained with this job—one not too many people can brag about. Yup, clean … not a speck of blood on me. The wall in that room, however, is almost like a masterpiece of art. "Here’s the deal," I say, keeping my voice soft and calm, "I'm sure it looks like we're a couple of brutes walking around, committing atrocities no one knows of, but there's a much bigger picture here."

Harley sweeps her hair off her shoulder and pinches her lips together. "Hmm. Seems like a nice cover story to me," she says. The sarcasm isn’t going unnoticed, as I’m sure she’s intending. "Your plan is to smooth me over so I'll turn a blind eye to what you're doing, right?" I release a long sigh, needing to release the stress building in my chest. It’s hard to believe how thrown off she is to my plan—so hard, I’m having doubts.

"That’s not my plan," I tell her.

She presses her lips together tightly, causing them to turn white in the center. She’s obviously irate, but whatever. "It doesn’t take a brainiac to figure out you're going to pay and feed me for a bit, then dispose of me the same way you do all the others?"

She obviously thinks so little of me.

I take a couple steps toward her, tilting my head slightly to the side. "You know, considering you have the balls to knock on a sketchy-looking door for a job and then exploit a mentally ill woman under what I would call an impossible circumstance, and then willingly sit down with us to have dinner, I’d say you're not as innocent and righteous as you're acting," I tell her, hoping to get a reaction from my accusation.

Instead, she chuckles and shakes her head dismissively. "Axel, you don’t know anything about me."