Well, that confirms that.

I wasn’t going to fuck around with him, either—not when Lia was my biggest concern.  I walked out of the station and toward the alley nearby.  I could hear the footsteps behind me—at this point he had to know I was on to him—and they were getting closer.  I moved quickly over the puddles and junk on the blacktop, around a group of dumpsters, and into a doorway leading to the back entrance of an apartment building.  I went up a half flight of stairs, checked that there was no one on the stairwell, turned, and waited.

He was inside just a moment after I turned, and I didn’t give a shit if it was paranoia or not.  I pulled out my Beretta and fired.

My ears rang from the deafening blast as it echoed around in the stairwell.  At the base of the stairs, the guy was struggling slightly, but there was no way he was ever going to get up again.  The blast left a huge hole in his back, and there wouldn’t be any fixing that.  Still, I moved back down the stairs and flipped him over with my boot.

I knew him.

Arthur Douglass was a small-time, independent contract killer.  He wasn’t very good at it, tended to leave a mess and a lot of evidence.  Though it hadn’t been enough to get caught, he still generally annoyed people who hired him.  He’d obviously gone a little rogue, given the tattered jacket and hoodie.  Maybe it was his idea of a disguise—I didn’t know and didn’t care.

“You’re an idiot,” I told him before I put another bullet in his head.

With my ears still ringing, I made my way back to the L and started all over again.

* * *

“Will you at least tell me why I’m packing?”

Lia was understandably ticked off.  I was giving her a lot of orders but not a lot of reasons why she needed to pack a bag immediately so I could move her to another location.  Once I blew up at her completely, she realized how serious I was and started doing what I said, but she was still pissed.

I couldn’t really blame her, but I also didn’t want to scare the shit out of her.  Telling her there was now a price on her head wasn’t going to give her any warm, fuzzy feelings.

“You’re packing because you are going to spend a few days away from here,” I said.

“Cryptic much?”

I went to the balcony and looked down below for anyone unusual hanging about.  The only person I saw below was the bitchy old woman with the obviously pregnant dog out in the green space.  It was probably about time for the pups to be born, and I wondered briefly how much cash it was going to cost me.

I pulled the curtains across the glass opening.

“You get your shit together,” I called over my shoulder.  “I’m leaving for about ninety minutes.  Don’t leave the apartment—not even to take Odin out.  Don’t hang out around the windows.  Don’t open the curtains.  And don’t open the fucking door.  Got it?”

Our eyes met, and I could see how close she was to losing it.  I moved up to her quickly, holstered my Beretta, and pulled her against me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered against her hair.  “I just need to keep you safe, okay?  Right now, it’s not safe here.  I was being followed on the way back here.  I took care of him, but there may be others I missed.  I need to get you out of here and to someplace where I know you’re okay.”

She cringed at my words and looked away from me.  I wanted to apologize for a couple other things as well, like not warning her there was a contract out for her death and maybe for kissing another woman while she fondled my cock, but I didn’t.  I couldn’t imagine that it would help the situation at all and had a very real possibility of making it worse.

I kissed Lia softly on the forehead, then tilted her head up and placed another kiss on her lips.  She sighed and leaned against me for a moment before she pushed back with her hands on my chest.

“I don’t like this,” she said.  She sounded defeated, and I didn’t like it.

“I know, baby.  But I’m close, or at least a lot closer.  I have some good information, and if it pans out, we could be out of here in a couple of weeks—a month, tops.”

“Where are you going?”

“Back to my apartment,” I told her.  “I need to get a few things.”

“Should I go with you?”

I brought my hand up to her cheek.

“I’d rather keep you close, but the chances of my apartment being watched are about one hundred percent.  I don’t want you seen.”

“Why not?”

I let out an exasperated breath.

“Please, I can’t explain now.  Just listen, okay?”

She pursed her lips but nodded her head.  I kissed her once more before checking my Beretta and heading back out the door.

“Remember—don’t answer the door.  Not for fucking anybody, all right?”

“I won’t.”

“Good.”

I didn’t want to waste time, so I took a slightly shorter route back to my apartment.  I went up north first, so I would at least be coming in from another direction but still arrived in good time.  I approached the door to the apartment quietly, listened a moment, and then went inside.

Nothing looked out of place, and maybe my paranoia was kicking in again and maybe it wasn’t, but I did have the distinct feeling someone had been there.  There wasn’t anyone there now, though, so I starting to collect what I had come for.

Mainly money.

I had a lot of it stashed away, and though the cops had confiscated about eighty grand in cash lying in the back of my closet, there was still plenty hidden much more discreetly.  I had that much in the open just for such an occurrence.  If they had found only a few hundred dollars, they would have looked a lot harder to find the rest.  They hadn’t even found the bit I had taped to the underside of the dresser, so it was likely they hadn’t found any of my other stashes.

There was a lot more.

In the kitchen underneath the refrigerator’s drip pan was ten grand.  There was twenty more sealed in plastic inside the toilet bowl and fifty thousand inside the air ducts.  I collected cash from a few other sites and ended up with a hundred and ten when I was done.

More than enough to get us going quickly if that was what we needed to do.

Inside my front closet, I selected one of my duffel bags from the never-ending supply and started to load it with the cash.  I’d already been gone an hour, and I wanted to be back as soon as possible.  I’d left Lia a little freaked out and wanted to be there with her to keep her calm.  I still wasn’t sure if I should tell her about the price on her head or not.  Maybe she should know—the situation was just too unfamiliar for me, and I didn’t know what I should do.  Every time I thought about telling her, I’d play it over in my mind.  Her reaction was never a good one.

“You buggin’ out?”

My gun was in my hand and pointed at the front door less than a second later.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” I screamed at Jonathan Ferris.  “Are you trying to get a fucking bullet in the head?”

“Well, I don’t have your fucking phone number anymore, asshole,” he replied.  He pulled out a cigarette, shoved it into his mouth unlit, and leaned against the doorjamb.  “How exactly was I supposed ta warn ya I was comin’?”

“Not the fucking point.”  I wasn’t sure what the point was exactly, but I knew that wasn’t it.  “I’m a little on edge here, and doing shit like that is going to get you killed.”

“I’m still standin’.”

“This time.”  I glared at him for a moment before I sat back and leaned against the wall.  I let out a long breath and then holstered my gun.

“You seem a little more trigger-happy than usual,” Jonathan said.  “What’s up with that?”

I ignored the question, opting to pose one of my own instead.

“So, what’s the deal?” I asked.  “Do you just hang around my apartment and wait for me to show up, or did you become psychic when I wasn’t looking?”

Jonathan laughed.  He took a few steps across the room and pulled out the end table next to the couch.  He reached down the leg and pointed out a small electronic device secured there.

“Motion detector,” he said simply.  He held up his smartphone to show me a blinking app with text that read “EVAN’S HOME” across the screen.  “Pretty straightforward, really.”

I rolled my eyes but was mostly annoyed with myself.  I should have realized he’d have lots of ways of knowing where I was and what I was doing.  I would have to be careful about that.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Well, brother,” Jonathan said, “I just wanted to get a look at you and see if I could figure out just what the fuck you think yer doin’.”

“Nothing,” I grumbled.  “I’m not doing anything.”

“Bullshit.”  He lit his cigarette though I doubted he’d forgotten how much I hated people smoking in my apartment.  He did at least eye me with a bit of a grin and then motion to the balcony.

I followed him out and leaned against the rails.  He handed me a pack of Marlboros and his lighter, and we both proceeded to smoke the cigarettes most of the way down before Jonathan finally spoke.

“Lenny’s hit wasn’t unexpected,” he said, “but there were some, shall we say, unexpected themes around it that got me thinking.”

“Thinking about what?” I asked.  I didn’t try to play stupid—like I didn’t know the dude was dead.  It wouldn’t have helped, and I was pretty sure I knew where this conversation was going.

“Military weapon used, near the river and in the daylight, which is pretty bold.  The fixer didn’t bother to wait until he was alone, either, which means a certain level of confidence, ya know?”

I shrugged and tossed the butt of my cigarette on the ground before I lit another one.

“And sometimes…well, sometimes when you’ve been around someone for a long time, you just recognize their work, ya know what I’m sayin’?”

My eyes moved to his, and I knew he wasn’t just making random statements, hoping I was going to give something away.  He knew I wouldn’t be so careless as to let my poker face down, and I knew he wouldn’t be making such proclamations without being a hundred percent sure.

I was going to have to kill him.

My stomach tightened at the thought.  If I was ever going to call anyone in my life a friend, it would be Jonathan.  He was one of the few who never pressed me to tell him about the shit I went through but somehow managed to get me to talk about more of it than I had with most people—even my shrink.  It never felt like prying with him, and he always changed the subject before it got to be too intense for me.

“He already knows, brotha.  I didn’t tell him shit, even when I suspected it, but he still knows.  Too many hits that look like you in the area, and you don’t return his calls.”

“Haven’t received any.”

“You’re workin’ for the competition.  You hate Greco, so what the fuck?”

I didn’t reply.  He had to have figured I wasn’t going to answer something so blunt.

“You ain’t gonna talk, and that’s fine,” he said.  “I don’t know what happened to you in the slammer, and you probably aren’t gonna tell me, but I just figured you ought to know he’ll be gunnin’ for you now.  I can’t stop that shit.”

“I don’t expect you to do me any favors,” I informed him.

“Well, I fuckin’ did anyway,” he replied.

I looked up at him as he stepped closer to me.

“I wanted to give ya somethin’.”  Jonathan pulled out a folded up piece of paper and handed it over to me.  “I know it’s been a while, and I don’t know where we stand now, but I said I’d find out what I could, so I did.”

Tentatively, I reached out and took it from him.  As I unfolded it, the letterhead was instantly familiar—a stylized crucifix within a circle of woven wheat.  There was also a State of Ohio seal on the bottom of the paper, and across the top were the words “Certificate of Adoption” followed by my name.

There were two names on the paper with signatures scrawled below them.  The signatures were just above the words mother and father.  I could feel my pulse in my wrists as I looked over the document confirming my adoption from Alexander Janez and Anita Arden to Sister Margaret Arden.

My maternal grandmother.

I knew who Sister Margaret was—she had often taken care of me and the other children at the orphanage.  She died when I was in seventh grade—around the same time Mother Superior started spending more time with me.

“I confirmed that they’re both deceased now,” Jonathan said.  “So is the nun who adopted you, but there’s addresses on the back that’ll tell you where they’re buried.  You know, in case you wanted to go there or somethin’.”