Page 41 of Brian and Mina's Holiday Hits
“The fireman will help you. Just tell him what you told me, okay?”
“O-okay.”
And there it is, that brave face again where he’s trying not to cry. It takes everything I have in me to turn and walk away, to push through the crowd and walk the few blocks to the waiting car. Brian already has the engine started, when I get there.
To his credit, he doesn’t say anything about the corn dog. He just takes a sip of my drink and backs the car out of our parking spot.
“Everything go okay?”
I just nod, and he pulls out on the road to take us back to the house.
TWENTY-TWO
brian
The drive isquiet and tense, and I know I’m the worst kind of monster. But she needed to see the truth. From the moment that bomb and that boy were in the same building, his future was gone.
Fate had decided.
You can’t go half ass on a kill. You have to plan it down to the last detail. It’s not like the illusion of movies where everything magically just comes together. And it’s not like all the fantasies in your head. The way you stay alive is by knowing your limits and following a well-laid out plan. And having contingencies. I didn’t think we needed a lot of contingencies for this. A kill at a distance has far fewer things to account for.
I never could have seen that boy coming. But still, I should have been prepared for things to go sideways, especially bringing a partner to the kill.
We were beyond lucky tonight.
“Mina, you need to think long and hard about if this is the life you want.”
“What does that mean?” She’s been crying in the passenger side since she got in the car, and I’ve mostly ignored it. It’s onething to be hard enough to be a killer. It’s another to be hard enough to accept collateral damage like this.
I get that she’s got darkness, but she still isn’t quite the same as me. She’s still got a soul, a conscience. The inky dark didn’t slip into her too soon, building its dirty tightly woven nest inside her heart, blocking out all the light that might otherwise get inside. She was already formed with morals and a sense of right and wrong. Guilt. Shame. She’s not a homegrown sociopath like me. It doesn’t mean she can’t be great at this, but she needs to really think about what she will become. And what she will lose in the process.
I’m so selfish. I want her to be like me, the mirror I look into to see a person staring back, but if this is going to destroy her, it’s best to stop now—before she crosses too many lines she can’t uncross. It was one thing to come after Matsumoto’s son to save me and get some lateral personal revenge. It’s quite another to enter this seedy world of killing random people you have no actual personal vendetta against.
It takes either a hollow soul or a whole different sort of rationalizing to make that kind of thing okay.
“It means, if you want to keep going on jobs with me, you have to understand what that could mean. What could happen, and what you might be a part of.”
“You’re still going to let me go on jobs?”
I know she’s looking at me. I can feel her eyes burning a hole in me, but I keep my gaze on the road. “I already made my choice. Now you have to make yours.”
I thread my fingers through hers and squeeze her hand. She squeezes back, and while I’m not sure if we, as two carbon-based life forms will survive, at least for now, what exists between us will.
“I just shouldn’t have brought you out before you were properly trained. The first rule of assassin work is if it can go wrong, it will go wrong.”
“I thought that was Murphy’s Law.”
“Where do you think Murphy got it? Don’t believe everything you read on Wikipedia.”
“Brian, I…”
“Shhhh, you don’t have to give me an answer now. Take some time to think about it.”
We’re silent the rest of the drive to the house. When we get back, it’s late, the whole place is still as a tomb. I punch in the code and guide her inside.
Wordlessly we go down to our dungeon level room. We’re both still covered in blood. We lay all our weapons on the bed and strip down. I toss our clothes and shoes in the incinerator, then I take her in the shower with me, and she just cries while I wash her off. I wonder if she regrets more than just the boy, if it’s the people she’s killed, or if it’s seeing me in action.
I watch as the blood of our fresh kills swirls down the drain.
