Only I did. I chose to make this monster now standing before me. I knew what he would become when I gave in to Mina’s pleas that night. So I’m responsible here. He’s already broken manylaws, already killed. And no kid of mine is going to prison for being a sloppy dumbass. I’d wanted to wait a few more years, but I can’t keep saving him from himself and if I don’t insert my influence now, he may be too lost anyway.
“Let’s go inside and sit down for a chat,” I say.
When we get inside the house, I move to Mina’s side. His gaze flicks to hers and I know… he remembers her. I don’t think he fully realized she was one of the bad guys that night—one of his nightmares coming to break his world apart in blood and death and gunfire way too loud for a small child’s ears.
I know how he feels. It’s hard for me to believe something so tiny and beautiful can be so lethal, too.
Trauma like that can mess up your memories, slot the wrong things into the wrong spaces. But now he’s putting the pieces together, now he’s realizing. She wasn’t an angel that just miraculously showed up to save him. And as he looks back and forth between us I see the moment it clicks inside his head, and he isn’t quite sure which one of us killed his father, which one of us deserves his wrath.
To be truthful, I don’t remember which one of us did it. It was a chaotic night, and I didn’t really care who my bullets were slicing through as long as Mina survived the night’s misadventures.
“It’s not her fault,” I say. “We were going to blow the building up. Several men I needed dead were all together in one space on a night of distraction. There wasn’t going to be another opportunity like that. Mina saw you in the window and wanted to save you. She didn’t know what that meant or what would happen. But I did. So if you want to hate someone, I’m your guy.”
The kid turns his rage back on me, which is right where I want it. If he loses his shit on Mina, he’s a dead man and her misguided mercy will have been for nothing.
“Tell me, Aidan… How would you like to learn how to be a real killer?”
There’s a long pause, and then his eyes light with excitement. I haven’t seen that look on his face since I saw him watching the firework display that night. But he masks it quickly, his cynicism and anger returning. It’s the safer emotion.
“And you think you’re going to train me?”
“I trained her,” I say, my head tilting to Mina.
She does a slow spin, revealing the various guns and knifes on her sleek black-clad form. I will never get tired of seeing her this way.
I see the light in his eyes at the chance to do real damage in this world, and do it the right way. If such a way exists.
“Okay,” he says, nodding.
“Good answer, kid. You’re going to be glorious.”
TWENTY-THREE
brian
Summer has just slippedinto fall. The morning is finally crisp enough for my favorite black leather jacket. It’s warm and comforting and carries so many fond memories. I’ve killed so many people wearing this jacket.
I sit in a nondescript black sedan, parked a few yards away from a cul de sac in a nice suburban neighborhood, sipping my black coffee. Ordinarily this car wouldn’t exactly be considered nondescript; I look like an agent from the government. But in this Upper Middle Class Pretending To Be Rich neighborhood, there are at least twenty other cars that look just like mine.
In fact, I’m currently parked in a driveway that normally has the same make and model, so it’s perfect. Like fate.
The occupants of the house are at work. I'm just within receiving distance from the listening devices I have planted in the two-story house that sits nestled in the middle of the cul de sac.
I turn up the volume on the wireless receiver when I hear Aidan’s aunt start to scream at him again. I flinch, pushing back the flashback to my own childhood. This feels all too familiar.
I’ve been watching this bitch for two and a half months, waiting, deciding her fate. And she is testing the very limits of my patience.
After all my plans blew up on the Fourth of July, and Mina and I had to go in and kill everybody by hand like we were running a murder craft fair, Aidan was the sole survivor. The kid hasn’t spoken a word about what happened no matter how many nice police officers with milk, cookies, and a fake smile ask. I will never acknowledge it to anybody, but I kind of like this kid. He’s tough for a little guy.
His father wasn’t even declared dead because we took care of those bodies.
He’s simplymissing. The police have their suspicions, of course, but no body, no crime. Plus, this isn’t exactly a crackpot top team of brilliant detectives like you see on TV. They’re just normal people, made bitter by how many jackasses the world contains and the limits and constraints on their crime solving budgets. More than half the time when they send evidence off to a forensics lab, the results come back inconclusive or don’t match anything on file. And then what?
All those fingerprints and DNA samples and other sundry clues are only useful if the bad guy is in a database somewhere, and I’m not. Neither is Mina. In real life, law enforcement relies on the dumbness of the average criminal to get caught doing some petty Starter Crime and end up “in the system”. Until such stupidity is committed, the authorities are usually shit out of luck. It’s not magic.
Sure, things like facial recognition software and the fact that everybody’s phone is a spy camera and listening device now can make things tricky, but not impossible if you know what you’re doing. And I do. So I doubt the mysterious disappearance of Stryker will ever be more than an unclosed case file collecting dust in the back of some filing cabinet.
But I haven’t been watching Aidan to make sure he doesn’t talk. Even if he talked, the police still wouldn’t be any better off than they started when it comes to leads. I mean, he’s five. Come on. They aregraspingat straws here.
