Chapter Thirty-Two
“Do you ever feel like there’s a monster inside you? And like it might get out?” The words escape me, that thing I’ve never said aloud to anyone, even Gran, and especially him.
This emotion—whatever label it deserves—makes me feel like I can barely breathe. But not because I’m panicking—no, because I’m doing everything in my power to keep the monster at bay. To keep her inside instead of out.
Silence stretches into the night and unfurls, leaving me utterly self-aware. Maybe I’m the only one like this, who feels as though there are two people inside her. The bad one. And the even worse one.
“I used to,” Ian finally says.
My heart leaps. I look over at him. “How did you make it stop? How did you—keep it under control?”
A grim smile, barely discernible in the darkness.
“I didn’t. I stopped fighting it. I became one with the monster.”
A tingle spreads over my skin. For a breathless moment, I think maybe that’s the key—embracing her.
But then I think of Eliza and Evie. Our home.
Our freaking dog, Bear, who tilts her head at me and gives me a doggy smile and wiggles every time she spots me.
I don’t see how the monster can exist in the same world they do. In fact, I’m sure she can’t.
“You don’t have to be this person.” He steps off the rock wall and gestures at me. “You don’t have to be everything, Nadia. You can just be the killer, and that’s okay.”
“I have kids,” I snap. “A life.”
A small smile. “So do I.”
I want to yell—want to argue. I huff in frustration; he doesn’t get it.
Where is his child right now? He can come and go as he pleases because he has someone at home taking care of his daughter.
I’m only out here because it’s the middle of the night and my family is sleeping soundly in their beds.
He can slip out the door and be the monster and do what needs doing and then come home and all will be okay, because it doesn’t all rest on his shoulders.
But me? I’m the mom. I have to be there for the girls.
What if I can’t compartmentalize? What if it’s all or nothing and I screw up their childhood, their lives?
“Consider this,” Ian murmurs. “Right now, they want him dead. But you know there can be collateral damage. There often is. The girls might end up with no parents at all. But if you kill him, you show them you’re willing to do the job.
That you’re not scheming with him behind their backs or playing both sides.
You show your loyalty, and not only does that keep you safe, they also let you continue doing the job you love.
They give you a way to channel your monster. ”
He’s right. I either get nothing or I get something. Something is better than nothing. And yet…
I can’t just kill Brian.
“Will you help me?” I ask, hoping desperately he cares enough to say yes. Our gazes connect through the shadows. He gives an almost imperceptible nod.
“Of course.”
“Thank you. I owe you.”
A twitch of a smile. “What do you want me to do?”
“Can you keep them safe tonight? Can you help me…keep us alive? Just while I figure this out?”
“What are you going to do?”
I exhale into the night, look out over San Antonio. “I need to run, need to think. Need to sort out what happens next.”
—
First, I run home. I sneak back inside and climb the staircase to my girls’ room.
I kiss Eliza on the forehead, brush her hair away from her face, pull the blanket from where she’s thrown it off the side of the bed and tuck her in.
Then I do the same with Evie, taking an extra moment to inhale her little girl scent that really is probably the smell of cookies and her strawberry shampoo.
Whatever I do will utterly transform their lives. I can’t fuck this up.
Back outside, I run.
No, that’s not right.
I tear through the streets. The awareness of my own body, my surroundings, fades away, and I have tunnel vision.
I can barely breathe because I’m sprinting, but it doesn’t matter.
I can barely think because I made this awful situation worse—by doing nothing, by not killing him, I’ve put my whole family in danger.
So now it’s time to do something.
My skin burns as though I might rip at the seams, come apart, shape-shift like a werewolf. The creature wants out. She wants to handle this in her own way, with carnage, killing. Making sure no one can ever hurt her family again.
It would be so easy.
At least, that’s what my inner monster says to me as I fret over the best way forward and how to deal with my employer.
The reality is, there is no central location of the agency.
As far as I’ve ever been able to tell, it’s a collection of people who all use a Tor network to patch into the dark web.
They are untraceable. If one person goes down, they can’t turn anyone else in, because they don’t know who anyone else is.
Only assassins are truly known, because they must actually kill a person.
And even they go through a point of contact—a handler.
The only reason I know who John really is and where he lives is because I’m paranoid; I tracked him down in the nearby college town of Columbia when I happened to be in St. Louis for a job.
It’s not terribly difficult to find a classic video game fiend who also manages a pizza place.
I’ve watched him enter his pizza shop in a blue polo and smile at the teenagers who work for him and put on his own facade.
It was for my safety, for my family’s. But tracking him down now won’t do shit.
He doesn’t know who gives out the jobs, just talks to a faceless boss through the dark web.
And he’s been warning me, hasn’t he? Telling me I need to get the job done, that whoever hands them down is asking why it’s not finished yet. He’s done what he can.
I don’t mean to end up at the apartment on the other side of town. It’s miles away, and yet an hour later, I stand in the street, coated in sweat, staring up at the pharmacist’s window.
This one person who is a sanctioned kill. Maybe just watching her, imagining it, will allow me to get my head straight, let this pressure simmering beneath the surface cool.
The lights are all off with the exception of the one in her bedroom. I know it’s her bedroom because the floor above hers seems to have the exact same layout, and that person has left their blinds raised, the edge of their bed frame visible from the ground, even in the darkness.
Technically, I’m working. I need to know this woman’s habits, after all.
Really, though, I’m not doing anything. She is in control, that inner being inside me I usually keep the lid shut tight on. It is she who stares through my eyes with a specific kind of lust.
No, I tell her. Go home. It’s not time for this job, not yet. This won’t fix you.
My phone vibrates.
Ian: I’m at your house. Your family is safe, for now.
For now, he said.
I take a shuddering breath. I imagine someone trying to break into my house, the alarm blaring, my daughters vulnerable to someone like me but not me, someone like Ian, who has apparently embraced this other side of himself.
But maybe someone worse than Ian. Someone who doesn’t have a little girl waiting at home, who doesn’t understand how important children are, how they are off-limits.
I imagine the worst possible ending to this assignment, the job I wanted so badly.
Not a second later, the door to the building clangs open, an older man stepping out with a lit cigarette. He sees me, holds the door open, gestures, obviously meaning You going in?
I smile my thanks and accept his kind offer.
Or rather, she does.
—
A long, dark hallway greets me. To one side, a staircase and an elevator. I take the stairs, climbing to the third floor. The top step gives way to a landing, eight doors leading to apartments. But hers is the corner one facing the street.
Seconds later, I stand in front of it.
I could knock. Could get her to let me into her apartment by her own volition.
But the monster likes the element of surprise.
So I don’t knock. I press a gloved hand to the doorknob, and it turns easily beneath my grip.
A sneer works its way to my mouth—such arrogance, the way some people now believe they are inherently safe.
The dark hall melts away as a bright, well-designed interior greets me.
A living room with brown leather couches, thick rugs, a fireplace.
Hardwood creaks softly beneath my feet as I shut the front door. Lock it. Listen for Jennifer Patrick.
The only sound that reaches my ears is the shower.
This is what I should do:
I should leave. I should go home and prepare for this kill in an entirely different way. It’s supposed to look like an accident, after all. That’s what careful, methodical assassin Nadia would do.
But as I reach the threshold of the kitchen and spy a fancy set of Wüsthof knives on a magnetic knife rack, I realize it’s too late.
That the monster inside me has wound herself tightly around my muscles and tendons, that it is she who entered this building and she who has control right now.
The play of light over the blades makes her smile.
Makes her stroll over to them and select the carving knife.
Then she goes to the hallway.
To the bedroom. While I maintain enough control to go past the bed and close the curtains to keep from giving the street below a full-on show, she won’t let me just leave the apartment. She needs this too much, wants it so badly it’s practically sweet and melting on her tongue.
The bathroom door is open a mere crack. Steamy air puffs out into the bedroom, a tantalizing tease of what’s inside. Together, we edge the bathroom door open another inch. Naked flesh through the glass shower door never looked so ready to bleed.
In the back of my mind, I think, She deserves to die.
But the monster doesn’t give a shit. The monster just wants blood.
We should be careful, don’t leave prints, don’t make a mess—
The monster rolls her eyes, yanks the shower door open, smiles as Jennifer’s eyes go wide. The pharmacist shrieks, her shrill cries echoing in the small space, and tries futilely to cover her body with her hands, as though modesty is what’s at stake here and not her life.
“I heard you were a bad girl.”
Who said that? Me? I said that.
My heart races with anticipation, and in that moment, the monster and I are inseparable—I can’t tell where she begins and I end because, really, we’ve been the same person all this time. It’s just that I’ve had control, and now I don’t. Now she does.
Jennifer huddles in the corner of the shower.
The monster takes us under the hot water, not giving a damn that we’re leaving behind evidence, that we’re soaking wet.
She laughs out loud in glee as the tip of the blade slides under Jennifer’s ribs, blood spraying over the shower walls and dripping down as though it were raining red from the sky.