Page 5 of The Rook’s Obsession

The fact that he doesn’t, means he’s anything but regular.

I’m pulled back to the present by the buzz of my phone. A text from a blocked number, which means it’s from the handler Vincenzo assigned me years ago. I’ve never met him in person. I only know him as a voice on the phone and words on a screen.

Status?

I type back without looking away from the restaurant. On schedule.

Confirm when complete.

I don’t bother responding. He knows I’ll confirm because I always do. That’s the arrangement. I do the job, I report in, and I collect payment before disappearing until the next one. That’s the deal I made with myself a long time ago. No complications, no attachments. It’s served me well.

Until now, anyway.

The target stands up from the table right on time. He buttons his jacket and says something to the waiter before heading toward the back of the restaurant. A service corridor leads to a small courtyard with high walls and a security camera I disabled this morning. There is no line of sight from the street.

Time for his nightly cigarette. It will be his last.

I take my place behind the rifle’s scope, peering down into the courtyard. He probably doesn’t deserve the mercy of a quick death, based on what his file told me, but I don’t get a say in how these things are done. I can’t afford to act like an undisciplined vigilante. It doesn’t matter how many people he’s hurt or destroyed or how he did it. He’s going to get what’s coming to him, either way.

He looks so damn self-satisfied as he lights a cigarette, the tip glowing in the darkness. He might as well wear a target.

I squeeze the trigger. He goes down, cigarette still burning on the ground next to his hand. I’ll be long gone by the time anyone goes to look for him—I’m already disassembling the rifle, placing it back in its case and swinging it over my shoulder. I drop onto the fire escape and take it quickly, silently on soft soles.

I should feel something, right?

In the beginning, each job left a film on me that I couldn’t wash off no matter how I tried. Not like guilt. More like the awareness that I’d just done something I could never take back. A person who existed no longer existed, because of what I did.

But over time, that feeling faded, the way everything fades after long enough. Now it’s muscle memory. The same as tying my shoes.

So why couldn’t I do it to him?

That’s the question that’s been gnawing at me for two days. I had him at point-blank range. Gun to his chest, my finger on the trigger. I had every reason in the world to put him down like a sick dog and walk away. He’s been asking around about me. He knows things about me, or thinks he does. He’s a loose end, and loose ends get people killed. I know that better than anyone.

So what did I do? I shot him in the leg. In the goddamn leg, like some amateur who can’t finish a job. I could’ve put a bullet between his eyes without blinking, but I gave him a flesh wound and a warning. Like warnings ever work on men like him. They don’t. They only make them more determined.

I knew that when I pulled the trigger, and I chose the leg anyway.

I’m three blocks from the restaurant before I slow my pace and blend into the foot traffic. Tourists staring at their phones. Couples walking arm in arm. A group of kids, probably living the college experience I never had, spills out of a bar. I adjust my jacket to cover the case strap, becoming another woman walking home.

But my mind won’t stop moving. It insists on going back to that room. To his face when I told him my name is Ivy. It hurt him; something crumbled inside, but he pulled himself together. I recognized it because I do it, too. We’re both people who’ve learned to keep the inside from showing on the outside.

The difference is, he slipped in front of me, and more than once. He talked about grieving for me, and his voice cracked. He reached for my face, and his hand was shaking.

The worst part? The part that still makes me feel cold inside? My chest went tight when I noticed that shaking hand. I didn’t understand it in the moment, and I sure as hell immediately resented it.

Because I don’t do feelings. Feelings are liabilities. Vincenzo made sure I understood that much from an early point. You feel nothing, fear nothing, and nothing can be used against you.

So why does part of me want to know what it would’ve felt like if I’d let him touch my face?

That’s dangerous thinking. It gets people killed. I need to get my head straight.

I need to go back to the facts.

Nick Brooks has been searching for me for months.

He has almost no digital footprint.

He claims to know me from a life I don’t remember. He says I have a brother who’s been looking for me.