He found himself on a walkway with a broken railing on one side and several doors on the other—tenants could come out and see who was in the lobby. Through the street-facing window at the far end, Henry saw the shooter leaping from balcony to balcony of the neighboring apartment building as he parkoured his way down to street level.
The guy’s head suddenly snapped up and around as if he’d actually felt Henry’s gaze. He raised the rifle and fired even as he was rebounding from the railing of one balcony to the next one lower down.
Staying low, Henry moved toward the window, and returned fire, his bullets kicking up tiny puffs of powder at each spot where the shooter had been only half a second before. He got to the window just in time to see the guy hit the ground and run into the building.
Okay, how about a little game of Hide’n’Kill? Henry thought at him, crouching close to the wall. There was another set of stairs leading down to the lobby at this end, this one with a landing to break up the climb. Henry heard broken glass crunching under the shooter’s feet as he approached it.
Henry leaned forward to peer between the broken staves of the railing. An object slightly smaller than his fist suddenly flew up and over in a curved trajectory that would end in his face. He batted it away reflexively while throwing himself backwards and covering his head with both arms. The grenade exploded in midair, making the walkway shake and taking a bite out of the railing. It also deafened Henry but he knew it had done the same to the shooter. He raised his head, brushed off the splinters and other debris, and crept forward to peer over the edge of the walkway.
The shooter was looking up at him from the lobby with a surprised expression on his face. On Henry’s face.
Yeah, you’re the junior hitman here and it ain’t gonna be that easy. Henry felt a grim satisfaction although he could barely hear himself think over the ringing in his ears. The blast had been closer to the lobby so the kid probably wouldn’t be doing any better. He hoped.
Doing his best to shake off the grenade’s effects, Henry slung the sniper rifle over his left shoulder and grabbed the Glock from his bag. As he made sure the gun was loaded, he heard the sound of sliding metal, albeit faintly; his hearing was coming back. Well, his mother had always said strong eardrums ran in the family. Thanks for the great genes, Ma. Now I’d just like to know how this bastard got my face—
Abruptly, his gaze came to rest on a large mirror hanging over the staircase landing. It had been placed very high up on the wall and although it was fly-specked and filthy, it was still intact. Henry was mystified as to how it was there at all—something like that should have been carried off long ago.
Although now that he was really looking at it, he could see how high up it was—probably well out of reach for the casual scavenger, who preferred low-hanging fruit. Plus it was really big— as in heavy. Breaking a mirror like that might get you fourteen or even twenty-one years of bad luck.
He realized it had been placed there so people going up and down the stairs could see anyone coming the other way. Because passing someone on the stairs was also bad luck, wasn’t it? He couldn’t remember. Although he had a few little rituals—tapping his rifle stock before a hit, burning the target’s photo afterwards—he wasn’t superstitious so he’d never paid much attention to what was supposed to be good luck or bad luck. In Henry’s experience, chance favored the prepared mind, especially in a situation like this. The way Junior was coming at him had nothing to do with luck. A guy who could travel by rooftops to stalk a target on the ground had to know the area better than the back of his hand, had to have burned it so deeply into his brain that he could do it with his eyes closed.
But even that wouldn’t explain how he always seemed to know what Henry was going to do at the same moment he himself did, so well he could fire at him while he parkoured down the side of a building.
Or why he had Henry’s face, which had to be completely impossible.
Maybe it was some kind of mind game, psychological warfare, one-on-one. But how—plastic surgery? A high-tech Halloween mask?
Henry shoved the questions aside; he could deal with impossible shit later. Right now, he had to press his advantage if he wanted to survive. Think, he ordered himself; there were more windows on the ground floor, which meant more light, making it easier for him to see what Junior Hitman was doing than vice versa.
Suddenly the already broken staves in the railing exploded into splinters as the guy opened fire on him. Henry fired back, belly-crawling to the stairs where he shifted quickly to feet first before moving down a couple of steps. Junior Hitman paced him; the reflection in the mirror confirmed to Henry again that what he had seen in the scope hadn’t been a trick of the light. It was his own face, circa his early twenties. Henry remembered what that time had been like. He’d been all grown up but still a year or two away from being permanently set, like paint that hadn’t quite dried or clay not yet fired—barely not a kid, convinced he knew the good guys from the bad guys and the right things from the wrong ones, and utterly certain that when push came to shove, he could grab the world by the tail and swing it around over his head.
“Stop right there,” Henry said sharply. “Who are you?”
Junior Hitman looked up at the mirror and didn’t answer. Henry knew he could make out only a vague, man-shaped shadow among darker shadows. Despite having a better view of the kid, however, he didn’t have a clear shot—not a non-lethal one, anyway. He didn’t want to kill him before he got some answers.
“I don’t want to shoot you,” Henry called down to him.
“Fine,” said the kid. “Then don’t shoot me.”
All the tiny hairs on the back of Henry’s neck stood up. Over the years, he had heard his own voice often enough on wiretaps and bugs to recognize it. What the fuck— the kid had his face and his voice?
“Mind if I shoot you?” the kid asked, making Henry’s voice sound offhand, like this was no big deal.
“Hey, I could have killed you on the roof,” Henry said.
“Maybe you should have,” said the kid.
Henry felt a surge of anger and exasperation. “Did they show you a picture of me?” he demanded.
“Yeah.” Junior Hitman took another step up the stairs. “You’re old.”
You’re gonna pay for that one, whether I shoot you or not, Henry promised him silently. “Kid, you take one step closer and you’re going to leave me no choice.”
The kid’s reflection kept coming. Henry took a grenade from the burn bag and made a quick and dirty calculation by eye before pulling the pin and hurling it at the wall, intending to make the kid give ground in a hurry. The grenade bounced off a spot six inches away from the mirror and flew toward Junior Hitman. Eight ball in the side pocket—either he ran or it was game over.
What happened next went too fast even for Henry’s eye to follow but he knew the move; he had done it himself once, in pure desperation:
Junior Hitman took aim at the grenade and fired, batting it back at the mirror. Before Henry could get both arms up to shield his head, it exploded in a burst of shrapnel, plaster, wood, and glass.
The shockwave slammed into him, flattened his lungs and midsection, punched his heart, drove his eyes against the back of their sockets, and made his brain ricochet around his skull. A split second later he registered the sting of countless fragments of mirror hitting his face and hands and larger debris pelting him like stones while clouds of dust billowed around him.