I think about the Bersa, snug in the room safe. See myself, in my mind’s eye, creeping toward him, holding the gun to the soft, flat spot just behind his left ear. Letting in the bullet that will find its way home.
His eyes fly open and he regards me levelly. I feel my color rise.
“What are you thinking about?”
“I was thinking about how beautiful you are,” I say without missing a beat. “When you sleep, I mean. You looked so very peaceful.”
He smiles then. A real smile. His teeth are white and even. A movie star’s smile.
“You’re lying,” he says cheerfully. “But that’s okay.” I start to protest but he stops me. And he is right. It is okay. My thoughts are my own.
In the morning, he leaves early with the air of a man who has places to go. He drops a kiss on my forehead before he bustles out the door. I realize we haven’t made any plans and I find I don’t mind. I have my own plans to consider. My own future. Because, at the moment, his doesn’t look bright. I feel a pang at the place where comfort and satisfaction should be.
I stay in bed for a while, luxuriating in the feel of crisp hotel sheets and my own postcoital glow. I am outwardly calm but my brain is seething with all of these new permutations. I am processing.
I have a job to do. If I decline, he’ll end up just as dead. It might delay things by a week or so, maybe not even that. I’m not the only hired gun around.
Thinking that makes me realize something: they’ve brought me a long way and from another country to do this hit. There is a reason for that. I think further. Who is this guy?
Some simple googling brings results right away, but none that answer the question. He’d designed a Sterling engine that purifies water based on a proprietary system that uses graphene. A byproduct of the purification system had been a graphene-based fuel cell that is thinner and lighter than any other. That had been a decade ago. He now heads a company that develops and implements new solutions for both of those things: water purification and alternate fuel sources. The company has been successful enough that he is also at the head of a large nonprofit doing good work in third world countries cleaning water and providing power. He is a good guy with a social conscience and the success to do something with his gifts. Nothing I read about him makes me like him less.
And someone wants him dead.
I see no one obvious who might be responsible. He heads a private company, so a takeover move seems unlikely. No visible enemies. But experience has shown me that you can never tell what it looks like inside someone else’s life.
I give thought to sending a text, beginning a sequence, to find out who bought the hit, but I know it is a useless avenue. A network like the one I am part of didn’t get and stay successful by easily giving up sensitive information. It strikes me that even asking about it might put both him and my livelihood in jeopardy. Maybe even my life.
I consider my options. I can do the job I have come to do. If I do, I will know it was tidy and he didn’t suffer. Or I could feasibly not do the job without too much loss of face or reputation if I did it quickly and like a professional. “Something’s come up.” He’d certainly end up just as dead, but it would not be by my hand.
I don’t love either of these options, so I toy briefly with the idea of telling him the truth, or something close to it. That there is danger here. For everyone concerned. But I know his knowledge won’t protect him. Possibly nothing can.
I go for another walk. The seawall is a different place on a sunny midday than it was at night in the rain — large ocean-going vessels at anchor in the protected water of the bay, while sailboats bob around them like ponies playing in a field.
The seawall itself is packed with jovial traffic. Mothers and nannies pushing strollers. Kids on skateboards gearing up to make injuries they’ll regret in a couple of decades. Hairy youths followed by clouds of marijuana smoke flouting a law that is imprecise. All manner of humanity out to enjoy Vancouver in the sunshine. I soak it in, enjoying the feeling of sun on my skin and the warmth that kisses the top of my head. I lift my face to it and my phone rings.
“What does your day look like?” he asks.
“Looks like sunshine,” I say in truth. “What a gorgeous city.”
“How would you like to see beyond it? I have to run up to Squamish to see a man about a dog. Wanna come? I figure after we could go to Whistler for dinner. How does that sound?”
None of the place names have any meaning to me. It doesn’t matter.
“Do you really have to see a man about a dog?”
“I do not. It’s an expression. It’s a meeting. Won’t take long.”
“Sure. Okay. If it’s not an actual dog, that changes everything. I’m maybe half an hour from my hotel. So any time after that?”
“Perfect.” I can hear the smile. “I’ll pick you up in an hour.”
By the time he pulls up in a sleek, long car, I’ve checked out of the hotel and am sitting on a bench out front, enjoying the sunshine. Waiting.
We follow a ribbon of highway out of town — raw young mountains, snow-kissed peaks, an ocean that laps at the edges of our journey at various points. I am lulled. The feeling of being out of control, like a little kid, and the grown-ups are taking you on vacation. That is how I feel. It’s not terrible.
At Squamish, he has his meeting while I find a café nearby and do more research, trying the dark web this time. Still nothing. He truly seems to be a straight-up, straight-shooting, well-liked guy. If there are skeletons, I can’t see them.
“You looked so intense,” he observes when he joins me. “As though what you were contemplating was life and death.”
“I was googling you.”
“Me? Why?”
“I just wondered if we had... I dunno? The right stuff.”
He drops down into the chair opposite mine. “Right for what?” he asks with an air of innocence.
“Exactly,” I say, deliberately obtuse.
“What did you conclude?”
“No conclusion,” I say tartly. “And here we both are.”
“Exactly,” he says. And the smile he gives me goes right to his eyes. “And what would I find if I were to google you?”
“Nothing,” I say. “I am an enigma.”
One eyebrow shoots up, but he doesn’t say anything.
“A cipher,” I add. “Maybe I don’t exist at all.”
“A cipher. An enigma. Those are interesting ways to describe oneself. And if that is the case, how is it that this cipheric—”
“I don’t think that’s a word.”
“—enigmatic woman should come into my life? What message does that bring?”
“That would be an arrogant way to frame things,” I say, smiling brightly and hoping he doesn’t see how close to the mark he’s come.
To my relief, he laughs. “It would, wouldn’t it? Of course. Everything is about me!”
“But all our worlds are, aren’t they?”
“I guess they are. Never mind. Let’s get back on the road. We’ve still got nearly an hour before dinner.”
The big car slips along the highway soundlessly for a while before I chance the question I’ve been formulating. It seems a risk worth taking. And we’ve got a long drive.