“Don’t be too impressed, there’s a lot of singles in there. It’s just a partial payment of our fee. We’ll get the rest once we complete our objective.”

Shan looked at her suspiciously. “Exactly what fee did you quote him?”

That made her smirk. Head injury or not, he could catch on quick sometimes. “A special job requires special funding.”

“Yeah, okay, but what is the job? You said we were setting some guy up, but the fact that we now have a small armory is making me think you’re hiding something. More than usual.”

She took out the folder and laid it on the bed before opening it. Just as she thought, it was full of photos and detailed itineraries. “Nothing important, Shan. The weapons are just a precaution.”

His look was scathing, and it wasn’t the least bit funny. “A precaution against what? A militia overthrow?”

She laid out some of the photos, garnering his attention. “These guys, I imagine.”

The black and white glossies clearly showed that the Wolf often traveled with three men, although only two were regularly visible. The third was often in the background, or partially out of frame. A floater, probably. She pointed at the Wolf, and told him, “This is our target, Andrew Romano, known internationally as the Wolf. His alias this time out is …” She consulted the itinerary, and couldn’t quite believe her eyes. “Oh, you’ve got to be shitting me. Kane Ironwood.”

“Seriously? Damn, that’s … bad. It’s like he walked out of a soap opera or a porno or something.”

“He’s batting zero. A skuzzy little psychopath, and he has no imagination at all.”

That made Shan raise his eyebrows. “Psychopath? How a psychopath? Are we talking Enron style psycho or Leatherface style?”

Rather than answer that and scare the shit out of him, she laid down some of the pictures on the bed that gave the best look at the bodyguards. “He’s got security, namely three guys, two of which are always close at hand, and a third who’s a floater.”

“Floater? Does he hover?”

“No, it’s a typical security configuration. Most dangers are evident and best handled from a distance, so they have a guy who’s constantly mobile and away from the client who can identify potential threats before they become a true threat. Now, according to the report, they only have last names on the two bodyguards, Montoya and Sanchez. The floater is unknown, so let’s just call him Mongo. If we move on the target, we’re going to have to neutralize Mongo first; he’s more of a threat than either of the two bodyguards.”

Shan looked warily between the guns and the photographs. “Neutralize? You don’t mean …”

“No, I don’t.” Actually, it depended, but if it needed to be done, she would be doing it, not him. She looked over the report, and read him the things he needed to know. “Romano likes to hit the town at night. His favorite bar is a fancy ass Yuppie place called Orbit, and he has a penchant for strip clubs, his favorite being … oh, you have to love this: a club called Spank.”

“Spank? Ooh, kinky. Think it’s an S&M place?”

“It doesn’t say, but I doubt it. An S&M place would probably be called the Nipple Clamp or something. Romano has a preference for barely legal girls as well, most often blonde and stacked. His favorite escort service is called Discreet Companions. Jesus, you’d think an escort service could come up with a more imaginative name. Maybe they pulled it from the same book he got Kane Ironwood from.”

“Umm … what’s the deal here?” Shan gestured at the photos and the case of guns, and at the file in her hands. “You didn’t do this. So who did? Why are we being handed someone else’s case? And why does this seem so … ominous?”

He deserved a good answer, but she wasn’t positive she could give him one. Sure she had all the information she needed, she closed the file and tossed it on the bed. “Okay, look - this guy is currently being protected because he’s a snitch. Of course, most of the stuff he’s snitching is bullshit, but as long as he gets a hit every now and again, they’re gonna protect him. What we’re doing here is setting him up, so his protection is taken away. That’s all we’re doing. He’ll be someone else’s problem then.”

He stared at her, slightly uncomprehending, and for a moment she thought he’d phased out. He could have - it was hard to tell. “Snitch? What is he, a plaza informant?”

She overlooked his malapropism. “Informant only refers to localized police investigations. The proper term in this case is asset.”

Shan continued to give her a puzzled look, like a dog who didn’t know where his favorite ball had been thrown. “This really isn’t explaining anything for me, Z. Who put all of this together? Who wants him … out, or whatever?”

She bit her lip, and considered her options. She knew Shan wasn’t likely to tell anyone about this, but she never wanted to give him information that could turn out potentially dangerous to him, whether he knew it or not. “Let’s just say there are some governments who want him off the grid, and they can’t do it without causing an incident with their allies. They’ve been watching him for some time, but they can’t do anything, except shop it out to freelancers. Which is us.”

It took him a moment to digest that, and she let him have it. She was really impressed with the British military issue night vision goggles that Frost sent along, and the camera with the zoom and the night filter. She wondered if she could keep any of this stuff after this was all over.

Finally Shan, strangely sober, said, “You weren’t kidding when you said we were causin’ an international incident, were you?”

“No. But you’ll never hear a thing about it on the CBC. This is the kind of stuff that happens all the time, but no one ever hears about it.”

He met her gaze steadily. “And you know this how?”

She shook her head and started sifting through the case of guns, picking out a clip on holster and a Browning Pro-40. For a forty caliber weapon, it was compact yet powerful and reliable. “I know a lot of things. Let’s just leave it at that.”

But she should have known better. Shan wasn’t like that. “You know, I know you weren’t a cop. I mean, no way. I couldn’t even picture you in the uniform. I did wonder if maybe you were an, I don’t know, former mobster or something, assassin. You seemed to know who those Triad guys were, and it turns out you’re part Japanese, so -”

“Triad are Chinese; Yakuza are Japanese.”

“See, you even know that! But you didn’t strike me as a mobster type, y’know. So now I’m thinking that maybe you were … government. A spy or … something.”

She continued shaking her head, and looked up at him as she clipped the holster onto the waistband of her jeans and put the gun inside. “You’re falling victim to Hollywood bullshit. Being a spy is boring, tedious work, bureaucracy in action as opposed to a thrill ride. They’re like cops, but even less interesting, and most aren’t even armed. They’re professional liars. I’m just an amateur liar.”

His look was deeply skeptical. “You’ve never been an amateur anything.”

“Don’t be too sure about that.” She decided to change the subject, get him back on topic. “Get settled in your room, and meet me back here in fifteen minutes. I want to hit Orbit and Spank, get the layout of the places, get an idea of all the entry points and egresses, find out where the weaknesses are in the basic architecture of the place. I’d rather study how he moves in a group, the weaknesses of the unit, but we don’t have that kind of time. As it is, Romano has been here a while, and he’s probably complacent, which should make it easier.”

Although there was a stubborn set to his jaw, something in his eyes seemed to light up a bit. “We’re going to Spank?”

“That’s what I said. But it’s reconnaissance, not a chance to drool. Got it?”

“Aye aye, Cap’n,” he replied, with a comical salute. He started to turn towards the door, but paused. “Er, uh, what the hell’s an egress?”

“An exit point.”

“Oh. You couldn’t just say that?”

“No.” She would have asked if he’d like a gun, but he was actually a poor excuse for an American, as he didn’t like guns, and invariably turned them down when she offered them to him. He liked to say that, being a bouncer, he never needed one anyways. Why bring a gun to an evil stare fight?

He sighed, shoulders sagging like he was the most put upon person in the world, and headed out to his room. She knew she’d dodged a bullet here, but only for the meantime. He would bring it up again; his suspicions were too deep, and by process of elimination, he had gotten too close to the truth. So what was she going to do about it?

****

Orbit was one of those places she instinctively hated, simply because it tried too hard to impress her.

It was in one of the chic enclaves inside downtown Toronto, not all that far from the Wyndham, which might explain why it had become a favorite of Romano’s. On the outside there was no sign that said that this was a bar, nor was its name given; there was just a blue neon O. If you were cool enough, you already knew what this place was.

The interior was full of chrome and clear Lucite, blue neon and muted gel lighting, creating deep pockets of bruise colored shadows. The air conditioner was cranked up, and the music in the background, which she expected would be Moby or Tangerine Dream or something, was actually the wistful Elliot Smith, which didn’t fit with this deliberately cold and sterile bar. If it just had a bit more grit and signs of realism, it could have been a La Femme Nikita set.

Shan looked around, and let out a low whistle. “I feel pretentious just being in here.”

“Wanna bet all you can get are frou frou drinks and microbrews?”

He let out a mock gasp. “No Molson? This isn’t Canada!”

“Shush, and try and be artsy fartsy.”

“Well, I can do the fartsy part …”

They went to the curved Lucite bar and sat on stools that looked to be warped pieces of chrome with electric blue vinyl on top, and they were just about as comfortable. The bartender was a young guy, maybe twenty six, with a shaved head and six separate earrings in his left ear, including one that looked like a small nail. He wore a blue t-shirt that clung to a relatively muscular torso, and she was sure the color choice of shirt was not coincidental. He stood behind the bar, looking at them expectantly, not saying a word. Too hip to talk, or did he not speak until he was spoken to? “Just give us a couple of sodas, anything with a high caffeine content.”

Mr. Clean finally spoke. “Anything in particular?”

“If you have that weird grape Mountain Dew that tastes like toilet cleanser, I’d like that,” Shan said, so brightly she had to cover her mouth so she didn’t laugh. It wouldn’t have been funny if he wasn’t so serious.

While the bartender got their drinks, she got up and drifted back towards the bathrooms. Orbit was a very small bar in actuality, with a tiny kitchen and a narrow corridor leading to both men’s and lady’s room. She checked out the ladies’ room, which was empty at this time of day, and followed the chrome silver and arctic blue color scheme of the bar, although there was no neon in here, and it smelled strongly of something minty, like mouthwash. There was a single window on the outside facing wall, very high up and narrow, with bars on the outside, so no one could sneak in - or, more likely, sneak out. The men’s room was probably the same way, so there was no need to check there.

She glanced in the window leading back to the kitchen, and saw an emergency exit at the end, past the freezer. Orbit was pretty closed, without a lot of access points, and it was small enough to be a potentially bad action area. It wouldn’t be private, and there’d be a lot of collateral damage, if it came down to a fight. Spank would probably be better on several levels, mainly because strip clubs usually had lots of “private” rooms, and had quite a few doors to sneak out of if you didn’t want to be seen. Orbit would only be good if she wanted to box him in.

She wandered back out to the main bar, where her glass of cola sat waiting, and Shan was glancing around, sipping from a glass of purplish-black liquid that was probably the Mountain Dew-slash-toilet cleanser. She sat on her stool, and asked, “So how is it?”

“Oh, it’s crap,” he said cheerfully. “It could clean oil off an engine block. Want a sip?”

This time she didn’t bother to hide the chuckle. “If it’s that bad, why do you drink it?”

“Are you kidding me? It’s like liquid crack. Try it.”

He nudged the glass over, and she took a sniff before venturing further. It smelled a bit like grape kool-aid, and because of that, her sip was very tentative. It tasted like a very harsh grape kool-aid, and she was sure it was horrible for you, even worse than it tasted. “I think you must have to drink a lot of it to get the full effect.”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s just since this thing-” he pointed to his own head, and she knew he meant his little “accident” and subsequent brain damage, “- I think caffeine effects me even more than before. Why I don’t know. Maybe because I’m a forced teetotaler most of the time.”

“Perhaps.” She then realized what he’d said, and looked at him hard. “Most?”

“Well,” he replied, hesitating slightly.

But whatever he was going to say she missed, because the door opened, and her casual glance towards it became a stare as she recognized the thick set, no necked man who stepped through the door. “Oh shit, they’re ahead of schedule.”

“Who is?” Shan asked, following her gaze.

As soon as Shan felt ready to venture out, they went back to her place to intercept the messenger who’d be returning with their new i.d.‘s, and she sent him to talk to Ms. Gordon down the hall, as the old lady had an obvious crush on Shan (older women loved him - she enjoyed teasing him about that), and she figured she’d take good care of Satan while she was gone. Of course, Shan would probably tell her the cat was named Satin, but that was okay; Satan couldn’t correct her.

The courier arrived while he was still gone, and she got the first look at their new identities. Shan was Chris Flood, a good, bland name that could belong to anyone, But the name he gave her was Kaya Echols.

Oh, that Pommy bastard. What had she ever done to him to deserve that? It wasn’t her fault he decided to have principles to stand on, was it? She threw the packet on her coffee table and went into her kitchenette to have a drink of too sweet tea. Revenge was a petty thing, but she was considering it all the same.

She heard the door open, and Shan said, “Well, Vera - Misses Gordon - will be happy to look after Satan for me … er, you. We also got a dinner invite when we come back.”

“We, Don Juan?” she replied sarcastically, returning to the living room.

He gave her an evil look, but on him it looked funny enough that she wanted to laugh. It wasn’t that he was harmless, it was that he looked so bloody innocent, like no matter how big he was, he couldn’t hurt a fly. “Eww, not like that. Jeeze. She‘s old enough to be my grandmother.” He saw the large cardboard envelope on the coffee table, and picked it up. “Ooh, this is who we are now?”

“Sadly yes.” She sat on the couch as he picked it up, and continued swigging her bottled tea. If she was lucky, he wouldn’t notice, or just wouldn’t ask. He took out the sheaf of identification and sat down on the arm of the couch as he flipped through it. “Chris Flood? Well, my middle name’s Chris, so that shouldn’t be too hard to remember. But Flood? Why am I named after a weather condition?”

“Would you have preferred Chris Hippo?”

“Well … not Hippo.” As he looked through the documents, he put them back on the table: his new driver’s license (which was funny, since he couldn’t legally drive, but Frost didn’t know that), their airplane tickets, the hotel reservation print out, and finally he got to her “new” name. Damn it, his eyes widened, and she knew what he found. “Whoa, did you check out the name they gave you? Man. Kaya - isn’t that Hawaiian?”

“Japanese.”

He studied her face for a long moment, as she deliberately didn’t look at him. “Hey … are you? I mean at least part? ‘Cause your eyes -”

“I’m like one eighth on my mother’s side, okay? Hardly counts.”

“See, that’s cool. I always knew there was something exotic about you.” He wisely turned his attention back to the documents.

“Exotic? Is that code for weird?”

“Yes’m.”

She shrugged. At least he was honest about it; she had to give him that.

****

They packed up and hit the airport a couple of hours later. She had two bags in total, one of which was a backpack, and Shan seemed both impressed and suspicious. “I’ve never known a woman to pack as light as you,” he said. “Does this mean you think we’re going to die?”

After punching his arm for having a sexist pig moment, he himself struggled with what to take. She told him just to bring changes of clothes, medication he deemed important, and perhaps something to kill the long stretches of boredom (stakeouts were nothing but long stretches of boredom), but he got a bit hung up on the latter. He regretted never buying a Game Boy, and wondered if he had time to pick one up - she told him he could do that in Toronto. She imagined this was what it was like trying to get a kid going.

Frost was at least kind enough to get them “business class” tickets, so they didn’t have to ride in coach, which was somehow less comfortable than going Greyhound. How the airlines had achieved that dubious feat was a puzzler. Business class was much better, with nicer seats and more leg room, and slightly more polite service. Somehow she ended up with the window seat, but that was okay; at least she could see for herself if the number three engine exploded while in flight.

She had taken one of her paperbacks out of her back - Metal Sky - and started reading as Shan got comfortable in his seat and pulled out his CD player. He’d phased out once in the security line, but none of those sharp wand wavers seemed to notice. She’d been hoping he wouldn’t do what he usually did when they hit a dead spot on a case, which was ask her a personal question. “So why don’t you ever talk about your family? I mean, I know you got a sister, and now I know you’re part Japanese, kinda, but that’s it. What about your parents?”

She sighed loudly, and held her book closer to her face. Damn it. “What about them?”

“You never talk about them. Who are they? Are you not talking to them too?”

“It’s hard to talk to the dead.”

That caught him up a bit short. “Ah. When did they … can I ask how they died?”

She shrugged. “I killed them.”

There was a long pause, where he just stared at the side of her face, and then he chuckled and shook his head, looking away. “When you really don’t want to talk about something, you really don’t.”

“Yep.” There was no point in telling him it wasn’t a complete lie. There were just some things he was better off not knowing.

****

The flight to Toronto was uneventful, and after wending their way out of the maze that was the airport, they caught a cab to the hotel, one she’d never heard of, the Wyndham. It was a huge tower in the heart of Toronto, on a block that seemed exclusively compromised of hotels and expensive boutique shops. The Wyndham even had a doorman in a red outfit who opened the rear door of the cab when they pulled up, which made her feel a bit weird, almost as weird as wearing pale blue sunglasses.

But surely there was a reason Frost chose this hotel, and it probably had to do with the Wolf’s expensive tastes. There was another fancy hotel right across the street, and she was sure that a search of their guest roster would turn up one of the Wolf’s aliases.

The lobby was all polished wood and burgundy and gold hues, promoting an aura of wealth and taste bound to scare away the rabble. They checked in at a huge, polished cherry desk shaped like a horseshoe, and they’d hardly been there four minutes when she heard behind her, “Excuse me, miss?”

Behind her was a casually dressed man she’d never seen before in her life, with a leather suitcase in each hand, and one wedged beneath his arm. “You left these in my cab.”

He was not their cab driver, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Shan looking very puzzled, and ready to say something. She said something before he could. “Oh, yes, thank you. I’d forget my head if it wasn’t stapled on.” How coy Frost was playing this? A fake cabbie with luggage. She bet she knew what was in the bags too.

He put the bags down at her feet, said, “My pleasure, ma’am,” and left the lobby. Shan kept staring at her like she’d just lost her mind, but after a moment, he seemed to adjust. “I knew you had more luggage,” he said sarcastically.

They got checked in, and the desk clerk told them they got the rooms they “requested”, which were adjoining suites on the fourteenth floor. She bet she knew what the view out their windows would be.

Shan grabbed her “forgotten” bags, but struggled under the weight of at least one. She picked up the third, which wasn’t too heavy at all, and they schlepped it all to the elevator, politely waving off any help with their bags. Once inside, Shan asked her quietly, “What the fuck is in here? A weight set?”

“I’ll tell you upstairs.”

The rooms were large and tastefully appointed in shades of blue and ecru and white, which could have looked like a hospital room color scheme, but just managed to avoid it. She had a big bed and a big window, the sky blue drapes pulled back to reveal her view, which was just what she expected - the hotel across the street. The windows of the Wyndham were mirrored on the outside, so no one from the outside could see in, but the hotel across the street was older, more stately, and didn’t have such a tacky modern addition. You’d think a former assassin would be more aware of the minor details.

Shan came in her room with her, lugging the bags, and he gratefully tossed them on her bed. “Okay, so you gonna tell me what that was about?”

“Our employer agreed to supply the equipment we’d need. That was their way of handing it off.”

“Equipment? What kind of equipment?”

“Various things.” She zipped open the heaviest piece of luggage, and took out the black foam insert used as a cushion before letting the lid fall back, revealing that her suspicion about what it contained was correct.

Guns. There were five of them, Browning and Sig Sauer handguns, with extra clips and accessories such as silencers, holsters, and scopes, and a disassembled Barrett M99 sniper rifle with a laser scope, all in a hard foam backing so they couldn‘t come loose and rattle, or worse yet discharge while the suitcase was being handled. They didn’t supply too many rounds for the rifle, but that was okay - if she had to use it, she wouldn’t be using it often.

She picked up a Browning and started checking it, taking off the safety and checking the clip to see if it was full (it was), and noticed Shan gaping down at the weapons like a slack jawed yokel. When he looked at her, it was with the glazed eyes of someone who just realized they’d made a horrible mistake. “What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?” he asked.

She felt obscurely bad for him. She really should have left him out of this one, but there’s no way he would have believed she was going off on a vacation. “Would you believe an international incident?”

He gave her a thousand yard stare, still shocked beyond all reasonable means. She was probably lucky he hadn‘t fainted. “Yeah. I’d believe a violent coup at this point.”

“That’s next week,” she assured him, moving on to the other suitcases, looking for the telescope or binoculars that were sure to be here.

She messengered them over to Frost’s hotel, then headed out, driving up to Kamloops, mainly because no one knew her in Kamloops. There she hit the first relatively clean looking strip mall, and had her hair cut in a cheap chain store. She just told the woman she got that she wanted it short, style didn’t matter, and the woman did just that. People often looked a lot like their i.d. photos, but if you wanted to look like you’d had it for a while, something about your appearance had to change. Hair was the easiest, cheapest, and most dramatic. After getting her cut, she hit the chain drugstore in the same lot and bought a box of hair dye. While she was fond of her understated purple, if you intended to follow someone or otherwise stake them out, you needed to be as inconspicuous and bland as possible. After looking over her choices, she settled on black, and while waiting for the bored clerk to ring it up, she saw a pair of sunglasses with round, powder blue lenses. They looked exactly like cheap knock offs of something Bono would wear on a talk show, and because they were something she wouldn’t wear in a million years, she bought them too.

She went home once more, and dyed her hair, aware that this did sort of … well, “excite” was too strong a word. But one of the things she’d enjoyed about this line of work was pretending to be someone else for a while. She knew herself, and it bored her more than anything. She could pretend to be a complete prat for a while, someone who didn’t have her background or her name, someone who didn’t know what she knew. She couldn’t live like that, but she could do it for a little while, and it was somewhat liberating. If she really needed to appear spacey, she popped a cold pill or a painkiller beforehand. It wasn’t too disabling, and yet gave off an aura of either stupidity or boredom minus her usual contempt. It wasn’t easy to bear the mantel of misanthrope on an undercover job.

She picked a good color; her hair came out so black it was almost blue, although only in very bright light, so she would easily blend into a crowd.

She then headed over to Shan’s place to let him know they had a gig that would take him out of Vancouver for a couple of days. It was possible he’d say no, but she doubted it - it would probably be better for him if he did.

When she got there, she found a little kid, maybe about ten, knocking on his door, leaning on a hockey stick like it was a cane. As she came up, she said, “That Shan’s stick?”

The kid glanced over his shoulder at her, lips pursed in annoyance. He was a small Asian kid, with temporary green streaks in his short black hair. “Shan? Do you mean Shane?”

The slightly snotty tone of his voice almost made her laugh. “Yeah. Didn’t he tell you his hockey nickname was Shan? Short for Shanahan. “

The kid sniffed and looked generally unimpressed and petulant, reminding her quite vividly why she never liked kids. “Yeah, but it sounds stupid.”

“Hockey ain’t played by brain surgeons.” No sport was, but why go into it? “So I’ll put his stick inside if you want.”

He looked wary and suspicious, tightening his grip on the stick. “How’ll you do that?”

She held up Shan’s apartment key, as she had a spare. He always liked her to have a spare “just because”, but she suspected this fell into his general fear about his petit mal seizures eventually moving up to grand mals. He was told that was unlikely to impossible, but since the treatment of his petit mals was a collective shrug, she couldn’t blame him for not trusting them. “’Cause I’m goin’ inside.”

Again that distrustful look, which was funny to see on a tween. Maybe he was one of those kids that had a “tough life”, as Shan had euphemistically called it. She should have sympathy, having had a “tough life” herself, but too often it was an excuse for other crap. Did she turn into a psychopath? Okay, maybe, but a government sanctioned psychopath, which could be at least argued as being semi-constructive. “You his girlfriend or somethin‘?”

“Or something. I’m his friend, thank you.” She moved to the door to unlock it, but as soon as she slid the key in, she knew the door wasn’t locked. So why wasn’t he answering the door? It wasn’t like Shan to shun anyone.

Oh shit. Today was “new medication” day, wasn’t it? He would be trying new meds to see if they could help his condition at all, and that was basically like playing Russian roulette with your brain chemistry. It could do nothing, it could do something good, or it could do something that would require a visit to the emergency room. Too bad he couldn’t have EMTs standing by.

She pretended to unlock the door and opened it a crack, pocketing her key. “See?”

The kid grumbled, a reluctant agreement, and handed her the stick. She briefly considered smacking him with it, but that was probably illegal unless they were actually on the ice. She went in and closed the door, prepared for the worst.

The television was on, but the volume was low, sparing her a commercial for the Fifth Estate. His blinds were open, letting in a soft gray light, but she didn’t see him, not at first. But then, just beyond the coffee table, was a foot.

He was passed out on the floor, dressed in sweatpants and a Ramones t-shirt, a fallen glass just beyond his outstretched right hand. She tossed the stick on the sofa and crouched down beside him. “Hey, Shan, get up you lazy asshole,” she taunted, feeling for a pulse on his neck. It was slow but there, steady, and he seemed to be breathing okay. She whistled sharply, but he didn’t even twitch.

“See, this is what you get for mixing Red Bull with crack.” She got up and went to his sink, pouring cold water in the nearest glass she could find. Not much, just about a half inch of water, and then she splashed it on Shan’s face.

He jolted and spluttered, finally waking up. He opened his eyes, looking around in a dazed manner, before attempting to sit up. “ Damn it, why’d you throw water on me?”

“Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been pee.”

He stared at her a moment, mouth agape, water dripping off his chin. Finally, he chuckled and shook his head. “Why do I get the feeling you’re not joking?” He then did a slight double take, and stared at her hair. “How long have I been out?”

She replied, deadpan, “Eight years. Fuck if I know, man, I came in and found you passed out on the floor. What happened?”

“Your hair is black, right?”

“Yeah, I dyed it and got it cut, so you’re not seein’ things. Get on with it, will you?”

He sighed and wiped the water off his face as he glanced at the carpet, trying to pull his thoughts together. “I took the new meds, and nothing seemed to happen, So I went through my closet, trying to figure out if I had any clean clothes or not, and then I started to feel … weak. Not even tired, I mean weak, like I wasn’t strong enough to hold myself up. So I decided to crash on the couch until I felt better, and …”

“You didn’t make it.”

“No, apparently not.” He struggled to his feet, and she didn’t make any move to help him, as she figured he’d been humiliated enough. He managed to stand, although he wavered unsteadily on his feet for a moment, and brought a hand to his head like it was in danger of floating away. “Man, I’m never taking those again.”

“Why not? They might make kick ass sleeping pills.”

He grunted in what could have been humor, stumbling to the couch and moving the stick aside before collapsing. “Yeah. And I guess if I’m unconscious, I can’t have a seizure, so the logic’s bulletproof.” He rubbed his head one more time - there was a little red spot where he hit the floor the hardest - and looked askance at the hockey stick. “Was Linus here?”

“He a mouthy Asian kid?”

He smirked, wiping more water off his face to hide it. “I’ll take that as a yes. Yeah, he’s gotta ‘tude, but he’s a great goalie in the making.”

“I know I’d like to shoot something at him.”

“Did he, uh, see me -”

“No, I took the stick and closed the door in his face.”

He shook his head, sweeping his damp bangs away from his face. “A little tact wouldn’t kill you.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I’m deathly allergic to tact.” She leaned against the counter and noticed the plastic amber colored bottle of pills besides the toaster. She picked it up and read the label, figuring it was his new pills, and she didn’t recognize the name of the meds at all, which seemed to have at least two extraneous syllables. “You google these?”

“No, but they came with this huge laundry list of side effects from the pharmacy. I can’t remember narcolepsy being on the list.”

“They probably hid it underneath swollen testicles.” She shook the bottle to gain his full attention. “Can I keep these?”

He gave her the funniest look, like she just told him where he could put his hockey stick, but after a moment he shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. I was just going to flush ‘em. You’re not going to do something illegal with them, are you?”

“Can’t make promises.” She slipped them in her coat pocket. “Tell me, you got any plans for the next couple of days?”

That seemed to perk him up. “Ooh, we got a job? Does that explain your hair?”

“Yes and yes. But if you don’t think you can handle it I really don’t want you comin’ along.”

He shook his head and sighed wearily. “See, challenging my manhood isn’t a good way to start any conversation.”

“There’s no joke here, Shan. This is a job I can’t tell you too much about. What I can tell you is that if everything goes wrong, we could end up dead in shallow graves in less than an eye blink, and we have to go to Toronto for two days, pretending to be other people. Think you can handle it?”

He considered that a moment, then slapped himself to make sure he was still awake. “Ow! Shit, I did that too hard.”

“Is abusing yourself an answer?”

He rubbed his jaw, and the scrape of stubble suggested he didn’t shave. “Maybe. Who are we pretending to be, exactly? And what are we doing?”

“Who we are doesn’t matter - we’re just tourists. If no one notices us, that’s what we want. As for what we’re doing, we’re setting up a man - a very dangerous man - for a big fall. If we get caught, we’re dead, so we’re gonna try not to do that, okay?”

“Setting someone up? Isn’t that entrapment?”

“Only for cops. We’re not. And believe me, this guy needs to go down, so don’t let your conscience get to ya.”

“It’s not conscience more than it’s self-preservation. What’s the likelihood we could fuck this up?”

That was a fair question, but she wasn’t sure she could give him a good answer. “It’s relatively low. We just can’t make ourselves conspicuous.”

He raised an eyebrow at that. “I’m brain damaged, and you’re you. We’re by nature conspicuous.”

“Yeah, but we can fake invisibility for a while. You in, or do you want to sit this one out?”

He had to think about it, glancing at the t.v., then at the window. “We getting paid good?”

“Oh yeah. I could give you two thousand dollars right now.”

He stared at her wide eyed. “Two thousand ..? Okay, yeah, I’m in. When we going to Toronto?”