This time the meeting place was at a café downtown, near the art museum. It was a sunny day, but the wind off the water gave everything a slight chill. Still, Frost was sitting at one of the round outdoor tables, in the shade of a multicolored umbrella. He wore sunglasses and a gray fedora along with a heavy dark coat, the kind that might be worn by an old man … or a hit man. It was sometimes a strangely fine line.

Z sat down in the chair across from him, suppressing the grimace that her broken rib had threatened to cause, and tried to guess what he was drinking by smell alone. Earl Grey? Frost folded up his newspaper, and said, “You were right about your American. He’s excellent. How much have you coached him?”

“Very little. Some people are just born fighters.”

“Such as you.”

“I wasn’t going to say that. I don’t want to seem conceited.”

“You’ve been a lot of things. Never conceited, though.”

“Thanks. I think.”

The waitress came over, a perky little brunette who was too cheerful not to be high on something or thinking about something much better than her job. Z ordered a sugary soda and sent her off. “You were always intending to permanently neutralize Oswald, weren’t you?” he asked. It almost wasn’t a question.

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“I can’t help but notice you didn’t deny it.”

“I’m more curious in why you said that.”

He shifted in his seat and took his sunglasses off, so he could fix her with his scrutinizing blue eyes. “He didn’t have much in the way of fight injuries, in spite of the mess in the room. Just that single paralyzing wound. It was almost surgical.”

“Almost my ass. It was perfectly surgical. A work of art, if I don’t say so myself.”

The waitress arrived with the soda, so he scowled at her until she left, then slipped his glasses back on. “You gave up the game. Canadian Intelligence knows when they encounter an assassin. They’re not happy.”

“They wanted Oswald out of their country. He is, so they shouldn’t be complaining. Karma’s a bitch and so am I.”

He grimaced as if in pain. “I know what you’re doing.”

She took a drink of her cola, which was iced near to death, and the cold combined with so much sugar made her teeth ache. “Getting my caffeine fix?”

“You think you’re going to get out of this by being trouble. Deary, we at MI-6 knew you were trouble the first moment we saw your psych profile. It’s not going to be that simple.”

“I know. I figured I’d have to die again and take up shop elsewhere. I hear Argentina needs more sheep farmers.”

“It’s a good thing you’re joking.”

“Am I?” She grinned at him in a humorless and honestly annoying way.

He sighed and stood up, putting the folded newspaper on the table. “You did good, so you’re off the hook … for now. But don’t press your luck. They’re so humorless at MI-6 nowadays.”

She wondered if they ever actually had a sense of humor, but didn’t say it. Frost knew it better than anybody.

She was torn. She was getting older, and she couldn’t keep doing this forever, and Shan, as tough as he was, couldn’t do this forever either. Not only did his seizures continue to get worse, he was still a little shaken up over the levels of violence employed on this assignment. He sometimes looked at her sidelong when he didn’t think she was looking. He didn’t ask about Oswald, so she figured he knew he was dead. She guessed it bothered him that she’d killed the guy and didn’t seem bothered by it. He was hardly the first man she’d killed, and besides that, he was a mad dog that deserved putting down. But Shan didn’t know that, and probably never would.

Z picked up the newspaper Frost had left behind, and wasn’t surprised to see a phone number scribbled in the margin of the front page. It was a British number, probably his. But did he give it to her in case she decided to pack up and disappear again, so she could keep him in the loop? Or did he want to talk her out of it?

That was what most sucked about the spy game, and what she missed the least. You never knew quite who you could trust, and how far you could trust them. Absolutely everyone could be bought, but prices varied.

Z sat at the outdoor table, in the shade of the parasol, and tried to figure out her next move.

*****

The End

She’d hate him for it, but damn it, he just could never reconcile the difference between who she appeared to be and who she actually was. She looked like a kind of average to slightly small woman; in reality, she was more gonzo and hard core violent than any hockey player he had ever met. It was hard to reconcile the two things. His head knew she didn’t need his help ever, but his head was basically broken, so he could expect no help from it at all. But that worked in his favor, right? She’d probably forgive him. He could blame a ton of shit on his brain injury.

Shan was searching his pockets for gum when he glanced up and realized the guy currently getting out of a cab in front of the hotel looked familiar. He quickly glanced at the print out Z had left him, and saw that it was the guy that Z inexplicably called Six. On the drive here, she told him Six was called that because his last name was phonetically close to the German word for six, but Shan wasn’t sure that made sense. It could, but not so much. Didn’t mean it wasn’t true, though; life was strange, and Z was stranger than that. Shan sighed, as he knew he had to go get him; storming in on Z would have to wait until later. Damn it.

He waited until the guy had entered the hotel before getting out and following. He followed Z’s instructions perfectly, because he was good at that.

He stayed out of earshot, stayed away from Six, and then realized he had no actual plan. He had Z’s guidelines, but she left him room to improvise. Crap.

Well, he knew what his room number was, right? He knew what floor he was on. Six got into an elevator and Shan got in too, not sure what his plan was. It turned out he and Six were alone in the mirrored elevator, and Shan felt big next to the guy; he was at least five inches taller, and maybe fifty pounds heavier. But he was a big boy; he wouldn’t be a bouncer if he was smaller than your average bear. He could overpower the guy without much trouble. But Z had emphasized, “Always assume a gun. With these morons, always assume they have a Smith and Wesson stashed somewhere, because more than half the time you’ll be right.” And while attacking him in the elevator might be ideal – really confined space; even if he had a gun, he could only shoot him – he couldn’t lug an unconscious body around. It was a little too early to go with the falling down drunk excuse, even in Canada.

He caught Six’s eyes in the mirrored walls, and as he wondered if he’d been made (what a cool phrase – did that ever actually apply to him? Did you have to actually be someone before you could get “made”?) he slapped on a big stupid smile, and went with a guise that had never ever failed him: dumb ass American tourist. “You in for the conference?” Shan had no idea if there was a conference, but it was a hotel. It was one of those bets where the odds heavily favored you.

Six’s cold eyes narrowed slightly. He had really thin eyebrows, almost like they’d been burned off at one point and he just glued these tiny strips of felt to his face. “No.”

“Ooh, accent! Where you from, buddy? I’m from Michigan myself. Ever been to Michigan?” Part of the reason this guise was easy was because he was just parroting his Uncle Stan, a good natured chatterbox who was never exactly a Mensa candidate at the best of times. As if to prove that point, while drunkenly hunting deer one winter, he accidentally shot and killed himself when he dropped his rifle and it went off, and the bullet ricocheted and hit him in the stomach, severing a vital artery. It was discovered he’d also left his headlights on in his truck, and the battery was dead by the time his body was found. It seemed like insult to injury.

Six’s gaze was much eviler, and he looked away, shoulders hunching in a way that suggested he wanted the stupid American to go away and leave him alone. “No.”

“You oughta go! We got lotsa lakes. You like fishing? I love it, but ya know, Vancouver ain’t so good for it. A buddy of mine was up here last year, and he said the place was lousy with trout, but I gotta say, place seems kinda dead to me. I think Phil was just yankin’ my chain.” Shan elbowed him, sending him stumbling towards the wall. “Oh, sorry bud. You okay?”

Six straightened the collar of his jacket and gave him a dirty look to compliment the perfect “fuck you” vibe he was giving off like steam. If you were blind, deaf, dumb, and brain damaged, you’d still get that he wanted you to leave him the fuck alone. Shan just gave him a big Uncle Stan smile, wishing he could give off an odor of cheap bourbon like Stan did. “Fine,” Six spat like poison, before turning and exiting. He barely let the elevator doors finish opening before he slipped out. Shan waited until the doors were completely open before he followed the guy out. “Hey, you on this floor too?” Shan boomed, sounding like the world’s happiest idiot. “I’m in room 321. What’re you in?”

Six cringed but made no effort to respond. If Shan were him, he’d probably be considering shooting the stupid bastard, damn the consequences. But Shan kept his distance, allowing Six to disappear around a bend in the corridor, and he waited until he heard the noise of a door accepting an electronic key and unlocking. Only then did Shan come around the corner, and see the back of Six’s nondescript coat disappearing into a room. The door was closing, but Shan got a hand on it and shoved it all the way open, startling Six and making him stumble into his room. “What the hell -”

“Hey, we haven’t been properly introduced,” Shan said, shutting the door behind him. “My name’s Shane Shanahan, and we have a mutual friend.”

He saw it; that instant of recognition, the sudden dawning that the big stupid idiot might not be a complete idiot after all. Six did something smart – he started backing up, reaching for something under his coat, but Shan could thank all his hockey training for the fact that he might be a big, lumbering oaf, but all his trainers made sure to teach him how to move fast, much faster than you’d think a big man like him would be capable of. He tackled Six, and they both hit the bed and rolled over it, Shan grabbing his arm and forcing it away, keeping him from going for whatever he was trying to grab.

They rolled off the bed and hit the floor, Six struggling to get free, driving knees into his crotch and midsection, attempting a head butt but failing, as he was beneath Shan and he saw it coming. The crotch hits hurt, but not as much as they probably would have had he not been wearing his cup. Come on – you go into a game, you gotta suit up.

Six realized it at some point, as he stopped trying to knee him, but he was now cursing at him in what was probably German – like Shan knew; French cursing he knew, but German was new to him – and finally stopped and said in English, “If you knew what she really was, you wouldn’t be helping her.”

“I know she’s Australian,” he said, wondering what the best way to knock this guy out would be. Could he reach that lamp?

He shouldn’t have talked to him at all. He got distracted. “She’s an assassin,” he said, getting his foot up into his gut and kicking him off of him. But he didn’t get as much strength on it as he should have; Shan stumbled back but controlled it, so as Six grabbed his gun and started rolling up to his feet, Shan was back on him, grabbing the gun and twisting it in his hand as he drove his knee down solidly into his chest. Shan got the gun away, but the guy suddenly slapped at him with his other hand. Shan ducked it and backed away, but as he did, he felt water dripping from his face. No, not water – blood.

Silver glinted in Six’s hand; it was a tiny blade, triangle shaped and wrapped with electrical or hockey tape at the bottom, the widest point, giving him something to hold onto. “Drop it or I shoot you in the fucking leg,” Shan ordered, all too aware of how dangerous a blade could be.

Years of hockey had taught him if a blade was sharp enough, a cut didn’t hurt; you could get a wicked slice and not even know it until after the fact. It also taught him there was an artery in the face, but he was sure Six missed it, because the blood wasn’t spurting, it was dripping. He’d seen guys with accidentally sliced arteries, and they sprayed like something out of a bad horror film. He started to feel an ache in his cheek, and figured that’s where he was bleeding from.

Six studied him, pale eyes glittering like wet crystals, and Shan wondered if that’s what crazy really looked like. Not the guy wearing underwear on the outside of his pants and four coats on an eighty degree day, ranting about how the aliens were sabotaging the cheese supply and trying to make everyone speak Swahili, but the guy who seemed to show no fear while looking down the barrel of his own gun, trying to figure out if he could throw the knife before the guy holding him could pull the trigger. There were degrees of crazy, and Shan imagined that Six’s mind was a hatbox full of rabid sewer rats. “Are you a killer, Shane? Really?”

He took aim at his thigh. “I won’t kill you. I’ll just cripple you. Drop the fucking knife!”

His eyes, hot and bright and just a fuckload of crazy, bored into his, and Shan tensed on the trigger. He was going to shoot the guy just to make him stop looking at him. But Six must have guessed his intent, because he let the sliver of a blade drop from his fingers and hit the carpet. “You know, as soon as you’re of no use to her, she’ll kill you too. She’s good at killing. That’s why the Brits took her even though she was an Aussie slag. She can kill anyone with anything.”

“You like to hear yourself talk, don’t you Colonel Klink?” Quickly, without telegraphing it, he snap kicked Six in the face, hoping that would knock him out, or at least stun him. But even though he slammed back hard into the nightstand, his lip bleeding from the contact, he was conscious enough to complain, “Son of a bitch! What was that -”

Shan turned the gun around so he had the butt out, and smashed Six on the head. It took two hits to knock him out, and even then he wasn’t sure he wasn’t just stunned into silence. It always looked so easy in the movies.

He heard a clunk, the door unlocking and opening, and he swung the gun around just in time to see Z come in. She had a bloody lip and what looked like the beginning of a black eye, but she seemed okay otherwise. “How’s it going here? Fuck, he cut you?”

“Yeah. He had a knife thingy, but I didn’t see it until I took his gun from him.”

“Yeah, he’s a slippery bastard.” She came over and took a good look at the cut, grimacing slightly. “Didn’t cut all the way through, did it?”

He felt the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “Don’t think so. How bad is it?”

“It looks very manly. You’ll get laid for sure.”

“Awesome. You look like yours went down with a fight.”

She clicked her tongue as she pulled out her cell phone. “Mercenary types only go down with a fight. They’re testosterone poisoned like that.” She put the phone to her ear, and said, “We’re at the hotel and it’s done. Send in the teams.” Shan though he heard the distant sound of a female voice, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. Z gave no facial or vocal clues. If it wasn’t for the bruises on her face, she could have been ordering a pizza. “Oswald has been neutralized. Six is alive and awaiting transport to a heavily guarded facility.” There was a pause, more distant female voice. “Neutralized means neutralized, Chen, as in no longer a threat to anyone in the first or third world. Now get the teams in here before the RCMP gets involved.” She hung up and put her phone back in her pocket, even though Shan was sure he still heard the woman talking.

He looked at her, and asked, “Why did you specify Six was alive?”

“Because we could have killed him. Mission parameters allowed for death. We coulda picked ‘em off with sniper rifles if we ever got a clear shot.”

“Ah.” Suddenly, he didn’t want to know what neutralized meant. He really, really didn’t.

Besides the ka-bar, she was carrying another weapon: the electronic equivalent of a skeleton key. Only the manager was supposed to have it, but hey, it was a brave new world, was it not? Who was to say she couldn’t be the manager?

Okay, so she was as likely to be a manager as a room service tray. But this was all theoretical. No one who looked at her had paid a single bit of attention to her: she was a woman with short hair and a loose, drab wardrobe, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses. She wasn’t particularly attractive, startling, or memorable. She might as well have been wallpaper.

All part of the plan, of course. She was nobody, and no one ever remembered a nobody.

The hall was empty as she approached, and she hoped that it stayed that way. She was hoping she could ambush him in his room, as that would cut down on witnesses and possible collateral damage. Not that she’d kill any idiots who stumbled into their fight scene, but Oswald might. You could never tell with those gung ho mercenary types.

She made it to his room door and slipped the card in the lock. The lock released and the red idiot light turned green, so she pushed the door open and went inside. She didn’t see him or hear any sign that he was here … until she heard the toilet flush in the bathroom. Yeah, even soldiers needed to piss now and again.

She hurried up and planted herself against the wall in the main living area, just beyond the bathroom. She didn’t know if he’d heard her or not, but he didn’t charge out, which was a good sign. He cleared his throat and she heard him zipping up his pants – didn’t he wash his hands? Eww – as he started into the living room.

She’d already judged his height, so she simply swung her fist, and hit him straight in the throat.

That should have killed him (not immediately, but within two minutes; after getting your windpipe crushed, that’s pretty much all she wrote), but either she missed the windpipe or he had a thicker neck than she thought, because while he gagged on the initial hit, he still had the strength and presence of mind to grab her arm. She figured he might be going for a break, so she quickly slammed a flattened palm in his face, and as he tried to grab her other arm, she planted a solid kick in his midsection, breaking his grip as he slammed hard against the wall. Even though his face was turning red and he hadn’t recovered, he was a pro, and lunged forward, spinning into a kick that she blocked with a kick of her own. Impact hurt enough that she was sure she got an ugly bruise, but none of that was in the forefront of her mind as he threw a punch that she blocked, yet he still got a hold of her arm and slung her across the room, where she turned her head in time to avoid hitting the wall face first. He was good – he knew he was stronger than her, so he’d try and use that strength against her. She’d hardly hit the wall when she turned away, and Oswald ended up burying his leg ankle deep in the drywall when his kick missed.

Perfect.

Even though she was winded, she instantly brought her elbow down on his kneecap, bending it the opposite way with a loud pop. He made a strangled noise of pain, but also backhanded her across the face, sending her slamming back into the wall. It was a stunning blow, she could taste the blood on her throbbing lower lip, but she didn’t give into it. You ignored pain until you couldn’t, as a moment of weakness could be death in a fight.

He pulled his leg out of the wall and made strangled noises of pain, and from the way he was balanced it must have hurt like a motherfucker; it wouldn’t hold him at all. Now she had the edge. “So you’re Zero, huh?” he grunted. “You shoulda stayed locked in the trunk.”

She simply pursed her lips and blew him a sarcastic kiss, all the response she was willing to give him. She was here to fight, not chat.

There was a funny moment where nothing happened – he was waiting for her to commit to a move, and she didn’t – but then he lunged for her. She understood instinctively it was a feint, a clumsy move she was supposed to step into, but she didn’t; she held back and let him come on, blocking a weak throat punch and spinning away from the real hit, one aimed towards the solar plexus. As she spun back around, she slammed an elbow into his kidneys and kicked his bad leg out from under him.

But Oswald was a killer mercenary for a good reason. Even falling, he grabbed her leg and pulled her down. He tried to throw her into the dresser, but she curled up into a sitting position, still hitting the dresser but taking the brunt of it on her back instead of her head, and drove a thumb right into his eyeball. No, it wasn’t pretty, but she wanted Six to find a messy corpse – she wanted him to know how fucked he was before she made it permanent.

He shouted inarticulately, grabbing her arm and ripping her hand away as he kicked her away, throwing her into the desk. The edge of it hit the window so hard she heard a small, glacial crack. “Fucking bitch,” Oswald snarled, finally losing it. This fight was over; whoever got emotional first lost, and he should have known that. The deadliest killers weren’t the ones who were the angry; they were the ones who honestly didn’t give a shit. “Fight like a man.”

He lunged for her again, this time on his knees, but he did surprise her by grabbing the wastebasket and hitting her with it, the metal clanging up against her skull, as he followed through with a rabbit punch that neatly snapped one of her ribs, a sudden shock of pain that never failed to leave her momentarily breathless.

He was on top of her, trying to pin her down with his weight, and grabbed one of her wrists and twisted it. “Fucking cunt, you don’t mess with me and live,” he spat into her face, spittle making his lower lip slick and wet. She could see his eyes were bloodshot beneath the lower lids, thread thin tendrils of red snaking beneath the orbital bones.

She had slipped the ka-bar out with her left hand, and raised it before quickly bringing it down hard on the back of his neck. The shock of it widened his eyes and coaxed an involuntary wet noise out of him as she felt his muscles stiffen. Although it was impossible to tell from this angle, she was pretty sure she had stabbed him between vertebrae C1 and C2 – almost total paralysis. He was trying to breathe, he was trying very hard, but saliva was now drooling out his mouth, and his eyeballs looked to be straining from their sockets. She could see the bloodshot vein tattoos perfectly now.

She let go of the knife (it was perfectly safe where it was), and squirmed out from beneath him, doing her best to ignore the sharp pains coming from her broken rib. “So you’re the big bad killer, huh? I bet you usually did it with a gun. Guns make people stupid. You should have known that, Bradford. Any fuck can wield an AK-47. It takes real talent to paralyze someone with a single stab wound.”

She frisked him, finding his wallet full of fake IDs and some credit cards, some of which matched the IDs and some that didn’t, as he lay face down on the carpet, choking pitifully as blood and saliva made a small pool on the sandy beige carpet. She found a small gun in an ankle holster, but it was little more than a pea shooter, only good for close quarters and precision targeting. His other guns were probably elsewhere in the room. “Shoulda went for this right away instead of getting sucked into that mano a mano combat bullshit. You see, us female agents, we know we ain’t gonna overpower you, so we use cunning. Ever heard of that? What a stupid question. Obviously you haven’t. I mean, look at you.”

Maybe he was trying to say something; he was making noises. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand and figured he was near the point of passing out, so she knelt down and grabbed the knife handle, and shifted it ever so slightly. “Consider this karma, Oswald. You should have never left Eritrea.” She shifted the knife around with deliberate clumsiness before sinking it in deep and ripping it out one side of his neck. Blood spilled out, but by the time she had gotten through the bones and tore the skin, the spray wasn’t arterial. Somewhere between the beginning and this end, he had died. She hoped he felt enough of it. Because he was a murderous fuck, and he probably deserved worse than this.

But, no matter now. One down, one to go.

Chen wasn’t taking her calls right now. Z got routed to a functionary named McCallum, who had his knickers in a twist over how shot up the guys in the woods were (and they didn’t find their being bound with hockey tape very amusing either). After asking how the Eurotrash dirt bags ended up getting so perforated with bullets, she finally told him, “They got in my way.” Did he think she was out in the woods for fun?

He sounded flustered for a moment, but then got back on track with the usual “I don’t know how they do things in MI-6, but -” which she’d heard in some form or another a hundred times. She’d even heard it from MI-6.

Shan took the time to change clothes, coming back into the living room wearing jeans not spattered with blood, and the t-shirt she got him for his birthday, the one with the happy bar of soap proclaiming “Rub me on your butt!” It fit like one of his bouncer t-shirts, meaning so tight you could watch him digest food, but that showed off his impressive musculature and made people cower around him, no matter what his shirt said. She pretended not to notice him get a soda from the fridge to take his pills with as she busied herself with ignoring McCallum and calling things up on the laptop.

After reminding her of Canadian law for the second time, she angrily pointed out that she was supposed to be working beyond the law, as this was all off the books – or had they forgotten their own stupid fucking rules already? He thought she was being “hostile”. “No, hostile is this,” she replied, slamming the phone down.

“You’ve worked in customer service, haven’t you?” Shan asked.

“I’m the patron saint of asshats.”

He choked a bit on his soda, to the point where he had to turn towards the sink, as he’d snorted some up his nose. She gave him a moment, then asked, “You okay, mate?”

He waved a hand at her, then said, “Yeah, just warn me next time.” His phone rang, but they both ignored it.

A little illegal poking around had turned something up. Namely that Oswald and Six, under their pseudonyms, were checked into the same posh hotel. She pointed this out to Shan as he sat next to her on the sofa, although he was careful to stay on the edge. She didn’t care about the blood stains; she’d had worse. “Umm, aren’t these records private?”

“What’s your point?”

He scowled at her, then shook his head, dismissing it. “Fine, okay, forgot who I was talking to for a second. What does this mean? Besides them liking four star hotels.”

“It means we can pay them a visit. But we should probably take them on hand to hand.”

Shan gave her a look that was half pleasant surprise, and half trepidation. “No more guns?”

“I’d rather not use ‘em in the hotel if we don’t hafta. It’ll bring way too much attention that CSIS can sort out, but that we really don’t need.” But now she had a real quandary. Six had the mad on for her, and she wanted to deal with him once and for all, but Oswald was a real piece of work. Killing was easy, Six had done it and she had done it as a teenager, but when it came down to it he wasn’t very good at it. Oswald was a real pro – his paycheck and his survival had depended on his ability to rip out his fellow man’s throat with his teeth. He was a trained killer, and Shan, as big and strong as he was, couldn’t compete with that level of psychopathic ruthlessness, even though he used to play hockey.

She could. She was a trained killer as well. Oswald wasn’t the only one who had learned how to rip the throat out of his fellow man with his teeth. She wanted to put down Six, it would have been fitting, but Oswald would probably kill Shan. She had to take the psycho; she had to leave nutball Six to Shan.

She pointed out Six’s hotel room number and told him, “This is your guy. He probably can’t fight well, but he’s a major league asshole. If he can shoot you, he will. Don’t let him go for a weapon; cripple him immediately.”

Shan looked troubled, but saluted nevertheless. “So you get Bob, eh? Insurance salesman Bob. What’s his deal?”

“He killed an entire village in Eritrea.”

He thought about that for a moment. “Is that near New Brunswick?”

“A bit further South.”

“Ah.” He paused again. “You should probably take a gun.”

“Don’t worry, I can handle him.” Or at least she hoped so.

Now would be a really bad time to discover she was rusty.

***

They swung by her place so she could grab some back up weapons, then went to a car rental place and rented a bland, average looking car, with the only vaguely distinguishing features being tinted windows. They parked down the street from the hotel where Six and Oswald had holed up, and she called their rooms from her cell to confirm they weren’t there (or at least weren’t answering their phones). She then watched the front of the hotel with binoculars, waiting for them to either leave or return.

After a while, Shan said, “So, the plan is we beat the shit out of these guys?”

“And call in the CSIS, yeah.”

Shan sat in the passenger seat, munching his apple for a minute. He took huge bites, ones that she thought could choke a moose, but he seemed to have no problems with it. He continued to eat in a mostly nauseatingly healthy fashion, to keep up his physique. She, on the other hand, had just downed four Excedrin and a Red Bull with a Snickers. Hey, it killed the pain in her head, she wasn’t about to start complaining. “Seems a little … basic, don’t you think?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, but fancy’s for losers.”

“It just seems like general jackassery.”

“I worked with him once.”

“Who?”

“General Jackassery. He was really more of a dick.”

He scowled at her. “Very funny. This is serious shit, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we treat it as such?”

“Why? Shit’s miserable enough as it is. Why mope about it?”

He didn’t have anything to say that, so he just shrugged and sank back in his seat.

It was almost an hour – an incredibly boring hour – when she spotted Oswald entering the hotel, wearing an army surplus jacket a size too large for him, shoulders slouched like he was in a rotten mood. “Looks like I’m up,” she told Shan, handing him the binoculars. “You know what your guy looks like, right?”

‘Yeah. But shouldn’t I come with you, as back up?”

“What if Six arrives? No, you stay here. I can take this fucko, really. I have a surprise for him.”

He grinned. “You did bring a gun.”

“Something like that. Good luck.”

She got out of the car and casually crossed the street, walking around to the back of the hotel, where she had already found the employee entrance. A twenty slipped to one of the kitchen staff got her let in, no problem. She already knew what room he was in, so all she had to do was find the nearest elevator and duck inside.

She reached inside her pants pocket and gripped the ka-bar she had stashed there. She could stun him, but that almost seemed too kind, and besides, some of those steroid monstrosities could shake off a stun. No, she had to go for the immediate paralyzation or kill; Oswald was too dangerous to mess around with for too long.

As the elevator door opened on his floor, she hoped she wasn’t rusty.

The first shot pinged off the hood, making both Z and Shan duck behind their open doors. Other shots went wide, although one cracked the windshield with a sound like rime creaking under the heat of the morning sun.

“You got a lotta nerve, you stupid bitch!” a man roared from the shack.

Shan looked at her across the seat. “A friend of yours?”

“People love me,” Z replied, as she fired back blindly with one of the nines. She wasn’t trying to hit anything, just trying to make him stop shooting for a second so she could gauge where he was firing from.

“You’re a people person,” Shan agreed. “Can I surrender?”

“I’d let ya, but I bet they’ll think it’s a trap.”

“What if I swore it wasn’t?” He ducked even lower as bullets shattered the passenger side window above him.

“I doubt they’d believe you.” From what she’d been able to tell, muzzle flashes seemed to be emanating from a crack beside the door. Not the door, which was shut, but a crack between boards, wide enough to shave a gun barrel in. Did they think that was going to save them? “Cover me. I’m gonna make a run for the door.”

“Umm … I really don’t wanna shoot anybody.”

“Just shoot towards the shed. You probably couldn’t shoot anyone from here anyways.”

“Are you sure?”

“Would you just fucking shoot already?”

He did, very randomly, almost missing the shed entirely, and she fired randomly with one of the nine millimeters as she ran in a crouch towards the shed. She made it without getting shot, but she suspected that she’d have been okay even if Shan hadn’t covered her. The crack they were shooting through was too narrow; they didn’t have much range or maneuverability. It was like having a huge blind spot, but worse than that: an obvious blind spot.

She waited for the pause after a shot, the barely audible click of someone cocking their gun, and put the shotgun up against the crack and pulled the trigger. As usual with a shotgun, it was explosively loud compared to the other guns, and it blew a huge hole in the wall, causing someone inside to yell “Holy fuck!” After pulling the trigger, Z quickly spun back to where she had been and ducked down, in case someone started shooting through the wall.

But no one did, not until she got back beside the flimsy door, and their shots were so far off target that they might as well have been lobbing frozen peas at them. Shan, for his part, had moved around to the other side of the car, staying as low as he could, which was difficult since he was such a big guy. Still, they never came close to shooting him.

She threw open the door but stood aside, letting the idiots fire blindly out and around the door, occasionally shooting randomly inside with one of the nines to encourage them firing back. Her ears grew accustomed to the small explosions of sound, so she was able to hear the familiar sounds of hasty reloading.

It was only then that she swung into the doorway, shotgun braced against her hip. “First guy to move gets his guts splattered on the wall.”

There were two guys in the shack, which was an odd collection of valuable car parts and shiny hubcaps amidst straggly pot plants on wooden shelves that looked like they could give way at any moment. There was also a lumpy love seat with worn spots and a brown plaid pattern like a series of accidents, which one of the guys was using as a makeshift cover. The other guy was kneeling on the floor near the crack, beside a knocked over coffee table, his arm visibly bleeding from either a bullet wound or a shrapnel wound. Both were white and slightly dopey looking; older too, and doughy. Not White Wolf, or at least not from the mercenary division. Did they have a Human Resources department?

Shan came up behind her in the doorway, gun out. “So, is the bad guy here?”

“Six? No, not unless he’s really let himself go. You dropping those guns, boys, or do I hafta make an example outta one of you?”

The guys reluctantly dropped their guns with loud clunks. Maybe they were hoping for accidental discharges that would shoot her in the foot, but it didn’t happen. “Good. Who are you dickheads?”

“Fuck off, limey,” the guy on the floor spat.

“Limey?” Shan repeated with a scoff. “Dude, she’s a dingo. Or whatever the nickname for Aussies is.”

“I think it’s koala fucker.” Z told him.

Shan looked at her in surprise. “Is it?”

“I’ve got no fucking idea. I’m guessing.”

“Huh. Might work, I suppose.”

“Are you both fucking retarded?” the guy on the floor said irritably, hand over the wound on his opposite arm, so Z couldn’t tell what had injured him.

She motioned the guy over from the love seat, and reluctantly he stepped out from behind the furniture (like it would have protected him from a shotgun blast). “Who are you assholes? You’re not White Wolf.”

“We’re nobody, okay?” the guy on the floor said irritably. Shan collected their dropped guns, and he watched him closely. Z was actually hoping the idiot would jump him, because Shan would make short work of him. He was great at hand to hand combat. He must have figured he was too big for him, because the guy remained where he was.

“Well, I can tell by the accent you’re Canadian. So what are you, stringers?”

The guy on the floor looked at her blankly. He had mouse brown hair that looked liked a collapsed ski lift, sagging on his forehead like it was slowly falling off a cliff. “What the fuck’s a stringer?”

“And you called us retarded?” Shan exclaimed.

“Where’s Six?” She asked, knowing it was a long shot. The reason they’d bring these guys on board was precisely because they knew nothing. They were the weak link in the information chain, and you couldn’t drag information out of a person who genuinely knew nothing at all.

“Six?” Said the uninjured guy. “What the fuck kinda name is that?” They were both pudgy white guys, like men made out of boiled potatoes, but this one had hair the color of smoker’s teeth, so thin in places on top of his head he had a bit of a sunburn. His eyes were small and squinty, barely eyes at all in his creased red face.

“Who’s your boss?” she asked, and then quickly amended, “In this operation, not in the junkyard.”

The sunburned guy rolled his eyes. “It’s not a junkyard, okay? It’s an auto yard. The sign says so!”

“Whatever. Who paid you to shoot at me?”

Mr. Sunburn shrugged and then shook his head, his general attitude one of annoyed boredom. “We just did some paperwork for these Eurotrash guys. They said they were Interpol. And they said you were a terrorist.”

“A terrorist? Me? Since when the fuck do women who aren’t trapped in burqas work for Al Qaeda?”

“They said you were North Korean.”

Z shook her head, scowling in disgust. She was only part Asian, and a rather small part at that. And she was part Japanese, not Korean! Racist assholes thinking all Asians looked alike. It figured Six would latch onto that. Shan laughed.

“Yeah, I’m from the Australian part of North Korea,” she said, deadpan. “Where they have the kangaroos.”

The wounded guy looked up at her curiously. “They got kangaroos in North Korea?”

She glared down at him in disgust – was anyone that stupid? – while sunburn clicked his tongue and exclaimed, “No, ya idiot, she was bein’ sarcastic.”

“Trust me, Interpol wouldn’t need you to cook up fake passports for them, and I’ve never even been to North Korea. So give me everything you got on them.”

The idiot and the sunburned guy exchanged a glance before sunburn said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t give me that shit. You keep a file on these guys so if they need another one, you don’t have to mess with getting another photo or any stats. So now, where is it?”

Again, the morons exchanged a glance. Didn’t they know that was a giveaway? It was a way of saying, “Yes, I’m guilty. Please take me away, Mr. Officer Man” without ever saying a word.

Sunburn sighed and turned away. “Oh, what the fuck.”

“Dude,” the wounded guy said. “You can’t.”

“Yes I can. She’s got a look in her eye like my ex-wife.”

“So?”

“So, I think she’ll kill us all if we don‘t do what she says.” Sunburn pried up a loose floorboard, and Z was watching him closely to make sure he wasn’t going for a weapon. He wasn’t; the only thing in the hollow piece of floor, besides a variety of passport sleeves, was a battered laptop computer.

Z quietly thanked this dumb shit’s ex-wife.

****

Armin Bauer.

Z looked at the file, showing Six’s dead eyed stare. He gave his home address as a parking lot across from the CN Tower, but hey, if they were examining his documents closely he was in deep shit anyways. No harm in giving a phony address as his residence in Canada.

Shan took a look at him, and dramatically shuddered. “Crap in a hat, Z, he looks like a young Hannibal Lecter.”

“You’re not far off.” Oswald had assumed the alias of Robert Stevens, the blandest name imaginable. Bob Stevens – now how could that be the name of a mercenary who could kill you with a toothpick? You’d think he was the last person on Earth to be a coldblooded killer. Unless you looked him in the eyes and realized that he was dead from the neck down.

Shan was quiet for a long time, long enough that she was sure he’d had an episode at some point and recovered, and then finally said, “I’m guessing you didn’t tell me all there is to know about this whole thing.”

“You’d guess right.” How could she lie now?

“Is it that bad? I mean … these guys really are killers, aren’t they? What I said to those guys back in my apartment wasn’t just bullshit. They meant to kill me.”

“Yes.”

He hissed a sigh out through his teeth. “Fucking hell. I thought it was hyper … hyper … hyperthyroid.”

“Hyperbole,” she corrected automatically.

“Yeah, that. So why the hell are we going back there?!”

“’Cause I need to talk to somebody. We know who they are, but not where they are. I need more intell.” They had taken a car from the auto junkyard, an old Dodge Charger that needed a paint job, new rear tires, and a bumper to take the place of the missing one, but at least it ran. Oh sure, the flywheel made a scraping noise like someone trying to get burnt residue off the bottom of a pan with a fork, but they weren’t keeping it forever.

“That explains nothing. You can call from the bus station.”

“They won’t be here. You survived the cleaners; it will be assumed you are on the run. Only an idiot would come back here.”

“So now we’re idiots.”

“No, we’re doing an idiotic thing because it’s actually smart. It’s the last place they’ll look. Besides my place.”

Shan looked blankly through the windshield for a moment, scratching his head quite close to his brain surgery scar. “I don’t get you at all. Shouldn’t we be goin’ to the cops?”

“I’ve told you, we’re beyond the cops now. But don’t worry, we’re not alone. It just seems like it.”

“Has it occurred to you that the guys could be still there, unconscious?”

She shook her head as she swung the Charger into the parking lot of Shan’s apartment building. “The Zamboni’s been through.”

“Huh?”

She killed the engine, which made a ticking noise for about half a minute. “I thought you played hockey, mate.”

Shan winced and rubbed his forehead, like she was paining him. “Did I have a seizure, or does this not make sense?”

“It makes sense, trust me.” With that, she got out of the car, and headed for his ground floor apartment. Shan reluctantly followed, and when they neared his door, he grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

“Look, let me go in first, okay? Just in case.”

She pulled up her t-shirt, just enough to reveal the butt of the nine she had slipped into the waist of her jeans. “I should go just in case, don’t you think?”

He frowned, but reluctantly let her go ahead. Shan had a strange sense of chivalry, which she almost never encountered, certainly not amongst the jock types. You could argue that it was due to his head injury, but Z figured it was because he was raised right. Never mind that he was an American from Michigan who had spent almost all of his childhood playing sports; he was a genuinely nice guy, a very rare breed. She was kind of sorry she was warping him, making him more and more cynical. At least it was occurring slowly.

There was some blood on the edge of his door, and a bit of denting, but she opened his apartment to reveal … nothing.

Well, okay, that wasn’t true. There was his apartment furniture, his television still on but the volume muted, the coffee table overturned and a couple of magazines scattered on the floor, almost covering the large dark spot of blood on the carpet.

Shan looked in the place with growing surprise, his jaw going slack. “What the fuck ..?”

“See? The Zamboni’s cleaned the place up.” When she called Chen to tell her about the Eurotrash in the woods, she also told her that Shan’s place needed “clearing”. It wouldn’t have taken them long. Unbeknownst to him, Shan’s place had been under surveillance since she’d hammered out a deal with Canadian Intelligence.

Yeah okay, he was a civilian and one very adept at beating a punk ass bitch down, but no one wanted to see him hurt. But she’d be damned if she’d ever tell him she’d had him “protected” all along. He’d never take it in a good way.

And really, she couldn’t blame him for that. She wouldn’t have liked it either.

In the end, she decided that she could kill in front of Shan, just not in any way that suggested execution style. Which left her with a bit of problem, because these guys just weren’t resisting.

But she did agree to keep in touch with Chen, and hadn’t bothered for long enough that CSIS were probably starting to doubt her intentions. At least Shan had some hockey tape in his Jeep. They used it to tape the thugs’ wrists behind their back, and taped their ankles together up to their calves. Just because he was bleeding so much, Shan taped up the bullet wounded knee of the more severely injured guy. Shan advised him to tell the doctors not to just rip it off as they might take skin with it, but for his kind advice he got a hearty fuck you. So they both agreed that the doctor should rip off the tape as hard as humanly possible.

She then called Chen and told her where to pick up these assclowns, and went through their car for clues.

They ended up having to do some math. The rental papers in the glove compartment listed the original mileage of the car, and then they noted what it was now, and subtracted the amount of miles it would take to get here from Vancouver. (Shan knew, since he drove it and wasn’t unconscious in the trunk of a car at the time.) With the amount of mileage left over, they tried to figure out where these numbnuts may have come from. Because they ran low on ideas, she called Chen and consulted her. Chen, for her part, thought they were both fucking nuts.

Chen still found them four potential sites. The best looked to be an auto junkyard that was suspected of being a chop shop as well as a source for illegal passports. Second best was a low rent bar; third best was a park. The last was a mall, which was highly unlikely, and yet would be good if you wanted to get lost in a crowd. Also, it had a “sporting goods” (read: gun) store, in case they needed to load up with some new shit in a hurry.

As soon as she hung up, she started the rental car and followed Shan’s instructions to get back to the road. “How long was I out?” Shan asked. He was attempting to put the safety back on the gun he grabbed, and he wasn’t doing well.

“Not long.”

“Are you sure? I seemed to have missed a shoot out.”

“There wasn’t a shoot out; I prevented one by shooting them in the back. Give me something with repeat action, and I can take out an entire platoon by shooting them in the back. It’s cowardly, but a hell of a time saver.”

Shan gave her a suspicious look, but seemed to accept that and let it go. The entire key to their relationship was his willingness to let shit go. “So, is your name actually Zero?”

“Zero’s a number, not a name.”

“That’s what I said! But those guys back at my apartment said that you changed your name to it in England or something. It seemed improbable, and yet, still like something you’d do.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

“So, are you named Zero?”

She glanced at him sidelong, trying to gauge his response. “Would you like it to be?”

He stared at her in surprise. “It’s an option?”

She shrugged. “Sure, why not? I can always use a new name.”

He looked briefly confused. “So it’s not your name?”

She shrugged. “It could be.” There had to be a limit to how much she revealed to him. It was really better for him, although he would probably object to that.

He frowned at her, dark brows becoming stark lines over his icy blue eyes. “Why won’t you tell me your name? I’ve known you for years. I’ve looked down the barrels of more guns than …” He made a vague motion with his hand, one that went on longer than it should have, and he had a desperate look in his eye. His transitory aphasia was making itself known once more.

“Sorry mate, but I have no idea what word you were goin’ for there. Hot dinners? Than in your entire life? I’m sorry, I never meant to drag you into all that shit.”

It took him another minute, but he finally got his voice and mind back on track. “Okay, doesn’t matter. My point was – is – I’ve never known your real name. Don’t I deserve to know what it is by now? I won’t blab.”

She sighed, trying not to be too obvious about it. Telling him there were things he was still better off not knowing sounded condescending, although it wasn’t intended that way. So she just skipped that part. “I haven’t had a real name for years, Shan.”

“Bullshit. Your parents named you, didn’t they?”

“Yeah, but I got rid of that name around the time they got rid of me. I didn’t want it, and they didn’t want me. We were even. Ever since then, I just pick up names and throw them away when I don’t need them anymore.”

“What do you mean they got rid of you? Your parents put you up for adoption or something?”

“Naw. By then I was too old. My mother just told me to get out, and I did. I left my name at the door. A name is nothing, a designation, but it’s not you. It’s just somethin’ to write on the death certificate.”

He shook his head in despair and rubbed his eyes. “Are you wanted by some government?”

“America, and probably Egypt. I’m not so sure about Syria or Serbia; time and regimes change, you know. Hard to keep track.”

Shan stared at her for a very long moment, but she deliberately avoided his gaze. “You’re making that up.”

She simply shrugged. She wasn’t – well, maybe Serbia; was that even a country anymore? – but it didn’t matter.

“Are you saying if I Google your real name, I’ll find you on a wanted list?”

“No, under a coupla different names. Told ya, I change ‘em all the time.”

He raised his hands up and let them fall on his lap, a gesture of frustrated surrender. “Either you’re making this shit up to freak me out, or you’re just trying to freak me out, period.”

“No mate, swear I’m not. I’m just bein’ honest. Maybe ‘cause of the head injury.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that. Maybe we should stop at an ER first?”

“Can’t. We’re already here.” She nodded down the road at a large chain link fence topped with looping curls of barbed wire. There was a sign so dirty you could barely see “Aaron’s Auto Hauling & Recycling” scrawled on it, or the hours of operation written underneath. She idled the car on the cracked asphalt ribbon some eight meters away from the chained and padlocked gate. It looked dark amongst the hulking hills of junked car bodies and the scree of loose parts, although there seemed to be a wan yellow light where she imagined the main building to be. “So what’s wrong with this picture?”

Shan studied the gate with well hidden but still obvious alarm on his face. “I … don’t know. They’re poor housekeepers?”

“It’s on the sign, right above the “Closed Sundays” line.”

He leaned forward, squinting his eyes to see through the built up dirt and grime. “Umm … “Open 11 to 8 Six Days A Week”.”

“What time is it?”

He looked at his watch. “Seven twenty.” She waited for him to put two and two together, and while he did, she reached in the duffle bag they found on the floor of the back seat. It contained a professionally sawed off shotgun, loaded, with several spare shells. Now this was a proper gun, not a pussy nine millimeter. Oh, well, they were fine for some people, but she wanted something guaranteed to put someone down for a long time. She laid her wonderfully phallic gun across her lap, barrel pointed towards her car door, ready for action. “They may have closed early for some good reason.”

“Maybe, but it’s a hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?” She started backing the car up, heading back down the small choppy road until she came to the intersection where it met the paved street.

“We leaving?”

“No, we’re gaining momentum.” She confirmed he was wearing his seatbelt, then gunned the engine before pushing the gas pedal down as far as it would go. Shan let out a surprised yelp and braced himself, hands wedged up against the dashboard, as the car met the gate.

The impact was a jarring thud accompanied by the scream of twisted metal and the soft noise of shattering headlights, but the barrier gave, the chain snapping and the gates swinging open as the damaged car roared into the wrecking yard. One of the front tires popped, possibly on a piece of metal sticking down from the now crumpled front end – she felt the head of the car going soft, the traction mushy and the steering sluggish – but she simply let up on the accelerator and wrestled the beast into some semblance of direction, refusing to lose control now.

The car fishtailed on the hard packed dirt, the rear slamming into one of the dead car cairns and causing an avalanche of small parts in their wake as she navigated the path between the car corpse hills, headed towards what now resolved itself into a low shack like building with a tar paper roof. “You’re fucking crazy,” Shan shouted, as the car was now rattling and making noises that suggested imminent death. (But what the fuck did she care? It wasn’t her rental.) She only grinned, because pronouncements like that always made her laugh. Of course she was crazy – she used to work for the government, didn’t she? That was pretty much a prerequisite.

She slued the car to a stop just beyond the shed, kicking up a huge cloud of dust that looked like smoke. As she killed the engine, it made a noise that could have been interpreted fairly as a death rattle.

Shan stared at her in wild eyed horror. “Couldn’t you have at least warned me?”

“What, and spoil the surprise?”

He scowled at her, not in the mood for jokes. “What if these people are innocent?”

“Then I’ll apologize,” she said, opening her door and sliding out, grabbing the shotgun and letting it hang next to her leg.

But it turned out there was no need for apologies. Shan had barely opened his door when the shooting

Four Days Earlier

It was so weird to see Shan with kids. It was even odder to see that they looked up to him.

Z was sitting in what would probably be considered the “cheap seats”, if the Rec Center could be said to have cheap seats. It gave her not only a good look at the skating rink, but at the few people in the seats who were sitting watching, presumably parents and family members ready to take the kids home when this was all over. Z found, even after a short amount of surveillance, that she could pick out different types amongst the people.

The “hockey dads” – guys who took it way too fucking seriously – all sat with rigid postures or clenched fists, acting like every kid who stumbled on the ice or took bad potshots at the net were committing some grievous sin. The “hockey moms” – basically chauffeurs – usually looked tired and distracted, although some did other things, such as read mass market paperbacks or knit scarves. The older brothers or sisters sent to pick up their little brother (or sister – Shan had a couple girls on his team, including a pudgy one who was actually an impressive brick wall of a goaltender) usually texted or watched or listened to something on their phone or iPod, their postures reflecting boredom. The older brothers who had played hockey and cared about it did nothing but watch. There was one hockey mom, a Korean woman in her early thirties, who never watched her kid but watched Shan instead, with an almost predatory gaze. He never believed Z when she said that mom wanted to jump his bones, but clearly she did – if it wasn’t for the presence of the kids, she’d have probably tackled him on the rink. Was it wrong that Z would have paid cash to see it?

Shan had haphazardly put on goalie gear (the leg pads and the helmet, but it didn’t look like he was wearing any other padding – maybe he knew they’d never be able to lift a puck into his midsection), and was taking pucks that his kids shot at him. Or towards the net, which was actually a different thing (about one of three kids actually hit him; the rest shanked pucks in wildly variant directions). But Shan always shouted out compliments and encouragement, no matter how far off the mark they were. He was very good with the kids, giving him a “gentle giant” mystique, which made her feel bad for always embroiling him in violent shit, until she recalled that Shan always liked being involved in the violent shit. Oh, he didn’t like hurting people, but he liked the excitement. He was a thrill junkie, even if he wouldn’t admit it.

She was marveling that Shan had a kid named Rajiv on his squad when a woman suddenly appeared in the aisle beside her. She was an older middle aged Asian woman, dressed in a surprisingly neat and conservative dark pantsuit, with a gold silk scarf knotted around her neck to add a little color. Her black hair was cut short and somewhat severe, accidentally emphasizing the roundness of her face. “Excuse me, do you have the time?” she asked.

Z didn’t even look at her watch. “Eight fifteen.” That wasn’t right, but it wasn’t supposed to be. That was the code.

The woman who was her contact with the CSIS, Elena Chen, sat down in the threadbare seat beside her and sighed. “I got held up in traffic. I forgot they were still doing road work.”

“So much for Canadian Intelligence.”

Z noticed her scowl out of the corner of her eye, but didn’t acknowledge it. After a moment, Chen stopped giving it to her. “I understand you don’t want to work with us, but you’re on our soil. If an MI-6 op wants to go off, we have to be involved.”

“I’m just a freelancer. I don’t want to be involved in this at all.”

“But here you are.” They sat in silence for a moment, before Chen said, “So that’s the civilian, Shane Shanahan. He’s a goalie? Well, that explains the brain damage.”

“He’s good, and he’s in. He won’t compromise anything.”

“Did you know I had never heard of petit mal? I had to Google it. And I’m still not sure I know what it means.”

“Look at him. He can handle his shit.”

She stared at him skeptically, like he was a pre-packaged sandwich with a dubious expiration date. “How much does he weigh?”

“Two twenty five, nearly all muscle. I don’t think he has any fat on him.”

She let out a low whistle. “So this and being a bouncer keeps him in shape?”

“He works out a bit. He has no social life. He’s afraid of having seizures in places where you would normally meet people: bars, restaurants, clubs. Too much light and noise contrast can trigger an episode.”

“Doesn’t he work at a club?”

“Yeah, but outside. He only goes in when he’s called for.”

There was a loud crack as a puck hit the Plexiglas behind the rink hard, and while some of the spectators in that area ducked (as if breaking was an actual possibility), Shan seemed unmoved, and actually called out, “Nice slapshot, Scotty! But take a moment to find your target first, okay?” That had missed Shan so badly that the kid might as well have been shooting for the other end of the rink. He would probably get better, but she bet Scotty didn’t have a future as a sniper.

“Hockey players have great bodies,” Chen said, apropos of nothing.

“Really?” Z wondered where this tangent was going.

“Oh yeah. Their faces are often a horror show, but slap a paper bag on their heads and strip ‘em, and they’re some of the best looking straight guys around. Really hard, lean bodies.”

Now Z got it. Chen was joining that one hockey mom who was wondering what Shan was packing under that jersey. “I wouldn’t know. You used to date one?”

“I grew up in Canada. So, yes. And they’re jerks, you know – most jocks are jerks. But nice to look at.”

Z only nodded, swallowing back her initial response, which was all men – jocks or not – were jerks. Women were hardly better. But that was cynical enough to be revealing of her personality, so she didn’t say it. “He’s had a dry spell for a long time. You could probably take a crack at him if you want.”

Chen raised an eyebrow at her for that, scoffing. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m sure he can fight – when he’s conscious – but I’d rather assign you an agent who knows what we’re up against.”

“I don’t want a CSIS shadow, Chen. I don’t want to be followed, I don’t want to be teamed up with someone new. I’m willing to work with you, but on my terms.”

She let out a little huff of a sigh. “They warned me you were difficult. They undersold it.”

“They undersell it to other agencies, and oversell it in house. They’re British – they’re all drama queens.”

That got a small, humorous noise out of her. “They warned me you weren’t a team player.”

“I was always one of those agents you called in when things went tits up. I wasn’t supposed to be a team player.”

She noticed Chen was now studying her out of the corner of her eye, but Z kept her focus resolutely on the ice. “Were you a cleaner?”

Z didn’t answer. She felt that, honestly, there was no need to answer that question. She either figured it out for herself, or she didn’t.

****

Now

The one good thing about being in a forested area was all the good cover it provided. But Z wasn’t happy, mainly because it would have been ideal if she had a sniper rifle. But what she had were two nine millimeters, which weren’t ideal for distance. To use them with any decent accuracy, she’d have to be closer to her targets than she liked. Oh well, it was her fault for getting locked in the trunk of a car.

This was a part Shan wasn’t very good at: waiting. He was used to waiting in one sense, as being a bouncer meant standing around for most of the night, but at least he got paid for it, and there was a nearly endless parade of people – many drunk – to keep things interesting. Here there was nothing to do but birdwatch.

She suggested he take the Jeep and go until she called him, but he refused. He only moved it, hiding it behind cover, and then came to join her where she was waiting for Six to show up.

This went on for a while. Occasionally they talked, but not often. Nothing worthy of note was covered, mainly because Shan had no desire to discuss what he did to those guys back at his apartment. Yeah, he could fuck guys up royal, but unlike most jock boys, he didn’t like to talk about it. Probably because a bit of roughing up lead him to his brain injured status. When you paid the price, you couldn’t be proud of it.

Finally she heard the hum of tires on hard packed earth, and nudged Shan. “Get ready.”

But she knew from nudging him that he seemed almost excessively rigid, and glancing over she confirmed that he was staring out into space, eyes unfocused. Seizure time. Well, you know, he lasted longer than she thought he would. He’d done very well. But she was on her own right now, and she kind of expected that to happen at some point.

She liked working alone. Now she could do stuff and not have to explain it to him.

She laid him out, because, even though he was in a sitting position, she didn’t need him toppling over at an inopportune time.

The car, a white Ford Focus (clearly a rental), came to a stop almost directly parallel to her hiding spot, and she saw two big men in the car, neither Six. She watched them get out, visually assessing them. Both were huge guys, easily beyond six feet, with the approximate width of refrigerators. They walked with their arms slightly held out at their sides, as if the muscles were too bulky to deal with, and both were obviously strapped. Guns sure, but probably knives as well. Both were smoking, one a regular cigarette, one a Galois. She assumed they were both former White Wolf, although she didn’t discount the possibility that the guy with the Galois was simply a Euro-thug.

She let them start moving out towards the clearing before she came out of hiding and advanced in a low crouch towards the Focus. She hid behind it and waited for them to say something, but neither did. They were such pros that they knew you didn’t talk when approaching an unknown situation. She glanced up at the side mirror, making sure their huge backs were turned to her, before standing up and shooting at both of them, a gun in each hand like she was a hero in an action movie.

It was as cowardly as shit to shoot someone in the back. But when you were dealing with mercenaries, there was no room for honor.

Bullets punched through both of them, shock startling yelps out of them as sprays of blood burst from their shoulders, chests, and legs. She wasn’t going for the fatal neck shot (you couldn’t be sure of a fatal head shot with a nine from this distance, but if you took out the carotid or the jugular, it was goodnight nurse, even if you used nothing more than a ballpoint pen), not yet, but she was prepared to as soon as she deemed it necessary.

One was hurt worse than the other, and you could tell which one, because the one with more surface injuries reached for his gun even as he hit the ground. Ignoring the sick ache in her head, she ran up and kicked the gun out of his hand as he pulled it. “Don’t you fucking move,” she snapped. “Unless you want me to shoot your balls off too.”

It was the Galois smoking one who still had some fight left in him. The other thug was curled up in a fetal position, whining, “Fucking cunt, you shot my knee!”

Galois had bristly black hair and eyes as brown as mud, his gaze flat and full of hate. “I knew it was too good to be true. They said they had you wrapped up like a Christmas present.”

“Yeah, I’m fucking Santa Claus.” She was tempted to kick him in his bloody thigh, where a bullet had penetrated (but not exited; he was only bleeding from the back), but she had stepped back after kicking the gun from his hand and had no desire to get that close again. He may have had four or five bullets in him, but the wounds were all minor, and he was a big guy who knew his life was at stake. He would fight like hell to live, and she didn’t need to get into direct combat with him. “Where’s Six?”

He sneered up at her, his eyes showing that, in his mind, he was crunching numbers, trying to figure out if he could tackle her before she could put another bullet in him. Since he didn’t move, he must have figured the answer was no. “What the fuck, d’ya think this is 24 or somethin’? You torture me and I spill my guts? Fuck you! You’re gonna kill me anyways.”

“I’m doin’ you a favor, mate. I could kill you quick, or leave you to die slow. Up to you.”

“I’ve already made my choice.”

“So is this why torture never works?” Shan said, coming up, holding out another nine millimeter Glock he’d gotten from the Jeep. His eyes still had the glassy sheen of post seizure consciousness, that fuzzy half way glance that said he barely knew what planet he was on, but he was with it enough to come help her, which she had to give him credit for. See, CSIS would have been happier to have him as an agent; he was a team player all the way, and never let a friend go it alone, even when he was half-conscious and severely disoriented. Z knew she was living proof that it was hard to teach that kind of knee jerk loyalty – either you were born with the tendency or you weren’t.

“No. Torture never works ‘cause people make shit up. They tell you what you want to hear so you stop shovin’ wires up their urethra.”

Shan and the two men on the ground all winced. “Please tell me you just made that up,” Shan asked. His voice still had a thick, slow fuzz to it – again, typical post-seizure problem – but since the guys on the ground had presumably never heard him speak before, they’d never notice it. They’d just presume he was a slow talker.

“If that makes you sleep better, sure,” she offered. He gave her a wide eyed look of shock.

Galois craned his neck up at him. “Are you the brain damaged fuck buddy? Why ain’t you dead yet?”

“Fuck buddy?” Shan repeated in confusion.

“I think Six is the only guy in the world who thinks I’m straight.”

“Well, you do give off a kinda manly vibe.”

Galois snorted a laugh. He tried to smother it, but not very hard. She wasn’t going to hold it against Shan, because, hell, she knew she came off as pretty butch. It was part of the job.

Shan was getting better. He noticed the guy in the fetal position, holding his bloody kneecap and gritting his teeth against the pain. “Um, should we call an ambulance or something?”

“No.”

Galois now sneered up at Shan. “You don’t have the slightest fucking idea what she is, do you?”

Shan glanced at her, but not in a way that suggested he was surprised by the comment. Shan had made peace with never quite knowing who she was, and actually he seemed happier not knowing, adopting the theory ignorance was bliss, or at least a good friendship. He was correct. “What are we gonna do with ‘em, then?”

What a very good question. With Shan standing right here, an eyeball witness to whatever she did, what was she going to do with them?

How far did Shan’s loyalty go?

Five Days Earlier

She ended up meeting Shan at a Tim Horton’s not far from the rec center, after one of his afternoons coaching. His hair was still wet and combed back like he was a villain in an old Miami Vice episode, his face slightly flushed from exertion. It was obvious this gig tired him out and depleted his energy, and yet it was equally clear he got enough joy from it that quitting would rob him of his will to live. Z wondered how long he could keep it up before something had to give.

And if you weren’t sitting across from him, where you could see his brain surgery scar peeking out from under his hairline, you’d probably think he was the most normal guy in the universe. He was sitting there, eating a box of sour cream glazed Timbits and drinking the largest café mocha they had, while she picked listlessly at a cheese croissant and had already surrendered the coffee she had no intention of drinking to him. Caffeine was one of the few drugs he could have, and by god, he had it a lot.

He didn’t stop chewing or slurping a moment while she broke it down for him, his eyes almost fever bright in his reddish face. He’d probably only just taken his pills, as he usually took them afterwards. He nodded at everything she said, so casually she wasn’t sure he understood her. “You do hear what I’m sayin’, yeah? These guys are professional killers. They don’t leave witnesses, and they’ll likely kill anyone who gets in their way. I think it’d be best you leave town for a while.”

He chewed on a Timbit like a cow chewing its cud, and shook his head. “Nope. Stayin’ here.”

“Shan -”

“Why do you even try and warn me off? You know I’m too stupid to avoid a fight.” He flashed her a brief, crumb filled smile.

“Cut that out. You’re not stupid, you’re differently abled.”

“Ha.” He took a swig of his café mocha. “Do you really think I’d leave you alone to face off with a buncha bloodthirsty bastards? I mean, I know I should, but the guilt’d kill me. And by the time I came back, the game would be in progress, and I wouldn’t know the play, and I’d make things worse. So better I’m in at the beginning than back at the front.” He paused a moment, looking down at his Timbits. “At what point did I stop making sense?”

“I think after bloodthirsty bastards. But if it’s anything, I know what you were goin’ for.”

“You always know what I’m goin’ for. That’s why I like you, even though you regularly scare the shit out of me.”

“I scare the shit out of most people. Shows they have a sense of self-preservation. Speakin’ of which, I’m willing to buy you a ticket to Michigan to visit your family. I really think you should take it, mate.”

He shook his head vociferously. “My family is my lawyer brother, rich as shit and twice as smelly, and my mother, who has Alzheimer’s and is in the best home my brother decided to pay for. Last time I visited her, she had no idea who I was, and my brother and his anorexic Olsen twin of a wife treated me like I was retarded. I’m surprised they didn’t have a special padded helmet for me to wear around their house. I’d rather face assassins than them.”

“Sounds like my family.”

“They’re assassins?”

She snorted a laugh. “Might as well be.”

He nudged the box on the table, tacitly offering her one of the doughnut things, and she shook her head. She knew lots of people raved about them, but she’d never been much of a doughnut person.

She also knew she probably wouldn’t be able to talk Shan out of this – he was a big goofy Saint Bernard of a person, always eager to get in and help even when he didn’t understand the situation, and capable of great feats of strength even when you’d already written him off as a harmless goofball. In short, he’d have made a great hockey player or president of a minor Pacific island nation. Still, in good conscience – whatever shreds of one she had – she had to try. “Look, mate, these people have killed, and are always willing to do it again. Can you?”

“Can I what?”

“Kill. I know I’ve told you never to aim a gun at someone you have no intention of killin’, but I also know you think I’m bein’ a weirdo.”

“I don’t like guns.”

“I know, but this time out you may be forced to use one.”

He shrugged and shook his head at the same time. “Why? Guns and other weapons are your strength, not mine. Mine’s hand to hand. I mean, you don’t play hockey and rugby for years without learning how to fuck someone up royal.”

“You played rugby?”

He nodded, chewing another Timbit. “During the off seasons. I liked to think it kept my stamina up when there were no rinks to skate at. Don’t know if it did or didn’t, but I could decapitate someone with my elbow.”

“Nice. Ever play a sport that didn’t involve physical violence?”

He looked out the window at the people walking by on the street, and he was so unfocused for so long that she thought maybe he’d had a seizure. But finally he looked back and said, “Volleyball.”

He had one. Imagine that. “Sometimes these guys know better than to try to go mano a mano with a big slice of guy like you. If I was comin’ up against you, I’d go for the distant take out, and that’s assuming I know nothing about you. I’m just goin’ on your size alone, mate.”

“But have you factored in the brain damage? Most people think I’m pathetic. That knocks about a foot off my height and about a hundred pounds off my weight.”

That was true, and she was counting on that. But how long would that last? “You’ll be able to use it once, maybe twice. But by then word will be gettin’ around, and you will be considered a legitimate target.”

“But that’s why you have my back, right? You’re the major enforcer anyways, I’m just the wing man.”

She sighed heavily. “Is it all sports metaphors with you?”

He shrugged. “It’s easiest.”

She felt herself sliding off the topic, as she often did around him. She wrestled it back under control. “Look, if you’re gonna stay, then we’d better come up with a plan.”

“A plan for what?”

“For when they come after you. They’re gonna come after me first, so I might not be able to help you right away. We need to be ready. You sure you wanna do this?”

He nodded before gulping down more coffee. “Just lay out the plan. With all this caffeine in me, I can’t help but remember it.”

She certainly hoped so. His life might depend on it.

*****

Now

The seat started to give.

She found she got a second wind as soon as she felt the give, and kicked harder. Finally the seat gave and crashed open into the body of the car. It was a relatively small car, so she was forced to squirm her way out of the trunk, but at least it didn’t smell like tires. It was still stuffy, though.

The ties were hard plastic, but they hadn’t done a thorough job of frisking her, and she still had her boot knife. She had to contort a bit to reach the knife and get it out, and then contort some more to actually slip the blade between the ties and saw through one. It made her feel better to get her feet free, although it didn’t help her one damn bit.

Getting the ties off her hands was another thing, but before struggling with that, she popped open a door for some fresh air, and a more unobstructed view of her surroundings. Which was about as helpful as not opening the door.

She was in some beater car in what looked like a scrub lot, something overgrown with Scotch broom and blackberry bushes, with a towering, slightly diseased looking pine tree blocking the car from wherever the road was. There was a road, though; she vaguely heard the noise of cars in the distance. This was an excellent place to dump a body.

But where the fuck was she? She could have been in some shithole part of Alberta for all she knew. And what was the plan here? They could have killed her while she was out – honestly, they should have; you didn’t back off on an opponent when you had them down – but instead they dumped her in the trunk of a car in the middle of nowhere. Why? Were they coming back later to riddle the trunk full of bullet holes?

No. She was a gift – a gift to Six. He wanted to kill her himself. Wow, how busy did a guy have to be to wait to kill someone he’d wanted dead for years? Was she no longer his number one priority? She was heartbroken.

She was sitting on the edge of the back seat, half out the door, trying to saw through the ties on her wrist (boy, this was awkward; it was her own fault though, as she was out of practice), when she heard the crunch of tires on gravel coming her way. She quickly got out of the car, kicked the door shut, and crouched down behind the far side of the car. She had to know how many people were here before deciding on a method of attack.

But she saw, as soon as it entered the clearing, that it was an old olive drab Jeep with a slight rattle in the engine, which was very familiar. A quick but thorough scan revealed that it was indeed Shan by himself. As soon as he looked around, she stood up and waved the knife at him. He turned off the Jeep, which ticked for a minute like a dying clock, and as soon as he opened the door, he said, “Do you know I’ve been all over this fucking forest? That guy couldn’t give directions to his own house. And aren’t you supposed to be locked in the trunk anyways?”

“Think a trunk can hold me?”

He thought about that a moment. “Guess not. You are the Terminator.”

No, Shan wasn’t legally able to drive due to his seizures, but he used the Jeep only for short jaunts, and only during the day, when there was lesser light contrast. He hadn’t been caught yet, hadn’t been in an accident, and she wasn’t about to rat him out.

Shan came over, and she gave him the knife to finish cutting the plastic ties off her wrists. He did it quickly, but then again, he was stronger than your average bear. She noticed little dark flecks on the bottom of his ash gray sweatshirt, splatters that she recognized as blood. “How’d it go?”

“You were right, they sent over the amateur cleaning squad for me, and I played placid and dumb until I wasn’t anymore. Either I am remarkably good, or they were really shitty at this sort of thing.”

“How much did you hurt ‘em?”

“It ranges from mildly to extremely. But I kinda doubt they’re gonna file charges against me.”

“Yeah. You’d be surprised at how guys wanted by Interpol rarely go to the cops.”

She gave him the knife, and he pulled up his sweatshirt, revealing an enviable six pack of abs and two gun butts. “I have a couple more in the car if you’d rather have one of those.”

“You really shouldn’t stick guns in the front of your pants. That’s how guys shoot their nuts off.” She took both of the guns, as she knew he had no intention of keeping either. One was a Glock, the other was an HK, both nine millimeters. She preferred something with a bit more stopping power, but if you were a good aim, these would do the trick. She had very good aim.

“But it looks so cool on TV.” As she checked the rounds in the guns and tucked them into the waistband of her jeans (not in the front, although she had no nuts to shoot off), he peered at her closely and reached for her forehead. “That looks painful.”

She stepped back, and he stopped. “It’s just a bruise. I’ve had worse.”

“Maybe I oughta test you for a concussion. Is your vision blurry? Do you have a headache? Feel sick?”

“No, yes, no. I’m fine, Shan. You have to have brains to rattle ‘em.”

“No you don’t. I’m living proof of that.”

She gave him a light back hand slap on the arm. “Can it, you. We have to get ready; I don’t know when they’re coming back.”

“What are we getting’ ready for? Please tell me we’re not going all Wild Bunch.”

“No, but we are gonna watch and wait. Six is comin’ back, and I wanna turn the tables on him.”

Shan sighed heavily, rolling his eyes and slumping his shoulders. “You know that’s where shit inevitably goes wrong in movies, right?”

“Hey, if this were a movie, I’d have bigger tits.”

He glanced down at her t-shirt and shrugged. “Yeah, guess so. So what do I do?”

Sometimes it was nice to have irrefutable logic on your side.

One Week Earlier

This time, the meeting was in a movie theater. It was early on a Tuesday afternoon on a sunny but cool day, and this picture was apparently a flop, which would explain why there was only Sir Randolph Frost sitting in the center of the second topmost row of the otherwise empty theater. Z hadn’t really been expecting to find him eating Junior Mints, but he was. This proved he was an old spymaster: always keep them guessing.

She didn’t acknowledge him in any way. She just sat down beside him and put her feet on the seat back in front of her as a loud promo for some network series or another unspooled on the big screen. Never mind that there were only two people in the entire theater, they were going to play this grim entertainment death march out.

Frost leaned over and shook the box of candy. “Want one? The chocolate’s plastic, but I can’t stop eating them.” His hair gleamed liquid silver in the dark, his accent still unbearably Cambridge upper class. In spite of that, he was still the most decent man she’d ever encountered in the spy game.

“No thanks. I prefer unbuttered popcorn.”

“Now where’s the fun in that?”

“I prefer salt over grease. I thought last time was the last time we were going to meet.”

He popped a shiny black button of candy in his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully, looking up at the flashing images on the screen and yet ignoring them. “There’s been a change of plans, I’m afraid.”

“That’s never good.”

“No, it’s not. Six leaked word to the Home Office that you were still alive.”

Z closed her eyes and mentally cursed, imagining eviscerating Six with a heated coat hanger. It only made her feel marginally better. “But didn’t he screw himself? He just admitted he was alive too.”

“Yes, but he’s not in as much danger now, as he’s fallen off the American’s radar. They’re only interested in Arab terrorists now.”

“Am I that lucky?”

“Sorry, no. You do look vaguely foreign.” There was a hint of wry humor to his voice, but his expression belied it, as it was a disgusted grimace. “But the Americans don’t know about you. Yet.”

They wanted her because she was MI-6’s sacrificial lamb to cooperation. One of their operatives betrayed them all and she killed him, but the Americans insisted she was the turncoat, not their man, and rather than fight, one of the higher ups decided she was best tossed overboard in the name of unity. Frost had gone to bat for her and tried to fight, which was probably why he found himself looking down the barrel of retirement soon afterwards. Not that it seemed to bother Frost; unlike many ex-spooks, he seemed to have settled into post – espionage life quite well, happy with his partner Gary living in some quaint English village who didn’t know that one of the queer old ducks at the end of the lane could actually kill you with a rolled up magazine. Of course that was just the kind of surprise you wanted to save until an appropriate time arose.

“Who’s gonna drop the hammer on me? Home Office? Six?”

“If anyone, it’ll be Six. Home Office is a little cooled on the Americans right now.”

“Why? Because they’ve colossally fucked up foreign policy or because they couldn’t find their own assholes with a GPS locator, satellite photographs, and a three week head start?” But she was glad that the Americans were around, as she wouldn’t know who else she’d have to kick around.

“A little from column A, a little from column B,” Frost replied with a wry smirk. “But I can’t help but notice you’re not surprised by the mention of Six.”

“I’m hard to surprise.” Six, the perpetual thorn in her side, used to be an Interpol asset in Germany. He’d aligned himself with some radical right wing Neo-Nazi organization known by the initials KMF, but in a deal to keep from prison he turned mole, and the firebombing of (mostly Turkish) immigrants’ houses and businesses dropped dramatically. But Six wasn’t quite as stupid as he first seemed, as he made connections with the Russian mob, and suddenly he began informing them of Interpol operations. It was Z herself – on a joint MI-6/Interpol operation – who discovered that Six was their mole, and not only that, but had participated in an aborted bombing of the Metro in France. (The hope was that Al-Qaeda would be blamed, but it was just a Neo-Nazi group who didn’t like all the Muslims calling France home nowadays.) Oh sure, in movies it was almost glamorous to chase someone through trains and train tunnels, but honestly? No, it wasn’t, it was a huge pain in the ass. And if civilians got a hint of what was going on, panic inevitably ensued. That made things that much worse.

Six escaped in the general chaos of the French subway system, but supposedly died in a bomb making accident a few days later. Z had always been suspicious of it and figured he’d faked his death with the help of his Russian mob contacts. Only after she faked her own death did she find out definitely that yes, Six was not only still alive, but he had a mad on for her bordering on obsession. It was his attempted killing of her that spurred her move to Canada. She suspected that Six would find her sooner rather than later, but so far he hadn’t … at least, as far as she knew. The only thing that actually surprised her was it had taken so long for him to leak her status and location to others.

“Is he still after you?” Frost wondered, but he said it in a way that suggested he knew the answer.

“Yes. When I was in America, he actually tried to get me with a car bomb.”

“Oh dear. What did he blow up instead?”

“Just a car no one would miss.”

“Oh. So he inadvertently helped urban renewal.”

“Not on purpose.”

“We all do good things accidentally.”

“And bad things deliberately,” she noted. “Home Office isn’t going to let this ride. What are they doing?”

Frost enjoyed another Junior Mint, and briefly ogled a handsome young actor on the screen before admitting, “They sent me here to bargain with you.”

She sighed and let her feet fall to the floor. “They figured you could get to me.”

“They figured you wouldn’t kill me on sight. No one has forgotten how dangerous you are.”

She snorted derisively. “You Brits. You’re just afraid ’cause I’m an Ozzie.”

“Well, you did kill your father with a shotgun.”

“Ancient history. Besides, it was deemed self-defense and I was never charged. MI-6 wouldn’t have accepted me if they thought I was a psychopath. Well, a real psychopath. They were counting on my basic inability to forge emotional connections.”

He dipped his head in acknowledgement. “There was some concern that you had a disassociative personality, but no one could deny you were good. And you had my favorite quality in a candidate.”

“Nothing to lose,” she said, remembering. He had told her ages ago, when she was originally recruited, that he loved to bring in those that had nothing to lose because they were so spectacularly dangerous. When your back was to the wall, you ironically had a type of ultimate freedom. No matter what you did, it wouldn’t change the fundamental fact that nothing would be taken from you. You could do absolutely anything. And she must have proved his point, because she had. “But I have something to lose now, don’t I? What the fuck does the H.O. want?”

“They want to take you back on a provisional, freelance basis.”

She chuckled without humor, letting her feet fall from the back of the chair in front of her to the floor. “Freelance? Meaning if it all goes tits up, they disavow any knowledge of me, and if I accomplish the mission, they pretend they did it and reap all the glory. Wow, what a deal. Where do I sign up?”

Frost sighed wearily. “My dear, I am very sorry, but it’s not precisely a choice.”

Son of a bitch. “They gonna come get me if I say no?”

“They didn’t say that in so many words, but the implication was pretty clear: they don’t want you running around on your own in any capacity. They’re afraid, not only of what you can do but of what you know. Cliché that it is – and I am loathe to say it – but … you simply know too much.”

“How can you even say that?”

“I told you I was loathe to.”

“Fuck.” A trailer for a movie started playing, all ominous music and quick cut violence, and Z viewed it with open hostility. “I’m gonna hafta die again, aren’t I?”

“I would hope not,” Frost replied. “Home doesn’t have many freelancers on its roster; the fact that they want you to join it is flattering.”

“Do they want you back as my handler?”

“I’m sure they’d rather pass you off to a handler closer to your location, but for now, I imagine I’m it.”

“’Cause I won’t kill you.”

“And we have an established relationship.”

“And I won’t kill you.”

“You’re just going to harp on that, aren’t you?”

“It seems startlingly relevant.”

He shrugged, but coming from Frost, that was a concession of agreement. He shook the last mint out of the box and into the palm of his hand, and tossed it in his mouth with surprising casualness. He then flattened the empty box and looked around. “Where do I put this?”

“What d’ya mean where do ya put this? It’s a theater; drop it on the floor.”

He looked at her like she’d just suggested he dig up his own mother and skin her, and wear the pelt as a cardigan. “Are you insane, woman? Drop it on the floor? Were you raised in a barn?”

“Well, duh. I’m Australian, aren’t I? And haven’t you ever been in a theater before? Everyone drops their trash on the floor. It’s what the clean up crew is for.”

He made a sour face. “It’s so lazy. And disgusting.”

“Welcome to the world. Now drop the fucking box.”

He looked around with a frown, as if he just realized they were sitting waist deep in filth, and after a moment, he flattened the box between his palms and put it on the arm of the seat beside him. As if that was any better. He was barmy sometimes. “So what is it Home wants me to freelance for them?”

“They want you to bring in Six. Alive is preferred, but if you kill him, no one will be heartbroken.”

She sighed heavily and settled back in her seat. “Why do they want him now?”

Frost reached into his pocket and pulled out some variety of smart phone. After a moment, he called up a picture on the small screen and showed it to her. It was a picture of Six, aged quite a bit, an aged anarchist wannabe gone to seed, his face as long and oval as a horse’s, but narrower, acne scars leaving his face as pockmarked as the surface of the moon. His eyes were bullet holes, small and dark, his hair close cropped and a pale grey-brown, like ash on a tree branch. His clothing sense had changed a little; Old Navy t-shirts and Army surplus jackets, stuff anyone could wear. He used to favor the European neo-Nazi look, but that wasn’t flattering to anyone.

He was standing next to a man with a hard face, head shaped like a bullet, his hair a military bristle cut and his shoulders broad under an unmarked black windbreaker, tight purse of a mouth half open in a sneer as he was caught taking a drag off a cigarette and looking up the street in a manner too casual to be genuine. His eyes were like stones pounded flat, devoid of everything, all solid surface. He almost looked familiar. “Is he a spook?” she wondered.

“Good guess. No, but close. Ex-military, he used to be in White Wolf.”

“Fuck me. Six is in with White Wolf?” White Wolf was the British equivalent of Blackwater, a mercenary outfit full of former soldiers who seemed to find their inner sadist when the money was right, and especially when it was wrong. You couldn’t trust any of them as far as you could sling a fragmentation grenade. And given half a chance, she sling the whole crate at all of them.

Frost shook his head. “His name is Bradford Oswald, and he was forced out of White Wolf under a cloud of suspicion after that … incident in Eritrea.”

“Which one?”

“The village that inexplicably disappeared?”

“Great. So he’s a mass murderer.”

“Allegedly,” Frost corrected her, his voice dripping with that essentially British dry sarcasm. “This picture was taken last week in New York. Shortly before the body of Sidney Whitten was found floating in the Hudson River.”

“That name means nothing to me.”

“He was one of Six’s former contacts inside MI-6. He was on vacation with his wife, who said he left their hotel at eight in the morning to go buy a London paper and never returned.”

The glow of the phone’s screen lit up Frost’s face from underneath, giving shadows to his otherwise dignified wrinkles and making him look vaguely spooky. “Six was a Home asset too? Why was this never mentioned?”

He snorted in mild disbelief. “My dear, Interpol looked like idiots after it was revealed he was their asset. Did you really think we were going to join the moron queue?”

True enough. Intelligence agencies covered up their own shit as well; that’s what nearly got her locked up. “Hit me with the short version. The movie’s starting soon and I wanna be outta here before it does.”

“Have you no appreciation at all for the oeuvre of Nicholas Cage?” he teased, smirking ever so slightly.

“I’m fucked in the head, but I don’t have scrambled eggs between my ears. Neither do you, so spill already.”

The short of it was kind of long, but it was probably inevitable in such a case. It looked like Six and Oswald were putting together their own outfit, as they’d gotten themselves quite a few followers in the form of petty criminals and sadistic wannabes of no real importance – expendable cannon fodder, as it were. Enemies of both Oswald and Six were turning up dead in violent ways, as was anyone that had any contact with Six when he was supposedly working for the good guys. It seemed they were cleaning house, although it wasn’t clear why.

And this is what made MI-6 nervous. They had an inside man in an international smuggling ring, Denis Brosseau, currently residing in Montreal (it was a joint MI-6/ Canadian Security Intelligence Service operation), and he had once worked with Six while in France. They were fairly certain he was on the hit list, and yet any move to protect or extract Brousseau would fuck up the op big time. That’s where she came in.

She was bait.

The idea was to plant a news story – nothing spectacular; local interest, which meant of almost no interest to anyone – in Canada’s biggest newspaper, and have her visible in the background of the photo. It would be nothing to absolutely everyone who saw and read it … except Six. He had such a mad on for her that they were certain he’d see it and come after her first. Either he’d pull a reluctant Oswald along, or they’d briefly split in two over this, but either way they saw that as a positive development. MI-6 couldn’t provide any back up in this instance, but the CSIS could.

She didn’t like the sound of this at all, too many things could go wrong, but it was also equally clear that MI-6 had made up its mind to use her. Although, honestly, it would be nice to finally bury Six, that motherfucking bastard.

“I have my own back up,” she said, as she wondered if she had any secret weapons she could use. Beyond the usual, of course.

Frost clicked his tongue in a scolding manner and shook his head. “Not the brain damaged man, dear. He has no intelligence training, and, may I add, he’s brain damaged?”

“He’s a natural fighter, Frost, and he epitomizes what you thought was so special with me: He has nothing to lose. He’s lost absolutely everything it’s possible to lose, including a portion of his brain. He’s constantly underestimated too, which is just a bonus. And playing team sports for so many years of his life has made him inclined to follow orders, as long as he thinks you’re the captain. He thinks I’m the captain, and while he’ll occasionally balk and protest, he always does what I ask, ‘cause he assumes I know what I’m doing.”

Frost’s look, even in the dim theater, was enormously skeptical. “Do you?”

She shrugged “As far as he’s concerned, yeah.”

He studied her for a moment, eyes reflecting the movement on screen like tiny mirrors. “Your loyalty is heartening, but he’s more of a liability than a help. He doesn’t know the game.”

“He doesn’t need to.”

“He’s a civilian. He’s at risk.”

“He knows me. He’s always at risk.”

“And what about the risk for you? For us?”

“He can’t hurt you. He knows nothing about MI-6. He thinks I used to be a copper in Australia.”

Frost raised a silver eyebrow at her. “And what about the risk to you?”

She shook her head. “There’s none. He’s proven himself way too many times for me to be worried about him.”

Frost didn’t look convinced, and she really couldn’t blame him. After all, there was the issue with the seizures, and no medication could completely knock them out.

But if absolutely everything went tits up, Six and Oswald would probably consider Shan too pathetic to kill, and she took that as something of a comfort.

1 – Thugs

Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before. -Steven Wright

Nothing suggested you’d made horrible choices in your life like waking up in the trunk of the car.

Z tasted blood in her mouth and her head throbbed like a stubbed toe, and her wrists and ankles ached from where the ties were cutting into her skin. It was stuffy in the trunk, smelled like tires even though they had to take them out to make room for her. She hated that smell; it gave her a headache and a bad taste in the back of her throat. She listened carefully for what seemed like an eternity, but was really just about ten minutes. She didn’t hear anyone, and she guessed they’d left her for now. Stupid mistake. Did they really think, simply because she was bound and unconscious in the back of their car, that they had beaten her?

She’d had worse. She wondered how far she’d have to take it before they realized she’d expected all of this. Probably all the way, because none of them struck her as a brain trust. You rub their heads together, you might get a spark of thought, but it would probably be nothing more than static electricity.

She oriented herself, figuring out where the back seat was in relation to her, and then began kicking it hard. Most back seats would give way under pressure, although the amount of pressure varied from doable to impossible. She’d figure out which one this was soon enough.

She hoped that Shan was doing better than she was.

****

While the new medication didn’t make him as groggy as the other stuff did, Shan also found that it wasn’t always as effective at warding off seizures. So he’d begun to investigate other ways to head off his seizures, but that wasn’t easy. Not only were petit mal seizures of the kind he had somewhat rare, but the damage done in his left parietal lobe just didn’t respond to things such as “think positive thoughts”. He had found if he could mentally distract himself in high stress situations, though, he could delay them or prevent a fit entirely. Concentrating on song lyrics or TV episodes seemed to be just distracting enough.

Which was why he was trying to recall all the lyrics to “Comfortably Numb” as the first gunman got a call on his cell and ducked outside his apartment to take it, holstering his piece before stepping out, leaving him with the other two gunmen. They sat on his couch, guns on their laps, looking at him and occasionally the playoff game on his set behind him. “So you used ta do that?” The smoking man said. You could tell he fancied himself a Scarface wannabe, as he had his hair slicked back in a kind of pompadour style he’d only ever seen in that film.

It was a hockey game, Edmonton at Colorado, and he’d actually been about to turn the channel, as the game was boring. It was too one sided to be of any interest to him, and to add insult to injury, he saw one of the guys he’d played with in college on the Edmonton side. It did no good to think that that could have been him if things had been different.

“Play hockey? Yes. I was on the University of Michigan’s team. Go Wolverines.”

The men both snickered derisively. Scarface had a bloated face from one too many late night benders, while his friend was thin and wiry, as nervous and twitchy as a coke fiend, although the pockmarks and spray of aggravated acne across his cheeks suggested he might be more into meth. Either way, Shan had already deduced that Ratboy was more of a danger than Scarface. “That’s kinda faggy, isn’t it? Skating an’ shit?” Ratboy said. He had a vaguely Eastern accent. Not as distinctive as a New York or Boston accent, but definitely somewhere from that region.

“Have you ever skated? It’s harder than it looks.”

“So how does that damage your brain exactly?” Scarface asked. When they initially stormed into his apartment, they laughed over Z – or as they called her, Zero – having a brain damaged hockey player as a “henchman”. They couldn’t think of anything more lame, beyond a cartoon platypus.

They didn’t deserve the real answer, but he decided to tell them, because it wouldn’t matter. “I lost my helmet during a game, and before I could replace it, I was cross-checked and hit the ice head first. It fractured my skull, and I had to have emergency surgery to relieve the pressure on my brain from intra-cranial bleeding. But there had been some damage done in spite of it all.” He paused briefly, watching Scarface’s expression turn from snarky to slightly queasy, and added, “It’s all rather faggy.”

Ratboy, who hadn’t been put off by the story, laughed. “But why hockey, man? That’s a lame sport. You coulda done basketball or somethin’, wouldn’t have made ya a retard.”

Shan narrowed his eyes at him, holding his rage somewhere in the center of his chest. If he allowed himself to get mad, he could trigger a fit, and he was too close to his objective to fuck it all up now. “I’m not a retard.”

Scarface elbowed the guy. “Dude, you don’t call ‘em that anymore. It ain’t polite.”

Oh yeah, this guy was really Miss Manners. Shan swallowed the urge to say something, and then, thanks to satellite problems that briefly silenced the play by play announcers, he could hear the gunman outside almost shouting into his phone. Z was frustrating them? She was really good at that. If that was an Olympic sport, she’d have a lifetime gold medal. But he supposed that this was his cue to start frustrating them himself. Shan made a show of looking at the time, and said, “I have to take my meds now. Can I get a drink?”

They both looked at him with suspicion. “Meds?” Scarface asked.

“Anti-seizure medication. If I don’t take them at certain times of the day, I’m liable to have a fit.”

Both Scarface and Ratboy looked disgusted by the idea, but it was Scarface who elbowed Ratboy again, and said, “Go get him some water or something.”

Ratboy looked almost horrified. “Why me?”

“’Cause I’m telling’ ya to, asshole. What, you want him all foaming at the mouth and shit?”

Ratboy scowled at him, but tucked his gun into the front of his pants as he stood, going to the sink in a huff. He banged the cupboard as he got a glass, and filled it up from the tap. From the cursing, he splattered water on himself. Shan had guessed Ratboy was the subordinate because he was younger, but it was nice to have confirmation. See, he could be smart about thugs. Z was rubbing off on him. He still loved how everyone just assumed his fits were the limb jerking, foaming at the mouth type, which couldn’t have been farther from the truth. It might have been more acceptable and easier to explain if they were the violent type. But oh no, he just zoned out and froze, and never really realized it until it was over and he’d come through the other side. This was why he hadn’t gotten laid in years, or so he liked to think. Z had once pointed out him being something of a hermit probably had something to do with it, but hey, his seizures were increasing in frequency, and it was hard to pick a woman up if you paused midway through for no reason at all. Besides, there was some consolation – the new meds had almost totally killed his sex drive. It seemed like a distant urge right now, like his occasional craving for beer; half remembered nostalgia, a dream of a better time he could never get back.

“So why did you call her Zero?” he asked Scarface, mainly to distract himself from any self-pity.

Scarface snorted. “Ya don’t know? That’s her name.”

“Zero is a number, not a name.”

“Don’t need to tell me that. She’s batshit. ‘Sposedly she changed her name to that when she joined MI-5 or 6, or whatever the fuck that limey organization is. Who changes their name to a fucking number? The bitch is crazy.”

He didn’t believe it, but oddly enough, it sounded like something Z would do. She would be just the type to name herself 0 and sign things by just printing the number. Maybe she was crazy, in her weird ass Australian way, but she was just the kind of crazy person who could accept him, stupid ass seizures and all. There was a hierarchy to this, he was sure there must have been, a line where not crazy enough became pity and screwed the entire pooch.

Ratboy came to him with his glass of water, and that’s when Shan finally got to do what he had been waiting to do.

Their guard was down, because he was such a pathetic piece of shit. Retarded, as they said. So that’s why Ratboy let him take the glass, and why he still had his hand on it as Shan shoved it hard right into Ratboy’s face, where it shattered and cut him at the same time, glass shards ground into his eyes as Shan continued to push it. He also cut his hand on the glass, felt it bite into the soft pad of flesh between his thumb and forefinger, but he was used to a certain level of pain and it didn’t bother him.

Ratboy was squealing bloody murder and scrabbling blindly for the gun in his belt as Shan stood and drove a knee right into his balls, ripping the gun from his hand before he dropped to the carpet. Shan barely had his gun before he charged over to Scarface, who was so shocked that the retard could do that – and move that fast – he was just bringing his gun up from his lap when Shan hit him across the face with Ratboy’s gun. The metal butt cracked something in his jaw, and the sight tore the flesh, making him bleed. Shan plucked the gun out of his stunned hand, tucking Ratboy’s gun in the back of his jeans. Z had told him that the first rule of anything was collect your opponent’s weapons, even if they were dead. You just didn’t want to give anyone an edge of any sort. She sounded like his old coach.

Cell guy obviously heard something (Ratboy’s squealing, probably), started to come in, but Shan met him at the door by slamming him in it as he came through (he must have thought it was Shan who was squealing, as he didn’t have his gun out), and helplessly wedged between the door and the frame, Shan began elbowing him in the face as hard as he could. Three solid hits, during which his elbow went numb all the way up his arm and something cracked inside cell guy and blood splattered on Shan’s neck, and the guy went limp. Shan opened the door and kicked his body out, barely remembering to grab his handgun before closing the door on his bloodied body.

Okay, look, he was new at all this cloak and dagger shit. Usually Z was around to lead the play; he was all on his own here. He was doing pretty well, if he didn’t say so himself.

He turned with one of his guns out (he was feeling seriously weighed down by all this hardware), and it was a good thing, as Scarface looked like he was getting up from the couch, but upon seeing Shan and the gun he lowered himself back down. “You don’t wanna do this,” Scarface cautioned him. He had a big bloody gash across his cheek, which he was trying to staunch with his hand. He had a big pinkie ring, which Shan honestly thought was the stupidest piece of jewelry ever invented. “We were just ‘sposed to watch ya, not kill ya.”

“Yes, because you leave witnesses alive all the time.” As he walked past the squealing Ratboy, who looked like he was trying to hold his eye in (it wasn’t actually coming out, but it probably hurt like a motherfucker), he kicked him in the head and sent him sprawling on the carpet. “Look, I may be a “retard”, but I’m not stupid. You were all wondering why Z picked me as her lackey? Here’s a clue: you don’t need a perfectly functioning brain to kick someone’s ass. In fact, having a traumatic brain injury is almost a positive boon.”

He walked right up to the sofa, where Scarface was still sitting and bleeding, watching him with wary, devious eyes, but mostly focusing on the gun in his hand. Was he going to make a grab for it? “I didn’t think you could move that fast,” Scarface admitted.

“I’m a bouncer by night, but I also teach kids how to play hockey at the rec center during the day. I’m in great shape. What, you think I’m wearing a sweatshirt because I’m cold? Z suggested I hide my muscles, look weaker than I am. She said you didn’t think much of me, so you’d believe I was some coach potato.”

His eyes, as pale as watercolors, widened slightly. “She knew?”

He nodded, and glanced down quickly to see where Scarface’s feet were. Oh, great, in perfect position. “You were coming? Oh yeah. She’s crazy, but she’s not nuts.” He then stomped down on Scarface’s left ankle, twice in succession, and he heard the join crack with a sound like a thick branch snapping.

Scarface attempted to scream, but the suddenness of the pain sucked all the air out of him, so he simply turned red and let out a high pitched noise that probably only dogs could hear. Shan stepped back as he reached for the foot, which was now at an odd angle. “Just think, if I was wearing my skates, I’d have chopped that right off.”

He was still making kettle whistle noises, and Shan shoved him back into the couch, pressing the barrel of his gun against his left shoulder. “Listen to me, assface. That was just the start of me dismantling you. Next will be your knees, your wrists, your elbows, and if you really piss me off, I’ll rip off your dick and shove it down your throat. Either you tell me where Z is and what you’ve done to her, or we’re both gonna find out how much pain you can take before passing out.”

Wow, that sounded awesomely macho. He had to write that down before he forgot it.

Z would be so proud of him.