by AJ Sherwood
“We will talk about that when I get in.”
“Thanks man, really.”
“You owe me.”
“Absolutely.”
With a grunt, Ivan hung up. Ari turned to find his daughter hovering in the kitchen doorway, staring at him with big, chocolate eyes and shifting anxiously from foot to foot. He gave her a reassuring smile. “Ivan’s really eager to meet you. He’ll be here in about an hour, maybe less.”
She nodded and didn’t look the slightest bit relieved.
Ari couldn’t exactly blame her. “Why don’t you eat breakfast while we’re waiting?”
Ivan showed up precisely forty-five minutes later. Ari expected he’d need to brace Remi and maybe hang out for a few minutes with them because Ivan looked intimidating at first glance. The Russian had grown up in a rough environment, and it had left its mark. The hint of a gold tooth in his smile and the tattoo on his collarbone peeking out were eye-catching in the wrong ways, but the man’s tall, rangy build and penetrating grey eyes unnerved people. For some reason, his acorn brown hair was in a buzz cut at the moment, which didn’t help his initial intimidating impression.
He came in, gave Ari an exasperated look, then knelt down to put himself on eye level with Remi. “Hello.”
Remi had a firm grip on Ari’s pant leg but still regarded Ivan with a sort of fascination. “Hello.”
“Remi, Ivan. Eidolon, this is Black Widow in training.” Ari ruffled her hair, hoping the affectionate gesture would relax her a little.
“I’d not heard my comrade has a daughter.”
Remi whispered, “Is that bad?”
“What, that he has you? No, no, cute girls are always a blessing, da?” Ivan grinned at her. “I’m just surprised.”
“I met and adopted her recently,” Ari explained, as he had promised to fill Ivan in. “About a month ago, actually. That job I took in Memphis, that’s where I met her.”
“My stepfather was hitting me,” Remi surprised Ari by saying. “I asked Daddy to help.”
“What!” Ivan soothed her with a hand petting her hair, outrage all over his face. “How can any man hit such pretty solnishko? Ari, this zasranets, he’s dealt with?”
Over her head, Ari mouthed the assurance: He’s dead.
Looking satisfied, Ivan listened to Remi’s response.
“Daddy made sure he won’t hurt me. Then he took me away with him.”
“I’m very glad to hear it.” Ivan gave her a serious look. “Solnishko, you’re an assassin in training? Your father, he’s teaching you how to fight?”
She nodded wordlessly.
“He teaching you how to get through locks?”
Now intrigued, she shook her head no.
“What? How can you reach a target if you can’t get through locked doors?” Ivan gave Ari an exasperated look, but it was clear the man was teasing and trying not to laugh. “You’re not teaching her the important things. You, go. I need time with my solnishko. We will start with something easy, da? Locks on this house.”
Ari looked down to see how Remi was taking this, but she was unclenching, drawn to Ivan’s offer and curious. Ivan’s lure was successful, then. Good. “Okay. Well, you’ve got till dinner. I should be back by then. But Ivan, the locks on this house aren’t exactly simple. I doubt she can crack these even with one of your lessons.”
Behind a hand, Ivan whispered to her, “He’s not an expert. Ignore him.”
Rolling his eyes, Ari gave Remi a last pat on the head and went for his duffle. “I’ll be back. Remi, don’t break him, okay?”
“Okay. Have fun, Daddy!”
There, that sounded more her normal self. Ari gave her a last smile and wink as he sauntered through the door.
Hopefully they didn’t do anything drastic. Like decide to rob a bank. Ivan, when bored, could not be trusted.
Maybe he should have called Kyou instead.
The job went well enough that Ari was indeed back by dinner, the restlessness under his skin eased. He came in to find his lovely daughter attacking the back door with lockpicks and opening it in ten seconds flat. It both alarmed and impressed him, because if an eight-year-old with only a day of training under her belt could get through his locks, then they were obviously not as secure as Ari had assumed them to be.
Ivan hung out for dinner, promised to come back tomorrow to play some more, and even got a hug in with Remi before he left. Remi was all smiles as Ari tucked her into bed that night, and he lingered, sitting next to her on the bed. “You like Ivan?”
“Uncle Ivan’s super fun,” Remi informed him, animated in a way he’d never seen before. “He taught me all about how locks work, and how to swear in Russian, and promised to get me lock picks and show me how to hide them in my hair.”
He breathed out in silent relief. Ari had felt bad about leaving her with Ivan all day, but apparently they got along swimmingly. “I’m glad you like him. He clearly likes you, if he’s coming back to play tomorrow.”
“He said, whenever you have a job, he’ll hang out with me. He said I’ve got another uncle too, a hacker uncle, that I should meet.”
“Yeah, Uncle Kyou, the one in New York. He may or may not meet you in person. He’s kinda like Batman, although he likes to stay in the batcave most of the time.”
“Oh.” She looked a little disappointed by that. “So he won’t want to play with me?”
“He might, gattina. We’ll have to see. Even I have a hard time getting him to leave his cave, and I’ve known him for years and years.” Frankly, now that he thought about it, Remi might work as a lure to get Kyou out of his house for once. “Anyway, I’ll call and ask him. When you do meet him, remember his code name is K. Use that in front of other people, okay?”
“Okay.” She plucked at her blanket and chewed on her bottom lip. “Daddy, you don’t have a girlfriend?”
Sometimes (and by sometimes he meant most of the time), Ari had no clue how ideas connected in Remi’s head. This was one of them. “No, and how did we jump to this subject?”
“Uncle Ivan said you had to call him because you didn’t have anyone else to call except Uncle Luca.”
“Ah.” Praise be, there was an actual connection. “Well, you’re half-right.”
“So you don’t have a girlfriend?”
“No, gattina. But I don’t like girls that way. I like boys better.” Wait, should he be explaining what gay is to an eight-year-old?
Remi took this in a single blink. “Okay. But you don’t have a boyfriend?”
Well, clearly children had an easier time accepting than adults. Ari was a bit nonplussed at how effortlessly she’d accepted that. “Naw, not right now. I haven’t met anyone I like.”
“But will you get one?”
“Eh, maybe.” Definitely not.
That wasn’t the answer she’d expected. Or maybe she wanted something different. Either way, Remi frowned in a dissatisfied manner.
Ari really didn’t want to get stuck on this topic, so he changed it. “Go to sleep, kiddo. I’ll see if you can’t meet Uncle Kyou at some point.” After he figured out how to tell him.
“Okay. Night, Daddy.”
“Night.” He slipped out of her room, hitting the light switch as he went. Ari absently thought about maybe picking up one of those parenting books. Today had been a clear example that he didn’t have a handle on this father thing yet. Maybe he should sit and make a game plan with Ivan. If he could get both Ivan and Kyou on board to help him watch Remi while on jobs, things would go a whole lot smoother.
Couldn’t someone out there write how an assassin should raise a child? If they did, Ari would be ever so grateful and read all ten volumes of it assiduously.
4
Kyou stared down at Remi with the most discombobulated expression to ever grace a human face. The hacker looked a little wild, his blue-black hair sticking up in every possible direction, and he wore a faded sweater that said: Some days I wish I were a missing person. He had that look of three
-day old bread. He wasn’t moldy yet, but give it a bit more time in a dark corner, and he’d get there.
“What is this short, human-shaped creature?” Kyou asked in honest bewilderment.
Ari rolled his eyes. “You’d think you’d never seen a child before.”
Remi leaned into him and whispered loudly, “This is my Uncle Kyou?”
“The under-caffeinated version. It’s why he’s not tracking right now. Let me pour a gallon of coffee down him, maybe a few energy drinks, then he’ll make more sense.”
Kyou spluttered, still staring at Remi as if she were the boogeyman. “Wait. Wait, you’re real?”
“What, you thought I was messing with you?”
“Ivan kept spouting off all these stories about her, of course I thought you were messing with me!” Kyou protested in a wail. “He’s not trustworthy!”
“Okay, I give you that.” Ari started to see the humor in this. “You gonna let us in? Uncle Kyou?”
The hacker spluttered again, still staring down at Remi as if doubting his sanity. But he did move back three steps to give them the room necessary to come inside.
Kyou’s place this time was a converted warehouse with I-beams stretching across the ceiling and polished cement floors. He favored the aesthetic, as most of his safehouses were like this. Ari personally thought it had more to do with the apartment leaning towards naturally cold, and better for a computer setup. Kyou had at least chosen to buy a couch this time. Last two places, there’d only been a giant bed and TV screen. The rest of the apartment furniture was all Kyou’s baby—aka the computer.
The hacker retreated to his computer like a baby turtle heading for the sea. Only once he was in his seat did he settle and look less on the verge of a panic attack. His basilisk stare at Remi didn’t unnerve the little girl, but it started to do so with Ari. Just when had Kyou last slept?
“K? You okay, man?”
Kyou blinked three times before he seemed to register the question. “What? Oh. Yeah, I slept.”
Yeah, that was an obvious lie. When he volunteered sleeping information without being asked, he’d not slept in days. “Was that this week or last week?”
Remi came around to stare at the many, many monitor screens and the giant CPU on top of the desk, her eyes wide with wonder. “You really are like Batman. Daddy said you were.” Seriously, she informed Kyou, “I’m going to be like Black Widow when I grow up.”
Kyou cocked his head at her, finally speaking to her directly. “Are you? Why, cause your dad is an assassin?”
“Naw. I just really like her. She’s so tough people can’t hurt her. I want to be like that too.”
An odd expression came over his face. “Was someone hurting you?”
“It’s okay. Daddy took care of it.” She gave him a small smile, and then abruptly changed topics, pointing to the computer. “Who’s that man?”
Kyou gave the monitor in question a glance. “Ah, that’s the bad man Ari—ah, your daddy needs to take care of. I’ve been watching him so Ari knows where to find him.”
“You can do that from a computer?”
“Yeah, sure. It’s just a matter of finding the right camera and connecting to it.”
“Can you show me?”
With an odd look on his face, Kyou slowly dipped his head. “Yeah. Yeah, sure, I guess. Ari, is this age appropriate?”
Ari shrugged, because fuck if he knew. “Ivan’s taught her how to pick locks, pickpocket, and swear in Russian. Hasn’t done any damage that I can see.”
“I feel like using Ivan as a baseline for sanity is a really poor life decision, but okay. Come here, Remi. What you do is—”
Ari more or less left them to it and headed for the opposite side of the room. He normally wouldn’t do this, but considering the state Kyou was in, it was better to have a backup plan. He called Ivan and watched the two in front of the computer as the phone rang.
“How’s my solnishko?”
“I love that’s how you now answer the phone.”
“She’s more fun than you are.”
“Uh-huh. Well, your solnishko has finally met her Uncle Kyou.”
“Ahhh. How did that go?”
“Kyou thought we were playing an elaborate prank on him this whole time. Didn’t think she was real.”
Ivan roared with laughter.
“You’re really something, you know that? Here I thought Kyou would know everything about her before I even got them face to face, but because you told him about her, he assumed we were pulling his leg.”
“I am the master of pranks.”
“You must be, to fool him. Anyway, I’m calling because he’s seriously sleep deprived.”
Ivan abruptly stopped laughing. “How bad?”
“He told me without my asking that he slept.”
“Ouch. Da, not good. Last time he was that bad off, he was hallucinating sounds.”
“And I have to leave your solnishko with him to do a job.” Ari waited. Three, two, one….
“Chert. You tell me this now. Where are you?”
“Up in Cincinnati for a job. You’re up here somewhere too, right? Kyou said he was providing support for you.”
“Da, I’m not far from his rental.”
“I’m reasonably sure Remi can keep him from doing something insane until you can get here. But I need to leave in five, so hurry it up.”
Ivan swore some more and abruptly hung up.
Ari really liked having Remi. This whole daughter thing was working out well for him. He’d never been able to get Ivan to cooperate like this before, not without more bribes involved.
He returned to the duo at the computer, taking a moment to appreciate the sight of his very introverted friend with a child in his lap, typing around her and seriously showing her how to hack traffic cameras and hijack them. He took a picture, too, as Ivan would be sorry later he’d missed this.
Hearing the click, Kyou looked up and made a face at him. “Why are you still here, you pest? Go away.”
“I kinda need to know where my target is?”
“I’ve pinged that into your phone already.”
Ari lifted his phone to check and sure enough, his GPS was already up and running with the address loaded. How Kyou managed to do that while teaching his child how to hack cameras, he had no idea. But then, Kyou often did stuff like this. He didn’t really question it anymore. “’Kay. I’m off, then. Rems, Ivan’s on his way in. Don’t let Uncle Kyou have anymore coffee, order computer parts, or call that guy he’s stalking. He says weird stuff when he’s this sleep deprived.”
Kyou snapped upright, outrage scrawled all over his face. “Excuse you, I told you I slept!”
“Uh-huh. You sure did. Unprompted.” Ari gave him a pointed look, and Kyou at least had the decency to look abashed. “And Rems, remember what I said before.”
“When you’re close to the target, I’m not allowed to look,” she parroted back faithfully, her attention only partially on him, eyes still on the screen.
“That’s my girl.” He ducked down and kissed her forehead. Kyou had a peculiar expression on his face and Ari paused, still leaning over, not sure how to interpret it. “I’m sorry, did you need a kiss bye too?”
Kyou swatted him on the ass without hesitation. “Get out of here.”
Laughing, Ari sauntered out, sliding an earbud into his ear as he went. Then it was a simple matter of hopping into his SUV and heading off. Fortunately, Cincinnati traffic wasn’t too bad this time of the day. The potholes were something else, though. Not to mention the black ice and the slush on the road. January always made for interesting road conditions up here.
This wasn’t going to be a drive-by, he’d need to set up somewhere with a good vantage point. Ari had been stalking his target for the past week with Kyou’s help, getting the target’s patterns down well enough to anticipate where he’d be. A certain rooftop promised the right angle for a snipe, which was what he preferred. Especially in cases like this, wh
en the target had enough bodyguards to be the president of a small country.
“Ari, we might have some trouble.”
Ari slowed to a stop at a light and frowned. “Define trouble.”
“Your contract just went open.”
“The hell? My client gave me two weeks to get this guy. I’m well within schedule.”
“Yeah, I don’t know what to tell you. He either got impatient or something changed. But it went open…shit, six hours ago. Why am I only getting the notification now?”
Six hours? A lot could change in six hours in their business. “So am I facing competition on this or not?”
“Maybe. I don’t see any movement at the moment, no one’s asking questions on the contract…wait. Wait a sec. Shiiiit. They’ve disabled comments.”
“So people could be messaging the broker directly but we wouldn’t know,” Ari translated wearily.
“Basically. I mean, I can hack the site and tell you, but I’d need like two days. The security on this site is no joke.”
“And I’d have the job well done by then. It’s okay, just try to watch my six. It looks like I’ll only get one shot at this.”
“Naw, he’s got this, Remi. He’s taken tougher jobs before. He’s just suddenly got a much closer deadline.”
Ari wished Remi had an earbud in, but at the same time she shouldn’t actually listen in on this job. Oh well. Next job, maybe, assuming it wasn’t another assassination. He’d see if the guys wanted support on one of their jobs so she could see him in action. Ari kept his eyes peeled as he found an open slot on the street and parked.
“Wave to the camera, Ari.”
Snorting, he did as bid, then pulled his case out of the back seat. Kyou was either more punch drunk than expected or he was hamming it up for Remi’s benefit. He put them temporarily out of mind as he started for the four-story building that would be his temporary sniper’s nest. As he slipped into the narrow alley between buildings, he caught movement up ahead as someone else entered the alley at the same time. Ari took his measure in a split second, but it wasn’t hard to recognize someone else in the same line of business.
