HIS BABY’S KEEPER

by Evelyn Glass

  I can’t deny it, so I ignore it. Maybe it’s true; I don’t know myself well enough to say for sure. All I can know is that Anna imbalances me, causes me to lose my killer’s center, my calm cold place. Nobody else has done that before.

  “What do you mean, arrange for my protection?” she says.

  “I had two plans for coming over here.” Neither of which involved making love to you. Not fucking. Or not just fucking. But making goddamn love! “The first was to get a description of the person who moved Eric’s body from you. But you don’t know that; you didn’t see anything. My second plan, the plan I have to follow now, is to protect you. It isn’t a coincidence that the body was moved to your car. Whoever did it, did it for a purpose. To make a point.”

  “Like some kind of twisted abstract art?”

  “Yes, I guess.” I shrug. “I can’t know if they’re watching me or you, so I have to stay with you until this is over.”

  When I rehearsed this in my mind on the way over—which seems like a long time ago now—I imagined her protesting this violently. I thought out what I would say when this happened. Of course she would protest. She doesn’t know me. She won’t trust me.

  But she does trust me. I can see it in her eyes, open and giving. The eyes of the woman I just made love to. I just fucked. More than that: the eyes of the woman I just shared my goddamn past with.

  “I get that,” she says. “But I have obligations. More cheering. Veterinary rounds to do at the center. I can’t just pause my life.”

  “No, I know. You don’t have to. But I’ll be there, watching you, the entire time. I’ll be like a shadow. You won’t even know I’m there.”

  “Doubtful,” Anna mutters. “I don’t think I could forget you were there.”

  She says this with startling directness. It’s like all the nervousness has dropped away from her, from us both, and now we are closer than we have any right to be. It terrifies me, but there’s nothing I can do to change it, and I don’t know if I even would.

  “But you agree?”

  “What choice do I have? If you want advice on how to fix a bird’s injured wing, ask me. If I want advice on what to do when being watched by some unknown psychopath, I defer to you.”

  I grin, can’t help but grin. “You’re strangely calm.”

  “No,” she smiles. “Just tipsy and tired.”

  “Let me do a quick circuit, and then you can sleep. You’ll have to lock the door behind me.”

  She nods. I get dressed and head for the door. Before I step into the hallway, I turn and glance at her. She’s on her feet, near me, ready to close the door.

  “Don’t get hurt,” she says.

  “I’ll try not to,” I reply, and leave the apartment.

  ###

  When I walk into the cold autumn chill of New York, I force myself to forget all about the sexy woman upstairs: the woman who just reached between my ribs and gripped my heart, gripped it so hard she could squeeze it until it burst if she liked. Don’t you think you’re going a bit far, Samson? Maybe I am; maybe the feeling isn’t that intense. But it’s difficult for a man like me to tell. Looking back, I’ve never had any truly intense experiences with women. It’s all been surface level, desperately trying to feel something rather than actually feeling it.

  But I push that aside and walk across the rain-shiny pavement. Moonlight spears down between sparse black clouds and cascades onto the sidewalk. Cars sit low and dim on the curbside. Down the street, a bar lets out a raucous man, cheering up at the sky with the aspect more of a howl. I don’t walk as far as the bar, though. I sense something. Behind me—a few cars behind me.

  This sense seems ludicrous to many, I know. The normal man or woman, walking to and from work, watching TV and going to barbecues, living their lives in the day-to-day of regular life, would have no clue that someone was lurking far behind them in the night. But I feel them, whoever they are. It’s in the little things: their footsteps, not completely concealed; their breathing, steady but not silent; a quiet click which could be the latch of a watch or the safety on a gun; and the more nebulous sense that I’m being watched.

  I slow my pace, stop, and turn around casually. When I begin walking back the way I came, away from the bar and back into the dimness of the street—the streetlamps flickering and pale, barely shining out over the moonlight—I catch a quick shift to my left, on the other side of the street, somebody ducking down behind an old beat-up Chevrolet. I spot the top of a head and fingers which were clutching the wing mirror before I turned around.

  They don’t scuttle away. No footsteps sound. But their breathing increases slightly. Other sounds don’t interest me. The cheering and shouting at the bar behind me—I barely hear it. Uncle Richard told me about feral children once. The man was a damn good killer and could be a mean bastard, but he was also a big reader. He had a book on them, and he told me that if a child was taken in by wolves, it became like them. Its senses honed and it learned to see in the dark and eat raw meat. I grew up among contract killers, and I became like them. I learned to sense my surroundings, to reach out with invisible hands and feel the people around me, sense their threat, and assess the quickest way to end it.

  Anger bubbles beneath this coldness tonight, though, and I can only think it is Anna, up there, waiting for me. Whoever this is has made her life more difficult, and for some reason my blackened husk of a heart cannot even come close to figuring out, I care about that more than I’ve cared about anything in a long time.

  I walk, and I watch my periphery, and listen for the hider.

  When I’m halfway back down the street, level with the old Chevrolet, which is probably brown or blue but looks pitch-black in the night—when my muscles are ready and my senses are sharp—when I’ve told myself, It ends here, now—when I’m geared up and ready to fight, ready to kill—when I’ve taken a long calming breath and found my killer’s center, I spring across the street and sprint at the car.

  The person leaps to their feet at once, like a jack-in-the-box, and sprints to an alleyway just behind them. I know without having to think that this is their pre-planned escape route. They head toward it with the purpose I’d head toward an escape route, head ducked low, sprinting purposefully. I slide over the hood of the car and sprint after them into the dark. Garbage cans, a dead cat, a rat gnawing on a bone, graffiti incomprehensible in the dark, condoms and spilling plastic bags and decaying food . . . I run past them all toward the watcher. He’s thin, tall, with a slight build. His legs are long and he takes long strides away from me.

  Left, left, right, left, right, here and there, all over the place, deep within this labyrinth of passageways until I’m almost convinced that he’s guessing. He has no getaway. But then we come to a tall iron fence of intersecting metal, reaching as high as two people. Beyond the fence is a busy street. Laughter and shouting and glasses clinking filter down the alleyway and through the fence toward me. Pedestrians walk back and forth at the mouth of the alleyway, oblivious. And parked just beyond it, in a perfect position for whoever this is, is an inconspicuous black Ford SUV.

  The person charges the fence, vaults off an upturned dumpster, grips the edge of the fence and swings his entire body over in one swift motion, like a gymnast. I don’t think; I just charge. I have to get to him before he gets to the car. I run as fast as I can to the fence, bend my knees, and jump. Reaching up, I grab the rim, and make to pull myself up. Stupid, not watching.

  The person is wearing a ski mask, thick goggles, and nondescript black clothes. Their boots are thick and black; they are covered from head to toe. Instead of running to the car, like I guessed he would, he stands at the other side of the fence as I make to climb it. And then, quick as a cat, he reaches into his pocket, takes out a Taser, and electrifies the metal.

  “Ah!” I grunt.

  My body seizes up and I fall backwards, into the dark, as the stalker sprints away into the light and toward his waiting getaway car.

  ###

&n
bsp; As soon as my body stops shaking, I sit bolt upright and search the mouth of the alleyway. Nothing but pedestrians and an empty street, light, but no assailant. Anna, I think, and I put myself in the mind of the trickster, the watcher, the stalker, the prick. They clearly have an interest in Anna. Perhaps they want to hurt Anna. I don’t know why, but it seems that way. If that’s true, I’ve just given them the perfect opportunity. Here I am, lying atop a dumpster, body aching all over, and right now Anna could be in danger.

  I jump to my feet, ignoring the twinge in my lower spine where the corner of the dumpster dug into my skin, ignoring the various pulsing aches all over my body, and run back down the alleyway. I remember the way, as I always do. That’s another trick of the trade: another testament of Uncle Richard’s savage child. From an early age I’ve been going along on jobs, and soon I learnt that if you want to be great, not just good, there’s more than brute killing. That’s a small part of it. The rest is planning, attention to detail. Without really considering it, I mapped the way as I was chasing the man in black. Now I dart through the alleyway without stopping to think, my legs pumping furiously, my chest heaving.

  Anna, Anna, Anna.

  I try to imagine how much I will hate myself if I left her to die. Allowing a woman to die on my watch would be bad enough, but allowing Anna to die because I couldn’t close a chase would feel like spikes wheedling through my body, incessant spikes of regret and shame and anger. I feel something for Anna, as bemusing as that is. I feel something for her which goes beyond the mere fact that she’s a woman.

  After what seems like an age, I’m in the street outside her apartment building. I pace across the road and charge into the building, up the stairs, images swirling through my mind, images which cause me to push myself harder, quicker. I see her splayed on her back, blood dripping from her mouth, eyes glassed over. I see her dangling from the roof by a rope. All the men I have killed, or have seen killed, become Anna in my mind. She becomes the actor in a hundred grotesque scenes.

  I reach the door to her apartment, and knock. I’m tempted to crash through the door, but if I do that, whoever is in there will kill her all the quicker. Knock, and they might think it’s a neighbor, perhaps keep Anna alive to try and talk me into leaving. I knock lightly, as though there’s no urgency, as though sweat doesn’t cake my body and my heart isn’t a song of gunshots. No answer. I knock again, and again. And still there’s no answer. The scenes, the scenes . . . Anna, the woman I met only a few hours ago and yet feel like I’ve known for a long time. Anna, who will haunt my dreams forever if I’ve let this happy. Anna, who is innocent in all of this.

  I reach into my pants pocket, praying that it didn’t fall out during the sex. It didn’t.

  I take out the lock pick kit, open it, and retrieve the tools. I work the door; after a few seconds, it clicks and unlocks.

  Creeping into the apartment, fists clenched, as silent as a jaguar, I ready myself for a fight. I creep to the couch and look down. There she is, mouth slack, eyes closed, body contorted. Sleeping soundly.

  I breathe a long, slow breath.

  Okay, okay, I think.

  I walk around the couch and lean down to her. “Anna,” I whisper.

  A small smile touches her lips and she rolls toward me. “Sleep,” she whispers.

  I smile. I almost laugh, but that would wake her up. I can’t even be angry at her for not waking up when I knocked. I’m just glad she isn’t dead, more relieved than I can understand. Not just that I’m not responsible for a woman’s death, but that she, Anna, is alive. Anna is still here.

  I scoop her into my arms and carry her into the bedroom. She doesn’t wake as I peel back the covers, lay her on the sheets, and tuck her in. She smiles up at me dreamily, muttering every so often. “Samson . . . strange . . . good . . . sleep . . .”

  I smooth blonde strands of hair from her forehead. “You scared me,” I say, only able to admit it because she can’t hear me. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  She doesn’t reply, so I leave the bedroom, peel off my clothes for the second time tonight, and go to the shower. I wash the blood and dirt from me, murky gray and bright red a maelstrom around the drain, and then stand in the bathroom, dripping onto the tiles.

  I wipe condensation from the mirror and look at myself, stare deep into my eyes.

  There it is: the killer’s purpose. It’s always in the eyes. A man can be smiling, cheering, weeping with joy, but if he’s a killer you only have to look into his eyes and see it. The primal urge to do damage, to be the strongest, to be the alpha of the pack.

  But behind that, there’s something else.

  I turn away.

  That something else frightens me.

  Chapter Seven

  Anna

  When I wake up, the central heating has timed itself off and the apartment is gripped by an icy autumn chill. I open my eyes onto the darkness, wondering if perhaps the events of last night were a dream. My bedside clock tells me that it’s just past four in the morning. I roll over, almost expecting the bed to be empty. Of course Eric isn’t dead; of course he didn’t try and kill me; of course a hitman didn’t come to my apartment and tell me that I’m in danger. That’s mad, something out of a movie. Not something that happens to vets-in-training.

  But when I roll over, there he is. Samson Black, lying on his back, eyes closed. He sleeps how I imagine soldiers do. He doesn’t seem completely at rest. The bottom of his eyelids don’t quite reach the bottom of his eye, so that a sliver of white shows through. I get the sense that if something happened, his eyes would be open in an instant. His body doesn’t seem relaxed. Dormant, but not relaxed. Waiting.

  I don’t remember coming to bed, which means he must’ve carried me. Am I a fool for letting a hitman carry me to bed? What if he isn’t the man I think he is? But it’s strange . . . looking at Samson gives me the same sense of calm my safe place does. I think of the turnstile and the field of dogs, and I imagine Samson is standing there with me, and instead of disturbing the scene he somehow makes it more attractive.

  As quietly as I can, I climb from the bed and pad across the apartment to the living room. Samson stirs, but doesn’t wake, and I’m sure even in his sleep he knows the difference between a dangerous noise and a safe one. I’m thinking about him in the same way I think about animals, I realize, and I wonder if that’s unfair. But it’s how my mind is trained and, anyway, Samson makes a whole lot of sense if I think about him as an animal. Hitman of the genus, killer of the species, night-stalker of the habitat New York City. His relatives are clients and victims and killers; his tools knives and poisons and guns; his prey bad men and women beaters.

  I pour myself a glass of water and pace the apartment, without really meaning to, just pacing up and down, thinking. The night is never truly silent in New York. People shout and laugh and scream into the sky; horns honk and somewhere a few blocks over, music plays loudly. A dog barks and a cat squeals. I drain the water and place the glass on the counter, and then continue my pacing.

  It’s not a dream. It’s real. Samson Black, hitman, is in my bed, sleeping. Samson and I had sex earlier tonight. I can still feel the ache of him deep inside of me, proof that it really happened. Shouldn’t I be terrified? That’s the question which returns to me again and again. Shouldn’t I be scared, panicked? He’s a killer, a stone-hearted killer. But maybe it’s that I can’t accept that as a fact. He’s a killer, sure, but stone-hearted, cold-blooded, and all those other adjectives which are routinely hurled at men of his trade? I’m not so sure. Sitting on the couch with him, talking, learning about him, I saw something that wasn’t cold or stone. It was downright warm. Human. And he killed Eric, and he’s protecting me. I’m not scared of him. Confusing or not, that’s the truth.

  I slump onto the couch, stretching my legs out on the coffee table. But it’s more than not just being scared, I realize. It’s more than just being comfortable. I’m not just at ease around him. I’m horny, curious, longing
. I want him. I like thinking that beyond my thin walls, lying on my bed, is a hitman. I remember Elle telling me once about how she and her ex-boyfriend liked to do BDSM stuff. I never understood it myself, never understood how you would want a man like that in your bed. But I think I understand it now. The danger itself is exciting, and the fact of Samson is way more dangerous than a few whips and chains.

  I like it, I think, stunned by myself. I like how strong he is and I like knowing that he killed Eric. I like how in control he is and how he must be able to handle any situation. I like imagining him stalking the streets, stalking his prey. What is he? A wolf? No, because wolves are pack animals. A cheetah, then, or perhaps even an eagle. Soaring through the sky, alone, darting down to sort his business and then ascending once again.

  Sort his business.

  The phrase lingers in my mind. Business. That’s the crux of it, I think. It’s business. Not pleasure or sport or survival, but business, which means money. A question occurs to me I feel silly for not thinking of before. Who hired Samson? Somebody must’ve hired him. He’s a hitman, and hitmen don’t work for free. No, someone out there gave him a large sum of money to dispose of Eric. I try to imagine who that might be, but I draw a blank. It might even be someone I don’t know, someone who had their own gripes with Eric. But Samson told me he killed him to stop him from hurting me. He was bragging about it in prison. Which must mean that whoever hired Samson didn’t want Eric to hurt me.