

Heartwreck Highway

Stuart Parker

Copyright © 2017 by Stuart Parker

Cover Design: SelfPubBookCovers.com/billwyc

Part 1

Love Child Must Die

1

There was only one picture on Wendy Jacks' side of the cell, a twelve-year-old boy beaming a smile on a park swing. It was her son, Jade. The photograph had been taken just one day before a SWAT team came crashing through her door and arrested her for a double murder she had been too wasted to remember. Her sixth sense must have warned her that the day of reckoning was coming, for she had inexplicably dragged her son away from his bedroom and the incessant video games on his phone to the nearest park, purely to take a photo for posterity. Perhaps she should have done that sort of thing earlier in Jade's upbringing, for he actually looked happy in the shot. Too bad she had been strung out most of his childhood. Even that picture was blurred with the shakes. But now Wendy could only dream of being in that kind of messed up state again. That was the true cruelty of prison: it had cleaned her up from her drug habit, allowing maternal love to come flooding back, only to deny her any chance of being with her son again – the fifteen years remaining on her sentence was nothing less than a death sentence. All Wendy had been doing for the past four years in her poky, little cell was sit on her bed and stare at her son on the wall. And the pain and guilt only ever got worse, knowing that she had hurt Jade and was hurting him still, having left him in the care of a stepfather who was still as fucked up as she used to be and with a violent disposition that she had once considered useful. Mint Smith had been her own personal enforcer and a serviceable lover, but as a stepfather, nothing good could ever come of it.

'Are you alright?' It was Wendy's cellmate, Mandy-Jane, standing in her own regular spot in the back corner of the cell. A fellow murderer, Mandy-Jane was short and petite but with an air of deadly menace. Although she had only killed the one person, an abusive ex, she had made him feel it with an attack that a noted journalist described as an infidel's crude attempt at halal – that article and a few more just like it was what decorated her side of the cell. 'You need to get your shit together, sweetheart,' she added. 'A cop killer would be a prized scalp in our much-loved Edna Mahan maximum security funhouse. And staring like a zombie at a wall isn't going to scare away the hardcore bitches who want a piece of you.'

Wendy Jacks replied defensively, 'I was just trying to think.'

'Well think about this. The searches of cells and persons doesn't mean nothing. Weapons are rife. Homemade blades are always your biggest danger. Easy to conceal and they slot between a zombie's ribs nice and neat.'

'What do you care about it?'

'If one murderer is taken out without bitches even having to raise a sweat, they might get the idea we're all ripe for the picking. Like apples on a tree. Everyone will want a taste. We've both got a long time left in this shit hole and we're only going to make it by owning the place, not by staring at its walls. So just forget about your son. People who love too much get diced up in the end. That's the one thing relationships have taught me.'

'You talking about your husband? Weren't you the one doing the chopping?'

'My husband suffered from poor decision making when it came to women. Taking this one to be his unlawfully abused wife was one of his biggest mistakes. Kind of the same thing as those two players who tried to shaft you on a drug deal. You shot them in the face.'

'It was no drug deal,' snapped Wendy. 'I was taking my son for ice cream when we got carjacked. It was self-defense. How was I supposed to know one was a bent cop?'

'Twenty years in this damned place, that's how much the jury believed your version of events. The bitches in here believe it even less.'

'I don't care what anyone believes.'

'That's brave of you. But why don't you let the bitches believe what they really want to believe?'

Wendy gave up trying to look at her photo. She stood up and folded her arms. Tiredness and a yellow jumpsuit had her looking every bit like the nineteen years in maximum security had already been served She had straggly black hair, gaunt checks and bloodshot eyes. Her lips were chapped and her shoulders hunched. 'What do they want to believe then?' she murmured.

'That you are one of Sweet Gazar's predators and that you blow off people's faces for fun. They want a reason not to mess with you.'

'Well, the parole board will need to believe something different. They'll need to believe I don't have any gang affiliations and that I am truly remorseful and no threat to society.'

Mandy-Jane laughed. 'You're a double murderer. You ain't sitting down with no parole board. For a long, long time all you've got to deal with are the sluts on the floor. And they don't like a thing about you.'

'Lights out in ten minutes,' announced the corrections officer pacing along the walkway outside the cell.

Mandy-Jane quickly used her finger as a tooth brush and swung into her bed still wearing her shoes. 'Anything you've got to live for on the outside will only get you killed on the inside. That's prison for you. Good night, sweetie.' She pulled her blanket up over her head such that only her shiny black ponytail was visible, stretched out over the pillow like a resting viper.

Wendy turned her attention back to her son. He had his father's eyes. Matt Sheppard, a corporal in the Marines. Killed by a land mine in Afghanistan, at just twenty-five. Blown into so many pieces he had been placed in his coffin like it was a jigsaw puzzle. Wendy's heart had been left in so many pieces too. She hadn't been able to handle seeing those haunting brown eyes in her son. That was where the drugs came into their own. She had needed them, needed to be medicated. She couldn't face her son without being souped to the eyeballs. Staring at her son on a prison wall hour after hour, day after day was the therapy that had been required to turn herself around. That was her rehabilitation. And she was almost grateful to the Edna Mahan Women's Penitentiary for that opportunity. But now that it was done, all the prison had left to offer her was fifteen more years of torture. Time she knew she could not survive. Mandy-Jane was right about that. But more importantly she did not think her son could survive either. She had been raising him in an ugly little world of drug dealers and junkies and after being arrested she had left him to it. It was not a problem she could fix inside a jail cell. There was no other choice, she simply had to get out.

'Lights out,' cried the corrections officer as she flicked the switch to bring darkness to the cells.

It marked the beginning of another sleepless night for Wendy Jacks amongst the hundreds of desperately miserable battle-hardened prisoners. She slid into her bed and stared up into the darkness. She began to plot her escape. It did not involve scaling walls or overpowering guards. It was more dangerous than that, it involved betrayal.

2

Detective Roger Platts had made quick time to the Edna Mahan Prison. He had picked up a good short cut the last time he was out that way, six months earlier on a homicide investigation. The trip had led to an arrest, but what he had really enjoyed about the trip was meeting Corrections Officer Alexandria Martinez. He liked any woman who worked out compulsively and even in her staid blue uniform he had been able to tell she was buffed. And the sharp confidence in her eyes only confirmed it. A real man eater. Platts knew from experience that such women could be more available than they cared to admit – a lot of experience. During fifteen years on the force he had worked with a lot of women like that. It made sense. People who liked to fight didn't become accountants. Still, he hadn't been so presumptuous as to do anything other than get her business number. Having a wife and kids afforded him the luxury of being able to wait and let opportunities arise naturally. And the day had finally arrived. He had business at Edna Mahan and she would be there to meet him.

He left his Mitsubishi sports car in the reserved parking area and strolled to the main gate where he was happy to see Martinez waiting to greet him. He also didn't mind that she looked as good as he remembered. Tall and lithe.

'Nice to see you again, Detective Platts,' said Martinez with a flirtatious sparkle in her eye.

'You too, Officer Martinez.' Platts straightened out the sleeves of his stylish grey jacket and he smiled the way he knew looked good, accentuating his dimpled chin, sticking out his chest. 'If only circumstances brought me more frequently to your ladies prison.'

'Is it murder again? I must admit I would be surprised. The prisoner you have come to see has been exceptionally well behaved these past four years. I was even beginning to wonder if her crimes had not indeed been self-defense like she claims.'

'Self-defense?' scoffed Platts. 'Protecting her drug business more like it. She might be a sweet little rose in your world but in the one I pulled her from she was all thorns.'

'She has been taken to the interview room. Discreetly as requested.'

Platts smirked. 'So, you're good at being discreet?'

'I'm good at a lot of things.'

Platts nodded to himself. Clearly, being a reasonably good-looking homicide detective with a sports car had its perks. Kind of being like Mount Everest, women would sleep with him just because he was there. He found himself getting seriously aroused and wanted to make dinner plans with her right there and then. A maximum security prison, however, would serve as a useful cold shower until business was done. 'Well, better not waste the precious time of our lifer,' he said, stepping through the gates onto the prison grounds.

'She only got nineteen years as a matter of fact. Not too bad for a double murder.' Martinez got in front of Platts to lead the way. 'She's very polite really. The kind of double murderer I'd invite to dinner.'

Platts did not know what to make of that last remark. Surely, she couldn't be flirting with him the way she was and still be a lesbian. He checked her out again for any clues and found himself admiring her shapely butt, capable of so much more than just walking a path. The grimness of the prison that shrouded them, however, soon commandeered his attention again. The heavy doors, thick walls, hellishly stale light, this was the fate awaiting the criminals he put away. The thought excited him, the stakes he played for as high as this - purgatory in a sterile hell. Wendy Jacks was one of the unlucky losers; as soon as he entered the interview room he looked at her on the other side of the centerpiece white plastic table and could see that prison had not been kind to her. She was even more pale and gaunt than the day he had arrested her - and at that time she had been a drug addict. She was nervously chewing her finger nails, looking a good two sizes too small for her awful yellow prison garb.

'Hello, Wendy,' Platts said, not even trying to reel in his snide grin – coming out all this way was bound to be a waste of time, so he might as well at least try to enjoy himself. 'Long time no see. What ya been up to?'

'Very funny,' snapped Wendy. 'You took your time getting here. The longer I'm away from the girls the more likely they will suspect something.'

'Suspect you're talking to the cops?' Platts sat down on the door's side of the table. 'Well, you are and you better make it worth the cop's while so that he doesn't get upset and tell everyone about it.'

'You don't have to worry about that. Four years ago, you had a real hard on for Sweet Gazar. Promised a deal if I agreed to cooperate against her. Well, I'm ready now to accept.'

Platts was startled. 'Four years ago, you refused to even acknowledge you knew her. Put it with some rather colourful language. So why the change of heart?'

'You justice people talk about rehabilitation like it's some lofty ideal,' said Wendy bitterly, 'but for a mother who has let down her son it's a reality check that's gonna tear her apart.' She wiped away a tear. 'I never cried when I was a junkie. That probably explains a few things right there. I needed to be fucked up just to get through the day. It took prison to free myself from all that shit clouding up my head.'

'I was at your trial when you used that as a defense. The errant war widow, twisted by her grief into a life of crime. The judge wasn't much of a patriot. Didn't do much with your sentence, did he?'

'I could have gotten a lot more cut off if I had given you Sweet Gazar. Well, do you want her or not?'

Platts stared hard. 'Before you go down this road you should know that Gazar hasn't been as idle these past four years as yourself. A few of her rivals have met with unnatural ends enabling her to expand her territory and harden her reputation as the baddest crime boss in New York City. She's got a lot of reach. Got a lot of violence at her disposal.'

'Which means you must be as keen as ever to get her.'

'Sure I am. But it also means you need to be certain your mud is going to stick before you start throwing it. You can bet she's not going to be throwing creampuffs in return.'

'You can put me into protective custody.'

'Yes, I can. And four years ago, you were given that offer and turned it down. It's harder now. You'll need to convince us that what you've got is still fresh. There's every chance whatever you know ain't worth a piece of shit. So, you'll need to give us a pretty good taste. You'll need to get us fucking hooked like the junkies were to your product.'

Wendy thought for a moment. 'There's a paramedic who marshals Sweet Gazar's pushers around the whole city. Follow him a week and you'll get a taste of how I can help you unravel her empire.'

'Interesting. A paramedic? Does this person have a name?'

'Let's talk about the name of my conviction first. Murder was the name you gave it because I refused to cooperate. So now I want that name changed to self-defense. And to get the judge to say that too I'll need you to find the reports that placed weapons at the scene.'

Platts frowned. 'Are you sure those reports exist?'

'They exist. You find them and you get Sweet Gazar.'

'Is Sweet Gazar a fucking paramedic? If I heard right, she's what you're offering.'

'The paramedic is Jars Larson. Follow him around awhile, see what he's up to, make some arrests if it makes you feel better, and when you're ready to get serious about taking Sweet Gazar down, come see me with an offer.'

Platts shook his head. 'It ain't gonna fly.'

Wendy sneered at him. 'Has the Detective's hard-on gone flaccid? Can't get it up anymore? Well, let me break the situation down for you. You want to make the city safe you gotta get Sweet Gazar off the streets. And every day you don't people suffer. Whereas keeping me in this joint isn't protecting anyone. All I did was take out a couple of lowlife drug dealers. One might have been a bent cop, but who gives a shit. If I was a cop myself, the commissioner would've given me such a big hug I could've had him up for harassment. And if you can't see what I'm saying, there are plenty of smarter cops who will.'

'Alright,' said Platts, pushing his chair back from the table, 'I'll see where your paramedic leads. But you better keep this to yourself 'cause some of those smarter cops might be in Gazar's pocket. I told you she's on the rise. She can afford them.' He left the interview room with a sour look and his head down and barely acknowledged Officer Martinez as she escorted him back out of the prison.

'Is everything alight?' Martinez queried as they approached the last gate.

'Sure. Why wouldn't it be?'

'You've gone all quiet.'

'I didn't mean to. Everything is fine.'

As Platts stepped away from the prison, he turned to Martinez and gave her a tense smile. 'Thanks for your time, Officer Martinez.'

'Will you be back again?' replied Martinez with a confused look.

'Not with this particular investigation. A dead end, I'm afraid.' Platts strode quickly out into the car park and climbed into his sports car. He plucked from his glovebox a picture of his wife and two kids. He sat staring at it a good two minutes before pulling out his mobile phone and scrolling through the contact list. He dialed the listing G1 and waited for the distinctive cruel whisper he had been fortunate enough to have avoided for the past six months. 'Hello,' said Sweet Gazar, and with that one word alone he knew that nothing had changed, that she was just as ruthless and dangerous as ever.

'Ms Gazar, this is Detective Platts.'

'I know who it is.'

'I'm at the Edna Mahan Prison. You've got a problem.'

3

Sweet Gazar had made her fortune putting dents in New York's unquenchable thirst for recreational drugs and yet her own personal addiction was nothing worse than reading newspapers. All the same, she did it with a vengeance, devouring cover to cover at least ten newspapers a day and sometimes as many as fifteen. She always started with the New York dailies before moving on to Washington and the rest of the United States. If she strayed internationally, it would be to the UK or to the countries where she had a lot of money squirreled away, such as Switzerland and El Salvador. In the beginning, she had only been interested in the crime pages and any mention the ruthless expansion of her empire may have rated. There were times when it was seemingly happening every day. She was murdering her enemies while trying to anticipate the headlines to come. On the days she got it right the thrill was enormous. And putting a murder onto the front page was pure euphoria. Gradually, however, over many years, Gazar had started to pay more attention to the profit-making side of the business and, as a well-established fifty-five-year-old crime boss, she started giving more credence to the finance and politics sections. She circulated through her luxurious multi-million-dollar apartment in the Grande Hummer building in uptown Soho with newspapers forever in hand. In the warmer months she spent most of her days flittering between the apartment's three terraces. Her bodyguards often warned her about the threat of snipers but there was no point having three superbly decorated terraces featuring amazing cityscape views of New York if she couldn't go out there and breathe a little pollution.

On this particular late October Tuesday afternoon, however, an impending decision had robbed her of her serenity. Her best killer was on the way and she wasn't quite sure who she wanted to be the target. Either Detective Roger Platts or Wendy Jacks. It all depended on whether or not she believed Platts. The call had come in an hour earlier. And Gazar had known straight away that someone was going to have to die. She hoped it didn't have to be Wendy. She had spent a lot of money taking care of her after her arrest. She had thrown her two hundred thousand dollars on her defense, hiring the best lawyers in the city to argue her case. The evidence had been too overwhelming to get her off altogether, but they had seen to her getting a lesser sentence than she might have expected for blowing away a cop and his pal at close range. And once Wendy had been convicted, Gazar had made a point of looking after her boyfriend and son. Even throwing some cocaine deals the boyfriend's way despite him being an unreliable, gambling addicted fuck up. The thing that hurt most was that Gazar had taken the trouble to throw Wendy a birthday bash right there in her Soho home just days before her arrest. The upper terrace, where she was standing now, had been the centre of the action, with a world class DJ and an even better barman. It was the spot where she had hugged Wendy and vowed to always take care of her no matter what. And a hundred guests had been there to applaud. To be betrayed after going to such lengths left a very bitter taste in Gazar's mouth. But the only other explanation was that Detective Platts was playing some kind of devious game. Gazar had spent an hour gazing out across the rooftops, trying to pinpoint a reason for him to concoct the story. But she was sure she had placed him soundly under her thumb. She had gone to a lot of trouble to make it so, back in the days when he had been seriously building a case against her. She had called in a lot of favours to find out who he was, where he lived and what were his pressure points. Fortunately, with a pretty wife and two young daughters, it had been easy to convince him that the cost of his investigations would have been too much to bear. A bullet in a letterbox and a decapitated family pet were all it had taken to turn a hungry cop into someone quite placid and with a very selective memory.

'Alice Persia is here,' announced Schote, her chief bodyguard, from the terrace's sliding doors.

'Let her come.'

The woman that brushed past the bodyguard onto the terrace was forty-something and had short black hair and icy cruel grey eyes. She was wearing a black leather jacket, brown moleskin trousers and black boots. She moved with an easy glide, her feet barely lifting from the ground. Her eyes locked onto Sweet Gazar and for an instant it appeared like a total eclipse the way all light suddenly seemed to be blocked out. As intimidating as her gaze was, Gazar knew well that most of Persia's numerous victims had not even had a chance to see them, for, whether it be with gun, knife or bare hands, Persia preferred to kill from behind. Sweet Gazar was more than happy to have her on her side. She really didn't care what kind of person went out onto the streets to sell her drugs, but when it came to killing, she only wanted the best.

'You called for me,' said Persia in a slightly bored tone.

'Thanks for coming at such short notice. How was the traffic?'

'Lousy. There was a cyclist who called me names.'

'And you let him?'

'I only kill professionally. So, what's the job?'

Gazar clicked her tongue. 'You might not want it. If I recall correctly you were getting on quite well with Wendy Jacks the last time you saw her. At her birthday party right here on this terrace. You were talking with her for quite some time and I think you may have even been smiling.'

Persia shrugged. 'I always smile when I'm drunk.'

'Then don't go drinking now. I need you to do some killing.'

'What did Wendy do? You were smiling too that night.'

'I got a tip off from a cop. She's had enough of prison and wants to sell me out. She knows enough about my operations that she could cause some real bother. So, she's got to die.'

'You sure you trust the cop? I never have myself.'

'He knew about a certain paramedic that I use in my business. Wendy and Schote are the only two people who could have told him about that. It's not a watertight case, but it's enough for me to sign a death warrant.'

'And what do you want me to do about it? If I try to kill someone in jail that's exactly where I'll end up myself.'

'I never said I wanted you to kill _her_. I know plenty of girls in Edna Mahan who would gladly take on the job just to ease the boredom, and they'll only cost a fraction of you.'

'Cheap whores. No wonder they're inside. So, what do you want then?'

'I want her family dead too. Not that it's much of a family. A de-facto husband with a drug addiction and a raging gambling habit. And a son with his head permanently buried in computer games.'

'I met prince charming at the party,' said Persia repulsively. 'He threw up on himself and it smelt like he shat his pants as well. A complete fuck up.'

'Why do you think they call him Mint? I want you to kill them both. And make it ugly. It'll be a warning to others.' Gazar bared her cigarette stained teeth. 'I want people to know that snitching against me gets them dead and gets their family dead.'

Persia paused. 'How old is the son?'

'I don't know,' spat Gazar. 'About fifteen. What does it matter?'

'I don't kill kids under ten. If they're too young to ride a roller coaster, they're too young to get a double tap to the back of the head.'

'That's some twisted logic.'

'Well, I don't charge you for my logic, I charge you for my bullets. And if Wendy has been talking to the cops, I may need a few more of them.'

'We have time to move before this gets out of hand. Wendy has only talked to one cop so far and she picked the wrong one.'

'What's the kid's name?'

'What kid?'

'Wendy's son.'

'I forget.'

'You wanna blow him away you should at least have the courtesy to know his name.'

Sweet Gazar trawled her memory. 'I think it's Jude or Judd. She didn't talk about him much. Just that he was a love child. The father went and got himself blown up by the Taliban without ever knowing he was a father.'

'Well, the kid wasn't at the party, so I don't know what he looks like. I'll need a photo.'

'I see.' Gazar wasn't expecting that. 'It might take some time. While you're waiting, why don't you go take care of the husband first? His full name is Mint Smith. If you saw him throwing up and soiling his pants, you must remember what he looks like.'

'Yeah,' gnarled Persia ruefully, 'I've got a very clear mental image.'

'Good.' There was an uncomfortable pause as Gazar tried to think of something else to say. She could never quite get used to how easy it was to send Persia off to kill someone. Usually she just needed a name and an address if she had one. 'You've come all this way,' Gazar finally murmured. 'I can have my maid prepare some tea or coffee.'

Persia smirked. Gazar didn't have a maid. She probably didn't have any tea either. She lived alone with her well-armed bodyguards in the penthouse suite, taking drug addicted pushers for lovers and disposing of them with overdoses once she had grown tired of them. Not someone to socialise with – dangerous and eccentric. She did, however, keep her preferred hired killers busy with well-paying employment.

'I will move quickly,' said Persia. 'And so should you. If Wendy has decided she doesn't want to be in prison anymore, she might want to sing it from the rooftops. She might even call the FBI. And you don't have a hook in that particular organisation.'

Gazar stiffened with the thought. 'Don't worry about that. It's not only the State that knows how to execute the incarcerated. It has its electric chairs and lethal injections, I have some far cruder methods. Go do whatever you need to do to take care of the happy little family. I don't want you being overshadowed when I splatter the Edna Mahan prison with Wendy Jacks' blood.'

Persia left the terrace with a feeling of disquiet. If Gazar wanted a messy, gruesome murder, she had asked the wrong person. Persia had honed her skills in the art of clean, professional killing. To do it any other way would take her out of her comfort zone. She would need assistance for that, and from the kind of people she hated to work with, the abjectly deranged: Gazar's people.

4

Wendy Jacks was playing around with her food tray, trying to separate the egg white from the yolk, something altogether hard to do with soft boiled eggs. Still, she had to try. She couldn't stop thinking that the yolk was the beginnings of a helpless baby chic, the makings of life. She would have preferred to leave her breakfast altogether, but she was hungry. And she was just as likely to get eggs at lunchtime as well. So, she toiled with her fork, desperate to stop her stomach growling for at least a couple of hours. The flavour was grotesque in her mouth, spoilt as it was by the images of death in her head. Not just the two murders she had been convicted of. There were many other deaths with her name on the credits. Other people whose heads had gotten in the way of her bullets. At least four. But in a lot of her gun battles she had just been spraying bullets willy-nilly, too whacked out to aim, and so there were probably more. And then there must have been a of lot deaths from all the heroin and meth she had been offloading on the streets. Truckloads of the stuff. Over many years. No wonder food tasted so bad in her mouth, her life had made the whole world taste rotten.

She tried to distract her mind from the food by concentrating on the things around her. It was Wednesday morning. October the 22nd. Or thereabouts. The dining area around her was settled. The prisoners were seated with their breakfast trays and there were three or four guards patrolling the tables. There was chatter and the occasional harsh laugh. On some occasions there seemed to be a competition amongst the different groups about who laughed the nastiest and stared the ugliest. The Hispanics did a good job at it but the Afro-Americans were the world champions – especially on the days when they were at each other's throats. On this day, however, the meals area was about as quiet as it ever got in maximum security.

Suddenly Wendy had an idea. Perhaps if she put her toast over her runny eggs it would help with the eating. She wouldn't be separating yolk from egg white anymore but who was she trying to kid with that anyway? She tore off a corner of toast and used it to isolate some of the egg. It reminded her of preparing a line of cocaine. There were many years when that very thing would have been all the breakfast she needed. She remembered it fondly. She pinched the egg with the toast and lifted it towards her mouth. The soft yolk run out. And that was when the blood too started to run. A few drops that quickly became a steady stream. Wendy did not panic. She used to get a bloody nose as a kid and figured it was just that. But when she went to wipe it away, she realised she was bleeding from her mouth too. Her vision was suddenly getting blurry and her head dizzy. The sour taste in her mouth had suddenly spread all over. She staggered to her feet and made her way urgently towards the toilets. That had always been her go-to place in moments like this. Whether it be needing to throw up during her phases of body weight issues or to empty her stomach of a high gone wrong, she had grown very adept at finding her way into toilets in times of emergency. So, she started the journey feeling in her element, in control. Even when an inmate in front of her gasped with horror at the blood streaming from her orifices, she simply pushed her aside and continued on her way. All women bled, and a fighter like Wendy bled even more than that. Best just keep out of her way.

The next woman who came at her way, however, was not so easily shoved aside. Sharp fingers latched onto Wendy's wrist and a foul-smelling breath was upon her. 'That's your last meal, bitch. Off to hell with you.'

The woman was only an inch away and yet Wendy could see nothing but a demonic blur. She would have loved to rip her throat out, to bring her along on the journey into the next world, but if she tried all she would get was more of that foul breath and taunting voice. The poison was real and it was taking hold, her body shutting down, the sudden waves of pain excruciating - her body was marked by the scars of many a knife attack, but she had never experienced such a ferocious stabbing sensation as this. She yanked herself free of her attacker and staggered forward as best she could. Poison in a prison was beyond the capabilities of the average dimwitted inmate who would gladly settle for turning a toothbrush into a knife. Sweet Gazar, however, had earned her nickname for her penchant for adding lethal garnishes to her enemies' dishes. She must have learned of Wendy's conversation with Detective Roger Platts. Possibly the cop himself had tipped her off, or maybe one of the prison officials had taken an interest in their secretive liaison in the prison's interview room. Wendy had known the risks when she made her move against Gazar, so she had no right to be surprised. But she was surprised all the same at how quickly and emphatically the response had been. Wendy was no longer interested in the toilets, for throwing up and splashing water on her face wasn't going to fix this. And she didn't want to die in a toilet. She headed for her cell instead. That would be more fitting. It was the place where she had wasted so much time dreaming about a new life outside the cold concrete walls around her. The final wasted moment would be her last moment in this world.

Despite her deteriorating vision, four years in the Edna Mahan maximum security wing had left her with an intimate knowledge of a very small world: she dragged herself to her cell and snatched from the wall her son's photograph. She clung to it tightly as she collapsed onto her bed. Let them find her like this, dead with the photograph gripped between her fingers. At least her son would know she had been thinking of him in her final moments. This gave her comfort as she curled up on her bed. She closed her eyes and took the pain. It was bad but she had gone to bed often enough doubting she would be in any state to wake up again the next day. If this was the day it would be true then why not a dose of agony for the road? To hell with it. She let her pillow wetten with tears and blood and thought about Jade. Just the image of him gave her the grit to function through the pain that was akin to having her organs sucked through a meat grinder.

But then the poisoner's foul breath was back upon her face. Even in such circumstances as this it broke through to Wendy's core. Her body tensed up as she realised the demonic figure had followed her into her cell and was now standing over her. She tried to say something but the poison had a stranglehold on her throat. All she could do was clench a fist threateningly. The figure, however, merely chuckled and snatched from her hand the photograph of her son. The woman laughed harshly. 'Yes, this is what I've come for. A fine-looking boy. He will be easy to pick out from the crowd.' The voice came closer, the mouth against her ear. 'You didn't think Sweet Gazar would let you die alone, did you? Your whole family are going to get it. Your son and your man. Jade and Mint. You've bored me with stories about them often enough, so now let me bore you with a story. They're both going to die bad. That's the full price of betrayal. And Sweet Gazar doesn't give discounts.'

Wendy recognised the voice at last. It was her cellmate Mandy-Jane. Wendy was too weak to feel anger or hate. She tried to wipe the wet out of her eyes. It was a bitter tasting concoction of blood and tears and it was flowing all the way to her mouth.

Mandy-Jane moved to her regular position in the back corner of the cell and whistled a tune as she waited excitedly for Wendy Jacks to die.

5

Mint Smith couldn't find a good place to hide his shotgun. There was already a Gloch under the folded-up sofa bed and the cramped apartment didn't have much room for any other furniture. There was the TV up against the wall, aimlessly blaring with one of the shopping channels, and some empty pizza boxes and beer bottles on the floor. No places for a shotgun anywhere there.

Mint scratched his sleeve-tattooed arm as he considered the problem. He was a thirty-six-year-old with greasy black hair and yellowy eyes that bespoke of nights blurring to days with weed and alcohol. His watch showed 10:05 on this particularly morning. He lit a cigarette and pulled himself up off the sofa. He took the shotgun with him to his stepson's bedroom. The door was open.

Jade Jacks was playing a mobile phone game on his bed. He was a pimply teenager with curly black hair, thick lips and a dimpled chin. His most prominent facial feature, however, was a bright, raw black eye. He flicked a hate-filled look at his stepfather and returned his attention to his video game. The game was called Space Fighter Pilot and it was his favourite. Flying in and out of clouds in dogfights never grew old to him. He played a similar game on a grander scale at a little arcade in China Town and would've been there now if it weren't for the cops constantly raiding it during school hours looking for gang members and truants.

'Don't look at me like that,' said Mint. 'I'm letting you stay home from school, ain't I?'

'Only 'cause you're afraid the teachers will ask questions about how I got the bruises on my face. You're afraid that I might tell the truth.'

'You wouldn't do that. I know I ain't your real father but I'm as close to it as you're ever going to get.' Mint sat down on the foot of the bed and tapped some cigarette ash onto the blanket like it were an ashtray. 'There ain't no else lining up to be your daddy. Sometimes I wonder why I let myself get involved as well. I guess while your mother is wasting away in prison, I don't have the heart to disappoint her. She pleaded with me to look after you until you're older enough to take care of yourself and that's why you get the bedroom and I sleep out on the sofa.'

'You're only looking after me,' snapped Jade, 'because my mother has got something on you and will turn you into the cops if you throw me out.'

Mint flashed an angry glance at him and sucked in a deep lungful of smoke. 'You ain't got any of your mother's good looks but you sure inherited her lip.' He pointed the shotgun at him and waited till he looked up from his video game. Jade sat up with a start and Mint laughed. 'You're living in the wrong world for that kind of lip, kid.' He brought the shotgun closer and closer until it was pressing against Jade's forehead. 'Bet they don't give you this kind of education at school.' He pulled away the shotgun away and sucked on his cigarette some more. Jade's squinting had accentuated his black eye such that Mint couldn't help but be impressed with his handiwork. 'My right hook really is something, isn't it? Maybe I should send you out there after all. I know you're only fifteen and not much of a fighter but that's a shiner that'll send a message. People better think twice before they get in my face.'

'I'm sixteen,' Jade corrected.

Mint pulled a face. 'That's why your mom still wants you to go to school. You look way too innocent for the real world. But you know you should take some responsibility for the beating. You've got to learn when a man's had a few too many and his blood is up, you've gotta hide. Just like taking shelter from a storm.' He thrust the shotgun at him barrel first. 'You can go practice hiding now. There's some people dropping by. Friends of your mother.'

Jade perked up. 'Who are they?'

'No one you know. They are colleagues. Your mother has been smart enough to keep her mouth shut in prison and so they are coming to reward her by offering to help us out. Kind of like the social welfare officers that came round when she first went to prison. The criminal version. And they're gonna do more than just stick their noses up at us over a clipboard. Your mother was hanging with some serious people. Have you heard of Sweet Gazar? She runs the syndicate. Spills a lot of blood.'

Jade shook his head.

'Good. You're too young to have heard of her and you're definitely too young to meet her. That's why you gotta hide.'

'Sure it ain't 'cause you don't want mum's friends seeing what you did?' said Jade pointing at his black eye.

'Hey, I've already apologised.' Mint tapped some more ash off his cigarette. 'Anyway, these people aren't going to notice a bruise. They cut off limbs with chainsaws.' He walked to the door and tried to wrestle it closed. It had been ripped off its hinges during his rage, however, and threatened to collapse to the floor.

'You did that too,' said Jade.

'Fuck it,' spat Mint and dragged the door back to something like where it had been against the wall. 'Well, you can't stay there then.'

There was a knock on the front door. Mint pulled a face. 'Fuck, that's them.' He dropped the shotgun on Jade's lap. 'Take it into the toilet and wait there. Make sure you don't blow your toe off by mistake. Or your dick, which I know is the same size.' He laughed with his own joke and stepped into the living room and waited until Jade had hurried away into the toilet. There was another knock - whoever was at the door was less than patient. No time to tidy the place up then. Empty bottles, filled ashtrays and fast food wrappings would be the scene to greet his visitors. Perhaps it would serve to illustrate how destitute Mint and Jade were, help get some cash-flow happening. At the very least it would put his guests off asking to use the toilet, for the thought of how filthy it might be would surely have them sucking in their bladders with all their might. That would keep Jade and the shotgun out of his hair. He smirked at the thought of Jade being stuck in the toilet for any length of time, packed up and stinking as it was. He supposed the living room wasn't much better and pulled open a window to let in some air. What he got was a rush of cold air accompanied by came the noise and fumes of downtown Brooklyn traffic?

'Coming,' he called out, sensing that his visitors lacked the patience to knock three times. He flicked his cigarette butt out the window and went to the front door. It was only slightly more attached to its frame than was the bedroom door. There were three tough looking people standing out in the corridor waiting for him. A woman and two men. They were all wearing jeans and loose hanging shirts. The woman was out front and she sneered, her perfume smelling to Mint a lot like gasoline. 'Hello,' she said. 'My name is Alice Persia. And these are my acquaintances, Fazeem and Frankie. We work for Sweet Gazar. Can we come in?' Her voice carried an edge of danger and the face under the peak of the denim baseball cap was hard and emotionless. The two men at her side didn't look any the friendlier and Mint suddenly felt a pang of unease. These were the brand of Sweet Gazar employee that Wendy had warned him about – usually waiting until he was high on weed and at his most paranoid to tell her tales of bloodshed and murder.

'Isn't Sweet Gazar coming?' he murmured meekly.

The man named Fazeem broke into a childish giggle and ran his fingers through his handlebar mustache like he had habitually done a thousand times before. 'Who?'

'Sweet Gazar.'

The other man, Frankie, who was slightly taller and harder-bodied than Fazeem and had a long beak-nose, put a piece of chewing gum into his mouth and proceeded chomping on it at a rapid rate. 'She has faith we can handle this particular job ourselves,' he finally replied.

Mint wanted to confirm exactly what job he was referring to, but he knew it wouldn't go down well. He had already been told over the phone: Sweet Gazar wanted to make sure Wendy Jacks' family was being looked after while she served her nineteen years. And Mint couldn't say no to that. He was desperate for the help. Wendy after all had been the household's main breadwinner. She had always negotiated the deals and made sure she didn't get near the drugs she sold. Mint knew that world was beyond his range. He sold a little crack and meth to make ends meet, but it was never enough, and his savings was fast dwindling. Wendy had threatened him with harm if he didn't look after her son, so if this was her way of providing the cash flow to make it happen, the last thing he wanted to do was get in the way.

'Would you like to come in?' Mint found himself murmuring.

Persia's lips slithered across her cheeks in a grin. 'We'd love to.'

Fazeem and Frankie went first, pushing past Mint into the apartment and scoping it out. Persia meanwhile held her ground and gestured with a hand to Mint. 'After you.' She waited for Mint to step back into the apartment before she closed the door. ''Nice place,' she muttered dryly.

Mint smiled awkwardly. 'Sorry there's only the one couch. Please make yourself comfortable.'

Fazeem and Frankie, however, were showing no inclination to sit down. Fazeem had edged to Jade's bedroom and stuck his head in. He glanced to Persia and shook his head.

'You have a son, don't you?' said Persia. 'Is he here?'

'He's at school,' Mint murmured, and his voice cracked nervously, knowing that all it would take for his lie to be discovered was for someone to open the lavatory door.

Persia stared at him a long moment. 'At school?'

'That's right.'

'Is today a school day?'

'It's Wednesday.'

'I could've told you that,' said Frankie, having taken up position in the corner of the living room.

Persia flashed him an angry look. 'And I would've told you to shut the fuck up.' She turned back to Mint. 'Out of curiosity, which school does she go to?'

'Brooklyn Community High.'

'Sounds prestigious.'

'I know it,' said Frankie, unflustered. 'I've sold drugs there.'

'Sure have,' interjected Fazeem enthusiastically. 'We've got some good customers in that school. I even got blown in the toilets once.'

'Nah, you're getting confused with the Brooklyn Special School,' fired back Persia curtly. 'And that's the only place you've ever got laid.'

'Ha, ha,' replied Fazeem sardonically.

Persia pulled a gun from her jacket and aimed it straight at him. 'One loud noise from this baby and I wouldn't need to hear any of your pitiful noises ever again. Do you know how tempting that is?'

Fazeem meekly shook his head, his mouth puckered shut.

Persia lowered the gun after a prolonged moment and smirked at Mint. 'I apologise. I have been told I am difficult to work with. I am Sweet Gazar's General Manager.' She looked around the apartment and frowned. 'I could have invited you to my office for our appointment but that wouldn't have given me a true impression of your predicament. It's only by coming out here and seeing for myself that I can truly appreciate the hard times you've fallen on.'

'It's tough,' Mint readily agreed, 'but we do the best we can.'

'Best you can? When it comes to gambling, that is not very good, is it? Wendy made enough from her business that you should be doing better than this.'

'I blow a little from time to time,' admitted Mint defensively. 'But Wendy didn't mind a bet herself.' He chuckled nervously. 'Wanna know what her favourite things to bet on were? Child pageants and NASCAR. Damned odd if you ask me.'

'This apartment is the thing that's odd. The plaster is peeling off the walls, the cracks in the ceiling are wannabe skylights and the place stinks like you've buried someone's gran under the floorboards. The couch you are so damned keen for us to sit on looks putrid. I mean, if I get too close, I'll see the fleas fucking. The same goes for what you call carpet.' Persia looked down at the grey threadbare carpet, screwing up her face with revulsion. 'If I'd known I'd be standing on this, I would've brought my platform boots just to be as high above it as I can.'

Fazeem and Frankie snickered and this time Persia let it slide.

'I am here on a cost versus return basis, Mr Smith,' she said, 'and what I see is not promising. It will cost many thousands of dollars to make this apartment habitable again. And if all you're gonna do is gamble your money away, it'll just go to the shit again in no time. Another option is to give you a big enough payout that you can get out of here and make a fresh start in a better neighbourhood for bringing up a kid. The problem with that is you still have your drug and gambling habits and you'll just blow any money we give you that way as well. You'll be right back living in squalor and you'll be asking for more money. Not directly to Sweets 'cause you won't have the balls for that. You'd be putting pressure on Wendy to get it out of us. Telling her to threaten us with going to the cops.'

'Those things would never happen,' urged Mint nervously.

'All those things have already happened. And I promise you the expression _history never repeats_ was not coined with an addict in mind.'

'You've got me all wrong. I may have tried to make a little money on the side through gambling and selling a few grams of shit, but times are tough, bills need to be paid.'

Persia stared at him without emotion. 'When cops investigate a murder, they are interested in three things. Motives, witness statements and physical evidence. Now the problem with drug dealers, even if they are small time, is that every one of their customers has a motive, 'cause drug-heads will kill just as quickly and easily as a shopper will pull out a credit card in your average Thanksgiving sale. Witness statements are no good because any neighbours lucid enough to have seen anything will have already witnessed so much crazy shit that they're not going to risk opening their mouths. And then as far as physical evidence goes, there's no more contaminated a crime scene than a drug dealer's living room.' She screwed up her nose again at the apartment. 'I mean, you tell me how a crime scene could be more contaminated than this pigsty?'

Mint was getting very jumpy now. He felt all three pairs of eyes burning into him and he glanced to the base of the sofa, trying to sum up his chances of reaching his pistol. Not great from this distance. He needed to get closer. 'How about I make some coffee and we talk through the situation?' he said as calmly as he could.

Persia shrugged and looked to her companions. 'Wanna coffee?'

'Not for me,' said Fazeem. Frankie just shook his head.

'Looks like we're passing on the coffee,' Persia muttered. 'Anyway, I think it'd be easier if we continued this conversation after you're dead.'

Mint's eyes widened but it was already too late to act. Frankie grabbed hold of his arms and Fazeem sprung at him with a flick-knife, stabbing wildly into his neck more than a dozen times. Blood sprayed out of severed arteries in all directions and was accompanied by a grotesque gargling noise from deep within Mint's throat. Frankie flung him to the ground to let him finish dying and wiped the blood flecks of blood he'd caught in his eyes. 'Man, were you trying to look like a crazy psycho or is that really how you kill someone?' he snapped at Fazeem.

Fazeem lowered the knife and gaped at Mint's mutilated form. 'I was just making sure of it,' he murmured defensively.

'Well you did that alright. Ain't no one living with their head hanging by a flap of skin.'

Mint's gurgling faded to silence and the body was still.

Fazeem and Frankie looked to Persia for her reaction.

'Frankie is right that you came across as some kind of deranged nut-job,' she said. 'But I'll put it down to youthful exuberance. The good news is you've got your gym clothes in the car. So you're going to get changed and head over to Brooklyn Community High. Give the son some similar treatment.'

'Really?' murmured Frankie.

'Sweet Gazar wants him taken care of.' Persia plucked an envelope from her pocket and handed it over to Frankie. 'Don't get your hopes up, it ain't money. You haven't suddenly turned into hitmen.'

'Isn't going around killing people what hitmen do?'

'The hitmen take out the adults while the apprentices can deal with the kids. You'll get paid after that.'

Fazeem pulled a face. 'So, what's in the envelope then?'

'A photo of the son, Jade. Take it with you to the school. Get him on the way home.'

Frankie pulled out the photo and looked over a young Jade smiling in a playground. 'I don't know about this. Doing a number on kids doesn't sit comfortably with me.'

'He's older than in the photo. And he's gonna keep getting older. A couple more years he'll come looking for you for what we've done to his mom and pop. Do you want to be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life?'

'But if his mother has just been done away with,' said Fazeem, trying to wipe the blood from his hands with a handkerchief, 'won't the cops have to come looking for him to break the news?'

'Normally they would,' said Persia. 'But when it's a dysfunctional family of prison inmates and drug dealers, they're more likely just send a postcard. So, let's be proactive about this.'

'Shouldn't we take something to make it appear like a robbery?' murmured Frankie, looking around the apartment on the off-chance there was something worth taking.

Persia screwed up her nose with the thought. 'Forget that, boys. The place already looks like it's been ransacked a good two or three times over.'

They left with a loud bang of the door but Jade did not stir from the lavatory quickly. It was not until dark that he finally emerged. Alice Persia was right, the cops hadn't come. And he wasn't about to call them. The neighbours would let them know once the smells grew worse than usual. Which meant it would take a while. The apartment was engulfed in darkness, but Jade did not turn on a light, did not want to see what was left of his stepfather. The grotesque gurgling noise had been plain to hear from the toilet, had left no doubt as to Mint's fate. Although there had been few good memories of him alive, it did not mean Jade wanted the last memory of him to be with his neck cut to shreds. He moved in a wide arc around the patch of floor where he had heard Mint's demise. And he moved gingerly in case Mint had crawled that way in a last gasp of life – stumbling into his stepfather's body or slipping over a pool of his blood would have been truly revolting.

Jade reached the couch unhindered and busily felt under it. His fingers touched the pistol first but it was the sock beside it that he wanted: it was the closest thing to a bank account Mint had ever kept. It was stuffed with the money he had made from his career of drug dealing. Jade doubted there was much though, for it slipped into his pocket all too easily. Like Persia said, Mint had always been a lousy gambler.

Jade did not take anything more and did not look back as he left the apartment never intending to return.

6

Jade Jacks went to the Port Authority Terminal Bus Station looking to get out of town in a hurry. Even nearing midnight, the sinister-looking cage of a building was busy. The 8th Avenue traffic was bristling with impatience and its pedestrians were either staring at Jade menacingly or not looking at all. Jade made his way to the intercity departure's screen on the bus station's main level and was all eyes for the places he might go. He was encouraged to see the screen was still filled with choices. But as he scanned the list of city names, he realized he didn't actually know where any of the places were. At home he played video games on his bed and at school he played them under his desk. Listening to teachers was the furthest thing on his mind. The world was shitty and he didn't much care to be educated about it – until now there had simply been nothing about it he wanted to know. The teachers let it go because they were too afraid of his mad mom. She had gone to Brooklyn Community High as well and had not been forgotten: her reputation for pushing drugs and rough handling rivals had been around even then.

Jade thought about looking up the departure board destinations on his mobile phone. Philadelphia, Miami, and Seattle all caught his eye, though he didn't think any of them were in California, which, from what he knew, was the furthest place from New York. Anyway, he decided against using his phone in case it was being tracked. The ankle bracelet his mum had been forced to wear the last time she was out on parole had made it abundantly clear how much the cops loved tracking people. And Sweet Gazar's hitmen would be even better at it. Jade turned the phone off and removed the SIM card.

He went to the lavatories at the Subway Level and locked himself in the farthest cubicle. It was filthy and stank so bad his nostrils were burning. He dropped his phone into the toilet and flushed it away. That was when it really hit him: at sixteen years of age he was now officially an orphan and the life he had known was gone for good. In its stead he had become marked for death. Not because he had done anything wrong. It was simply that a crazed gangster named Sweet Gazar was afraid he might come looking for revenge. If only Jade could have explained to her that he didn't know his mother particulaly well, that she had been in jail a lot of the time, and that the men she had left behind in her place had been king-sized fuck ups who had done nothing except teach him how to take a punch. It just didn't leave him in the right headspace for avenging her. Anyway, he doubted he could have explained his feelings to anyone with a sympathetic ear let alone someone solely interested in blowing his head off.

He wondered then if he should go to the cops instead. They could put him into their witness protection program, give him a new identity and a new life. Perhaps in Miami or Mexico. Somewhere with T-shirt weather. Jade liked the idea so much he started to consider the logistics: which police station he would go to, how he would get there, how he would introduce himself. Where the idea fell down, however, was in deciding what he would actually tell them. The problem was he didn't know anything of an incriminating nature. Nothing other than a few little things on his mom and so-called stepfather and they were now both dead. Sure he had been present at his stepdad's murder, but had been on the wrong side of a lavatory door to be an effective witness. The cops wouldn't laugh at him, they'd just lock him in a room and call protective services. Before long he would have a brand-new guardian to beat him up or a juvenile home where he would be fighting kids his same age. And at some point Sweet Gazar's people would be guaranteed to show up. They'd just be putting him out of his misery.

The one part of the idea Jade couldn't let go of, however, was having a new identity. He didn't need the cops help to do that. He could call himself whoever he wanted, look however he wanted. The thought made him feel better. He closed his eyes and slept a while.

When he woke up the toilets were quiet and didn't smell as bad. Maybe the cleaners had been through. Or maybe he had just gotten used to it. He left the cubicle and went to one of the basins. No, the cleaners hadn't been through - there was some puke in it. An exploded omelet. He washed it away as best he could and then had a drink and washed his face. He was starting to feel kind of good about the situation. Not having a bedroom meant no one drunk or high on the other side of the door might come bursting in at any moment to start throwing punches. This felt like summer camp in comparison to what he was used to. He looked at himself in the mirror and thought he looked better than he probably should've. The whites of his eyes were clear and his complexion didn't look so bad. Especially considering the only thing he had eaten for the day was an egg and spinach sandwich. The bruising around his eye was still prominent. Mint's hit had certainly been one to remember him by. He supposed it had saved his life though. Without it he would have gone to school as usual and ended up with his throat slit. The world was kind of twisted like that.

Jade looked at his watch. It was 3am. He'd better get back to his cubicle and get some shut eye. On the way he noticed some graffiti scratched on one of the stall doors. _Pain and Panic waz ere_. He thought about the message back in the cubicle. He decided to adopt it into his new identity. Jade Panic: that would do. He would join coyotes and red foxes in being a wild animal of New York City. Living off the land. An urban scavenger. He plucked out his pocketknife and returned to the graffiti on the stall door; he changed the message to: _Jade Panic waz born ere_.

7

The club was named the Death Disco and had a handwritten sign on the door: _Busboy wanted - sleepers need not apply_. The building was a converted warehouse of red and brown brick with a metal door and bars over its shuttered windows. Jade knocked and realised the door was not going to emit a noise without a ramrod. He noticed a faded blood spatter on the concrete step at his feet. Jade Jacks might have thought twice about going any further. But that person had been buried at sea at the start of the day – his library card, his only piece of ID, having been flushed down the toilet of the Port Authority Bus Station. That was a fitting farewell for Jade Jacks. Now there was Jade Panic and he was not going to think twice about doing anything. He entered the night club with a swagger and looked around for someone to talk to. There were a couple of roadies in torn black denim working on the sound system and a tall man stocktaking on the other side of the bar with a black vinyl covered notebook. Jade figured the man at the bar was probably the one who could make a decision and went that way. The man had greasy jet-black hair and a straggly black beard. He wore a pale blue T-shirt and thick black arm hair poured out from the sleeves. The man looked up with a hard pair of grey eyes, taking Jade in as though he were just another item to be accounted for.

'You're a little early if you came to dance,' he said dryly.

'I came about the job on the door,' said Jade.

'Is that so? Well, I have to tell you whatever miserable form a busboy might take, he doesn't look like you. Are you even old enough to be in a nightclub?'

'Sure,' said Jade, a little too adamantly. 'I wouldn't waste your time.'

The man straightened up from the bar to reveal his full height and folded his powerful looking arms. 'I'm not so sure about that. But fortunately for you I'm in the mood for a chat. Nightclubs in the daytime are unbearably fake places. It's like seeing a one-night stand in the morning with the makeup off, there are no more illusions.'

Jade smirked. 'Kind of like the blood on your doorstep?'

The man gave him a hard look. 'So why do you want to be a busboy?'

'To save some money for college.'

'You want to be lawyer or something?'

'Yeah, of course.'

'Your parents don't have the money to put you through?'

'No, but we're a big, happy family.'

'That's a shame because if you take this job, you'll be working so late they'll never get to see you.'

'We all have to make sacrifices.'

'Do you have experience working in a bar?'

'Yeah, I've worked here and there.'

'That must be the name of a bar 'cause you sure as hell haven't worked here.'

Jade did not reply but continued to look the man hard in the eye.

'What's your name?' the man asked.

'Jade Panic.'

'Yeah? Well, your name could be Jade Panic and it could be that you're talking a lot of bull. But when the lights go down and the music is pumping through the club, that's when I see what's true and what's fake. Makeup or no makeup. I become like a fortuneteller. That's why I've lasted in this business so long.' He paused a moment. 'I'll give you a chance. Come back at eleven and we'll see what kind of busboy you make.'

Jade smiled. 'Thanks.'

'It's too early to thank me just yet. The Death Disco with all its temptations has been the ruin of many a cocky kid. Every night there will be someone new trying to stick a pill in your mouth or whisper an offer in your ear. And one day there'll be someone you can't say no to. Then before you know it you won't be able to say no to anyone. I've been in this business twenty years and I've seen it happen plenty.'

'I'll be careful.'

'Yeah, do that. Right now, even with bruises around them, I can see that your eyes are clear of substance abuse. Keep it that way or I'll have security throw you out the door so hard you'll be leaving your own marks on the concrete.' The man smirked and held out his hand. 'Nice to meet you by the way, my name is Franco Moose.'

Jade shook his hand.

'So, how did you get that black eye?' Moose murmured. 'It wasn't a member of your big, happy family, was it?'

Jade shook his head.

'Well, employees of Death Disco don't get black eyes. A bunch of us finish off every shift with a work out at the local twenty-four-hour gym. And sometimes at my home as well. We pump iron until midmorning. I'm talking bouncers, bartenders, cleaners and the odd customer so long as they're either cool or hot. A few months with us, I guarantee you won't be getting any more black eyes.'

'Sounds good.'

Moose returned to his audit and idly murmured, 'Take the sign off the door on your way out.'

*

Jade left the Death Disco with a spring in his step. The job would be perfect. He would work all night in a club full of people too weird themselves to notice him and at the end of a shift he would get stronger with Moose and his gym junkie staff members. And the gym would also be the place to shower and wash and generally keep himself from becoming just another stinky, unkempt homeless malcontent. And afterwards he would spend his days sleeping where he could and sharpening his head with books. The only question nagging at him was would such an extreme life really be necessary? Surely Sweet Gazar wouldn't be that concerned in tracking him down. After all, he was nothing but a harmless kid. He didn't have any friends and his own teachers struggled to remember his name, and that was despite having repeated a couple of years. He had heard the stories of Japanese soldiers hiding away on tropical islands for decades because they hadn't believed World War Two was over. He would hate to be like that, hiding when no one was even looking for him. He looked at his watch and realised if he hurried, he could reach his school just in time for the final bell. Perhaps he would be able to spot the men Gazar had sent to kill him. They hadn't gotten him yesterday, so maybe they would try again today. If they were serious, they would. Jade had not seen their faces but had caught their names: Frankie and Fazeem. Maybe he would know them when he saw them. Even at the Brooklyn Community College a couple of hardened killers would tend to stand out.

With his mind made up, Jade moved quickly. The school was a train and a bus ride away. And it wasn't lost on him the irony that this was probably the first time he had ever rushed to school. But he found himself enjoying the journey nonetheless. He had always travelled with his head down in his smartphone and now that circumstances were forcing his eyes up and his senses attuned to his surroundings, he realised New York was not as cliquey as he had always imagined. Nearly everyone was travelling alone just like him. It was not at all like school where everyone was in a group or a gang and being alone made you the lowest of the low – which is how Jade had always felt. Here no one was even glancing at him. Maybe he was being spewed out into the real world too young, but at least it seemed more ready to accept him than the school where he had been expected to endure another two long, miserable years.

Jade had soon reached his school for this one last time. He was not there as a student. The sound of his stepfather gasping for life with a cut throat was still reverberating inside his head. He had graduated. He took up position across the road from the main gate and scouted the scene. School had been out fifteen minutes and there was still a steady stream of students rushing to leave. Jade recognised some of them. A few even were classmates. But it was only when he saw Lois Allen did he finally start to feel something. Lois was a tall, gangly-limbed fifteen-year-old who had taken pity on him when she noticed he never came to school with lunch. She would feign not being hungry so that she could split her lunch with him without causing any embarrassment, without ever needing to be thanked. And Jade suddenly felt a pang of regret about that - he had never thanked her, probably the only person who had ever really been kind to him. He had an overwhelming urge to run across the road and tell her some feel good story about how his mother had got a job promotion in Las Angeles and that he was heading off to enjoy the high life. Lois had taken always taken his lies with an easy smile and nod and would do it again this time. It would be a good way to say goodbye. Jade started to cross the street in her direction when a cold, sinking feeling pulled him back. He scoured both sides of the street and spotted what he had been sensing. A man was leaning arms folded up against an old grey Pontiac with a hard chin, hunched shoulders and an unusually large nose. He was wearing a faded blue sports jacket and black jeans and was smoking idly as he maintained an intense vigil over the school. Jade wasn't sure if it was Frankie or Fazeem, but if there was one thing he had gained from his childhood, it was the knowledge of what an outsider looked like. The knife that had killed Mint would've been flung into a very deep river by now, but there would've been an equally deadly replacement in one of the man's pockets. Jade dared himself to go find out.

He turned back to Lois, hoping to at least catch her eyes and wave so long from where he was. She, however, was focused on the beat-up Ford station wagon she was hurrying towards. There was a brightly dressed woman in the driver's seat, the resemblance obvious enough to know Lois was being picked up by her mother. Lois got in the car and it pulled away into the traffic. That was when the anger hit Jade. Since he could remember he had been clinging to the hope he would one day have the chance to see his mother without the veil of a raging drug addiction, to see in her eyes more than a glazed euphoria or a numb hatred. He was sure he could have felt something for her, if only he had been able to see who she really was. She had tried often enough to let him in, the letters inviting him to visit her in prison terribly written but clearly heartfelt. Why had he never accepted? What had he been so afraid of? Instead of answers he only had this all-consuming anger. And if the man smoking complacently by the Pontiac really was Frankie or Fazeem, it meant the things he had overheard in the apartment were true: his mother murdered and his own life in peril. Jade looked around him for a weapon. A couple of second graders were crossing the road with baseball bats protruding from their bags. Probably on their way to practice. That would do. Jade jumped in front of them. 'I need to borrow your bat,' he said, pulling the nearest one from its bag.

'What are you doing?' the young owner protested. 'I need it.'

'Well, have you got a knife or a damn gun?' Jade replied.

'No.'

'Then your bat will have to do.' Jade marched across to the man by the Pontiac. 'Fazeem,' he called out but there was no reaction. 'Frankie,' he tried then and this time the man turned quickly his way. So, Frankie it was. Jade slugged him across the jaw with the meatiest part of the bat. Frankie crumpled to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Jade hit him some more and as the blood began to pour from his broken face, he realised he could have easily kept going until his head was mush. Screams from mothers in their cars, however, checked his rage. He stared disdainfully down at Frankie. 'You came looking for me and you found me. Now one day I may want to come looking for you.' He knelt down beside him and frisked through his pockets. He found a gun, a knife, a mobile phone, an envelope and a wallet. He tossed them all away except the phone. He slipped that into a pocket of his own. 'I might come looking for you when I feel like a second innings.' He paused to absorb the moment. He knew he was talking and acting exactly how his mother would have done and he liked it. That was the best kind of revenge.

'Stop right there,' screamed a security guard running towards him from the school's front entrance.

Jade wasn't fit but his body was bursting with adrenaline. He dropped the bat and sprinted away at such a speed the overweight middle-aged guard didn't even make an attempt to follow. Instead the guard turned to Frankie. 'Are you alright, sir? I'll call an ambulance.'

Although Frankie was still conscious, he did not even try to move. He had never been beaten up like this before and he couldn't bear to think what had happened to his face. He suspected his nose and jaw were dangling grotesquely. Teeth had definitely been rearranged, for he could feel them swimming around his mouth. He listened to the security guard make phone calls to the paramedics and police. The thought of this hurt more than the baseball bat. At some point someone with a badge would certainly ask him what he was doing hanging around the entrance of a high school with a gun and a knife. And if they did any DNA checking, they might just be able to link the gun to a series of bank robberies and a shooting or two.

'Alright, sir, the emergency services dispatch officer has been notified,' said the security guard. 'There will be an ambulance here soon.'

Frankie spat out some blood in reply.

'Excuse me, sir, is this your gun?' asked the security guard, bending over the pistol on the sidewalk, his voice darkening. 'Do you have a license to carry it?'

Frankie tried to pick himself up only for a stabbing pain in his ribs to put him back down flat.

'I think you better stay down, sir,' muttered the security guard sternly.

Frankie gritted his teeth in anger and blood ran through the gaps. He touched the empty pocket where the gun would have been if only he had been imagining this whole nightmare and Jade hadn't really disarmed him. Frankie managed to pry open his fast-swelling eyes to see the security guard pick up the gun with a pen the way they did it on TV. What he wouldn't have done to get it back. Of course, it wasn't registered, he had been planning to put a couple of rounds in the back of Jade's head. It was a gun that couldn't have been traced back to him. No serial number. No point of sale. But that only worked if he wasn't caught red handed. What made the situation even more unbearable was the security guard's pot belly and lazy eye. This was budget rate security at its worst and had no business being involved in his apprehension. For that matter, neither did a teenage kid. Frankie may have been blind-sided, but he would never live it down. Not unless he put the kid's head on a pike. That at least would give people pause when contemplating snide remarks. Frankie looked around him for the photograph of Jade Jacks, wanting to preserve it for further reference. He found it lying right by his head, almost as though taunting him. He carefully picked it up and returned it to its envelope, making sure he only held it by its edges, not wanting to soil it with more blood than was already there. And that was a further taunt, knowing how easily his mother's blood had been spilt. Usually at such times, taking out the family members was straight forward and clinical. A son might have to die for his mother's betrayal but that was nothing a couple of bullets or a sharp blade to an artery couldn't take care of. So, what had happened? How had Jade even known he was there?

It was hard for Frankie to think with his head knocked in. As the sirens emerged in the distance, he knew he just had to let it go.

He looked up at the security guard and said desperately, 'You've called the wrong cop. Call Detective Roger Platts. He's the right kind of cop. He pays out rewards without needing arrests.'

The security guard stroked his mustache as he mulled over the offer. 'Your detective friend got a number?'

'It's in the contacts in my phone.'

'And where's your phone?'

'It's on the ground somewhere.'

The security guard looked around the vicinity of where he had found the wallet and the gun and shook his head. 'There ain't no phone.'

Had the damned kid stolen it? Incensed, Frankie tried to retrieve the phone number from his memory, but that was hopeless. He didn't make a habit of calling cops, even bent ones, so it was a number he had barely ever used. 'Look again,' was all he could say.

'There ain't no phone,' snapped the security guard again, 'and there ain't no number. So, you're getting whichever cop happens to step out that car.'

Frankie sighed. 'You at least got a cigarette?'

'Yeah, I got a cigarette, but you ain't got a mouth.'

Frankie's face twisted up in anger. So, the snide comments had already started. He really needed to get hold of that kid and make him dead. And he would make a point of getting close enough to see his eyes as it happened. It would feel so good.

8

The latest man entering the New York City Hall toilets was wearing a nice looking black suit and was holding the _New York Times_. He had greying hair and looked tired. He quickly disappeared into a stall and would probably be there a while – an escape from the monotony of his desk. Jade had a similar idea though the reading material in his hands was a two-thousand-page history of the United States that he had picked up virtually for free at a thrift store. Time to get an education, he thought. His experience at the bus station had been a wakeup call, not knowing enough about America to even buy a ticket. If he was going to escape New York, he needed to know where to go. More importantly, if he was going to survive on his own, he needed to know more than his enemies. The one thing he had learned from his doomed parents was that in order to survive, enemies had to be dealt with. All those years at school had been the wrong way to learn. If he ever got something right in class, his classmates would wanna push him around. And when the teacher asked him a question that he got wrong, often they would push him around for that too. But their toughness was a cheap playground kind which paled against what Sweet Gazar brought to the table. And no tired eyed, red cheeked high school teacher was going to be able to help Jade either. He couldn't even ask them for fear of being shunted into a juvenile home. Legally too young to be alone, he could see in his reflection just how young he was. Too young yet to take on the likes of Sweet Gazar. But if he was patient enough there were good reasons why he might not have to. The most likely was that someone else would kill her first. After all, being a crime boss was fraught with danger. Especially for such a ruthless figure as Gazar. There would be a thousand hands itching to put a knife into her back. Or failing that Gazar could wind up in jail. She wasn't the sort of crime boss that necessarily put distance between herself and the dirty work. Jade had experienced firsthand the kind of blood trail that would one day lead the police to her door. Or maybe she would disappear overseas. She had been born in Colombia and might head into the jungles when things got too hot.

Anyway, Jade would not go looking for the answer to that until he was ready for it to be no. He took his book into one of the stalls and locked himself in. He sat down, putting the odors out of his mind. He would read until he fell asleep and when he woke up would read a little more. There must have been thousands of public toilets scattered all over New York where he could hide from the day. Subway stations, department stores, hotels and fast food outlets. And perhaps even the odd sports stadium and cinema. It meant he would never need to go to the same spot twice. A thousand books in a thousand toilets. This was how he would grow up. The flushing of toilets would mean more to him than anyone else in the whole city. It would be his fountain of knowledge. He would learn and grow up and be the person he wanted to be. And when he was ready, he would go looking for Sweet Gazar. Once she was taken care of he could become Jade Jacks again.

Jade was cheered by the prospect. He had a future to look forward to. And it was fitting that he was starting with a book about American History. Maybe it would help him understand why this city had become so hard. Or if in fact it had always been like this. He opened the book on his lap and did his best to ignore a rather spectacular bowel movement in a neighbouring stall. He started to read.

*

Jade was awoken by the screaming and grunts of someone getting beaten up.

For an instant Jade didn't know where he was. He was blocked in by white walls, so close that it felt like a coffin. The air of danger was ice cold and his jaw was clamped together in the throes of some horrible nightmare he had been having.

'Still gonna fuck Sal?' a man shouted.

'No,' the victim cried from down on the floor.

'Damn right you're not. But I'm going to put my cigarette out right on your face.' There was another scream. 'Shut up, bitch, that's a beauty spot. Next time it'll be a blade and I'll be cutting your nose off.'

Jade was getting his bearings now. He was still on the toilet seat in City Hall, the American history book on his lap. He didn't dare look at his watch to see how long he had been asleep for. He didn't dare even breathe. His ears strained for that familiar sound of throat being slashed, gripped by the same all-consuming fear as when his stepfather was murdered. But the death gargle never came. The washroom door opened and closed quickly and all that was left was a quiet whimpering at the sink. The tap was turned on and there were splashing noises.

Jade guessed the victim really had had a cigarette stubbed out on his face, for the smell of cigarette was plain enough in the air. He resisted the urge to see if the victim was alright. It would be too shameful to admit he had been there the whole time and yet done nothing. And besides, just because the guy had been used as an ashtray, it didn't make him friendly. He might even have deserved it. All Jade really knew was that if the City Hall toilets were like this then nowhere would be safe.

He recalled the Kung Fu Assassins video game on his phone. He replayed the moves carefully in his mind's eye and then stood up and began to try them out, punches and blocks as fast as he could. And suddenly for the first time since he could remember he started to feel good. All the anger and tension that had been building within him was flooding to the surface, driving his fists with a fury. He knew he was breathing heavily enough to be heard but he felt too good to stop. He let the sound of his dying stepfather come to him again and he stepped into a front kick that smashed the cubicle door clear off its hinges. The door finished up propped against the sink. Jade picked up his book and left the stall. There was fresh blood on the floor near the sink where the man had been beaten up; the man was no longer there, but there was someone else cowering at the urinals. 'I haven't seen your face!' the man cried in a panic, covering his face with his arm. 'My eyes are closed!'

Jade saw that the man was urinating all over the floor and smirked. 'Yeah, I can tell.' He gave him a wide berth and walked out of the toilets.

4 Years Later

Part 2

The Disturbed

1

Two NYPD homicide detectives, Robinson and Sanchez, were gazing into the male toilets of the Lavardi Brother's Funeral Home. The forensics team were busily at work, sweeping the area for the small and the minute: hair, fluids and fibres. The body was still on the floor, face down in a pool of blood. Looking at the destruction about the toilets it had been quite a fight. Cubicle doors broken, mirrors shattered and walls cracked. The two detectives were still absorbing the novelty of the crime scene itself. It wasn't every day that a dead body turned up in a funeral parlor, at least not one outside a coffin.

Robinson was the older of the two detectives and his newfound obsessive veganism had left his suit struggling to cling onto the skeletal frame within. Sanchez had a thick mustache and a three hundred push-up a day chest. Between them there were twenty-five years of experience in homicide investigations, and eyeing over the heavily tattooed male body in the middle of the toilet floor did not give either the impression the cause of death was particularly exotic. A brawl turned deadly.

'It has to be said,' Robinson muttered with more than a hint of cynicism in his voice, 'a funeral home is a convenient spot to find a body. Should we bother taking it to the morgue or just leave it here?'

Sanchez waved a hand incredulously at the destruction about the toilets. 'What is your summation, partner? Does the crime scene suggest this is simply a body that has been misplaced or does it look like a murder spawned from a hand to hand altercation? And before you answer that, have you noticed that his arm has been snapped at the elbow and that his neck has been twisted to six o'clock?'

'I am confident enough to say that this was a fight without a referee.'

'Excuse me, Detectives Robinson and Sanchez?' The man approached purposefully from the front reception area. He was wearing a grey suit and holding an FBI identification card. 'Special Agent Max Davell.' A high, sharp forehead and thin jaw gave the man a somewhat dislikable appearance. As did his stern gaze.

'FBI?' muttered Robinson with surprise. 'I didn't think fighting in a public toilet in the Bronx would warrant federal attention. Unless you know something we don't.'

Davell stopped alongside them in the doorway and took in the crime scene. 'I'm just seeing what you are: a toilet that's out of order. According to the uniformed officer out front, a suspect has been picked up.'

'That's right,' said Sanchez. 'The gardener found him curled up bawling his eyes out in the back garden. Apparently, he had tripped and hit his head on a water feature.'

'This crime scene doesn't look like the work of someone who cries hugging a fountain in a garden.'

'He claims to be a victim,' Robinson informed.

'Where is he now?'

'In the back of the squad car out front. You must've walked right passed him. We'll take him back to the station to make his statement. This crime scene is practically raining evidence, so we'll find out soon enough how deeply he's involved.'

'Mind if I have a word with him first?'

The two homicide detectives gave Davell a more discerning look than before.

'Is the FBI taking over the case?' queried Sanchez.

'It's too early to say. Let's talk with the kid before anything.'

The chance to handoff a dirty case like this was too good an opportunity to pass up, so the NYPD detectives led the Special Agent out onto the gravel courtyard of the funeral home and fished the handcuffed teenage suspect out of the squad car. From the first glance, Davell could see he wasn't the type to break someone's neck with his bare hands. He was chubby and quivering with nerves and, apart from the gash on his forehead, his skin was a soft unblemished white - that, combined with his red Tommy Hilfiger polo shirt, smacked of a privileged upbringing. He surmised that this was a kid whose usual idea of a crisis was when he had to tie his own shoelaces.

'What's your name, son?' Davell asked.

'Harold Greegan, sir,' replied the teenager in a squeaky prepubescent voice.

'Don't take the handcuffs personally, Harold. You were seen running from quite a nasty crime scene. And although precautions need to be taken, I feel I will be safe having a chat with you without them.' He turned to Robinson and Sanchez. 'Let's get the handcuffs off.'

Robinson relayed the order to the uniformed officer and the handcuffs were removed.

'Let's sit down a moment,' said Davell, 'and you can tell us what happened.'

'The garden out back is quiet and has seats,' suggested the uniformed officer.

'I'm not going to propose to him,' snapped Davell testily out the corner of his mouth. 'We'll stay right here and if he's got nothing to say, he can call his lawyer and the handcuffs will go right back on.'

'They took me here,' said Harold, seizing on his chance to explain himself. 'I was on my way to class when they picked me up.' He sat down on the gravel next to the squad car and pressed his legs up against his chest.

Davell knelt beside him. 'Where do you study?'

'New York University.'

'That's a fair way from here.'

'They drove me here.'

'Who is _they_.'

'Three men. Bad looking. Covered in tattoos. Latino, I think. They were speaking either Spanish or Portuguese. But I don't know who they are.'

'Didn't your parents warn you about getting into cars with strange men?'

'They accosted me on the street, forced me into their car. And they knew my name. They said if I didn't come with them, they would kill my parents. They had a photo to prove they weren't bluffing.'

'A photo of your parents?'

'That's right.'

'Were they armed?'

Harold nodded and wiped away a tear.

'Knives?'

'Knives and guns.'

'Why did they bring you to a funeral parlour?'

'I don't know. They took me into the toilets and threatened me. They told me if I didn't pay them, they would kill my parents. Four hundred dollars a month. And they flushed my head in the toilet.'

'So, they brought you to a funeral home to scare you?'

'I guess. They said this was where I would see my parents next if I didn't give them a thousand bucks right there and then as a sign of good faith.'

'Sounds like a bread and butter case of extortion and I suppose your parents are quite wealthy.'

'My father works on Wall Street.'

'Well, it's one form of trickledown economics. I'm sure at some point a police officer will want to talk to you about it. But for now let's focus on how there came to be a dead body in the washroom.'

'Did you put him there?' asked Robinson standing just behind them.

Harold shook his head adamantly. 'There was someone else in the toilets. He was in the last cubicle, kind of like he was hiding. He jumped onto the three of them and fought them single handed. I couldn't see much, I was on the floor and my head had just been flushed, but I could see that he moved much faster than the gang.'

'So, you didn't see the victim getting his neck broken?' asked Davell.

'I heard it. Well, I think I did. There was more than one bone being broken.'

'Did you get a look at your rescuer?'

'Not really. He was wearing a hoodie. I saw a bit of his face. He seemed young, but I didn't really see him.'

'What was his ethnicity? Latino?'

'Nah, I couldn't say.'

'Was he hurt in the fight?'

'I don't think so. He was definitely the last man standing.'

'How do you know that?'

'He came to the cubicle, asked me if I was alright.'

'And yet you claim you couldn't see his face.'

'I told you he was wearing a hoodie.'

Davell backed away and put his hands on his hips. The two homicide detectives came in beside him. 'Did you hear all that?' Davell muttered.

'Sure,' said Robinson. 'But it doesn't sound likely to me. A vigilante lurking in the toilets of a funeral home? Bullshit.'

'As a matter of fact, I'm here because that's just the scenario I was expecting.'

Robinson raised his eyebrows. 'So, you've been in places like this before?'

'More or less. Unfortunately, the investigations haven't progressed much beyond a few matching DNA samples, and they would probably be thrown out of court if we were got our hands on a suspect. Public toilets, after all, are awash with DNA.'

'And no chance of surveillance cameras in a toilet either,' added Sanchez.

'No unless there's a pervert in residence.'

'Maybe we should send out a media release,' said Robinson sardonically. 'To all criminals of New York, stay out of public toilets, for the Toilet Man is going to get you.'

Davell slipped on his aviator sunglasses to conceal his ire at being mocked. 'I have every faith in the NYPD's ability to make the right calls in this investigation.' He turned and walked away. 'Just leave my name out of it.'

Robinson and Sanchez watched him return to his silver Ford executive on the other side of the courtyard and speed away.

'What was that all about?' Robinson murmured. 'Was he scanning the radio waves for any hints of toilet action?'

'It creeps me out when you put it like that.' Sanchez waved at the uniformed officer. 'Put the handcuffs back on the kid and get him in the car.' As this was being done, Sanchez shook his head at his partner. 'Is the FBI losing its mind or is there really something going on here?'

Robinson shrugged. 'Let's start by seeing if the kid can tell the same story twice.' A wry smirk formed on his lips. 'I was going to use the bathroom before we left, but I think I'll wait till we get back to the station.'

2

Lance Krenshaw had come to the gun range with a lot of things on his mind. His ex-wife was nagging him for more money and his two young daughters had picked up the habit as well. At work, his sales targets had been increased and at home the kitchen tap was constantly dripping. As he thought about these things, he fired rounds from his Koch pistol. He was encouraged by his accuracy upon the targets. He could always tell he was living straight when he was shooting straight.

Krenshaw was in his late thirties. The growth spurt he had longed for as a teenager had never eventuated. He had short black hair, a freckled complexion and a long nose that would have resembled his father's, if only his father hadn't let his get beaten down flat during his long years of hard living and barroom brawling. He was more overweight than he had ever been before and he tried to conceal it with loose shirts and, when he was not shooting, bulky jackets. What he really needed was to be more active and his gym membership was perpetually renewed for that purpose. But he simply didn't have time to both workout and to visit the gun range. And the gun range won out every time. The power of what his body was capable of in the gym couldn't begin to compare with that of his beloved Koch pistol. An awe-inspiring, uncompromising power. The power to take life.

It was an unseasonably cool Saturday morning in late June. Krenshaw had traveled to the fringe of New York City so that he could shoot in the great outdoors. He always preferred being in the midst of nature as he did his gunplay. The traffic had been lousy but worth putting up with to be here now. Krenshaw's only regret was that his usual shooting buddy, Gary Blake, had canceled at the last moment with a headache. His friend would have been impressed with his groupings upon the target. Barely a stray shot. Better than the other shooters around him - even the ones with rifles. Perhaps they were noticing. They might have suspected he was a law enforcement agent or from the military \- well, with his extra pounds, perhaps ex-military.

After exactly an hour, he ended the session. He removed his earmuffs and packed away his weapon into its leather satchel bag. Then, as always, he went for a beer. The firing range had a small bar and Krenshaw chose a window table. He wasn't the type who felt compelled to chatter whenever an alcoholic drink was in hand. He nursed his pleasantly cold glass and stared out into space. He might have still been thinking about all those things going wrong in his life, but after the exhilaration of the gunplay, they weren't getting to him nearly as much. And anyway, as it turned out, a conversation was coming his way.

'Mind if I join you?' Fazeem Hasan had barely changed in the four years that had passed. He still took good care of his handlebar mustache and retained a confident glint in his intense brown eyes. He had come from nowhere to be standing beside Krenshaw's table. He was wearing a heavy black leather jacket - probably too warm for this weather.

Krenshaw's initial instinct was to blow him off. There was something about this stranger that just wasn't right. Fazeem recognised his reticence and smirked. 'You shot well today.'

Krenshaw warmed with that. He was happy to have been noticed. He nodded casually. 'Thanks, man. I won't be staying long but you can pull up a chair if you like.'

Fazeem did just that and had another couple of beers brought to the table. His demeanour was calm and assured. He sipped his beer delicately, like it was champagne. 'I will not mislead you with pretensions of randomness,' he said. 'I know well who you are. I know your name. I know your place of employment and residence. And most importantly, I know that you are one of the one percenters - that one percent of the population who are natural killers.'

Krenshaw frowned. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'That is understandable. You live a normal life and you've probably never even suspected there might be something wrong with it apart from the usual. I dare say you've been dissatisfied so long you probably just accept it.' Fazeem paused for effect. 'I am a businessman and the product I sell is a remedy for emptiness and banality. It's a chance to be who you really are.'

'Are you selling life insurance? I should tell you I'm in that industry too.'

Fazeem chuckled. 'In fact, the exact opposite is true. I'm selling the insurance to murder.'

Krenshaw visibly shook. 'What are you talking about?'

Fazeem studied his eyes and was encouraged by what he saw: amidst the usual mix of surprise, suspicion and anxiety, there was that all important element that was either there or wasn't, and with this particular life insurance salesman it was there in spades: the element of curiosity.

'You shoot pretty good and I can tell from your enthusiasm that you have people in mind when you take on the targets. Unfortunately, we cannot give you those folks. That would bring the cops calling. But we can give you someone else to take out. I speak from experience when I say it will satisfy you like you have never been satisfied before.'

Krenshaw looked around him, wanting to ensure there was no one close enough to eavesdrop. 'What you're talking about is murder,' he muttered.

'Yes, but not cold-blooded murder. My company will set up a contest between you and a willing participant who will stand to win a good deal of money if he is able to elude the attention of your gun. You will put up a stake of twenty thousand dollars. If the quarry survives, this sum will be his reward. If he is killed, the stake will be added to our fee as payment.'

'It doesn't make sense. If I wanted to kill someone, I could do it for free.'

Fazeem smirked knowingly. 'My friend, you would pay with fifteen to twenty years in a maximum security penitentiary. What is forty grand compared to that? For your payment, my company will offer four things. Firstly, a worthy consenting human target. Secondly, an untraceable gun. Thirdly, a personalised training program to get you ready for the big day. And fourthly, back up on the day should anything unforeseen occur. We will be supporting you with a considerable amount of hardware and expertise.'

Krenshaw had recovered from the initial shock of what was being sold and, with a relaxed gulp of beer, murmured, 'How do I know you're not the cops trying to set me up.'

'Have you ever heard of cops trying to turn a law-abiding citizen into a hitman? Anyway, it would entrapment. The courts would throw the case out with a severe reprimand against the cops. And the media would have a frenzy. The fact that you have never heard of a case like this just proves the discretion and reliability of our service. We have been operating for over four years and have had more than fifty clients. Not all have killed. Some were too slow or inaccurate to hit their human target. Some were in a good position but when the time came to make the shot they realised they weren't cut out to be killers after all. Most, however, accomplished what they set out to and their lives have become complete. Once you have become a killer it is something no one can ever take away from you.'

Krenshaw couldn't help but feel excited and intrigued. It was true he had often fantasised about killing someone, wondered what it would feel like. But he had always just dismissed it as the fading remnants of schoolboy daydreams. Suddenly, however, it was resurfacing in earnest in his adult world, a place that was rarely anything more than dull and tedious. 'Tell me a little more about the human target you have in mind,' he found himself saying.

'We take great pains in the selection process. It cannot be too easy or else you'll feel like a murderer not a killer. So, someone young and in sound physical condition. Generally, we look for someone unemployed and homeless, someone who is a burden on society. We offer them a chance of redemption, money to start a new life. If you fail to kill your target, at least he will have a second chance at life.'

'You say you have seen me shoot. Do you think I will miss?'

Fazeem smiled. 'We run a handicap race and you can be sure we will have a challenging opponent for you.' He looked at his watch and grabbed a napkin and scrawled down a phone number. 'I have another appointment. I will leave you with a contact number. Call me when you are ready to commit to the project.' He slid the napkin across the table. The number did not come with a name, just the letter F.

Krenshaw picked up the napkin and stared at it intently.

'Let me save you some heartache by telling you how the process inevitably plays out,' said Fazeem. 'Your initial reaction is that the idea is simply too dangerous to even contemplate and the overwhelming temptation is to throw the number away. But you don't. And as the days and weeks go by, you find that the seed of the idea takes hold and continues to grow and grow until it can't be shaken. You realise that the opportunity may never come along again and that you aren't about to sacrifice five years in the military purely on the off chance they give you someone to kill. Although some people do it, you realise you don't need to salute to be a killer. And finally, you accept that what you are being offered is the chance to experience natural selection in its purest form. Two opponents battling over life and death with only one to be victorious. That will have you once again gripping the napkin with my phone number as tightly as you are now. But what will push you to actually making the call, is the irrepressible urge to explore the killer that you know is inside you, lying dormant just beneath the surface. That is what has inspired me to offer this service and why the prices are affordable for the average person. Once you have become a killer, your self-worth will never again be a concern. You will never have to doubt yourself as the hardest man in the room.' Fazeem rose out of his chair and smirked. 'If in a moment of weakness you are tempted to call the police instead of me, just remember the business I am in, Mr Krenshaw. Have a nice day.'

Krenshaw watched him leave and tried to calm himself with his beer. Hearing his name uttered hit home that this wasn't some kind of bizarre practical joke. He had been approached in a very precise, professional manner. These people were for real.

Krenshaw remained lost in thought at the table for quite a while before finally snapping out of his trance. He put down some money for the beer and stood up with Fazeem's napkin in hand. He could have left that behind too, let the waitress dispose of it when she cleared the table. But after a moment's hesitation, he slipped the napkin into his jeans' pocket. He really was never going to do anything less.

*

Fazeem's encounter with Krenshaw had put him behind schedule. He drove fast out to the Fishkill Prison in Beacon. Although he pulled some time back, he was still half an hour late. But he knew Frankie wouldn't mind too much. Time spent waiting outside a prison was infinitely easier than the eons spent waiting within. Frankie Lovina was standing across the road from the sinister looking brown brick prison. Fazeem had only visited him twice during his four year stretch and it struck him how thin he had become. The clothes he had entered prison with were hanging off him loosely, especially at the shoulders, which had seemingly disappeared. The sight left Fazeem with a pang of guilt. If he had been backing up Frankie the last time he had been standing roadside, there would not have been a blindside attack by a baseball bat wielding teenager. But who could have known that the son was capable of such fight when the parents had proven to be such easy beats? And the kid was elusive too. No trace of him in four years. And that was despite Sweet Gazar's marshalling of the underworld and Detective Roger Platts' marshalling of the city's police resources. Fazeem pondered for a moment lying that he had caught up with Jade Jacks personally and put a bullet in his head and buried him in the State Forest. He dismissed the idea, however, for there was nothing like a few years in the can to hone one's sense of a lie. And that was what Fazeem knew he really needed to concentrate on. People usually came out of long stretches in the can different to the way they had gone in. Not just in terms of clothes sizes. Shot nerves, paranoia, sexual diseases, violent tempers. Perhaps, that was the State's idea of rehabilitation: messing with a player's head so bad they weren't good for a job anymore.

Just being on the road to the prison was enough to give Fazeem the jitters. The massive brown building mostly resembled a mental asylum and that pretty much was what it was. Fazeem was grateful he had gotten his incarceration out of his system in juvenile detention. He had learned plenty of skills in his two years under lock and key, and the most important lesson was if someone had to go to prison, just make sure it was somebody else. He pulled in against the curb and tooted his horn to get Frankie's attention. Frankie looked his way with a distant, glazed-eye look. Not quite a zombie, but Fazeem wondered just how much Fishkill had scrambled Frankie's brain. 'Hello stranger,' he said cheerily out the window. 'Put your luggage in the boot and let's go.'

'Very funny,' snapped Frankie, getting into the passenger seat. 'All I got on me is twenty bucks and a stolen Rolex that's stopped working.' He tapped the watch. 'Damned thing.'

'Too bad they didn't let you keep the Koch peacemaker as well. But I guess that's why you got thrown in the can in the first place.' Fazeem pulled a sharp hard U-turn, putting the Ford SUV back on the road to New York.

'Yeah, I guess. At the end of the day, I'm just lucky they didn't catch me with a weapon I actually killed someone with. Otherwise I would've been stuck in that mother a whole lot longer than four years.'

'So, where am I driving you on your first day out? We could go get a new battery for your Rolex.'

'Fuck that. Four years in prison I've learnt not to look at my watch.'

'Where then?'

'Know any good prostitutes?'

'Only by their professional names.'

'That's just the way I want it.'

'Suzie Gaze is the woman I'd recommend for you. She takes her time. Plenty of skills.'

'Well, she'd better have her game face on 'cause I've got four lost years to make up.'

'Damned right.'

They drove in silence for a while before Frankie muttered contritely, 'I guess she is gonna want more than twenty bucks for her efforts.'

Fazeem looked at him a long moment. 'A lot more than twenty bucks. That's all you got in your pocket?'

'That's all I got anywhere.'

'Really? They didn't pay you for making number plates or whatever the hell they make you do inside?'

Frankie shook his head. 'Prison doesn't pay particularly well.'

'Good thing you're out then.'

Frankie shrugged. 'I don't think freedom is going to pay much better. Apparently, my parole officer runs gas station franchises on the back of the slave labour of ex-cons. A real pain in the arse. How's that ever gonna put more than twenty bucks in my pocket?'

There was an uncomfortable pause before Frankie asked the question they both knew was coming: 'How's Sweet Gazar?'

'She's stood the test of time,' replied Fazeem matter-of-factly. 'More powerful than when you went in. No one knows how but she's been bringing in regular loads of smack from South America. Never lost a single one. Must be paying off the right people. And killing the right people as well.'

'Does she ask about me.'

'Four years ago, she asked just one question about you. "Can you take prison?" I said yes and I'm glad for both our sakes I was right. Since Wendy Jacks, she's lost her sense of humour concerning snitches.'

'So, she knows I'm dependable.'

Fazeem glared at him. 'She was willing to accept you could take a four-year stretch. You go down again and it's not gonna be anything less than ten. Even I don't think you could take that.'

'Fuck you.'

'Listen, you're out clean. You had protection inside the slammer and no one thinks you owe them now that you're out. Sweet Gazar has let herself forget about you. Think very carefully before you decide to remind her.'

Frankie held up the old ragged twenty-dollar bill in front of Fazeem's face. 'How else am I gonna add to this?'

Fazeem reached for the radio dial to end the conversation but hesitated. He pushed back into his seat. 'There's a side business I've been running. There might some money for you to make there.'

'A side business? Selling drugs? Cutting into other people's business can get you killed real ugly.'

'Nah, this is something completely different.'

'So, you've become an entrepreneur. What the hell is it?'

'We get told to kill people and we do it because we reckon they must've deserved it. But deep down we know we'd do it whether they deserved it or not. 'Cause we like it. So, then I got the feeling that regular folks might want to kill someone as well, if the circumstances were made right.' A car tooted as it tore up the road past them. Fazeem smirked. 'They sure act like they want to kill someone. And that's what my new business is all about. I offer people the chance to kill someone. Set up the target. Supply the weapon.'

Frankie laughed. 'People really pay for that? Can't they figure that out for themselves?'

'People don't have a clue. That's why most murders involve family members. They just let their instincts well up inside them until they lash out at the people around them. That just makes the cops' job easy for them. Do your killing random and the cops are clueless.'

Frankie thought about it for a moment and nodded. 'Yeah, I can see the sense in it. How's the business been going?'

'Good. I've learnt a thing or two from Sweet Gazar about being a small business owner. Don't get too big, don't get too greedy. Keep it slow. I've been going at it for a couple of years now. I reckon it just might be the right time to take on a partner.'

Frankie nodded. 'I'd like that.' He reached into the pocket of his faded blue jacket and came away with the blood-stained envelope containing the photograph of Jade Jacks on the playground swing. He lifted the photograph halfway out. 'Not that I'm ready to outsource all my killing until this is taken care of.'

Fazeem's eyes widened. 'You let yourself get arrested with that?'

'Why not? Unless he's already dead, I'm going to need it. When the cops asked me about it, I just told them it was a nephew. They were too lazy to check it out.'

'But if they had, they would have discovered the kid in the picture was a student at the school and that the blood of his mother is all over it. That would have added conspiracy to murder onto your rap sheet and a whole lot more time in the can.'

'The cops figured I was there to do a drug deal or collect on a debt. They were disappointed they didn't find any drugs on me and just assumed I got cleaned out when I got beaten up. They also assumed that all the blood on the photo was mine and so for them the more the merrier. All they saw was an unregistered gun and the extent of their detective work was to fill out the charge sheet.'

Although less than convinced, Fazeem wasn't about to needle someone the penal system might have turned into a mad-dog. 'It's just too bad you got beat up in the first place. How the kid knew you were there is beyond me. That's even assuming it was him. In that neighbourhood getting knocked on the head for your mobile phone is pretty standard, especially once school gets out.'

'But if you remember he gave me a bit of conversation. Threatened me like he was some kind of tough guy. It was him alright.'

'Yes, I remember you telling me that,' Fazeem murmured. 'Well, go get him if you can. But don't expect it to be part of any get rich quick scheme. Sweet Gazar has long since moved on from the Jacks family. She is comfortable she made her point with Wendy Jacks and Mint Smith. She isn't going to pay anything more.'

'Don't worry about that, it's one job I'll gladly do for free. So, tell me, hasn't the kid turned up even once in the last four years?'

'No, but if you ask me, he probably snuck away a long time ago to live with some hick uncle in a barn somewhere. Long gone. Anyway, after four years, the kid's not going to look the same as he does in that photograph. He'll have gone through puberty and look even uglier.'

Frankie pushed the photograph back into the envelope and returned it to his pocket. 'For his sake he better have slipped away to the other end of the earth. 'Cause the wrath I'm feeling is gonna make the world a very small place.' He turned his attention out the window with the same blank stare he had given the walls of his prison cell. 'If they knew half the things I done, I'd have been left inside a whole lot longer than four years.'

Fazeem drove in a wary silence. He reaffirmed to himself that to avoid his own downfall he would have to be vigilant about what headspace Frankie was in. There was plenty of actual paying work to share with his old partner if he still had it in him.

3

'Lift it!' cried Franco Moose enthusiastically, spotting above Jade on the weight bench. 'Don't let it whip you! Don't be someone's bitch!'

Jade's arms were threatening to buckle but he steeled himself for one last big effort. He had tried and failed at this weight before but two hundred pounds was feeling lighter now than ever. It was succumbing. Jade grunted with the exertion, pushing through the pain to lock his elbows above his chest.

'Good man!' said Moose jubilantly, safely steering the barbell back onto the weight bench. He slapped Jade across the check. 'Stay down if you don't won't a hug.'

'Go easy,' said Alice Joselu, Moose's girlfriend, flipping beef patties on the portable barbecue that shared the terrace with Moose's gym equipment. 'You don't want to give your girlfriend the wrong idea.'

'Wrong idea? You saw what he just did. You might be able to lift two hundred pounds in your sleep but for this young man it's a first.' Moose held out his hand to Jade who was grateful for the help in getting off the bench.

Joselu was a fitness-fanatic paramedic and was ripped in her tight-fitting khaki T-shirt. 'Actually, I can't lift that much and I wouldn't try. Anyway, when I was Jade's age there was only one first I got that excited about. And it wasn't lifting weights.'

'But it did involve laying on your back,' snapped Moose. 'And you were probably ten years younger than Jade at the time.'

Joselu picked up an uncut onion off her cutting board and threw it at him hard, hitting him on the chest. 'Idiot.' She began flicking patties onto the plate amidst the salad bowl, buns and sauces that were ready to complete the DIY hamburgers. 'You'd better start eating before you get more of it thrown at you.'

Moose smiled at Jade and wiped off his tank top in which his own pectoral muscles were bulging impressively. 'Looks like the hug is off. So, let's eat. You've earned yourself a couple of burgers. And a beer.'

'Sure, he's old enough to drink?' murmured Joselu.

'If he can lift two hundred pounds, he can drink a beer. Age has got nothing to do with it.' Moose pulled three beers out of the terrace's mini-fridge. He made a point of handing Joselu the first and kissed her on the cheek. 'Smells great, honey.'

The small single bedroom apartment was overlooking a pizza restaurant, a laundromat and a massage parlour in downtown Queens. The real downtown, the sirens of the emergency services never far from one's ears. There was not enough room on the terrace for a table and chairs and so once Moose finished putting together his burger, he sat down on his weight bench. He swigged his bottle of Indian stout, and watched Jade haphazardly putting together a burger of his own.

'Joselu's got a point about one thing,' he murmured. 'In all these years you've been working at the Death Disco I haven't once seen you make a move on a chic. Or a guy for that matter. Is it because you're trying to keep personal relationships out of your workplace? If so, you needn't bother. Death Disco is a seething hotbed of lust and for me that is just part of the business model. You'd never see me tell staff off for losing their pants at work. That would be like banning chocolate at an Easter egg factory.'

Jade put the lid on his hamburger and took a large bite and shook his head.

'The other possibility,' continued Moose, 'is that you have been put off by what passes for dating at the club. A guy making moves on a woman sometimes wakes up a month later with a very large lump on his head. Growing up in that environment could make anyone think the better of playing the game.'

'That's how we met,' interjected Joselu, wrapping her arms affectionately around Moose before squeezing onto the bench beside him. 'I was a first responder. A couple of guys had rearranged each other's faces over some sweet thing.'

'As glad as I am about that particular moment, it's not the best dating scene for a kid.'

'It's not that anyway,' said Jade. 'I just that I don't have my own place.'

'Your parents are strict?' queried Moose.

'Something like that.'

'Well, Anouska likes you and she lives alone. She told me when I interviewed her.'

Joselu pushed him on the chest. 'Why the hell were you asking who she lives with?'

'I wasn't asking but she was telling. She said she was making a fresh start after running out on her hubby. That's why the bouncers haven't been getting anywhere with her. They remind her of her dirt-bag ex.'

'She's got more choices than bouncers,' said Jade. 'She gets more tips than any of the other bartenders.'

'She's too proud to go with any guy that's tipped her.'

'That rules out everyone man in the club,' said Joselu to Jade, 'so you might have a chance.'

Jade shrugged. 'Maybe she doesn't need anyone.'

'Don't depress me,' said Moose. 'You like her, don't you?'

'She's alright.'

'If you can take the time to lift a couple of hundred pounds above your chest, there's no reason you can't say hello to a nice girl who probably doesn't weigh half that much. I'll be your spotter then too. If she rejects you, I'll chew out anyone who gives you a hard time about it. That's a promise.'

'Don't pressure him,' growled Joselu. 'He'll find someone when he's ready. He volunteers his time looking after the homeless and there'll be plenty of girls interested in that kind of generosity. That's my idea of a real man. You are still doing that, Jade, aren't you?'

'Sure. Three nights a week.'

'The only girls interested in nice guys,' scoffed Moose, 'are those that have already gone the distance with their fair share of bad boys. Usually it takes till the mid-thirties for a girl to reach that point. Jade is just lucky that Anouska has had a busy life and is already there at just twenty-two.'

Joselu shook her head admonishingly. 'You really are deranged.'

Moose smirked at Jade. 'If your nice guy act reels in the likes of Anouska, that will be a moment to rejoice. But if it doesn't happen, I suggest you start becoming a little bad. The girls coming to the Death Disco are not mid-thirties and jaded. That's why the club is so much fun.'

Jade took another hurried bite and looked at his watch. I'm volunteering tonight for a few hours before work.'

'I can drive you,' said Joselu. 'I'm on nights this week.'

Moose put a hand on her knee. 'With a bit of luck there will be some more punch-ups at the club and you'll have a reason to drop by.'

'I wouldn't be surprised if it's Jade I have to come scrape off the floor now that you've filled his head with all that rot.'

'Rot you say? Well, tell me, do you go out with me because I visit my mother every second Sunday without fail, or do you like that I run the freakiest night club in New York?'

Joselu smiled and kissed his cheek. 'Put it this way. See your mother if you want to. But whatever you do, don't sell your club.'

4

Lance Krenshaw didn't find it difficult to reconcile being a life insurance salesman and having a thirst for murder. After all, both were about deception and risk taking and being able to close a deal. Krenshaw smirked at the thought, he was good at selling life insurance so there was no reason he wouldn't be just as good at committing murder. It was Friday evening and he was sitting in his lazy boy chair, smoking cigarettes and flicking between reality shows on the TV. It was after midnight and he was still wearing his office attire. He had an empty pizza box and six beer bottles at his feet. The emptiness of the house mirrored the emptiness he felt within. Loneliness that throbbed like a migraine. Women didn't cure it, could even exacerbate it with all their neediness. The only responsibility-free sex he had ever known had been with a hooker and she turned out to be a client of his. He had come to realise there were a lot of hookers with life insurance - for some reason a real turn off. Krenshaw grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair and fished out his nickel-plated business card holder. Fazeem's card was tucked away at the back. A letter and a number in heavy black ink.

Krenshaw stared at it for a long time, wondering if the unlikely enterprise was a way around the main stumbling block to him indulging the murderous inclinations swirling around inside of him: the actual choosing of a victim. He knew if he killed someone, he would spend all his time thinking about whether or not the person deserved it. But if he was spared the burden of deciding who was to die, he could focus on the act, savour becoming a killer. And that was what interested him the most about Fazeem's proposition. Let them decide who was to die. Someone homeless and decrepit would do just fine. Krenshaw would make sure he trusted Fazeem before agreeing to the deal. He, however, wouldn't press Fazeem for the details. Obviously, it would be in Fazeem's best interest to ensure the victim was a worthless, meaningless nobody whose murder would not make the news nor rouse the cops into an investigation. Krenshaw felt his heartbeat quickening with anticipation. He really did want to do this. He didn't quite have the money Fazeem was asking, but he could add the difference to the mortgage. The prospect of paying off a loan for murder by selling life insurance was simply too delicious to pass up. Forty grand wasn't that big a sacrifice to become a killer. The strength and confidence he would gain would surely be priceless. He would be able to look his family and colleagues in the eye like he had never done before.

Krenshaw picked up his phone. His mind was made up and to procrastinate anymore would just be an act of cowardice. It didn't matter if he just got voicemail - as long as he was starting the ball rolling he could go to bed without the usual crushing sense of another wasted day. As he inputted the numbers, he felt a pang of excitement, realising that someone as a result of this call was destined to die.
5

New York City was the homeless capital of the United States with thousands of people every night sleeping out on the streets. Many were suffering from mental illness and drug addiction and as terrible as they looked, for most, they had simply become invisible. What Jade had noticed most over the years was how few homeless Asian Americans there were. He had heard they constituted less than one percent of the total homeless population. He guessed though that they were just as good at faking it as he was. Working nights in a club, sleeping days in places like washrooms, laundromats and university libraries had kept him undetected. And volunteering with the Mobile Soup Vans had helped fill those nights when he was not at the Death Disco. The curries they served were good and plentiful and Jade never ate better than when he was there. And he liked the people he worked with. His favourite was a rough looking forty-two-year-old Special Forces veteran named Marco Montessori. Montessori volunteered his time almost every night. He didn't talk much but one day out of the blue he invited Jade to the local shooting range. That's when Jade realised they had become friends. And Montessori was a good friend to have. They started going to the gun range weekly and Montessori always seemed to have a different weapon to fire. Some were small, designed for concealment and some looked exactly like what Special Forces were supposed to have. And when he shot, he never missed. He was a patient teacher and it wasn't long before Jade started getting good. Jade felt perhaps one day he might be able to confide in him the secret of his predicament. It didn't help, however, that he knew Montessori was holding back his own secrets. Montessori never talked about his combat experience or about the scars upon his body or the slight limp with which he walked. Jade suspected he volunteered his time at night because in sleep was when all those things came back to haunt him. Still, having come from Moose's house, he had something on his mind and he couldn't let it go. Pouring instant coffee for those who would drink it in the middle of the night, he murmured, 'Does your wife mind that you're out on the streets dishing up curries every night?'

The question caught Montessori by surprise. He had been maintaining a steady rhythm with his ladle, scooping up curries and making conversation. It was two in the morning and very cold. Warmth, however, was permeating up from the steaming pots on the portable gas burners and Montessori preferred to lean into it rather than wear a jacket over his stained and tattered grey T-shirt. He and the other volunteers had set up their two vans just east of Central Park and there had been a steady stream of the destitute all night. A mix of familiar faces and first timers. They were mostly quiet, gripped by hunger and the sense of being in an oasis in the midst of a bleak desert. Montessori stopped his serving as he gazed intently at Jade. 'Why do you ask?'

Serving from the pot next to him, Jade tried to impress through his calmness that this was just friendly banter. 'You don't drink, smoke or fight. Anymore.'

'Not anymore.'

'You've let people on the lines insult you, spit on you and even mug you.'

'That's right,' said Montessori. 'When it's necessary.'

'But it's never necessary. You have the skills to break every bone in their bodies.'

'I didn't mean it like that. What I'm trying to say is I don't come here to fight.'

'I get it.'

'I'm glad.' Montessori filled the next paper bowl with a slap that sent curry spitting out.

Although Jade realised he was on touchy ground, he didn't want to back off now. 'I just think you must have been pretty bad in the past to feel the need to be this good now.'

Montessori smirked. 'You're right, I did used to be pretty badass. But I'm not sure I am so good now. For one thing, I've taught you how to fight and shoot like a maniac. I don't know if that's going to make the world a better place.'

'Then why did you bother?'

Montessori went back to scooping up curry, but only halfheartedly. 'I like to think I'm still some kind of judge of character. Now what's really on your mind?'

Jade served a couple more people while he struggled for the right words. 'Carol has been your wife for a while?'

'It's been ten perfect years.'

'So, you must have met her when you were still in your badass mode.'

'That's true. I can't deny that.'

'Do you ever wonder if she would have still been interested in you if all she had known was the good you, the one dishing out curry to the streets every night?'

Montessori shook his head. 'What's brought this on?'

'Nothing.'

'Trust me, _nothing_ sounds a lot quieter than this.'

'I guess I'm still trying to work things out. Do you hold yourself back waiting for the right things to come along or do you take what is around right now?'

'You're talking about girls, aren't you? Well, I wish I could feed you some romantic line about biding your time until the right one comes along to sweep you off your feet. But you've asked an old soldier who has fought his way through two wars and two divorces and all I can say is why would you blow ten years waiting for some kind of dream girl to miraculously show up when probably she won't and even if she does you might only know her for ten minutes before the brakes on her car fail and that's the end of it. With life as tough as it is, why would you want to let yourself be the softest son of a bitch in the room? Some people will like you for it. But they will use you too.' Montessori forced his attention back to the curry pot before he let his mouth get away from him.

Jade paused to let the moment settle. 'Mind if I leave a little bit earlier tonight? There is somewhere I've got to be.'

'At two in the morning there's somewhere you've got to be?'

Jade nodded. 'I think so.'

Montessori slapped him on the back. 'Go for it. And just in case you find yourself losing courage on the way, I'll make a deal with you. If you bring your friend around to prove she exists, I'll give you a session at the firing range guaranteed to be the best first date in history.'

That gave Jade pause. 'You mean the M16?'

'There's only one way to find out.'

'Fair enough. And you'll bring clips?'

'Are you kidding me? This is a modern relationship, isn't it? Girls don't want flowers, they want clips.'

Jade smiled. 'I don't know about that. But for this particular girl, it just might be true.'

*

Jade hurried to the Death Disco by subway and on foot and was just in time to catch Anouska Leggero on the way out. It was the distinctive combination of long wavy blonde hair and purple velvet jacket that helped him recognise her in the dim street light. She was walking with long, purposeful strides and Jade wondered where she might be headed. All he really knew was she never let a shift run past 3am and she never lingered in the club a moment past the shift being done. Jade summed up his position on the street in relation to her and realised he was going to have to move quickly if he was going to run into her with any semblance of believability. He crossed the road to Anouska's side, his steps busy and his head down as though lost in his own world. Anouska's eyes were up and alert and she spotted him early. Her hand slid into her handbag and stayed there, her eyes locking onto him, sensing that the appearance of this shadowy figure was by no means random.

Jade looked up at the last moment and stopped in his tracks. 'Hi Anouska.'

Anouska stopped too. 'Panic? What are you doing in these parts? I thought you had the night off.'

There was still that intensity about her that had made Jade wary in the past, but he supposed there would always be a reason not to do something if he let it. So, he smirked and shrugged. 'I've locked myself out of my place. I was going to sleep a couple of hours at the club.'

Anouska stared at him skeptically. 'Death Disco is not the kind of place where people sleep.'

'It's the best I can think of it.'

'My place is quieter.' Anouska didn't blink as she said it.

Jade smirked. 'Are you sure?'

Anouska looked for a taxi. There was one bravely parked outside the Death Disco. 'Come with me.'

As soon as they were in the backseat and moving, Anouska rested her head against Jade's shoulder and closed her eyes.

'Are you alright?' Jade queried.

'Shut up,' Anouska whispered.

The journey wasn't long. Anouska's apartment was located on the tenth floor of a Bronx building that had been constructed in a different era - when elevators jolted one step back for two steps forward and corridor lights hummed like cicadas Anouska's apartment was small and smelt of chillies. As Anouska locked the door behind them, she murmured, 'You can sleep on the couch if you're tired, but if you want to stay awake a while, you can join me in my single bed.' She moved up to Jade and kissed him ever so lightly on the lips. 'So how sleepy are you?'

*

Anouska awoke the next morning wrapped up naked in a cashmere blanket. She sent a probing hand out across the bed to see if Jade was still with her. She found Jade's pillow but there was no head upon it. She pulled the pillow into her chest and cuddled up with it. She was not phased at all that it appeared Jade had snuck off early following their late-night session of love making. She left the front door unlocked on such occasions to accommodate a guy itching to get away. She half opened one eye at the bedside clock to see that it was just past nine - she could sleep another hour or two before she had to start thinking about going to the gym. She curled back up into her favourite sleeping position and would have been back asleep in a moment if not for sensing a presence in the bedroom. She looked around the foot of the bed and noticed a naked back bobbing up and down in a steady rhythm.

'Is that you, Jade?' she murmured.

'Who else would it be?' Jade replied, doing push-ups off his knuckles.

'Maybe I should be feeling shortchanged. You obviously left a lot of energy in the tank last night.'

Jade finished off his workout and got to his feet. 'I'm not much of a sleeper.'

Anouska turned on the bedside lamp and her eyes widened at the sight of his ripped body. 'Holy crap. New rule. From now on we do it with the lights on. And another new rule. You can do as many push-ups as you want.' She yawned and her head collapsed back onto the pillow. 'Open the curtains before you come back to bed.'

6

The deer was sniffing about the undergrowth. The forest was cold and damp; the overnight rain had cleared, however, and the biting wind becalmed. Lance Krenshaw was hopeful his gun hand was warm enough to make the shot. He was lying on his stomach, thirty metres away from the deer, hidden within a grove of tall cedar trees. His view was impaired by the forest in between, but there was target enough in sight to make it a gettable shot. He knew that's what Fazeem and his partner Frankie would be thinking from their vantage point a further few metres back. They had been trekking through the forest since dawn and this was their first big break. Krenshaw couldn't risk trying to get any closer. The slightest sound could send the deer scurrying, and there would be no more an ignoble defeat than that. His finger went gently to the rifle's trigger. Although the rifle felt good, it wasn't a weapon he was used to, just a couple of times shooting at cans on friends' farms. And as he watched the deer through the rifle's sniper scope it occurred to him that he had never before shot at a living thing. That was probably why Fazeem was testing him out, to make sure he had what it took to be a hunter before progressing to the top of the food chain. And he had to admit there was a different feeling than when just taking potshots at a target. A tingling excitement that he was about to take a life. He didn't mind the feeling. It proved at least he wasn't a sociopath. No point spending a lot of money on blowing someone away if he wasn't even going to get a buzz out of it.

He decided not to waste any more time waiting for a better shot at the deer. He fixed his aim on the centre of the deer's neck and gently squeezed the trigger. The rifle cracked off a round and the deer reared to the side, staggered, and collapsed.

'I got him!' cried Krenshaw jubilantly, jumping to his feet, glancing back at the two observers behind him.

Fazeem was peering through a pair of binoculars and stood up as well. 'Not bad. You've put him down alright. Now for the coup de grace.'

They struggled through the slippery undergrowth to find the deer panting heavily, its eyes open wide with pain and fear. The bullet hole was at the base of its neck, almost exactly where Krenshaw had been aiming. Blood was oozing out. An ugly wound and Krenshaw lowered the rifle to finish it off.

'Not so fast,' said Fazeem grabbing his arm. 'Let it feel it for a bit. That is what we are here for. We are not sports hunters. And we sure as hell aren't hungry. We are killers and our motivation is other people's deaths. The deer was just to give us an idea of your ability with a firearm and your ability to step up when the killing moment has arrived. And you've aced it. So, there will be no grandpa with a walking frame for you. We'll have to find a pretty decent mark to challenge your skills. Isn't that right, Frankie?'

'Sure,' Frankie muttered, not particularly impressed with the whole business. A babysitter for wannabe murderers? The money just better be green.

'Lance, we'll need the full twenty thousand to offer the mark as bait,' continued Fazeem as though reading his mind. 'Remember, we wouldn't want your experience to feel like cold blooded murder, would we? Just like when hunting deer, we enjoy it more when we know it was a fair fight. Once we have final payment we'll get the search underway.'

Krenshaw nodded, still looking down at the deer, wondering if it would feel any different if it was a person he had put down – wondering if it would feel even better. 'You'll get your money by the end of the week.'

'Excellent. Once the deposit has been made, keep your phone handy. You may get a call at any time to begin the hunt.' Fazeem paused. 'And one more thing. Frankie and I have the job of making your experience as incredible as possible but you must make sure you never talk about it with anyone else. No slips of the tongue or teasing hints with friends, and definitely no anonymous posts on online forums. Only soldiers get to blow people away and write tell-all books about it.'

'I got it.'

'Good. Now look into those adorable pleading eyes of the deer and blow its fucking head off.'

Krenshaw aimed the rifle right at the deer's eye, held his breath and pulled the trigger.

Fazeem patted him on the shoulder. 'Perfect. Would you like a trophy? A tooth? The whole damned head?'

Krenshaw made the rifle safe. 'No, I don't care about this all that much. It hasn't addressed the need inside of me. I require the human element.'

Fazeem glanced at his watch. 'Alright, let's leave it then to the scavengers. We'll head back.' He checked his compass for bearings. 'The next time we hunt it will be in New York City. Big cities can absorb a lot of death. That's why I would never live anywhere else.'

7

Jade held the taxi door open for Anouska to disembark onto the sidewalk and then paid the driver. Anouska surveyed full moon, lifting up the collars of her purple velvet jacket to warm her neck. She then looked on in bewilderment at the mobile soup kitchen and the line of homeless people waiting for a meal. 'I wasn't expecting anything fancy,' she said, 'but a soup kitchen?'

'We're not going to ask for a table for two,' said Jade. He moved passed her and pointed to Montessori at one of the steaming pots within the van. 'He's a friend of mine.'

Montessori was too absorbed in serving the queue to notice the young couple in turn.

'The old guy?' voiced Anouska dubiously. 'Is he some sort of father figure?'

'An old soldier,' Jade affirmed. 'He has survived a lot of wars.'

'Well, that sounds pretty interesting.'

The food van was parked just off Atlantic Avenue in East New York and the mix of nationalities and ages in the line was truly diverse. The majority, however, were male and their heads turned almost as one at the approaching Anouska. With her blow-wave hair, colourful jacket, figure hugging black dress, and tall red suede boots, she certainly stood out on this side of the street. Montessori finally noticed her too and when he realised she was with Jade, he smirked and nodded his approval. 'Well done, Jade. You've brought a visitor, after all.'

Jade made the introductions and Montessori and Anouska shook hands over the van's counter. Montessori stepped down from the van and led the young couple passed a huddle of old men smoking cigarettes and sipping hot vegetable soup.

'A deal is a deal,' said Montessori, 'though your fashionable young friend might not be drawn to bluster and recoil. That would explain a thing or two.'

Anouska turned to Jade. 'What's he talking about?'

'An M16 rifle,' Jade replied.

Anouska's eyes widened.

If Frankie Lovina had heard the conversation, he might also have been impressed. He would certainly have become warier. He was leaning against a wall in the shadows further down the street. He also had a lit cigarette but his hand had frozen a few inches from his mouth as he stared at Jade with every ounce of his being. Could it really be him? Frankie was certain that it was and he felt a pang of anger. Fazeem had just the other day moaned about how unlikely it would be to ever find the kid again and yet with a couple of hours standing outside a soup kitchen here he was. And if on the off chance this kid was just a lookalike, he deserved to die for the aggravation anyway. Everyone in the city that even half looked like Jade should have already been dead, but Frankie bet Fazeem hadn't even tried once to find him. The only consolation was that Frankie would now have the pleasure of settling scores himself. He surreptitiously rummaged through his pockets for anything that might be used as a weapon. He had purposefully left his gun and knife at home, for he had not wanted to risk blowing his parole on a simple weapons violation. Now he was kicking himself over it, for the urge to take the kid out there and then was irresistible. Frankie's stocktake revealed keys on chain as the only metal at his disposal. They would make for a very messy weapon. But maybe in fact he would enjoy that. He gripped the keys between his knuckles as he pushed off the wall towards the soup kitchen. He Jade approached like he was stalking a deer. The closer he got, the surer he was of his target. This was the kid that had blindsided him and put him in jail for four years. All those wasted years \- the hate flooded through him. He stopped on the sidewalk and folded his arms. He was only a couple of metres away. The way was open for a blindsiding of his own. Keys opened doors and they could open a kid's throat. Frankie could do it. If he couldn't have done it before he was thrown in jail, he was easily capable of it now. But a sixth sense had also been honed in prison and something was telling him it wouldn't be as simple as it appeared. He widened his attention away from Jade to those around him, trying to pinpoint where his unease was originating from. It was clearly nothing to do with those waiting in line. They were far too malnourished and drug impaired to be a threat. His eyes instead settled on Montessori. Old timer that he was, the man looked fit, lucid and alert. And he very much seemed to be enjoying his conversation with Jade – which suggested he would fight committedly once Frankie made his move. If Frankie had been carrying a firearm, he could have taken out all three of them in the one instant – but with his house keys, he needed to be conservative.

He forced himself to keep walking, head down, hands in pockets, minding his own business. His ears strained to pick up their conversation, but all he got was the older dude's chuckle. It proved at least that they were good friends, probably with regular contact. Perhaps, Jade was a homeless hobo who came looking for a nightly bowl of soup. But it was doubtful a girl like that would be hanging out with a bum. So, maybe then he volunteered here himself some times, just like the old man was doing. That would be easy enough to find out. Frankie memorised the van's number plate and crossed the street to end the contact. He felt so exhilarated. Finally, some luck in his life.

He returned to his car and drove quickly home, foregoing the strip club that he had promised himself at the end of the recce. His tiny rental apartment welcomed him with its usual aroma of stale cigarette and cat urine. Frankie went straight to the shoebox under his bed. At the top of the old letters and unpaid parking tickets that he had kept for posterity was the photograph given to him by Alice Persia: the young kid smiling on the swing who Frankie had come to despise with every single strand of his DNA. It was the kid at the soup kitchen alright. It wasn't just a case of him willing it to be so. This was real.

Frankie pulled out his mobile phone and called Fazeem. The sleepy voice at the other end of the call was less than welcoming. 'You know what time it is?'

'I know it better than you,' Frankie shot back. 'I'm still up.'

'Well, what is it?'

'Get your customer ready. I've found him a target.'

'Great,' said Fazeem, still clearly unenthusiastic. 'But you didn't need to lose sleep over it. All we're after is someone low key, preferably homeless, who Krenshaw can comfortably shoot on the night.'

'This is better than low key. I've found Jade Jacks.'

'The kid that put you in the slammer?'

'The one and only'

'Where was he?'

'On the streets of New York.'

'You sure it's him,' murmured Fazeem dubiously.

'I'm holding his picture in my hand right now. It's a confirmed match. And it makes sense, doesn't it? We cut up the guy's stepdad and put him out on the streets. That's the very definition of homeless.'

There was a pause as Fazeem considered the news. 'Alright,' he finally said, 'I'll put Krenshaw on standby for next week. In the meantime, you have to do some more surveillance. You need to know exactly where the Jacks kid is going to be.'

'Sure.'

'And I mean that. Customers have zero patience. Even when it comes to killing someone, people will wait five minutes and then start asking for their money back.'

'Don't worry, I'll put the time in,' said Frankie menacingly. 'I'll get to know him back to front.'

'Good, but take it easy, too. The first time the Jacks kid put you down it could be shrugged off as a sucker punch. If he does it again though, the street will never stop laughing at you. People don't live very long when the street is laughing at them. Good night.'

The line went dead. Fazeem again scrutinised the photograph in his hands and sniffed the dried blood smears upon it, curious to see if it still bore an odour. There was nothing to detect. 'No one will be laughing,' he muttered to himself and took the photograph with him to bed.

8

Two weeks later, Lance Krenshaw was handling the stolen Beretta pistol in leather gloves like it was some kind of foreplay. 'Feels good,' he declared. He was sharing the backseat of Fazeem's SUV with Frankie Lovina, who was making little attempt to conceal his disdain. Fazeem Hasan was also looking on, from over the driver's seat, and was in his usual customer service mode. 'Glad to hear it,' he said. Normally at this point, when the murder weapon was actually placed in the client's hand, he would make a little speech about it not being too late to pull out, but in this case, he knew it was unnecessary. Krenshaw had already made final payment and was itching to launch into action. Fazeem glanced at his watch. A quarter to midnight. 'It's almost time.'

'Remember,' said Frankie sternly, 'get in nice and close and give him the whole clip. This is your moment to take a life so don't get stingy with the bullets.'

'And don't let him get near the subway station,' added Fazeem. 'A lot of surveillance cameras, a lot of heat. If something doesn't feel right about the hit, just walk away. Even if you don't kill the guy, it's guaranteed to be the greatest buzz of your life.'

'Don't worry, the guy is a dead man,' said Krenshaw, 'not that I'm sure how much he deserves it. You say he volunteers at a food van for the homeless?'

'He deserves it alright,' snapped Frankie, a little too forcefully. 'I did some checking. He beat up a grandmother in her home. Stole her wedding ring and porned it. And it wasn't the first time. His volunteering is just because the judge gave him the choice between that and the slammer.'

Krenshaw nodded. 'In that case he's gonna get my full attention.' He pumped a bullet into the chamber. 'You're sure the gun can't be traced?'

Fazeem nodded patiently. 'This is where we earn our money, Lance. We are seasoned killers with a lot of experience to draw on. You should just go out there and enjoy the kill and leave the technical details to us. Frankie will be shadowing you at ten metres in case you get in trouble. He carries an untraceable gun of his own.'

'If I'm needed, I'll step up,' said Frankie bluntly. 'At that time, you must do exactly what I tell you. Nothing more and nothing less.'

'Alright,' Krenshaw grumbled. He looked at these two men and knew he could just as easily have turned the Beretta on them. It would have been doing the world a favour sure enough. He didn't act on the impulse, however, as there was every chance he would have only gotten one of them before the other struck back. Anyway, being in an SUV raining in gore was not the experience he was after. At least they had gotten him in the mood to shoot someone. He tucked the gun into his trousers and got out of the SUV. 'May I see his photo again?' he asked.

Frankie had taken several during his long week of surveillance and handed one of his favourite shots - where he had managed to get right up close. 'He usually finishes up at about two o'clock and then heads across town to meet his girl. Want to meet her? I can give you her address. Once you've blown the target away, you'll at least know she's single.'

'Keep your mind on the job, boys,' interjected Fazeem.

*

It was like a wasp sting from hell. Jade was flung forward into a parked car, smashing a side window with his head. He pulled himself to the ground as more windows were shattered in a burst of follow up gunfire. He wasn't sure which direction the shots were coming from but guessed from the rear and scurried around the front of the car, his wounded arm dragging uselessly under him. That the shooting suddenly stopped gave him the impression it had exclusively been directed at him. This was certainly not someone spraying the night with bullets. With the pain came anger, and the Band-Aid was to fight back. Jade curled up under the bumper-bar, taking stock, waiting for his chance. He wondered if it was a random shooting or targeted. Had he been spotted after so many years in hiding? Possibly, but why now? He had stuck to the same routine for so long without any incident. Anyway, all that mattered now was that his instincts told him the shooter was still coming.

Sure enough there were footsteps approaching. They were slow and deliberate, maybe too much so. Was it a false sense of security? Was it sensual? Or was it just plain, simple cold-blooded murder? That was irrelevant. Jade was going to hurt the shooter no matter what. There was enough space under the bumper-bar that he was able to strike out with a kick at full force. He hit at the base of the knee and there was a grotesque snap and a scream of agony. A bullet was discharged erratically at the ground to the side. Jade sprung up, snatching the gun out of the crippled man's hand and hammered him ferociously with the butt until he was on the ground and either unconscious or dead. The smashed nose and lips were not much to look at, but Jade suspected he wasn't going to recognise the man anyway. He was a stranger.

Jade patted down his shirt and trousers for a wallet and was surprised to come up completely empty handed. A stranger trying to kill him and not so much as a handkerchief in his pockets? Jade's sense of foreboding was immense. He hauled himself up and ran, desperate to get as far away from there as he could.

*

Krenshaw wasn't unconscious long, just a couple of minutes. He revived with a stab of pain and a fit of coughing as he tried to breathe through a busted nose. Frankie stepped up to him, looking down with disgust. Was this how he had looked after being blindsided by Jade Jacks? Surely not as pitiful as this. 'Are you alright?' he murmured without a grain of sympathy and shot Krenshaw in the face before he could answer. 'Play time is over,' he muttered to the body left behind. 'Now it is time for the grownups.' He noticed a patch of blood on the road beside the car and a trail of blood leading away from it. Chances are it was Jade's. It was quite a mess, but there was no guarantee Frankie was going to find a body at the end of it. Certainly, the number Jade had done on Krenshaw's face indicated the kid still had some strength left. Frankie would just have to follow the trail of blood and see where it led.

*

Jade heard the gunshot that killed Krenshaw and it gave him pause. This time it did not seem to be at him. So possibly the shooting was random after all. Jade needed to know. Otherwise, he would be forever looking over his shoulder, forever in fear of another bullet in the back.

He slid down into the gap between two cars and peered up the street from where he had come. He had travelled a couple of blocks, well and truly losing sight of the spot where he had been shot. He noticed that a trail of blood had followed him there and watching some of its droplets glistening under the street lights gave him an idea. He squeezed some of his blood onto the street and then ran to the other side, pinching the wound to stem the flow. He backed up between two closely parked SUVs and took to hand Krenshaw's Beretta. As he waited to see if the bait was taken, he looked over the pistol introspectively. It was a big ugly chunk of metal that had almost killed him, but thanks to Montessori it was also just as much a friend as an enemy. Such an easy fit in his hand, he had worked pistols just like it at the firing range and was accurate from much greater distances than across a street. He was pleased that the hand holding the Beretta was rock steady. That, Montessori had said, was the test of a true soldier – in battle you could be as terrified as you wanted to be just so long as your hand remained steady.

A shadowy figure emerged along the street, more purposeful and alert than the first. Despite the darkness, it was apparent both his direction and his gun were honed in on the blood splatter Jade had left behind – he was falling for the trap. The man was walking at his full height, not even trying to reduce the target he was presenting. At the spattering of blood, he burst into action, lunging forward and firing a shot into the gap where Jade had first taken cover. He had been completely duped. Jade fired a burst into his back – he supposed it wasn't the most honourable thing to do but Montessori had been adamant that people fighting with guns shouldn't try to be nice.

The way the man jerked about and collapsed left little doubt he had been hit. Jade hurried that way, keeping the Beretta trained on the limp body. He kicked away the man's gun and rifled through his pockets. This time he was not disappointed: there was a wallet, a ratty envelope, a retractable knife, and a set of keys. The driver's licence inside his wallet said the name was Frankie Lovina – it was vaguely familiar. Jade filled his pockets with the wallet and the other things and rapidly strode away into the night.

*

The bar was named the Watershed and was quiet and dark enough that Jade could walk in with a shirt saturated in blood and not be noticed – and he was under twenty-one as well. He weaved a course through the unoccupied tables, trying to remain inconspicuous while staying as far away from the barman as possible. Fortunately, the man was preoccupied with the NBL Game of the Day replay on the wall mounted television and wasn't going to notice anyone unless they leaned over the bar and yelled a drink name at him.

Jade only used bar toilets in emergencies – they were too small and busy for extended stays and too many drunks puked in them to make them in any way appealing \- but this situation he found himself in was as bad as it got. He had always avoided doctors and hospitals no matter how sick, but he knew he couldn't self-medicate a gunshot wound. He was getting more and more light-headed and queasy and he wondered if he might even pass out right there and then. He shouldered open the door and went directly to the sink and splashed his face to revive himself. When he glanced at his reflection in the mirror, his initial thought was that there was a villain looking over him and he spun quickly around. But there was no one there and with a second look he realised it was him and that it was precisely what would be expected of a gunshot victim – glass-eyed and cadaver white. The only consolation was that it confirmed he had the washroom to himself. He pulled off his shirt and inspected the bullet hole in his shoulder. It was gaping and blood was still leaking out of it. No Band-Aid was going to fix it. He ran the tap over the shirt as though washing the blood out of it was the first step in his recovery.

The door opened and a thin man walked into the toilet in black denim and Jade was about to explain that he had spilt spaghetti sauce on his shirt when he saw the man pointing a pistol at his head. The black hole of the gun barrel only looked half as deadly as the hateful eyes behind it. Jade's body was still juiced on adrenaline and he reacted even before the danger had registered, kicking the gun hand away with a spinning sidekick just as the gun discharged. The bullet shattered the mirror and Jade caught some of the falling glass and sprung at the man, weaving inside of the gun hand and stabbing him in the neck. It didn't sever arteries like he had hoped, but it enabled him to gain control of the pistol. He pressed it against the man's temple and looked him in the face. Although this time the man's face was unscathed, Jade still could not recognise him. 'Why are you trying to kill me?' he blurted.

The man was Fazeem and despite the shard of glass in his neck, he was ready to fight. He headbutted Jade on the bridge of the nose and landed a knee flush in his chest, sending him sliding across the toilet. The gun was back with him and he took aim again.

'This is why I am going to kill you,' he said, feeling the glass shard hanging from his neck.

Jade rolled into the nearest cubicle as he opened fire. A bullet ripped across his back with a searing pain. He lunged against the wall, taking shelter behind the toilet bowl. The cistern was hit and water poured out onto him, stinging his wounded shoulder and back. He pulled out Krenshaw's gun from beneath his belt and returned fire with a deafening roar. The fierce exchange of gunfire that followed pierced water pipes and flooded the floors. Jade watched his blood dispersing with the water. After discharging six intermittent rounds he paused to check his magazine. Only two rounds were left.

The firing ceased from the doorway too, bringing forth an eerie silence. Despite the many holes blown into the cubicles, Jade couldn't see if the shooter remained in the doorway - not that he was trying too hard, for an indiscreet head in a gunfight was liable to catch a bullet between the eyes. Still, he couldn't stay where he was. The cops would no doubt be on their way and the gun he was holding just happened to be a murder weapon – and it was his finger on the trigger that had made it so. It would be hard to plead self-defense once they had ascertained he had shot the guy from across the street. Just because he had spent much of his formative years in the confines of public toilets didn't mean he was more willing than anyone else to spend his adult years in the confines of prison cells.

Jade concentrated all his senses for any indication of the shooter's presence, but there was nothing. He attempted to leave the cubicle with a leap, only to be thwarted by the pain that gripped him, making him an easy target as he stumbled sideways. No shot came, however. The shooter was no longer in the toilets. There was an outgoing trail of blood on the floor thicker than the one Jade had brought in with him. He followed it out into the bar and that was where he found Fazeem, crawling for the door with his stomach shot open. Jade knew it had been a lucky shot, but if Fazeem had taken cover behind toilet porcelain, it would never have happened. Jade almost felt sorry for the pitiful figure at his feet. He gave the bar a quick glance to confirm that it had emptied with the gunfight and he returned his attention to Fazeem. 'Do I know you?' he murmured.

'Fuck off,' muttered, Fazeem looking up at him with the kind of gunshot face that he had seen in his own reflection moments earlier. But there was something else about this man that was naggingly familiar - it was something about the voice. And suddenly the blonde-haired man he had shot on the street felt familiar too. Jade pulled out the things he had taken from the dead man's pocket. He went through the wallet again and then turned his attention to the ratty envelope. He opened it to find a single photograph inside. He took it out and looked at it. For that initial moment he forgot that he had just been shot twice and that in retaliation he had sent one man to the grave and was looking on while another went the same way. Although he had never seen the photograph before, the memory it captured was one of his most vivid: the last day he had ever spent with his mother, the first time she had taken him to a playground. She had forced him to ride the swing and look happy so she could take a picture. He had tried his best too, tried so hard to be the perfect twelve-year-old. He had hoped it would give her a reason to pull herself together, to be his mother for real. But he had lost her and holding that photograph was the final confirmation of that. The final nail in the coffin that had been buried in his heart. That the photograph was covered in dried bloody finger marks filled him with a burning rage – the photograph had not been taken from his mother willingly.

'Now I get it,' Jade muttered. 'Sweet Gazar sent you. After all this time, she still wants me dead. She must really be pissed with my mother to hold a grudge this long. That's it, isn't it? Tell me and I'll let you live.' He tried to give Fazeem a moment to speak, but the pain was too much to bear. 'No don't bother with confessions or denials. What matters is that with just two words I recognized your voice. The last time I heard it my stepfather's throat was getting cut. Do you remember Mint Smith?' Jade lowered his gun at Fazeem. 'You should've checked the toilet.' The bullets he had kept in reserve he used now to put holes in Fazeem's head. He sensed underneath the anger there was no other feeling and he wondered if it was this kind of numbness that his mother had been medicating herself against, if there was something terribly wrong with the whole family. It was Sweet Gazar who was going to suffer for it, for war had been declared. He hadn't been keeping track of her, but he did know where she lived. And he could only assume that her top floor apartment in the Grande Hummer building was a mini-fortress. It was going to be messy.

Jade stood over Fazeem a time and decided against frisking his pockets. There was nothing else he needed to know and no other photographs he might have. His mother had only taken the one. He noticed a black suede jacket on the other side of the bar top. He took it and painfully put it on. The jacket would not think much of the experience either, for suede did not like getting wet. But Jade had to wear something.

He stepped out into the cold night, braced with hand on gun for a hot reception. Fortunately, however, there were only a few jittery would-be witnesses in attendance, keeping their distance on the other side of the street. The cops were dragging their feet in getting there, possibly preoccupied with the other people Jade had blown away. Well, they hadn't seen anything yet. Jade strode quickly away, hell-bent on giving them a very busy night.

9

In the beginning, Jade's friendship with Marco Montessori had revolved around the mobile soup kitchen. It was what they talked about and the only place where they met. But as the friendship strengthened over time it was guns that replaced soup and Montessori would talk of little else. For Jade it was like basic training without the push-ups. The instruction included the specs of the various kinds of weaponry in Montessori's arsenal, the finer points of their use and, best of all, the location of the cabinet they were kept.

Jade found the soup kitchen vans still set up where he had left them.

It had been less than thirty minutes since he had been shot and he knew he had to act quickly if he wanted to get some more payback before his own bullet wounds put a stop to it. He doubted there would be a second chance. His back may have only been hit with a grazing blow, but the wound in his shoulder was either going to be fatal or require hopsitalisation, which meant if the Grim Reaper did not get him, the cops would. The only choice he had to make was whether or not to go after Sweet Gazar. And that decision had been easy.

Montessori always left his house keys in his overcoat, which he hung in the back of his soup van during working hours. Jade walked through the van behind the volunteers dealing out their nourishments with a general announcement that he had left his own keys behind – not that he had ever owned a key in his life. Montessori's keys were in the first pocket he tried and he was back out on the sidewalk in an instant. Frankie Lovina's wallet had contained five hundred dollars in large notes and some tipping notes as well. It meant Jade could take a limousine to Montessori's home if he wanted to go. He would settle for a cab.

The soup kitchen would be open for another hour: plenty of time for Jade to get the weapons he needed from Montessori's cabinet. Jade went looking for a taxi in the opposite direction to the shootings. There were a lot of sirens about now and there was every chance the cops had his description – at least anecdotally from the bartender, but more than likely there had been at least one surveillance camera in the bar with a very good angle of him putting Fazeem out of his misery. Clearly, it hadn't been the crime of the century. Jade managed to wave down a cab after walking a couple of nondescript blocks. He looked for any reaction in the driver's eyes in the rearview mirror as he climbed in – just in case his face was already in the public domain. All he got, however, was a disinterested side-glance. Jade gave him Montessori's address and fought to keep himself conscious as the journey got underway.

*

The call hit Sweet Gazar at 4:30am. She swore viciously and only just refrained from throwing her mobile phone against the wall. Although she almost never slept, she hated with a passion her insomnia being disturbed. She looked for the name of the caller on the screen with a view to having the person firmly dealt with in the morning. But when she saw that it was Detective Roger Platts, she knew she had to take the call. He cost too much to ignore.

Sweet Gazar brought the phone to her ear. She was already sitting up in her luxurious queen size bed, for she very rarely lay down – an act she felt best left for the dead. She took in a settling breath so that the first words she said weren't a tirade of abuse and instead barked, 'This better not be a social call.'

Platts' voice was dour. 'There's been a bloodbath on the streets tonight. At least two of the people are yours.'

'What do you mean mine? I didn't order anyone dead tonight.'

'No, the victims. They both worked for you.'

'Who?'

'Frankie Lovina and Fazeem Hasan.'

Sweet Gazar took a moment to light a cigarette. 'Oh, those two. They haven't been working for me much since Frankie was sent up river. Certainly, they weren't working for me tonight. Still, I'm happy to contribute lilies to the funeral if that's what you're worried about.'

'No, that's not what I'm worried about. We have a suspect. He looks awfully like an old friend of yours. I'm sending the picture through now.'

Gazar coolly blew out smoke as the image appeared on her screen: a grainy image of Jade Jacks taken from an overhead surveillance camera in the Watershed Bar. Gazar couldn't immediately place the face and her initial reaction was that it was a kid too young to be blowing away hard people like Fazeem and Frankie. She brought the image a little closer. There was indeed something disturbingly familiar about the kid. 'Who is he?' she snapped impatiently.

'So far there has not been a formal identification. And there haven't been any matches in our databases. But I'll tell you who he reminds me of.'

'Please do.'

'There was a kid you ordered a hit on a few years ago as punishment for his mother turning snitch. Frankie had a go at getting the job done and came off particularly worse for wear. Beaten up by a baseball bat. Remember that? Well, it seems tonight was the second round of that little feud. If so, the result got even worse for Frankie. The kid graduated from baseball bat to gun.'

Gazar's eyes remained on the picture and a sudden recognition hit her like a slap, the cigarette falling out of her lips and burning a hole in her silk sheet before she could retrieve it. At first it was Wendy Jacks' eyes and nose she was seeing in the picture and thought it was some kind of ghostly apparition, but then she remembered the son. What was his name? Damned if she could remember.

'Are you sure he shot Frankie and Fazeem?' she murmured. 'He seems a tad young for that kind of thing.'

'Not just shot them. It was execution at close range.'

'Where?'

'Fazeem got his in a bar in the West Bronx. Quite a shootout. Frankie got his comeuppance on a street about a mile from the bar. Near Frankie there is another corpse. We are yet to identity him.'

'There is only one other corpse I want to hear about, the damned kid's.'

'As mentioned, the perpetrator has not been formally identified. We don't have a motive, either. And I doubt you'll want to make a statement.'

'What are you saying?'

'This kid is running wild and we don't have a beat on him. You've shed a lot of blood in his family, so it's no wonder he's maladjusted.'

'What's he got to complain about? Where I come from, murder is considered dying of natural causes.'

'And all the kids grow up to be sweet like you?'

There was a pause. 'Some do,' Gazar gnarled.

'We can send a squad car over to your building, keep a watch on the place. Just as a precaution.'

'The day I need the cops to protect my civil liberties I can guarantee you I will be as good as dead. I've got my own people to do that for me. And they don't get distracted by reading people their rights. So, if you want to be useful and earn your money, you can make a point of staying away. I'd forgotten all about this kid and how much his mother's betrayal upset me. But I've been reminded now.'

'With three dead and the killer on the loose, there's no chance we're going to leave this alone. This kid needs to be put down. Anyway, it might already be over. Some unaccounted-for blood patches on the street give us the impression he's been shot. Like a wounded animal, he might have crawled away to die.'

'Be careful, Platts,' said Gazar in a threatening tone. 'It's not nice to get a girl excited only to leave her hanging.'

'Like I said, we haven't found the kid's body yet,' replied Platts defensively. 'That's why I am calling.'

The line went dead.

Gazar turned to the face planted in the pillow beside her. It was her chief bodyguard Schote, curled up and snoring. It was typical, she thought. She had taken him to bed because she was attracted to his dangerous edge, but by sleeping with him she had turned him into a domesticated puppy. Still, she had to admire how well he slept considering all the people he had killed or maimed. She woke him up by stabbing her cigarette into his neck.

'What the hell?' he yelled, springing up, clutching his neck.

'Shut up,' Gazar snapped. 'You're a friend with benefits.' She pulled a pistol out from under her pillow and dropped it onto his lap. 'This kind of benefits.'

Schote frowned. 'You want me to hurt someone?' He glanced across at the bedside clock. 'I'm not going out at this hour.'

'You won't have to go anywhere. Detective Platts thinks he might be coming to us.'

'Really?' Schote picked up the gun and pumped a bullet into the chamber. 'Who are we talking about?'

'Wendy Jacks' kid.'

'Jade?'

'Yeah, that's it. You've got a good memory.'

'A good memory is one of the tools of the trade.'

'Well, anyway, he's all grown up and he's been spending the night blowing away my people. Platts is worried he's on some kind of vendetta. I don't want him getting anywhere near my freshly steamed carpet. So, go wake up the boys. Take my cigarette if you think it will help.'

'I thought you took care of Jade Jacks years ago.'

'I tried, but he seemed to just vanish. Now I'm starting to think I should've tried harder.'

'Well, I'm going to put on the basketball and keep an eye on the monitor screens. If he knocks on the door, I'll answer it with bullets. How does that sound?'

Sweet Gazar watched his naked body slide out of the bed. 'Fine, but keep the TV down. We wouldn't want to disturb the neighbours.'

10

'What's your name?' Jade asked the cab driver at the end of their journey.

'Mario,' the old man replied.

'Well, I'm Jade Jacks.'

The old man nodded. Either he had noticed that Jade was covered in blood or he hadn't noticed anything – certainly his eyes were shying away from the rearview mirror like his own backseat was somehow out of bounds.

Jade paid the fare and added a fifty-buck tip and took his recently acquired bag of weapons out with him onto the roadside. It was five in the morning and the air was icy cold. Jade watched the cab drive off with a bloodied backseat a memento of the trip, and he turned his attention to the top floor of the Grande Hummer apartment building. There were no lights on in the windows, nothing to differentiate that floor from all the others. Nothing besides the burning anger Jade felt when he looked upon it. From having an absent mother to no mother at all, from having to spend his teenage years hidden away in public spaces to being shot in the back for simply walking the streets, he had come to the source of all his misery.

He did not pause a moment longer, striding into the building's foyer and directly to the pristinely white reception desk. The saggy-eyed watchman on duty looked up too late from the game on his tablet to avoid the pistol cracking over his head. It stunned him enough that Jade was able to bind him using the modified nursing wrist restraints in Montessori's bag. Hands behind his back, back to the reception desk. He wasn't going anywhere.

Jade headed to the elevators, scouring the foyer for any sign of activity. It was quiet. The night owls had already stumbled home and the early birds were yet to crawl out of beds – or were they? Jade reached for the elevator button only to see that all three elevators were already on their way down. They were passing the fifth floor, moving fast. With a feeling of unease Jade replaced the pistol he had used as a club upon the watchman for the assault rifle Montessori had used in Somalia. There must have been a fix on him from the security cameras, for the gunfire erupted from the elevators even before the doors had opened. Jade dived to the ground as bullets cracked by, the walls behind him being torn apart. Jade wanted to give some back, but the accuracy of the gunfire compelled him to find cover first; his only choice was to join the tied-up watchman at the reception desk.

'Did you call them?' he yelled.

The watchman was shivering with panic, his jaw locked up.

Jade reached around the counter with the automatic rifle and gave the elevators a frenzied burst. The screams told him the bullets were making a mess and when the doors opened he got to see it: some of the gunmen within were moving fast and some not at all but they were all splattered in blood. Those still on their feet were armed with assault weapons and were firing furiously. The reception desk provided scant protection, the bullets punching neat holes where they entered and where they left. The watchman screamed in agony as bullets, not so neatly, tore into him as well. Jade swung around the counter and mowed down the gunmen taking centre position in the foyer – their swashbuckling attempts to hide behind their guns, making for soft targets. Jade reloaded and emptied another clip that way, as though taking potshots at the spirits departing their bodies. In return gunfire roared from the flanks and a small black canister slid across the floor. Jade turned his gunfire onto the canister only for the magazine to run dry. The flash grenade's detonation caught him flush in the face, sending him onto his back with a screaming in his ears and his head exploding with light. But the worst attack of all upon his senses was when he had recovered enough to hear the laughter of Sweet Gazar from right above him.

'Every bit as nasty as your mother,' she said. She slipped on a pair of knuckledusters and rapped them across his jaw. The blow hurt, but Jade mostly felt disappointment. His big chance at revenge and he hadn't even made it to her front door. And after so many years kidding himself, he had proven all too easy to kill after all.

Sweet Gazar worked the knuckledusters off her fingers and reached out a hand to Schote, who stepped up to her side. 'Pistol,' she called. The gun was slapped into her palm like a scalpel into the hand of a surgeon. Gazar's eyes did not stray from Jade. 'I get to shoot you and tell the police it was self-defense. After that I will give the order for your mother to die as well. I have people in Cumberland just like I have people in Edna Mahan. And in low security killing is so much easier.'

As Jade's vision improved, he was able to make out the shape of Sweet Gazar and the gun pointed at his head. 'You already killed my mother,' he said.

'Is that what you think?' Gazar muttered. 'What a dysfunctional family you are. You don't even know your own mother is still alive. Well, for the time being she is. Too bad you're not.'

Jade stared down the barrel of the gun without flinching. And once again he was blinded by white light.

*

Consciousness returned in the backseat of Marco Montessori's SUV. Jade jolted forward as though with the impact of a head on collision. He found, however, Montessori driving calmly with Country and Western music on the radio and street lights sliding by at an easy pace. A police car came wailing by in the other direction, it's flashing lights momentarily illuminating Montessori's frown. 'Did that one wake you up?' Montessori murmured. 'The other ten that went by didn't have much effect. I don't know what you thought you were doing with my guns, but if your intention was to wake up half of New York with emergency sirens, then you've done a spectacular job.'

Jade's shoulder began to throb with pain. He had lost a lot of blood and he was very weak. 'How did you find me?' he blurted out.

'I didn't find you. I found my guns. I have fixed them with GPS trackers. I like to know where my guns are.'

'Apologies for taking them.'

' _Taking_ them? Rampaging would be a better word.'

Jade gazed out the window, trying to place where they were driving. He could see that they were moving onto an expansive bridge, which he suspected was the Verranzo-Narrows - not that he had ever been that far south. 'Where are we going?'

'Where are _we_ going? You might be going off the middle of the damned bridge if you can't tell me straight what's going on. And while you're at it, tell me who the hell you really are. Skip the bit about you being some kid who works in a nightclub and volunteers in a soup kitchen from the goodness of your heart. Fast forward to the part where you are in a shot up lobby with the nastiest looking woman I think I've ever seen about to blow your head off. You were just lucky that you didn't pinch my flash grenades. There was no saving you any other way.'

'Did you kill her?'

'That woman? No, I didn't kill her. Taking you for a ride in my car might make me an accessory to murder but that doesn't mean I want to be a murderer myself.'

'Being near me is going to make you an accessory to murder a few more times yet.'

'And why is that?'

'My mother is still alive.'

Montessori studied him in the rearview mirror. 'A lot of dying soldiers talk deliriously about their mothers. You've been shot multiple times, but try to hang on. I've got a friend on Staten Island who used to be a black-ops medic. He owes me a favour or two. If I take you to a hospital, the cops will get you. And whatever the hell you were doing with guns, it wasn't legal. There's no point saving you if you're going to get life in prison. So, just damn well hold on.'

'Alright,' muttered Jade. 'But I wasn't talking about my mom because I'm dying.'

'Well, you've never mentioned her before. You may have said you were living with her once, but I had a feeling you weren't telling the truth.' Montessori caught his reaction and for the first time saw a flicker of pain. 'Is your mother in trouble?' he asked.

But the pain was gone. Jade stared with a steely countenance out the window.

Montessori held off asking again the question he wanted to know more than ever: _Who the hell was he?_

They drove off the bridge into an industrialised area towards the Russian district of Rossville. Montessori felt himself softening to the circumstances he found himself in. He was glad he was helping Jade and didn't much care if it was right or wrong – he had fought most of his wars that way. He recalled the lustful look on Sweet Gazar's face as she readied herself to blow Jade away. And he recalled how grotesque her face looked as it was lit up by the flash grenade. The kind of pure evil he had only ever encountered in torturers and their masters. The sort of evil that forced guns into the hands of reluctant soldiers. Montessori had to get over the feeling of being used – if his guns were for anything, it was for fights like this.

'Hold on,' he said, the kindness that had taken many years and a wife to learn returning to his voice, 'we are almost there.' He dared to pick up speed in the final leg of the journey, unlikely as it was to run into a patrol car amongst the quiet outer-suburban streets that rolled in around them. His friend, Losif Gleb, hadn't been wrong when he said he was retiring to the quiet life. A Siberian mercenary, Gleb had lived life to the limit in the world's darkest backwaters, before finally being one of the few smart enough to get out while he was still in one piece. And here he was on Statton Island with a three-bedroom house and a two-car garage. Montessori parked across the street two doors down.

'Wait here,' Montessori said. 'We're going to put the good doctor to work early this morning.'

'Why would he want to help? The cops are going to be all over this.'

Montessori put a foot out the car. 'Like I said, he owes me a favour. He's one of the best war doctors I've ever seen. He could stitch you up with barbed wire if he had to. We'll get you fixed and then we'll take care of whatever mess you're in.' He departed the car and walked across the road in a hurry.

Jade watched him go and turned his attention to the keys hanging invitingly in the ignition. He climbed into the driver's seat and pulled opened the glovebox; there was a pack of chewing gum and a holstered pistol. He took a piece of the chewing gum and shook the pistol out of its holster onto the passenger seat. He then inputted Cumberland Prison into the GPS console. He doubted he could make it but it was certain his mother would be dead if he couldn't. Sweet Gazar had been robbed of one kill in the Jacks family this morning and she would move heaven and hell to make sure no miraculous reprieves got in the way of the second. But it was in the search of a miracle that Jade sent the SUV screaming out onto the road. He followed the GPS's instructions for a U-turn with a cloud of burning rubber spewing out from the tires. Montessori came running at him right onto the middle of the street, yelling and waving his arms. Jade veered sharply around him. He did not like treating his friend this way and hoped that one day he would have the opportunity to explain the full significance when he said his mother was still alive. For now, however, he had to keep moving. He ducked down, fearing that Montessori might put bullets through the windscreen. What came instead was a loud scream: 'Behind you!'

Jade peered back over his shoulder only to see the empty street from where he had come. Perhaps it was just some heart pills on the backseat he was after. He glanced that way when he noticed dangling legs in black boots outside the rear window. He had been too dazed and distracted to realise there were helicopters right above him. Abseiling SWAT police landed on top of Montessori, dragging him to the ground and pulling his arms behind his back. They were decked out in black from their masks down to their shoelaces and they moved expertly. Jade pushed the accelerator to the floor, desperate to elude the closing net. But the engine was not responsive, smoke wafting out through bullet holes in the bonnet. Anger surged through Jade – despite his desperation, he was being so professionally handled, his resistance nothing better than routine. The GPS voice was telling him to go straight one hundred metres and turn right, but the long journey to his mother had once again become heartbreakingly impossible. A black box-shaped SWAT van sped around the corner he was being directed to. It pulled to a stop diagonally across the intersection and the SWAT team burst out with their rifles aimed Jade's ways; they were screaming for him to stop the vehicle. Jade, however, sat stunned and motionless as the SUV rolled ever so slowly towards them. He was caught.
Part 3

Toilet Man

1

A woman and man wearing business suits entered Jade's hospital room. The woman's suit was black and precisely tailored and was accompanied by a stylish light blue blouse. The man's suit was grey and his shirt white. Jade noticed their outfits before anything because it was the first time in the three weeks since he had been admitted that he had seen clothes other than the drab green garb of the medical team. It suggested what he had already suspected: he was recovering.

'Hello, Jade,' said the woman. 'Mind if we join you?' She had large inquisitive green eyes and thick lips – the crow's feet around her eyes did not gel with her pale, unblemished complexion, which seemed a decade younger.

'I don't think you need to ask permission,' Jade replied.

'Funnily enough, we do,' she replied. 'At least for what I have in mind.' She moved from the doorway to the side of the bed. 'I've been following your progress from my little surveillance camera in the ceiling and must say you've made good progress. My name is Jane Crow of the CIA. And this is Max Davell of the FBI.' She folded her arms and smiled. 'One of us is going to get to take you home.'

'She wants you, but I've earned you,' said the man, holding up his ID to confirm that he was indeed Special Agent Max Davell of the FBI.

Jade had nothing better to do than to lean over and actually look at it. Same bottle-brown hair, grey stubble and disengaged gaze. Even the suit was the same. He was tall and strong and innately tired – as though he managed to both workout and be a workaholic.

'No one else even thought you existed,' Davell said. 'And they thought I was mad for looking. I'm not talking about Jade Jacks. No one gives a damn about that. I'm talking about the Toilet Man. That's what I dubbed you. When other agents saw random incidents of violence in the public lavatories of New York, I saw evidence of a vigilante, an exponent of martial arts, a killer kid that lurked in the cubicles of New York's dirtiest spaces. A lot of hard men were given a sound beating and a lot of public toilets looked like a hurricane had blown through them. Nothing to make the news or get the Mayor excited, but over a four-year period the red pins on my wall map made for a very pimply face. I was given approval to pursue the case because there were some fugitives we thought it might be. You were on the list, albeit low down. A missing person that no one quite knew anything about. And yet here you are. You've been found.'

'I think you'll do well in prison,' Crow chimed in. 'Public toilets and prisons are all too similar. Sadly though, in jail it is life that gets flushed away. For your little killing spree, you'll be lucky to get less than forty years. By that point you'll be a candidate for having lived the most miserable life in all New York. And Special Agent Davell won't mind that one bit. You can't blame him. The more years he piles on the better the bust looks. And to my mind it is an impressive bust, regardless of the fact it took a small massacre to finally catch up with you. He is here to formally take you into custody and he has earned the right to hear it from you directly if that is not the option you want to take.'

'What other option is there?'

'Work with the CIA, of course.'

'Doing what?'

Davell chuckled dryly. 'The CIA is not going to tell you anything, kid. They'll use you and get you killed. But you won't know why.'

'That's probably right,' replied Crow testily. 'So, if you didn't recently blow away nine people, including shooting someone in the face in front of a surveillance camera, I'd recommend you take your chances before a judge and jury. Otherwise, you had better listen to what I have got to say.'

Jade looked out the barred window at the wire fence and grey sky: it was a view he could gaze at without thinking and he had done so for weeks. The only things he had been missing from his world beyond the fence was his karate training and his friends Moose and Montessori. And probably Anouska as well. Not much but enough for Jade. Prison was best to be avoided. And it suddenly occurred to him that Montessori might already be waiting for him there.

'Does this option of yours apply to my acquaintance?' Jade said.

'You mean Marco Montessori? Are you wondering if he has been charged with accessory to murder? Well actually I have made a donation to his soup kitchen. I am all about good causes. It would really upset me if I had to take such a fine upstanding citizen and lock him up in a cell full of rapists. The good news is if you help me out, that certainly won't be necessary. And I might just take an interest in your cause as well.'

Davell shook his head with a wry smirk. 'This is exactly the way the CIA talks.'

But Jade didn't hear him. 'What cause do you think I have?'

'The address in the GPS made it pretty obvious,' said Crow. 'Would you like to know the visiting hours to the Cumberland Penitentiary, or can I be of more significant assistance regarding the incarceration of your mother?'

Jade stared at her so long Crow was tempted to check the bedside monitors to see if he was flatlining.

'Alright,' Jade finally said. 'You've got my cooperation.'

Crow turned triumphantly to Davell. 'You can see your own way out, can't you?'

'Sure,' sighed Davell and started for the door.

'Knowing that I can commandeer a whole SWAT team would undoubtedly give you pause if you were to consider ever uttering Jade Jacks' name again,' Crow said to him. 'Especially as there will be no one else to suspect if word gets out. There's only you and I.'

Davell pulled open the heavy steel door with some irritation. 'My lips are sealed.'

'Excellent. And I'll make sure your career gets the bounce it deserves. But, like everything else in this case, it will be secret.'

'Exactly the way the CIA talks,' Davell muttered. He gave Jade a final curious glance. He had spent many years wondering if he really existed and he suspected he would spend many more years wondering what had become of him in this peculiar arrangement with the CIA.

Jane Crow waited for him to be gone and the door closed behind him. 'I'm sure he won't say anything about you,' she said to Jade. 'While he was calling in squad cars to make the arrest, I landed a couple of helicopters on top of you. That's got to make him think.'

'Yeah, we're all very impressed,' muttered Jade sardonically.

'You should be. I got you admitted to the Walter Reid X Ward, the most classified hospital rooms in the country. The doctors don't know your name, don't make case notes, don't even take your pulse unless it's authorized. But they are good at keeping people alive. And now that the tubes are starting to come out of you, it's time to go to work.'

'Before I cooperate with the CIA, I want to see that my mother is well. Sweet Gazar was going to have her killed and for all I know she has already succeeded.'

'Your mother is alive and in protective custody. You'll just have to trust me on that.'

'The FBI doesn't seem to trust you.'

'The FBI isn't facing life imprisonment. You're rough and raw and under the radar and I'll need you to be all of that to be of any use to me.'

'Drug smuggling?'

'That's not the CIA's area of business,' muttered Crow with a glare. 'Actually, we're not in the business of assassination either, officially. But let's leave that for later. There is a helipad at the rear of this facility and in one hour you will be picked up by a helicopter. The crew will know you simply as Passenger 1. Your ultimate destination is a bar in Hong Kong's Lan Kwai Fong district called the Lion House. You'll find a bartender there by the name of Leslie Coco. She's not the friendliest person you're going to meet, but befriend her anyway. She's an expert in Kill Karate. It's a secret form of karate that has its origins in North Korea and that lives up to its name very well. Learn what you can and when the time is right, I'll let you know how you can get your cop killing mom out of jail.'

'This woman Coco is not friendly and I'm not good at making friends, so she might blow me off from the very beginning.'

'The CIA is an intelligence agency,' said Crow. 'We can work it out that a young man that has spent his formative years lurking in public washrooms will be lacking in social graces. Fortunately, another likely explanation for this particular ailment is having too much money, and that's the cover we're going to give you – complemented with a passport full of stamps to demonstrate the aimless wonderings of the idle rich. Money may not win her affections but at least it may prevent you from getting kicked out of the bar. That will buy you some time.'

'Alright,' said Jade. 'I'll play along. I can do aimless. But I know exactly what I want. And if you don't live up to your promises, the bullets you've just pulled out of me you'll wish you could put right back in.'

'That would be a shame. I've already sent the SWAT team home. But we have other assets in Singapore. That's where you're going first. Take a week to get yourself looking like a no-good self-absorbed rich kid – which means all you'll need to work on is the rich part. A walk up Orchard Street will remedy that. And when that's done, fly first class to Hong Kong. If only I had a dollar for every spoilt, snotty-nosed rich kid I have had the misfortune to sit next to in first class. I'm about to inflict upon the world one more.' Crow stepped back from the bed. 'The longer you stay in bed the longer your mother stays in jail, so get the hell up. If you do alright in Hong Kong, I'll be in touch with news about her. Screw up though and I'll cut you loose. You'll neither see me nor her again.'

'If I do alright? You mean go to a bar and chat up a woman who kills with her bare hands?'

Crow smirked. 'Sounds like you two are pretty compatible, but it's not about matchmaking. Tell her your favourite drink is Long Island Ice Tea extra-long. That's our little password. Things will likely get very interesting after that.'

'A password for what?'

Crow's face went still. 'Good luck, Toilet Man.'

2

'Sir, this suit might be appropriate.' The glamorous looking sales clerk was tall and slim in sparkling black high heels and had a haughty air. She didn't seem to like calling Jade sir. And she was reluctant to hand over the suit - as though his trying it on would somehow halve its value. Jade wanted to assure her of his cleanliness. After all, he had spent the past few weeks being sponge bathed by nurses. But from the hardness of her face, he doubted she would be much impressed by the revelation. He took the charcoal black business suit out of her fingers, decorated with rings of gold and silver, and headed to the fitting rooms.

The shop's name was Singapore Superior Men Fashions and Jade had entered purely because it was the kind of place someone with pockets full of money might be attracted to. Headless mannequins in rich wool blend suits lined the glittering glass shopfront. And inside there were numerous racks of sophisticated corporate fashions. Although much of it seemed inappropriate for Singapore's sweltering tropical heat, Jade figured power dressing had little to do with climate.

The fitting rooms were at the back of the shop. Jade entered the first in the line and was greeted with a space about as big as the average Singaporean studio apartment. The allure of transformation permeated through the pureness of the brass-framed wall mirrors and the luxuriousness of the sofa chair and the plush carpet underfoot. Jade couldn't help but feel the significance of the moment. His first suit and an enclosed sanctuary that came without a toilet. Was he moving up in the world? It was the first time he had seen his reflection since he had been shot and the thing he noticed was the garish shiny polyester silver and brown shirt the CIA had given him to wear when he was discharged from the X ward. Despite all his years on the street, he had never looked as homeless as this. It made him trust the CIA even less. It explained why the sales clerk had looked at him so funny – although he supposed she would have done that anyway. It might have also explained the cold shoulder he had been given by the crews of the helicopter and military plane that had been involved in flying him out from the States: they would have had the feeling the air force had become some kind of budget airline. Jade quickly set about putting the suit on, keen to feel the five hundred dollars' worth of fabric against his skin. The trousers and jacket slid on easily and comfortably and taking in his reflection Jade suddenly realised why people wore suits: even with his body shot up and held together by stitches, he doubted he had ever looked better. He took from the coat hanger the blue and white patterned tie to complement the look. The tie was a lustrous silk and would surely consolidate the image of wealth and privilege. But Jade had never worn a tie before and had no idea how to put one on. He held it in the middle and at the thin end and tried to recall those times he had been standing alongside businessmen fixing their ties in front of washroom mirrors. The fast, purposeful movements that had transformed a long piece of material into an exclamation of corporate power had certainly made an impression, though he had never suspected he would one day need to replicate the action. Now what was it they did first? Jade was about to swing the tie over the back of his neck when there came a grotesque short, sharp female scream. Jade had heard enough death screams to have no illusions now.

He turned to face the fitting room door and replayed the sound in his head. Although it had been a very different pitch to the haughty utterances she had directed Jade's way, he had recognised the sales clerk's voice all the same. Breaking the subsequent silence was an excited chatter of male voices. They were speaking an Asian language. Not Japanese or Mandarin. Korean?

A rush of feet came at the change room door and Jade readied himself. The door went flying open under the impact of a boot heel and a gun hand came surging in. Jade reacted without hesitation, wrapping the tie around the hand and flinging the man against the wall. The man was wearing an expensive suit of his own – jet black – and a pair of sunglasses to complete the gangster look. Another man, a step behind, wore the same uniform and was also armed with a pistol. Jade sent the sharp edge of his foot into the man's throat, dropping him flat.

The hand wrapped in the tie began to open fire and Jade twisted and turned and put all his weight behind snapping the elbow. The accompanying scream was of similar pitch to the sale clerk's. Jade whisked the gun out of the man's limp fingers and stapled bullets into the foreheads of both men. He noticed that once again he didn't feel a thing – not that he wanted to shoot someone he liked just to prove he owned an emotion.

With gun at the fore, he poked his head out of the fitting room, looking about for anyone else in the shop. The sales clerk was sprawled across the floor in a pool of blood, her throat slit deep. She hadn't deserved it and Jade was relieved that at last an emotion came, or was the urge to kill really an emotion? He rifled through the dead gangsters' pockets looking for clues to their identity and was disappointed to only find money. Although they were both carrying large wads, since Jade had joined the CIA, money did not have the same aura as it once did. He stuffed the tie in one pocket and wiped the pistol down on his shirt before discarding it to the floor. His arrest in New York had taught him a lesson in security cameras, prompting him to pluck the sunglasses off one of the gangsters and hoped that would be enough to conceal his identity. He stepped out of the store onto Orchard Street and glanced about the busy shopping precinct for anyone still in the vicinity who might want to kill him. There was a man who immediately stood out. He was tall and broad shouldered and was wearing a blue suit and had bright orange frizzy hair. He was standing on the other side of the street, his eyes glued menacingly on Jade. He was about the most fearsome man Jade had ever seen, as though every single strand of DNA in his body had predisposed him to being a cool, calculating killer.

The one advantage Jade had was that the man was confused about who he was looking at, so sure had he been that his colleagues would take care of their target. The intensity in his eyes suggested he was ninety nice percent sure Jade was his man; perhaps, he was wondering if the two hitmen had put their rounds into Jade's back and that he was about to collapse dead on the street at any moment. Jade knew that any confusion would be not last long and that this man was perfectly capable of shooting him dead right there in public. He regretted not taking the gangster's pistol as well as his sunglasses. Feeling his vulnerability, he turned and ran, thankful that Orchard Street could even match Times Square for the density of its crowds. Still, he tensed for yet another bullet in the back. When it didn't come, he could only wonder whether it was because the man had scruples about shooting into a crowd of innocent people or whether he simply felt that whipping up a panicked stampede was not going to improve his chances. There was also the very real possibility that this hadn't been about Jade at all. He might simply have been unlucky enough to get caught up in an armed robbery - unluckier for the robbers as it turned out. For all Jade knew, Singapore was even worse than New York for people greeting strangers with a gun in the face.

He rushed into one side of a shopping mall and out the other and did that a few more times until he was sure he was not being followed. Then he considered the merits of returning to his hotel. It wasn't particularly necessary, for he was carrying his fake passport and CIA money and that was all he had brought with him to Singapore. Still, he wanted to unload his hotel room key and the hotel was just around the corner. He would checkout, pay off the minibar bill and head to the airport without delay: if Singapore was going to be like this, he would take his chances in Hong Kong with Leslie Coco and her mysterious Kill Karate techniques. He looked over his shoulder one more time and headed for the Holiday Inn.

The receptionist greeted him with a flawless smile, but it developed a chink when he informed her he wanted to check out early.

'You have paid for the night, sir?'

'That's ok,' replied Jade. 'Something has come up. I'm not asking for a refund.'

'Just a minute, sir.' The receptionist went to her intercom and whispered something in a language mercifully different to the one the two gangsters had been speaking. By the way she read the number off the computer screen, Jade figured she was dispatching a maid to check out whether he had trashed the room and to quantify the raid on the minibar. He didn't mind waiting: the room had been way too quiet for him to sleep in, but he certainly hadn't done it any harm. He considered putting in a request for the maid to bring down his toothbrush, but decided to let it go. He leaned side on to the gunmetal grey reception desk and watched the comings and goings in the hotel foyer. He wasn't sure if he was more interested in scoping for the man with the orange hair or admiring the well-dressed women returning from their Oxford Street shopping expeditions with elegant bags of cosmetics and garments in hand. He noticed a tall, exotic Eurasian woman striding across the foyer with her rich black hair bouncing on her shoulders and a Vogue magazine under her arm, and she was about to settle the argument when there came a tremendous explosion that shook the entire building. Screams of shock and panic erupted from all parts of the foyer and someone shouted, 'It's a bomb!'

A small stampede of people began for the exits. A few other guests froze like statues. Jade watched the receptionist talking ashen-faced into her mobile phone and realised with a sinking feeling that it might well have been his room that had just been bombed. He walked out the foyer and into the parking area, joining the ever-swelling throng of people peering up at the smoke billowing from the window high up on the hotel's facade. He counted up from the ground floor and across from the elevator shaft – it was his room alright. He could only hope it hadn't been the maid checking on his room that had triggered the blast. He would certainly have an emotion about that. What had Jane Crow put him into? Jade double checked that his backup passport was still in his pocket. Crow had given it to him in case he needed to sneak out of Hong Kong under the radar. But Jade was going to have to use it now just to get in. He turned and marched away from the hotel, scouring the way for taxis and potential assassins. It suddenly occurred to him that he had not had the opportunity to pay for his new suit – the CIA money had not proven all that useful after all. Jade reached back to the collar and pulled off the price tag.

3

One night later, Jade was throwing back shots at the Lion House shotbar in Hong Kong. There were two bartenders on duty, a serious looking young man and a broad shouldered older woman who to Jade's mind didn't quite look convincing as a bartender, didn't look all that comfortable in the role – could she be Leslie Coco? Finding out quickly had been thwarted by Jade inadvertently sitting on the male bartender's side of the bar. It had seemed logical at the time as that section had had all its stools free. But with the male bartender enthusiastically leaping on his every order, Jade needed another way to get the female's attention. It wasn't going to be easy as the bar's other male patrons had not made the same mistake: the woman had three groups of enthusiastic businessmen leaning across the bar top, spilling their conversation over to her. She was doing a good job of not getting trapped with one group, flittering from one corner of her station to another. Mostly Jade only got a back view, but he did catch a glimpse of her face on a couple of occasions. She had a rather round face, a flat petite nose and pink-glossed lips. She had square shoulders that seemed capable of doing chin-ups all day, or putting one of those young, cocky office workers into the ceiling if they encroached too far across the bar. Crow had not been exaggerating when he said it would be difficult to make friends with Coco. Jade was eyeing off his eighth Jack Daniels' shot before the woman even looked his way. It was, however, far from an idle glance. She poured three tequila shots and with a wink Jade's way downed one with an easy flick. She passed off the other two to eagerly awaiting hands on her side of the bar.

Jade waited intently for another look but once again her back was steadfastly turned. He whipped back his own shot, letting the last of it drain luxuriously between his teeth. He held the empty glass and made eye contact with his barman.

'Another shot, sir?' the man asked.

'An acquaintance of mine has recommended a particular drink at the Lion House.'

'What drink would that be?'

'A version of Long Island Ice Tea. Extra-long. Apparently it is Leslie Coco's specialty. Is that her over there?'

The man's face remained passive, though his eyes lingered as he backed away. He stepped up to the female bartender with a hint of unease and whispered into her ear. The woman's head tilted ever so slightly his way. She flicked back her hair and walked to Jade, leaving the other bartender to babysit her customers.

'Hello, sir,' she said in a sprightly voice. 'Coco is not working tonight. My name is Zing. But I know exactly the recipe of the drink you are referring to. Equal measures of vodka, white rum, tequila, triple sec, gin and a colouring of cola and ice cubes for the top. Shall I pour?' Jade found himself unsettled by her presence. Apart from the gothic heaviness of the black rouge around her eyes and white foundation on her cheeks, there was a viper-like stillness to her gaze. Although her English was clear, there was a hint of an accent Jade could not place. Chinese? Korean? She went with fast hands to the colourful collection of bottles on an island bench in the centre of the bar; her actual pouring, however, was not particularly proficient. She over-poured each ingredient and was continually tipping some out to make room for the next. It was incongruous with everything else about her, and Jade had to again wonder if she was actually a bartender. But as she forcefully plonked the drink down onto the bar-top before him, she certainly seemed good at something.

'Long Island Ice Tea,' she said.

Jade took it and sipped it. 'Not bad. But it's pretty standard. Why do you call it extra-long?'

'Oh, yes. My apologies. There's one missing ingredient.' Zing extracted from the pocket of her black slacks a small glass vial containing a clear liquid and held it above his drink. 'This is it?'

'What is it?' Jade murmured.

'Ever heard of date rape drugs before? This is one of the more powerful versions.' Zing unscrewed the top of the vial and added the liquid to the Long Island Ice Tea. 'That's what we call extra long.'

'When you spike someone's drink, it is proper practice to wait until the intended victim is not looking.'

'On this occasion I can do as I please. Because the only way you're going to see Leslie Coco is if you drink what's in your glass all the way down to the ice-cubes.' The woman leaned closer on the bar. 'And we know what happens if you don't. I'm talking about what happens to your mom.'

Jade frowned. There was no doubt now that she was for real. But who was she? 'How do I know you're not one of those people who were shooting at me in Singapore?' he found himself muttering.

'Yeah, I heard about what happened in Singapore. Sure, you should worry about that. But why stop there? You might drink this and wake up to find a kidney or two missing. I don't know myself what's going to happen to you once the drink is consumed. Coco has been my master in Kill Karate. I offer her obedience not questions.'

Jade picked up the glass and looked her in the eye. 'Cheers, Zing.' He swallowed the drink in a hard gulp and wiped his lips. 'Delicious. Was it rohypnol?'

Zing smiled and shook her head in wonder. 'I'm attracted to crazy brave men, so it's a shame you have to leave so soon.' She returned the vial to her pocket and pulled out an address and transferred it onto a napkin. 'Flag down a taxi and tell the driver to take you here. Pay the fare in advance in case you pass out on the way.' She took Jade's hand and pressed the napkin into it. 'You'd better hurry or you won't even make it to the taxi. It's a bunch stronger than rohypnol.'

'Well, thanks for the good time,' said Jade, sliding off the barstool. 'How much do I owe you for the drinks?'

'Twenty Honk Kong dollars for the Long Island Ice Tea. The date rape drug is on the house.'

4

Jade woke up thinking he must have still been curled up in the backseat of the taxi - the only difference being that the ride had got bumpier and noisier. That, however, might have had more to do with the drug rampaging inside his head. His attempt to shake the disorientation away simply left his head spinning like a top on a glass surface. He knew what the scene looked like from the outside, having grown up in a swamp of dubious drugs, but this was his first time to get pinned down by one himself. The feeling was as bad as he had imagined. There was nothing worse than being helpless. All he could do was keep calm and await developments. As it happened, it came in the form of a sharp pin prick to his arm.

'I'm giving you something that will make you feel better,' came a young sounding but very assured woman's voice. 'Where we're going, unfortunately, you're not likely to feel better for very long.'

The gentle power of the voice drew Jade from his stupor - like a perfume melting snow. He imagined the drug she was injecting into his veins may also have had something to do with it. Through his blurred vision he could see that the woman was sharing the seat with him. She was Asian and very attractive with blonde-peroxide hair, green eyes, lightly tanned skin and thin pink lipstick.

'Are you Leslie Coco?' Jade asked.

The woman leaned closer and ran her fingers through his hair. 'Yes, I am. And you're Jade Jacks, or is it Jade Panic? Anyway, I've heard so much about you.' She put on some more pink lipstick and puckered to work it in. 'Crow didn't mention how fine you are. I find myself wanting a taste.' She clamped her fingers onto Jade's chin and kissed his lips hungrily and fully. Jade wasn't quite sure if he wanted to reciprocate, but the drugs weren't going to let him anyway. As good as the kiss felt, he somehow doubted it was for his benefit. He looked up through the window at the dark night, trying to get his bearings. Although there were no streetlights, a white light was flashing in a steady rhythm.

'Are we in a taxi?' Jade muttered.

Coco chuckled. 'Not quite. We're in the backseat of a light aircraft and we're about to join the mile-high club. Sound fun?' She turned him around and pressed her body against him. 'I'm going to be on top.' She reached around him and began buckling up straps. 'Excuse me while I put on some protection.'

Jade reached behind him and felt a pack on her back. 'Are you talking about a parachute?'

'That's right, darling.' Coco nibbled his neck and caressed his chest. 'With a little foreplay. I'm going to be posing as a prostitute, so I need to feel the part.' She finished applying the straps. 'We are about to jump into the world's most dangerous town. Would you like to know where the CIA is sending you?'

'Yeah, that would be nice.'

'We're going to parachute onto Private Island. It's a small island on the Pearl River Delta. South east of Honk Kong. You've probably never heard of it. I've revived you a few minutes before the drop off point just so I can explain our mission. The British set up a small nuclear reactor on Private Island in the 1980s to help meet Hong Kong's ever burgeoning energy requirements. Jump forward to 1996, a year before Hong Kong's reunification with China. The British sent a team of specialists to decommission the plant with a view of returning it piecemeal to the UK. Little did they know the team had been infiltrated by the master criminal Pall Marmalade and his gang the Viking Snakes. With only a skeleton security force left behind, the island was easy pickings. Marmalade wasted no time then in rigging the reactor with enough explosives to trigger a core meltdown. And in that way the island has become an impregnable hub for all his criminal enterprises. Drug and gun smuggling, human organ trafficking, prostitution, extortion, and the list goes on. But Marmalade is smart enough to keep his dealings entirely outside of China. Private Island is used purely for administration and as a fortress hideout. The Viking Snakes live mostly in the town while Marmalade occupies an original medieval castle, transported brick by brick from Latvia. Sure the Chinese military could blockade the island and starve him out, but Marmalade has threatened the annihilation of Hong Kong if his nest is disturbed. The consequences are too great to make a move on him. The Chinese have settled for blaming the British and demanding monetary compensation. The British are paying too. Two billion pounds a year. The Chinese might even be a tad disappointed when we close the island down.' Coco glanced at the GPS device on her wrist. 'We will be over the island in less than five minutes. It's an island with no laws and a population of killers. The way you went shopping in Singapore you could do every day on Private Island.'

Jade flicked a look back her way as far as his neck would turn. 'How do you know about what happened in Singapore?'

'The men that went after you were North Korean agents. They had received a tipoff that you were my lover. The enthusiasm with which they went after you made it plain enough you do not work for them. It also demonstrated that you have some ability to handle yourself.'

'It was you that tipped them off?'

'I am a North Korean defector with a death warrant against me. I do not trust anyone, including, with all its leaks and intrigues, the CIA. But I can trust you a little more now. At least I trust you enough for me to explain the first step of the operation.'

'Which is?'

'Like I said, we skydive onto the island. If we are detected, we leave the parachute behind. It has an emblem on it linking us to the Kill Karate Parachute Club. They are a band of daredevils whose specialty is parachuting into highly restricted areas and then escaping on foot. The club has been active in Asia, Europe and the Americas. It is a CIA front that will explain our incursion onto the island. But if we arrive undetected, we will take the parachute with us. It is made of a highly flammable material and that will be useful for the next stage of the plan.' Coco checked again her GPS display. If you are still alive at the appropriate time, I will certainly explain more then.' She slid with him across the seat and grabbed hold of the door handle. 'For now, I've probably already told you too much. As a note of warning, if under torture you mention the CIA, the torturers will no doubt slow down and become even more unpleasant. Not that I recommend you get captured in the first place. With these people death would be the preferred option.'

'Do you have a cyanide pill I can take along?' muttered Jade dryly.

'No. Having a cyanide pill would make you look like a CIA agent.' Coco grabbed the door handle. 'You will just have to find another way to die.' She prized open the door to a rush of icy wind amidst an oily dark night.

*

Coco controlled the parachute with a deft handling of the guy-ropes. Jade was enjoying the thrill of it, but could only wonder if the sensation he was feeling was that of the descent or just the drugs still swishing around his head. Hong Kong's skyline was brilliantly ablaze in the distance: an acid bath of colourful light dissolving away the night. Directly below the two skydivers, however, only a few mediocre clumps of dim lights were to be seen, mere specs in the blackness. And Coco did not even head towards these. Indeed, she was maneuvering the parachute so far out over the blackness that Jade had to wonder if it wasn't the shark infested waters between Private Island and Hong Kong. But perhaps, she preferred to swim with sharks rather than risk getting too close to the Viking Snakes.

'Brace yourself,' Coco said after a time. 'We're going to be landing on a beach of sharp shale.'

It slightly allayed Jade's fears, though being cut up on razor sharp rock was not particularly appealing either. The sea breeze grew strong as they neared ground, and it required an expert touch to land as lightly on the beach as they did. Two quick strides and one long one were enough to ensure they completed the journey on their feet. Coco immediately unclipped Jade and then the parachute, which she hurriedly set about stuffing into a loose canvas backpack. 'We've landed in a quiet corner of the island,' she explained as she worked. 'But the island's security includes a radar capability able to have detected us while we were still plummeting like rocks. So, let's find ourselves a vantage point and see what comes our way.'

They ran off the beach, taking position amongst the tall grass of a foreshore sand dune.

'This will do,' said Coco. 'While we are waiting, we can break the ice a little. So far I have only met you as an unconscious body in a taxi and a rambling junkie on plane. Drugging you, by the way, was the pilot's idea. She doesn't want any chance of being connected to you.'

'Sounds like she must be CIA,' Jade replied.

'No, she isn't it. Nothing is CIA. Their only contribution to this whole enterprise was to find people they could bully into a suicide mission and to create a credible backstory for when it all inevitably goes to shit. The Kill Karate Parachute Club is just the figment of their very peculiar imagination. A group of daredevils that have nothing better to do than parachute into highly restricted areas. Crow has been running the club for a year or two with this sole job in mind. And every stamp in your fake passport has been elaborately aligned with mine to show anyone who cares to look that we are lovers roaming the world together.' She thrust the backpack into his chest and from a pocket of her cargo pants pulled a pair of night vision goggles. 'Put these on.'

'Have you got a gun as well?' muttered Jade as he did so.

'The CIA has forbidden weapons. The Kill Karate Club it seems are not killers after all.'

'Whatever.'

Coco watched him intently until the goggles were on and then sprung up. 'No one seems to be coming. Follow me.'

For the next five minutes they ran faster than Jade had ever run before. They came to a small jetty with five go-fast boats moored to it. Coco jumped aboard the largest, a white fiberglass monster shaped like a spearhead. There were two imposing outboard motors at the rear. Coco tested the first of her skeleton keys in the cockpit ignition and when the cockpit instantaneously lit up, she programmed the onboard GPS system with a destination and handed the keys to Jade. 'This boat will be your escape route. Know how to drive one?'

Jade shook his head.

Coco raised her eyebrows. 'You've landed on an enemy island and you don't know how to drive a boat? How does the CIA expect you to get away? Best we don't think about that. Just to spite them, I'm going to teach you. Pay careful attention.'

Jade did just that, concentrating hard, but never fully able to rid his mind of the notion that if he died on this island, his mother would in turn die in prison. There had been no official contract given to him by the CIA, only a wink and a whispered promise. And that would be forgotten as soon as the undertaker was called in. A rush of anger blasted the last of the drugs from Jade's faculties. He may have been a high school dropout, but the one thing he had learnt was the art of survival. And this moment was shaping as his own final exam. The prize was a last chance at a normal life.

'Have you got all that?' said Coco at the completion of the tutorial. 'We don't have time for a test drive.'

'I've got it,' said Jade.

'Good. Then that's it for the escape. Now to the mission that's brought us here. Come with me.'

Jade latched onto her arm as she tried to move away. 'Before we worry about that, I want to know why you bothered teaching me about the speedboat in the first place. Aren't you going to be escaping too?'

Coco smirked threateningly. 'I'm not going anywhere. I'm here to own this island.' She pulled her arm free. 'Let's go.'

They ran along a forest path and followed a sheer cliff face to a pathway cut into the rock. Coco was moving with an easy stride that took her up the steeply rising steps with deceptive speed. Jade, however, was ill used to running and had to battle through every step just to keep up.

Finally, wrapped in razor wire at the top of the path, was a radar station with a dish spinning in a fast, steady rhythm atop a windowless, square concrete building. The area was windy and deserted, though would have made for a romantic date spot with its vantage point over the island. Marmalade's medieval castle was the most prominent structure around with its curtain walls and corner towers an imposing statement of power. At the foot of the castle were the houses and single level buildings of the town. Beyond them was an extensive port featuring fishing boats, luxury cruise boats, go-fast boats and two sea planes. All in all, it was a small self-contained town with the capacity of a few hundred. A town that did not exist.

'Welcome to Private Island,' said Coco. 'A very nasty place. And don't let our uneventful passage so far make you feel welcome. The town is heavy on protection and the guards will shoot to kill on sight. I actually asked Crow for a woman for this mission, someone who could join me in the cover of hooker. But apparently you're all she could come up with.'

'Maybe I could be your pimp.'

'A fine idea, but unfortunately you'll need to come up with something better if you want to survive more than two seconds at the security checkpoint. Crow says you're very good at melting into a background. You'll need to because this particularly background is going to get real hot.'

'Are you worried for me?' muttered Jade flippantly.

'I thought Americans scared more easily.'

'How many Americans have you actually met?'

'I've met Crow. She scares very easily. That is why she has disowned us. And like most scared people, she likes nasty weapons.' She touched the bottom of the parachute backpack. 'There's a string here held down by wax. Once pulled the backpack will simulate an oil fire, liquifying and exploding like napalm. I need you to use it to make a diversion in the town. There are two spots that will really get the Viking Snake's attention: the ammunition dump inside the castle and the local bar in the tow outside.'

Jade looked again at the castle and thought it pretty much impregnable. 'So, where is the bar?'

'It's the round building in the centre of the town.' Coco pointed down at it. 'Do you see it?'

Jade followed the line of her finger amongst the rows of small, neatly arranged blocks, patterned with sharply angled terrocota tiled rooftops. There was only one round building - made of black steel and glass. 'Yeah, I got it.'

'I'll give you thirty minutes to set it ablaze. And remember no gunfire. If Marmalade thinks he's under attack he may just trigger a nuclear meltdown and you'll have the deaths of thousands of people on your conscience.'

'I'll keep that in mind.'

'Wait until I am in town before you make your move. It is not easy to see it in the darkness but there is a guard-post and an electrified fence at the town's entrance.' Coco pulled off her cargo pants to reveal a red leather miniskirt and fishnet stockings. Her legs were wonderfully toned.

'Nice look,' complimented Jade.

'Thanks. Are you sure you can't do the same?'

'Afraid not.'

Coco tossed her pants onto him. 'In the pockets you will find a hand drawn map of the castle, featuring the ammunition dump. Just in case get the opportunity.' She reached across and kissed him with a hand upon his cheek.

'Still trying to feel like a hooker?' Jade murmured.

'No, that one was for you. If there is pain to come, you will have something good to think about.' Coco stepped back. 'Crow said you are something special. You'll have thirty minutes to prove it. I can't give you longer because I don't trust Crow at all. My biggest fear is she is setting us up. Maybe she wants Marmalade to take out Hong Kong with a North Korean agent there to take the blame. Once and for all China would be pushed to abandoning its support of North Korea. The US has been wanting that result for a long, long time. Would they stoop to destroying a city like Hong Kong to do it? A woman like Crow is capable of anything.' From her side bag she pulled out a red and black checkered handbag, a pair of black stilettos and some gold earrings. 'If you somehow survive long enough to be a distraction,' she said as she slipped the stilettos on, 'you will hear a siren sound out across the island. After that you can start shooting all you want.'

'Why? What will the siren mean?'

Coco smirked. 'It will mean I own the island. But if your diversion is not successful, I will abort the mission. I will disappear from the island without trace and your mother will undoubtedly soon disappear too.'

'You're not the first to say that.'

'Well, if I'm starting to sound like the CIA, it's time I got going.'

Jade watched her head down the road to the town. To his mind she looked far more like an assassin than a prostitute. But she certainly looked good.

*

Jade sat silently staring at the castle and the town and Coco's neatly hand sketched map for a good fifteen minutes before deciding how the diversion would unfold. By this time Coco had reached the main perimetre gates. Sure enough, after a minute or so of talking and bowing at the guard-post, the gates rolled open and she walked into the town.

Now it was Jade's turn to try. He went to the radar station's razor-wire fence and studied the sophisticated-looking equipment beyond. This was where he would start. If the town was a death trap to enter, he would bring a bite-size piece of it to him. The spot he picked out was a metal box with a network of wires running out at the base of the concrete blockhouse. A power box, or so Jade hoped. He took off the backpack and worked the string free from the wax film. He summed up the throw he would need to land the backpack on the box. It was neither easy nor difficult, he would simply have to relax and take his chance. He had played enough street basketball to know that some shots went in and some just trickled out - that was the game. He took in a loosening breath and pulled the string until there was a click. He stepped forward and lobbed the backpack over the fence. He initially feared the trajectory was too flat, but it narrowly cleared the razor wire and landed right on top of the box. Jade punched his fist with this small victory. He turned quickly to find a hiding spot, for once the bag ignited there would be a lot of eyes from the town drawn that way. He settled for a crouched position amongst a row of prickly shrubs by the roadside. He pulled out from the dirt a sharp, flat-edged rock and slipped it into a pocket of his trousers. The backpack meanwhile erupted into flames with a shrill hiss like firecrackers just as they were about to take off, and just as Coco had described, it liquefied and spat outwards in a raging oil-fire. The power box was engulfed by flames and began to crackle and pop and there came a pungent stench of burning plastic. Jade withdrew further into the shrubs, certain that this would not go unnoticed.

Unsurprisingly for a town that did not officially exist, it was not the fire department that came. Rather an ominous looking black SUV roared out from the main gates and powered its way up the hill. The vehicle's large, heavy wheels passed right by Jade and it skidded to a halt beside the burning power box. Jade quickly followed, staying low and behind the roadside vegetation. The SUV's four doors opened and men holding guns got out. The two on Jade's side of the car were conversing animatedly in Portuguese. They were staring at the burning box as though mesmerized by the flickering flames of a campfire. Jade rushed up behind them, snapping their necks with lightning quick hands just the way Montessori had taught him. Force of hand and force of mind were the key, Montessori had explained, and very few people had sufficient portions of both. For Jade, however, there had been no hesitation, and he rushed around the SUV ready for the other two.

These two men were also distracted, shining flashlights onto the scene ahead. One beam was concentrating on the power box and the other was flittering about the perimeter fence, looking for signs of an intruder. The men, however, were not talking and proved far more alert. Jade's approach was quickly noticed. The torch beam roaming the fence swung sharply at him, catching him flush in the eyes, rendering him temporarily blinded. Jade resisted the urge to dive for cover, fearing the inevitable gunfire would alert the town, send Coco running and confirm that this had indeed been a suicide mission. He chanelled his concentration upon his mind's eye, where he had spent more time than most in his life in hiding. He still had clear images of the two men and where they had been positioned and it was against these that he struck. He brought a vicious flat hand against the Adams Apple of one man and lifted a boot heel into the groin of the other. Both men tumbled incapacitated to the ground. Jade kicked them some more before hog-tying them with their own bootlaces, taking his time, waiting for his vision to fully clear. He got into the SUV and headed down towards the town. His hands on the steering wheel were relaxed and assured. He was well used to driving under pressure, having made good tips at the Death Disco driving home drunks in their own vehicles, unlicensed and in makes of cars he had never driven before, and usually at the time of night when cops patrolled the roads like sharks. He enjoyed driving and with never any real destination his patience was rarely tested. He negotiated the uneven, winding road like it was just another midnight expedition through the backstreets of New York. But he could feel he was being watched. On the dashboard he noticed a pack of cigarettes. He opened it and tucked a cigarette into the corner of his mouth. He idly toyed with it, taking in the layout of the town and the location of the bar one more time before the SUV descended below the level of the rooftops.

The road flattened out at the base of the hill to a straight wide stretch culminating in the town's electrified main gates. Jade eased his foot off the accelerator to give himself more time to absorb just what kind of welcome he was going to be confronted with. The gates had been left tantalizingly open, but there were machine gun-nests on either side of the entrance and the guardpost was a concrete bunker with slots where cannon and heavy machine guns were positioned. Beyond the entrance, the castle loomed menacingly on its own hill, the rocket launchers on the towers clearly far more modern than the medieval structure underneath and would be in reach of any point on the island - including the SUV Jade was currently in and the speedboat he was intending to escape on.

An enormous snarling Rottweiler and three men armed with machine guns were standing by the concrete pillbox. The men fortunately were much calmer than the dog. They were idly smoking cigarettes and probably, after seeing the gorgeous Coco go by, feeling the pain of having to endure a lonesome night of guard-duty. Jade approached the gates slowly, giving the men every chance to close it if they wanted to. It took all his restraint not to accelerate through, painfully aware that after many lost years, he had at last found the road that led to his mother no matter how precarious it might have been. He felt his pocket for the bloody Polaroid of him on the swing. It was still there and he somehow felt more protected by it than if it had been a handgun. It was _why_ he was there.

Neither the guards nor the gates reacted to Jade's approach and he passed through the entrance unhindered. So, his rouse had worked. At last he was able to put his foot to the accelerator with intent. He drove along streets of simple wooden houses, working his way to the centre of the town and the circular building containing the town's bar. The building was constructed of silver aluminum and black glass and it was two floors high. There were no signs to actually indicate it was a bar and no people about, not even a drunk or two sitting incapacitated on the sidewalk. Jade put on his seatbelt as he neared. He noticed movement in the rearview mirror, some men were approaching. He couldn't be sure if they were approaching him or the bar, but they were clearly in a hurry. He revved the engine into a frenzy and spat out the cigarette. He sped for the building's front entrance, holding up an arm to shield his face and noticed the door open to a man with long black hair drunkenly staggering out into the night - wrong place, wrong time. The SUV sent him flying upwards as it tore into the bar, smashing through tables and chairs and anyone too slow to get out of the way. It was only a back wall that brought the journey to an end. The airbag cushioned the impact as the front of the SUV crumpled in. Jade kicked out what was left of the front windscreen and exited the vehicle. The bar he slipped into was dark, the air heavy with tobacco smoke, and heavy metal music blasted from the sound system. It was an intoxicating atmosphere and the fearsome looking revelers that filled it had been worked up even before Jade had rammed them with the SUV. Jade continued the journey on foot, staying close to the wall, looking for a way out. The first door he came to was the male toilets. He had no choice but to enter, for once he was recognised as an outsider the gunfire would start - and it was likely that every soul in the club was carrying a piece. The most likely explanation for the SUVs crude entrance was an employee tripping out of his mind and Jade needed to preserve that illusion for as long as possible. Jade slammed the toilet door closed behind him and wedged under it the rock he had collected from the top of the hill. A pounding at the door followed almost instantly and a husky male voice unloaded a barrage of Spanish expletives.

The toilets Jade found himself in were impressively styled with white chrome downlights, immaculately clean wall mirrors, basins of black tempered glass and a blue tiled floor. There was a man in a white suit on his knees, pressing his face against the far wall. He had a long ponytail and gold earrings. Sensing Jade's attention, he glanced back over his shoulder and smiled lecherously. 'Keep away from my hole, man. I'm catching the late show.' He was about to turn back to his peephole when he noticed the hammering on the door. 'Let the poor guy in,' he muttered. 'He must be about to soil himself.' And with that he returned to his peeping through the wall.

Jade turned on a tap to add another sound to the hammering and thumping base of the music and sprung at the man, smashing his head against the wall so hard that he enlarged the peephole; he found himself looking at a man and woman making love against a washbasin in the female toilets. He stepped back and began pounding at the hole with his boot. The already weakened wall quickly gave way and Jade was able to squeeze through the hole. Even now the couple, pressed against a wall mirror with their eyes clamped shut in ecstasy, failed to notice the intrusion. Jade couldn't help but smirk. He moved to the door and peered outside to see that the SUV was attracting a large gathering and many more of the night club's seedy clientele were milling around the decimated front entrance. A third group were excitedly hammering at the door to the male toilets with the butts of their guns, keen to get their hands on the instigator of all this carnage. Jade slipped out the female toilets and moved calmly amongst the throng at the front entrance. From there he backed away from the bar as though to take an all-encompassing view of the crash site. What he was actually interested in, however, was a replacement vehicle for the SUV. Something that would not just take him to the perimetre gate but all the way through it. Parked along the curb were some gleaming Italian sports cars and American motorbikes. They all looked classy and fun and Jade was tempted to try out his speedboat skeleton keys on them, but a roar of engines marked the arrival of some more practical options. Jade sucked in a settling breath as the convoy of armoured vehicles pulled to a halt outside the bar. This, he suspected, was what the diversion had been all about: six personnel carriers armed with cannons and heavy machine guns. They stopped in a row across the middle of the street and the rear hatches opened and a small private army emerged with Uzis and Kalashnikovs. Amongst them, an older man with thinning silver hair, piercing blue eyes and a tanned complexion limped out with a walking cane from the first of the vehicles. He was wearing a red lounge jacket and grey slacks; he was holding a pipe and took a quick drag as he inspected the scene around him. He noticed Jade standing close by and went up to him. 'What's going on here?' he asked with a pronounced German accent.

The man smelt of a heavy cologne and he had a mouth littered with gold fillings that his mirthless grin seemed to be at pains to display. Jade felt a tightening in his chest as he realised that this man was more than likely Pall Marmalade himself. One of the world's most wanted criminals. Marmalade was used to people being afraid of him, so did not become suspicious with Jade's shaky reply. 'Someone drove a truck through the front door.'

' _My_ front door,' the man replied in a gravel voice, leaving no doubt that it was indeed Marmalade. 'Any idea who?'

'He has barricaded himself into the toilet.'

Marmalade sucked on his pipe some more, releasing the smoke with a frown of discontent. 'No doubt someone helping himself to free samples of the product. That is why I do not allow drug use on my island.' He marched for the bar, waving his soldiers to follow. Three remained behind to guard the personnel carriers. They spread out so that they were standing in between them. Jade knew he was only moments away from being discovered by the enemy and his only chance of escape was inside one of those vehicles.

'There is smoke coming out of this one's engines,' he said to the nearest guard. 'Come here and I'll show you.'

The guard complied; having seen Marmalade exchange words with Jade, he was wary of dismissing him out of hand. He followed Jade around to the rear of the vehicle and bent down in the search of smoke. It exposed his neck and its pressure points to two quick stabs of thumb that sent him crumpling into unconsciousness. Jade dragged him into the vehicle and discarded him onto the floor. He climbed into the cramped driver's seat and sat in silence, looking over the controls until he was confident he knew what was what. He had driven tractors and forklifts and these controls looked a little bit of both. He raised the rear-entry hatch and disengaged the brakes. He started to reverse when a hailstorm suddenly erupted against the front of the carrier. On the console screen, he could see two guards shooting at the vehicle with wild abandon. He went to the heavy machine gun and turned it on them, tearing them to pieces with a short powerful burst. He dropped back into the driver's seat and sped away from the bar. With his ears ringing from the noise, he supposed this was just the kind of gunfire Coco had said would send her running from the island. He had an inkling, however, that underneath the threats she was not about to run from anything.

5

The entrance to Private Island's underground nuclear facility was a high-ceilinged, immensely thick concrete archway that descended into a dark cavernous tunnel. The road leading to it, however, was brightly lit with floodlights set on tall poles. Coco strutted along it in her tight white T-shirt and red leather miniskirt like it were a catwalk. Her checkered handbag was tucked under her arm and her stilettos were accentuating her long, sleek legs. Her audience consisted of three guards standing together with rifles in hand and eyes glued on this imminent arrival. Usually there would have been more, and the armed personnel carriers would have been parked there as well. Whether or not the distant gunfire was Jade being diced to the pieces, he had clearly been worth bringing along after all. Coco swung her hips and let her long black hair swing from side to side. One guard smirked, one gawked with his mouth open wide and the third guard stepped out to meet her.

'This area is strictly off limits,' he said earnestly.

'There's been some trouble in town,' Coco responded. 'Pall told me to hide here.'

It didn't sound likely but having a killer for a boss, the guard did not want to dismiss her out of hand. 'I doubt he told you to come here,' he said. 'He doesn't let his girlfriends come anywhere near this facility.'

'Maybe not,' said Coco. 'And I'll show you why.' In one deadly instant the handbag's true nature was revealed as bullets spat from a small black hole on the side. Coco had spent hundreds of hours perfecting her aim with the camouflaged gun and all three men were dead with pierced brains before they could even react. It was every bit as clean as Coco had hoped for, but she knew this had been the limit of her capabilities: a fourth guard would almost certainly have meant herself being shot as well. She turned quickly and shot out the overhead cameras. It was likely already too late. That was the one problem with dressing like a prostitute: it tended to draw the attention of bored men. Sure enough the alarm siren began to blare from the top of the arch and it was triggering other sirens atop Marmalade's castle and the town. The whole island was being woken. Never mind, Coco was well aware the main blast door took precisely 3.3 seconds to close. And she knew how exactly the explosives to trigger the nuclear meltdown were rigged. She walked passed the blast door and down the nuclear facilities' entry ramp, her handbag tucked casually under her arm.

*

The castle drawbridge was rising ahead of the armoured personnel carrier. Jade applied the brakes and shifted his position to the heavy machine gun. Two hard bursts of gunfire snapped the chains on either side of the door, sending it crashing back down over the moat. Jade drove the carrier over it, while a blinding flash of light streaked across the cockpit monitors - it was a Stinger missile that had narrowly missed the carrier and exploded halfway up the moat's rock wall. More small ordinance fire greeted Jade in the inner-bailey, most of it coming from soldiers at ground level. The blaring sirens was Jade's permission to counter it with the carrier's full capabilities. His main objective, however, was the missile launchers positioned on the tops of the three towers. He pulled into the corner of the belfry behind a semi-trailer truck and turned the twenty-five millimitre auto cannon upon them. The explosion of missile stacks was massive, cutting all three towers off at the head in a torrent of flames and bricks. Even as the debry was still raining down, Jade turned the cannon on the old grain store that Coco's map indicated had been converted to an ammunition dump. The whole castle seemed to lift off the ground with the explosion that ensued. Jade looked on dumbstruck. It was a long, tumultuous moment before the destruction had abated enough to see the road leading out of the castle. Jade drove the carrier back out into the town and this time the castle defenses did not respond to his presence. Even the sirens had been silenced. Jade watched fascinated via the rear cameras the swirling inferno he had left behind. It was such an impressive diversion it would surely have been seen by the CIA satellites. That was important, for whether Coco was successful or not, Jade wanted there to be no doubt that he had fulfilled his part of the mission. Over the drawbridge he took a hard right and headed down a pot-holed track that ended with the perimeter fence. He expended the last of the cannon shells in blasting passage through it. From there he went off-road, soon reaching the coast and followed it to the jetty with the speedboat Coco had primed for his escape. Leaving the carrier behind, he freed the speedboat from its mooring jumped aboard. The skeleton key brought the engines powering to life. A crack of gunfire came in reply, but Jade was already speeding away from the jetty. He glanced back for another look at the glow of destruction of Marmalade's castle. It was quite spectacular and so much better because it had not been joined by the explosion of the nuclear reactor - at least not yet. Whatever plot Leslie Coco and the CIA had concocted together, it was apparently working. Jade supposed he should have been more excited about it. But he had been nothing more than a sacrificial lamb, dropped semi-conscious onto an island full of killers. Surviving it had been a thousand to one chance. And Jade feared it wasn't going to be that easy. His mother was still a long way from home.

6

Jade had all too comfortably settled into his lifestyle by the pool. His butler was a corporal and his two maids were privates. His villa, usually the preserve of visiting generals, contained three bedrooms, a large living room, a gym, a study and a sauna. Meals were brought on a fixed timetable, and other requests could be summoned by intercom, and when delivered they always came with a Will that be all, sir? And all that was needed in return was that Jade not ask questions of his own – especially when it came to why he was there and when he would be leaving. The Marines that had escorted him onto the military base from the battle cruiser he had been picked up on had been less than talkative as well. The military base on the island of Saipan was to be his new home until further notice. Hot peaceful days under the tropical sun were his to enjoy and he just needed to forget that his view of the horizon was impeded by a barbed wire fence.

On the tenth day of his stay Jane Crow came to him poolside. Jade opened his eyes with a start to find her standing at the foot of his deckchair, looking very officious in a blue pin-striped suit and with her hair tied back in a tight bun. 'You're getting sunburned,' she murmured.

'I don't have anything else to do,' Jade murmured. He pointed to the Rum Collins on the table beside him. 'Except drink cocktails. Anything but Long Island Ice Tea.'

Crow smirked. 'Yes, I heard you had one in Hong Kong. It wasn't to your taste?'

'I drank it. I fulfilled my part of the deal.'

'I suppose you did. And now it's time for you to pack your bags.'

'I don't have any bags.'

'That's right. Nor anything to put them in. That's the world we are returning you to. You are flying home tonight.'

'And my mother?'

Crow paused a moment, the thought seemingly not sitting comfortably with her. 'There will be a parole hearing for her next week.'

'Will it rule in her favour?'

Crow gave a barely discernible nod. 'A deal is deal.'

'So, the mission was a success?'

'That information is classified,' Crow muttered.

'But I was there.'

'I know. You made your presence felt.' Crow folded her arms with a hint of self-consciousness. 'Your abilities are unique and forged in a manner that we could not hope to replicate. I have campaigned to get you an ongoing position with the agency, but it has been deemed that you are too unpredictable, unstable and uncontrollable. I argued that those are the attributes we should like the most about you. Regretfully, the decision is out of my hands. It's a shame because there are a few projects I could really have used you on. The top brass are just plain scared of you. They didn't even want you using their pool. I have been stalling the past few days to give you a bit more time by the pool.'

'Well, you can tell the generals I won't steal any of their towels.'

'Honestly, you might as well take them because they won't want to use them again anyway.' Crow glanced at her watch. 'You'll be returning to New York on a civilian aircraft. There's a flight leaving in four hours.'

'I see. And you came all this way to tell me that? All you needed was a travel agent and some Marines to make it happen.'

Crow glanced across the pool. 'I came to give you a choice. Your problems in New York haven't gone away. Sweet Gazar still wants you dead. And when your mother is released, Gazar will want her dead too. Your old friend Max Davell of the FBI has been bugging me about it. He is frustrated that despite the FBI's best efforts, Gazar always seems to get exactly what she wants. For you it will be more than frustration you experience. But, of course, that's only if the North Koreans don't get you first. I doubt they enjoyed the treatment you meted out in Singapore. And they have long memories.'

'So, where should I go?'

Crow shrugged. 'Somewhere warm perhaps. Find yourself another pool. Make use of the passports we have given you. Especially the one that doesn't have your real name on it. I have already included in my report that it was destroyed during the operation. It's the least I could do.'

Jade thought for a moment. 'Maybe one day a new life would be nice. But my old one is not over yet. I will go back to New York and wait for my mother to be released. She will need looking after.'

'Very well. I will have the ticket organised for you. Unfortunately, I have only secured the budget to send you home economy class.' Crow's gaze diverted to the villa grounds before springing back again. 'You have time for one last swim. The driver will pick you up at four. That's in two hours.'

'Fine.'

'Do you have anywhere to stay in New York?'

Jade looked at her hard. 'Yeah, many places.'

'Well, this is goodbye then.' Crow tentatively stepped forward and shook his hand. 'When the chief asked me who you really are, I had to say I don't know. But whatever fate has in store for you, just know that with Private Island, you have given your country more service than many operatives will do in their entire careers.' She started to walk away, but gave him a final glance. 'I hope you eventually find yourself a home, Jade Jacks.' She quickened her stride, bringing her phone to her ear on some other business.

Jade idly watched the rippling blue waters of the swimming pool and sipped his cocktail. It didn't taste as sweet as before. He thought about New York and was glad his body had become strong again.
Part 4

Heartwreck Highway

1

JFK Airport was a good place to be homeless. It was warm, there was security everywhere, there were plenty of seats to lie down on, there were clean washrooms to wash in and it was easy to blend in with so many passengers laid up overnight in wait for a flight to take them away. Jade had avoided airports in the past, reluctant to put himself in the path of police in case he was recognised. But now his name was clean and he only had gangsters to worry about. He would stay a night or two; no longer than that, for the airport authorities would soon become suspicious and ask for proof that he was a traveller. Only an hour earlier a woman on a nearby row of seats had been given the treatment, picked up by the security staff and put on a bus back to the city. Jade had overheard the exchange from his own row of seats as he drifted in and out of sleep, his first night roughing it after the oasis of Saipan.

At two in the morning Jade was sitting up, reading a discarded New York Times \- he supposed it was rare that someone homeless would be suffering jet lag. Anyway, he had banked enough sleep in Saipan that he would get by with only an hour or two of sleep for a few days yet. An announcement was made for a flight departing for Lima, Peru and Jade thought again about the passports in his jacket pocket and the places he could go. He still had a thousand dollars tucked inside them as well, enough to pick a flight off the departure board and just go. Was he tempted? His time in Singapore and Private Island had taught him that a plane flight was no guarantee of peace. Saipan had just been an illusion, a beautiful bubble surrounded by guards and barbed wire fences.

A woman sat down at the end of Jade's row of seats. Her long black hair was concealing her face from her side on position, but Jade sensed she was young and attractive. She was wearing a fashionable black and white striped top, black corduroy pants and she smelt of lavender. To Jade's surprise, she started talking.

'I have been watching you, Jade. You are in a place of travel and yet you have no place to go.'

Jade recognised the voice even before she turned her head. It was Leslie Coco. She looked at him and her lips turned into a half-smile.

'Hello, Leslie,' Jade replied. 'Have you been following me?'

'Following you? You do not go anywhere. It is regrettable that your country has forsaken you like this. In my country someone who has performed such exploits as you did on Private Island would at the very least get his own parade. In America it seems all you can expect is a flight home on a budget airline.'

'Is that what you got?'

Coco smirked. 'I flew first class with a brand new American passport and five million dollars in my account. Obviously, I am better at negotiating a deal than you are.'

'Five million bucks makes a lot of friends in New York,' muttered Jade. 'You can do better than me.'

'I haven't made any friends yet, except maybe the car I bought today.'

'Cars are not friends.'

'You're wrong there. A 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle is a very good friend. Want go for a drive?'

'Now?'

'Why not? Better than just living it lying around the airport car park in a city swarming with thieves. I mean, you stole that personnel carrier so easily and you are just a homeless kid. What does that say about the country that raised you?'

'You chose to come here,' muttered Jade.

'To the United States?' Coco slid closer across the seats. 'And let me tell you why. My parents disappeared when I was ten. I was told by the authorities that they were required workers and had been sent away on a special project. I doubt I will ever know the real reason or what happened to them. My uncle took over my upbringing. He is a colonel in the army. A very strict, hard man who brought me up like I was a private in basic training. He would scream at me and beat me and that was fine, I could take that. It was when he started touching me in other ways that I really began to suffer. At the age of sixteen I joined the army for real just to get away from him. I rose through the ranks quickly. Having a colonel for an uncle helped, but it was also because I was already dead inside, just the way they like their soldiers.' She looked around the airport lounge with a pained look. 'I used my uncle's influence to be assigned to the secret police. That was ironic considering my only motivation was to learn the skills to kill him. I made a point of learning the skills very well.'

'Yeah, I get that feeling.'

'I could have killed my uncle with my bare hands or in a hundred different ways, but he was constantly surrounded by bodyguards, which meant I would surely have been killed as well. And I didn't want my life to be added to the list of all the other things my molester of an uncle took from me. Then it occurred to me that the best way to kill him was not by my own hand, but to defect. Do you know what happens to the family of defectors in North Korea? Ripped apart by wild dogs or slowly immersed into acid are some of the more pleasant modes of retribution. The horror of the death is limited only by the extent of any given general's depraved imagination. And to reach a rank so high the imagination must be pretty damned bent. Which makes it the perfect revenge. It doesn't matter that my uncle is a well decorated colonel. There is no other course of action available to his superiors. Especially not when the defector has so severely betrayed his or her country to the Americans. Blood must be spilled.'

Jade folded up his newspaper. 'You seem to be a fun girl to be around.'

'So, you want to go for a drive?'

'Sure. I'm happy to give you some pointers on how to drive a muscle car right.'

Coco stood up straight. 'That's thoughtful of you, but unnecessary. You're not the only one who can drive enemy vehicles. I was trained in all kind of American automobiles. The Chevrolet Chevelle just happens to by my favourite, the car I used to drive along the highway towards the sunset in my sad-girl American daydreams.'

Jade shrugged. 'You can drive then. You've earned it.'

They walked in silence out of the terminal and into the short-term car park. Rows and rows of SUVs and full efficient Asian made cars gave way to the Chevelle. It was a glistening metallic grey with a white stripe on the front. It looked every bit a five hundred and sixty horsepower machine. Coco tapped more of the horsepower than was necessary in screeching out into the traffic. Her hands on the racing steering wheel moved with assured ease. The traffic, however, would not allow the vehicle to fully stretch out. Still, the intensity on Coco's face did not dissipate as they edged along the JFK Expressway.

'Do you know where we're going?' Jade muttered curiously.

'Of course, I do.'

When details were not forthcoming, Jade added, 'And you're sure you don't need directions? Some local knowledge might be helpful.'

'I didn't pick you up because I need directions. I was already at my destination, so why would I need directions?'

'Why did you pick me up then?'

'Because we both have problems. Maybe we can help each other out.'

Jade frowned. 'The last problem you had was taking over a nuclear reactor guarded by killers.'

'My problem then was to draw away enough killers that I was able to get inside. After that was achieved, it was a straightforward mission.'

'Well, if you do not want to tell me where we're going, why don't you tell me about that?'

'Alright, though there's not much to tell. Our intelligence service had hacked the codes to the reactor's inner blast shield doors. Once they were closed and everyone inside the reactor was dead, I was able to deactivate the explosives that had been rigged to set off a nuclear meltdown. That was also quite straightforward as it was us who supplied the explosives in the first place.'

'Neat.'

'Very. Pall Marmalade is now in a Chinese prison, his criminal empire in tatters, and Britain has been relieved of its annual compensation bill. But your problem now is the same as it was then. That's the one thing that hasn't changed.'

'What's that?'

'Your country keeps sending you out to die.'

Jade pulled a face.

'Don't doubt that's what the CIA expected to happen on Private Island,' continued Coco. 'And they were satisfied that was all the diversion I needed – some stupid kid getting his head blown off on a Saturday night. But you somehow survived and so they shook your hand and gave you a week by the pool with a butler and maid. Now they have sent you on your final mission, to die in New York City. This time it's just to tie up loose ends.'

'Why would they even care?'

'Your mother is a cop killer. Do you think your government wants her to breathe fresh air? They made a deal with you thinking they would never have to honour it. Now they will look the other way while Sweet Gazar cleans up this little spillage from their cool aid bottle.'

'Sounds pretty paranoid.'

'If you want to survive, you better start assuming you're worth killing,' snapped Coco.

'How do you know these things?'

They left the expressway, the Chevelle's engine rumbling moodily. The streets were growing disturbingly familiar and Jade stared at Coco a protracted moment. 'How are you going to solve my problem?'

Coco noted the urgency in his voice. 'So, you recognise the neighbourhood?'

'Sure,' Jade murmured. 'We're heading into Soho. I was here not too long ago. Sweet Gazar's apartment is just around the corner.'

'That's right.' Coco swept to a stop on the roadside. 'Before we get any closer, you should see what I've got in the boot.'

Jade followed her out to the rear of the car and when the boot opened, his eyes swelled with surprise. Packed inside were machine guns, grenade launchers, shotguns, knives and boxes of ammunition. It made Marco Montessori's arsenal almost look plain.

'How did you get all this?' Jade exclaimed. 'You can't have been in the US even a week.'

'Two days to be exact and I spent the first day visiting the Statue of Liberty.'

'Then you must have really been busy on the second.'

'I raided one of our safe houses. We have them scattered all over the US. I think the idea is if North Korea ever decides to attack the US, the weapons will already be here.'

'Is that what you're doing now?' muttered Jade. 'You've got enough weapons for an invasion.'

Coco began strapping on a Kevlar chest protector. 'I'm going to plant a flag in the middle of Sweet Gazar's living room if that's what you mean. We won't need everything here but take as much as you can carry.'

'Last time I took a lot of guns with me too, but it didn't get me very far.'

'The difference is this time you've got a friend. So, do you want to try?'

Jade doubted he could have stopped his head nodding even if he wanted to. The attraction he felt for Coco was intoxicating. Her platinum blonde hair and olive skin were humming with electricity. Her eyes upon him were cool and unflappable.

'You did just nod your head?' she queried. 'I don't want to get ready only to find it was a nervous twitch.'

'Let's do this,' said Jade, picking up some body armour of his own.

'Alright then,' said Coco, strapping on a gunbelt. 'Now the good news is Gazar doesn't like children, so there won't be any nephew or niece sleepovers to worry about. And she only uses bodyguards as domestic staff. It means anyone in that apartment we can give the treatment.'

'The treatment? Where did you learn your English?'

'Mostly from backpackers abducted from India.' Coco looked at Jade defensively. 'Why? Is my English not correct?'

'It's fine. But what happened to the backpackers?'

'I suspect their days of travelling are over,' Coco murmured dourly. She opened up a duffel bag lying inside the boot and began packing it with a selection of weapons and ammunition. She worked quickly, knowing exactly what she wanted. Once the bag was full, she zipped it up and swung it over her shoulder. 'I have booked a room for a week at the Manhattan Hilton,' she said. 'If I'm hit or we're separated, we'll regroup there.' She took out a hotel security card from her pocket and handed it to him. 'The room number is attached.'

Jade pocketed it and then squeezed his hands into a pair of leather gloves and filled up his own duffel bag of guns. 'Am I invited even if you don't get shot?' he queried as he finished.

Coco slammed closed the boot, narrowly missing his finger. 'Wait before I get started on Sweet Gazar before you think about hitting on to me. The killing is going to be up close and nasty. You might decide I'm not the kind of girl you'd want to take home to meet mom.'

As they walked towards the Grande Hummer apartment building, she brought to hand a small black smartphone-shaped device. 'This is something you can't yet buy in stores yet,' Coco said. 'It's an electro-pulse scrambler. It will knock out the surveillance cameras within a hundred metres radius.' She activated it and slid it into her breast pocket. 'It's a little heavy but more comfortable than wearing a balaclava.'

Walking into the building foyer, Jade could see that it had been completely refurbished after his previous visit. The walls were painted turquoise and the floors tiled in charcoal grey. The reception desk was empty, leaving Jade to wonder if the recent vacancy for the dangerous position of watchman in the Sweet Gazar residence was yet to be filled.

Coco waited until inside the elevator to open her duffel bag. She worked quickly, drawing out a pistol and screwing on a suppressor. As Jade delved into his own bag, he noticed Coco and his reflection in the wall mirror and thought they looked good together. Her long blonde hair and his thick black hair. Their similar heights and athletic builds. Their stylish black shirts and trousers. And most importantly the common purpose that was evident in the way they held their guns at the ready.

The doors opened and they stepped into the corridor. Two guards were seated drowsily in chairs by the apartment front door and Coco shot them dead even before they could turn their heads. Coco tossed a grenade at the door and pressed Jade against the wall to be out of harm's way. The explosion was large and destructive and Coco stepped out and threw another grenade into the blast area. The whole building seemed to shake and the overhead sprinklers were triggered. When the explosions abated, a panic of retaliatory gunfire tore through the wall from the inside of Gazar's apartment. To Coco it was merely a useful soundboard to where resistance was to be found. She unleashed her machine gun in its direction. At first Jade thought she too was firing indiscriminately, but there quickly came screams and the gunfire from the apartment was silenced.

Coco crouched alongside Jade. 'Do you like golf?' she suddenly asked, her eyes focussed intently on the decimated entrance of Gazar's apartment for any further signs of resistance.

Jade frowned. 'Why do you ask?

'One of my trainers, a South African mercenary once told me that raids should be similar to how golf is played. The grenades and bombs are the woods for the big tee-off. The machine guns and automatic rifles are the irons for positioning nice and close to the target.' She pulled a Glock pistol from her holster, no longer interested in a noise suppressor. 'And the pistol is the putter for the final tap in.' She gestured to the elevator. 'I don't have any friends in New York and, even though it's your hometown, I doubt you have many either. So, if anyone comes up that elevator, don't wait for the doors to open before you let them have it. Okay?'

'Sure,' said Jade.

'And watch the stairs too. I'm going to putt in for a birdie.'

Coco stepped over the debris into the apartment, her pistol held at the ready and her duffel bag still on her shoulder. Jade turned his attention to the elevator and the stairwell. As the gunfire started again from inside the apartment, Jade knew that Sweet Gazar and everyone else in that apartment were finished, it was inevitable. Gazar had met her match. She had only ever been good at fighting gangsters, but Coco was a soldier and a state trained assassin. And she obviously had few compunctions about killing. Maybe she had been right that knowing what she was capable of would scare Jade away. He thought about heading to the elevator right there and then. But that would mean he had merely replaced one shadow with another far deadlier one. The ease with which she had found him at the airport showed how hopeless it would be if he ever became her target. Jade was still thinking about it when Coco re-emerged into the corridor. 'Time to leave,' she said.

Jade nodded and realised there was nowhere else he wanted to be. He pressed the elevator button.

'Better not to go that way unless you want a gunfight with the cops,' said Coco. 'I've got a better idea.' She headed back into the apartment and Jade followed. The carpet was soggy underfoot from the cascading sprinklers and blood, and debris and bodies littered the way.

'Sweet Gazar is in the bedroom down the hall if you would like to say a quick goodbye,' said Coco.

Jade could see the walls leading that way were splattered with blood and riddled with bullet holes. The scene smacked of a massacre. 'Is this what the nuclear reactor looked like on Private Island?' he muttered.

'Something like it.' Coco muttered. 'This is how I play golf.' She paced out across the terrace, pulling from her duffel bag a coil of black rope with a hook attached. She fastened the hook to the perimetre railing in a dark corner and tossed the rope out over the seven storeys drop. Police squad cars were meanwhile screaming towards the building, their flashing lights moving in clumps along the dark streets like pulsating amoeba.

Coco straddled over the railing and tested the hook's purchase on railing. Satisfied, she leaned backwards over the ledge. 'Have you ever repelled down a rope?' she queried of Jade.

Jade shook his head.

'Well, watch how I do it and follow,' said Coco. 'Gravity does most of the work. The gloves will protect your hands. Just remember to not let go.' She sprung out away from the building and effortlessly abseiled down to the road in a matter of seconds. Jade admired her skill. He swung over the railing, took a final look at Sweet Gazar's decimated apartment, and plunged down the rope. The rope hummed through his fingers with tremendous friction and he could imagine his gloves being torn open and his hands being cut to the bone, but he held his nerve and soon reached the pavement, where Coco was waiting to help break his fall.

'Let's walk away holding hands,' Coco said. 'The cops won't be looking for a loved-up couple.'

'Alright.' Jade took her hand and was surprised how soft and warm it felt despite all the devastation it had inflicted. They strolled in silence for a time on their way back to the Chevelle,

'So, what's your problem?' Jade finally murmured as another police car sped by.

'What do you mean?' queried Coco.

'At the airport you said you wanted help with a problem.'

'That's right.' Coco nestled her head against his shoulder. 'I don't know the best places to eat in New York City. Tonight, I feel like Italian.'

2

Lauren Wallace, Associate Director of the CIA, was leaning forward on the desk, flicking through a wad of photographs of the crime scene that was once Sweet Gazar's penthouse. Having worked a decade in the Middle East she had seen things she doubted she would ever see again, but the scene that confronted her was not too far removed. She gazed up at Jane Crow, who was eyeing her impassively on the other side of the desk.

'One theory is that a battalion of marauding Marines took it upon themselves to hit Sweet Gazar's residence with everything they had,' she muttered caustically. 'Your theory, on the other hand, is that it is the work of one young North Korean agent?'

Crow sighed as though she were already bored. 'That's right.'

'Perhaps we could ask her. Do you have any idea where our newest CIA sponsored resident to the United States might be staying?'

'We don't know where she is and to be honest we don't even know who she is. We offered her a new identity, but it seems she already has a few of her own.'

Wallace looked at the pictures some more and Crow took in the framed pictures that decorated her desk. These too had been taken in war zones and featured mostly redacted faces. Not a single picture related to family or recreational pursuits. This was a woman who didn't like weekends, Crow suspected.

Finally, Wallace was done with the pictures and she made a spectacle of dropping them onto the desk. 'The police will come hard on this. It is not the kind of case people want sitting on their books unsolved. That's how careers get interrupted.'

'It's a good thing the CIA doesn't keep records of a kind that others get to see. Let the cops do their best.'

'What if it results in more scenes like this? It's likely to be what happen if the local cops somehow manage to get close enough to the suspects. We might just find out that cop killing runs in the Jacks family. Does the CIA really want that on its conscience?'

Crow frowned. 'The organisation's conscience is like a limbo stick that goes up and down and we are all expected to dance under it.'

Wallace shrugged. 'And dance under it we shall. We have a clear play here. For Leslie Coco to take on Sweet Gazar, she's obviously in cahoots with Jade. So, the mother will lead us right to them. We can inject her with a GPS tracking device and release her from her eight years of servitude into the wild.'

'Sure, it will probably get you a shot at them.' Crow leaned forward on the desk and tapped the pile of photographs. 'But you wouldn't want to miss. I'm sure Coco knows where you live. And besides, what would it say to the next would-be North Korean defector? Bring down a criminal cartel holding an entire city hostage and your reward will be to wind up dead in a back-alley courtesy of the CIA. It won't read well in the brochures.'

Wallace puckered her lips. 'We've had the best of the deal so far but the aftertaste has the potential to be bitter. Not the happy ending you promised.'

'It could still be that. If Coco and Jacks have hooked up, that's great. They'll make for a cute couple. So far all they've done is waste a drug dealer and her bodyguards and trash her pretty apartment. That should be the last of it. Coco has my number and I have her account. If she blows five million, we will give her some more. When letting a tiger roam your backyard, you want to make sure she is well fed.'

Wallace shuffled uncomfortably. 'My career has been predominantly spent chasing terrorists, and, with the resources of the world's most powerful county at my disposal, I have been continually disappointed at how little money can buy.' She neatened up the pile of photographs and pushed them to one side. 'Nonetheless, I will call the Governor and Wendy will get her parole and the deal will be complete.'

Crow nodded. 'Thank you, Lauren.'

'The Director will set aside some time to personally thank you for the demise of the Marmalade Cartel. He is just waiting for the smoke to clear and the dust to settle. Let's hope your operatives can find a place without enemies.'

'Is that what the Director is waiting for? He may be waiting a long time then. The North Korean agent in Singapore has been officially confirmed as Ki-Nam Charlie. He's their best killer. If the regime has assigned him it suggests they are serious in wanting Coco dead.'

'Well, that's the chance Coco has taken.' Wallace pulled across her computer keyboard and began typing as a way to signal the meeting was over.

Crow left the office disappointed that Wallace had not enquired about any of her future operations – clearly the Associate Director was not yet ready to move on.

3

The guard opened the gate and Wendy Jacks stepped out of prison in a dress that she had not worn in eight years. It was a perfect summer's day: blue sky and a slight hint of a breeze. Wendy was nervous, her heart was fluttering and cold sweat was gathering in her armpits. It was because her son was here to meet her. And it was because of the unexpected nature of her release. But it was more than that. Wendy had a secret she was afraid her son would discover. The poisoning that had almost killed her, the years of drug abuse and the fighting and domestic violence had all taken their toll. Her memory was terrible and she struggled to participate in a conversation or even to make a decision. She had brain damage. In prison it was easily concealed as inmates were usually well advised to keep to themselves anyway. In the free world, however, especially with the reunion of her son after so many lost years, she would be expected to talk, would want that for herself, and she knew she couldn't.

She walked towards the handsome young couple waiting for her at the end of the long concrete path that led to the car park. The young man had nicely groomed black hair and he was wearing a perfectly cut grey suede jacket and black shirt and blue jeans. So that was her son, Jade? He had changed so much from the photograph that had been lifted from her hand on the day of the poisoning. He had been doing a lot of growing without her. And he must have been living right to be in the company of the woman beside him. She was strikingly beautiful with deep dark eyes, luscious blonde hair and long, athletic limbs. She was wearing a figure hugging white blouse and a black skirt. Wendy had not encountered a lot of glamour in prison and found it mesmerising.

'Hello, mom,' said Jade as he stepped forward and hugged her tightly.

'Hello, Jade,' she replied and warm tears began to streak down her cheeks.

'You're out,' Jade added. 'You've made it.'

'Yes, son.' Wendy grinned as best she could but inside she felt hollow. The moment was the final confirmation of all that she had lost. A son that had grown up strong and fine without her, a brain that could never come up with something worth saying and a body that moved so slowly and achingly that she was more like a grandmother that a mother.

'When the embrace was over,' Jade gestured to Coco. 'This is my girlfriend. Her name is Leslie.'

Wendy nodded self-consciously. 'That's nice.'

'She's Korean. She recently lost her parents and she's come to America to start a new life.'

'I'm sorry to hear that.'

'Thank you,' said Coco. 'I must admit I have experienced some culture shock. But Jade has been a very helpful guide with all of that.'

'The good news,' said Jade, 'is that her parents left her some money. So, you're going to get a nice little upgrade from your prison cell. A five-star hotel room at the Hilton for starters. We can take a few days to decide where we really to go. Somewhere at the end of a very long highway is best. We've got the perfect set of wheels for the trip. Come and I'll show you.' Jade led Wendy to the Chevelle in the middle of the car park. It was glistening after a visit to a carwash on the way. 'See what I mean? She's a beauty, isn't she?'

Wendy stopped and stared at the car for a time, taking in the exquisite contours of the chassis and then peering in through the windows at its stylish interior that featured a polished walnut dashboard, racing steering wheel and black leather bucket seats. 'It's nice,' she finally muttered. 'But I'm on parole. I'm not allowed to leave the state.'

'Think again,' said Jade. 'You're getting life without parole - but this time it's going to be on the outside. New name, new city, new house, and very definitely new job.'

'What name?'

'Wendy Gareth Turner. There's a driver's licence in the glovebox confirming it. Not that it means we're going to let you drive the Chevelle straight away. On a quiet stretch of highway, you can get reacquainted with some grunt and power. Like I said, all we've got to do is decide which highway.'

'Well don't ask me,' said Wendy. 'I never had the patience for highways and long trips.'

'It's never too late to start,' said Jade. 'Are you ready to try this time?'

'Ok, I'll try my best.' Wendy climbed laboriously into the back seat, refusing the offer to sit in the front.

4

They drove to Sleepy Hollow, drank some bourbons at a little corner bar and then headed to the Hilton Club on the Avenue of the Americas. Wendy put on a good show. She smirked and looked present and didn't allow her thoughts to take over her mind. She expressed surprise when they handed over her new fake licence and explained that it was the CIA that had provided the photograph. And she nodded her concern when they explained that even with Sweet Gazar dead, they would need to cover their tracks from would-be pursuers. They ate dinner in a steakhouse across the road from the hotel. All the while they had a map of the United States in the centre of the table. Wendy made sure she ate heartily and looked interested whey they discussed the different directions they could take. She even added a few suggestions of her own: the cold mountains of New York State or the sweltering swamps of Florida. But the secret she was holding onto was that she simply didn't care, not about any of it. In all her lost years in prison she had learnt just one small thing: how to stop caring. If that's what the penitentiary system considered rehabilitation then it was no wonder the parole board had granted her an early release.

Wendy found herself staring at Jade despite herself, recalling how badly she had wanted to be with him for so many years – so bad she was sure she would go mad. But now that the moment had finally come, she just felt numb. Her thoughts were continually drifting to Jade's father, Matt Sheppard and she couldn't understand why. Jade may have had his eyes but the resemblance was not significant enough to warrant the return of memories so deeply buried. Was it because Matt was the only man she had ever loved? Wendy was not sure she had loved anyone really. It was hard to know because the feelings that had etched moments into her brain had not themselves been recorded and in time had faded and been forgotten. Wendy found herself having to smile extra hard to stop these thoughts stamping themselves on her face. The wine helped.

It got easier around dessert when Jade and Coco's attention gradually shifted away from her to each other. That might have been the wine too. But the way they looked at each other was enviable. If it wasn't love, it was at least the kind of lust that might be confused for love. Jade's father had probably been somewhere in that realm. Back in the days when Wendy had found men more attractive than the drugs they took. A long time ago.

Jade dropped down a couple of hundred dollars onto the table and folded up the road map. 'We don't need to decide tonight where we're driving,' he murmured, getting up. 'The US has four sides and we can just keep bouncing off them. That would be something to do, wouldn't it?'

'Sorry if we've tired you out, Wendy,' said Coco, helping her out of her chair.

Wendy yawned. 'I'm not used to being up so late. Lights out at eleven for us old inmates, I'm afraid.'

Coco glanced at her Bulgari watch and saw that it was approaching 1am. 'For your first day of freedom it's good to stay up late. I was up till dawn for my first week in New York. Having electricity all night long seemed too good to ignore.'

They retired to their two-bedroom hotel suite. Coco tried to be impressed by her transformation from prison inmate to a guest at a five-star hotel. She reminded herself of the days when she had frequented hotels just like this on the back of drug money, before Jade was born. Maybe it was only right that her son had brought her back to this level. Wasn't that what a good son should do?

Wendy climbed into the enormous queen bed and turned off the light. But the feeling of unease that had been nagging at her all evening remained and sleep, when it finally came, was unsettled and brief. Wendy woke with a jolt in the middle of the night and immediately knew it had not been a nightmare that had shaken her, it had been a memory. The conversation in the steakhouse had jogged loose an ancient memory; there had been another evening when she had sat with a map deciding the best way out of town. In a jazz club with Matt. They had decided on Miami and drank a toast to it. The chance to start a new life. With new hope. But the following day Wendy had got cold feet and pulled out. She gave many reasons, but really, she just did not want to sever her access to easy drugs. Matt went without her and that was the last time she saw him. He got side-tracked on the way to Miami, enlisted in the army and wound up in Afghanistan. Would he have stayed with her if he had known she was pregnant with his son? Why hadn't she told him? And why hadn't she just gone with him? Gone with him wherever. Wendy lay in her bed, staring at a dark ceiling and knew that her life had been decided at that moment. Fear of the unknown had robbed her of her chance of happiness. The realisation left as bitter a taste in her mouth as Sweet Gazar's poison. The thought of going on a road trip with Jade and Coco was too unbearable to contemplate. Their happiness would be a constant dagger in her heart as it reminded her of the happiness she had turned her back on. She might even will their relationship to disintegrate just so it would somehow validate her own choices. What kind of mother would that make her? So, she had to leave. No need to wait till morning. Wendy had given her son as good a version of herself as she would ever be able to conjure, and that would be a memory for him to hold onto. There was nothing else for her to give - nothing else worth giving. Tears welled in her eyes as she pondered where else she could go. She was too old and too damaged to start again. There was only one journey left for her: the short trip to the bathroom with a belt. She had thought about it many times before, but now it seemed the right time. She climbed out of the bed and wiped away the tears. She pondered writing Jade a final note. But that was the whole problem, she simply had nothing to say.

*

Jade found her at dawn. He had roused from his sleep sensing something was wrong and went looking for her. He sat on the bathroom floor next to the shower recess where her body was propped up on her knees. He stared at the white floor tiles, his head buried in his hands. It could have been minutes or hours before Coco came in. She silently pulled a knife from her bathrobe and cut Wendy free. Then she removed her bathrobe and draped it over her. She stared at Jade for a long moment. 'We can stay for the funeral if you'd like,' she said.

'You know we can't,' Jade muttered. 'We have blood on our hands. The FBI will know we were responsible for Sweet Gazar's murder. One hair follicle at the crime scene will cement their case. And funerals are one of their favourite places to make a bust. People become nice and placid at funerals. The proximity to death and grief seems to slow them down.'

'I might be able to make a deal with them. There are some other state secrets I know of value to the United States.'

'You're a mass murderer on US soil. The only deal they'll let you make is which organs you donate after your execution.'

Coco frowned. 'I didn't think Americans were so sensitive about these kinds of things. Sweet Gazar was only a gangster and it was a fair fight.'

Jade slowly picked himself up off the floor. 'Anyway, your compatriot with the orange hair would be able to track us down even without you giving him a tipoff.'

'That is true. His name is Charlie, by the way. He is a very good assassin. But my sources tell me that after the events on Private Island he was summoned back to North Korea. He would have thought twice about obeying that order, for our generals do not take kindly to failure. Especially when it is a failure of that magnitude. Unfortunately for him, he had a fondness for his family that he could not break. Two young daughters to be exact. I fear they may grow up like me, left to wonder about the fate of their father without actually daring to know the truth. That is a long, hard road to travel.' Coco looked down at Wendy's body, her legs protruding from the bathrobe. 'You had a last moment with your mother. I think it was all she was able to give you. Life had damaged her.'

Jade's attention remained pointedly with Coco. 'If it is not Charlie that is sent after us, will it be another assassin?'

'Of course. I have earned a painful death. While you are with me, you will be a target too.'

'Bring the car around the front,' Jade said. 'Let's start with the swamps of Florida.'

Coco nodded. 'I'm sorry about your mother. It is a hard thing.' She quietly left the bathroom, gathered up her things and headed out the suite.

Jade collected his own things and returned to his mother's side. He slipped into her fingers the photo of his young self on the playground swing and kissed her on the forehead. 'Goodbye, mom,' he whispered and a single tear streaked down his cheek. He departed the hotel in a daze, bumping his way through the foyer and stopping on the sidewalk of Sixth Avenue, where the bright sunshine stung his eyes. As he waited for the Chevelle to emerge amidst the rush hour congestion, he found that rising from amidst his sadness there came an inexplicable sense of freedom. Now he could leave.

