A year ago, in another anonymous hotel in another city, Glenn stared out of the window of his fourth-floor room. The money from the last hit sat in one of his bank accounts where it would probably stay, untouched. After all what did he have to spend it on? It wasn't as if he had a home somewhere, and his clothes were all geared to what was needed for the jobs. His only real expenses were the tools of his trade, which could cost a small fortune but that was just part of the game and what made him one of the best.
The adrenaline rush and euphoria from the kill were long gone and he was restless. Not so restless that he'd go find himself a playmate for the night, but too much so to just sit there. Perhaps that was what he needed, a long walk along the shoreline.
He put the thought into motion as he donned his warm jacket to protect him from the damp chill in the air and started to leave his room. After a moment's hesitation he went back, got his Gerber Mark II and attached it, in its sheath, to his belt at the small of his back. Now he was ready.
The sun was just setting when he reached the lake. Hands in his pockets he strolled along the rocky shoreline. Cars passed on the highway a few yards to the right of him, the sound of their tires on the pavement making white noise that was surprisingly calming as it blended with the soft pound of the lake's water against the rocks.
'This I should do more often,' he thought, 'or perhaps not.' he added, a flash of pain crossing his face. His mind went back to another lake in another country and he remembered the 'accident' that had ended his parents' lives. That was the beginning of his life as it was now.
He had been eighteen when they'd died in a horrific explosion that had annihilated them and their boat. At first the police believed it had been an accident but they changed their minds when it came out that certain of his father's associates had put out a hit on him. When Glenn learned about it he'd made it his mission to find his parents' killers. He had approached a man he knew was trustworthy, one of his father's business partners, and told him what he needed to do.
The man had tried his hardest to dissuade him, but in the end realized that would not happen and so put him in contact with another man who would train him in the fine art of how to kill and get away with it. Within two years Glenn had learned everything the man could teach him. Six months later the two men responsible for his parents' murder were dead as was the man who had hired them.
The rest, as the saying goes, was history. Now, fourteen years later, Glenn was looked upon by those who knew what he did as the hitman to go to when the job had to be done quickly and efficiently. He had the unique ability to easily see the ins and outs of each job, avoid all pitfalls, and get the kill done rapidly with nothing that would point a finger at the people who hired him. His work was well known by all the law enforcement agencies around the world, but his face, his name, and his whereabouts were not. Only one person knew who he was. Him. Even his few contacts, the men who were intermediaries between him and the person who was hiring him, had no idea how to find him unless he was on a job for them.
Contact was by email, through an account so well protected even the best hacker couldn't access it. His intermediaries used it to let him know there was a job, he would send back a phone number where he could be reached, and things were set up from there. The only weakness in the system, he knew, was that at some point one of them might decide to sell him out. But that was life. He had to trust someone and he had picked them very carefully.
Glenn looked around and realized he had walked much further than he'd planned to. The shoreline was smoother than before, the rocks few and far between but larger. He picked one that looked as if it would be semi-comfortable and sat down, resting his elbows on his knees.
It struck him with unexpected force that he had some decisions to make.
That he liked what he did was to some extent a given, otherwise he would have stopped after the first, revenge-laden kills. However, recently, he felt that something was missing in his life. Something that made him wonder if he’d actually made the right choice once his parents' deaths had been avenged. There was a challenge to what he had spent the last fourteen years doing. It was like a complicated jigsaw puzzle and if all the pieces for each job didn't fit perfectly then he lost. He'd never lost.
But in not losing, he had begun to realize he had lost. He’d lost his life while taking the lives of others. Not literally. He was physically alive; he ate, he slept, he… existed. Therein lay the problem, as all he did was exist. He was thirty-four and had nothing to show for his life except money in the bank.
He slid off the rock and used it as a backrest while he lit a cigarette then stared up at the starlit sky. The lights of an airplane went by and he wondered where it was headed. Undoubtedly wherever it was going was somewhere where he had been, where he had spent a day, a week, a month in some anonymous hotel. The days of his life were written in hotel ledgers.
From the moment his parents were murdered, he hadn't had a normal life. Not in the way normal was considered by most people. He had no friends. He had momentary relationships, for lack of a better word, with whatever female or male caught his fancy when his libido required he find sexual release. But he had no one who cared about him come morning. No one who cared for him, to say the least of someone who could or would love him the way his parents had loved each other.
And that was how he’d wanted it at first. No ties. No one to betray him. What he did fed his need for recognition, albeit a very strange sort of recognition. He was famous, infamous, and for years that had been enough.
Now…? Now he was uncertain if it had been worth it. No, not uncertain anymore. He realized that it had not been worth it, not in the long run. He wanted out.
The question was could he get out?
He didn't know, but he knew he was going to try.
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