Midnight Hunter

The boy seems to consider this but then shakes his head. He doesn’t want to get any closer.

All right. I’ll just have to do this the hard way, and quickly as possible before I pass out again.

I watch him carefully for a few minutes, observing his body language. The way his hand clutches the gun convulsively. The way he swallows far too often. He’s hiding it well but he’s nervous. He’s not used to being out in the field.

“What’s your name?”

“Peter,” he says without thinking, and then looks like he wishes he could take it back.

“Peter,” I say conversationally. “I’m going to kill you, Peter.”

The boy freezes and then re-centers the gun on my chest. So he’s at ease in the corridors of HQ lying to Evony but he doesn’t like when things start to get serious. No one has ever pointed a gun at me without me returning fire and my temper rises that I’m not able to do so now. But I keep my emotions out of my face as it’s more unnerving for him this way.

I go on in the same conversational tone, never breaking eye contact. “It’s been a very long day, Peter, and there’s a lot still for me to do. Even so, I promise you that I’m going to spend a few minutes of it wringing your neck.” This isn’t an idle threat. I’m already anticipating the feel of his tendons cracking in my hands. The sound of him choking his last.

“Shut up.”

“What were you before you thought you could get the better of my Evony? His assistant? His driver?”

Peter’s face flickers, an almost imperceptible movement but I see it, and I roar with laughter, putting more energy into it than I feel, making this as unpleasant as possible for him. “You were his driver. All this—” I nod at the gun, myself, the barn “—is rather out of your league. Did you hatch the scheme between the two of you to trick Evony? Did the battered secretary seemed like an easy mark?”

Peter rallies a little as I remind him of his apparent cleverness. “She agreed so easily. That’ll teach you to beat up women.”

“I never laid a hand on her.” I pause, and then smile coldly at him. “Not like that. I touch her in many other ways, and she likes it. She always has. Do you know she was playing you the whole time? She’s far cleverer than you or your captain; far stronger in her mind. Far stronger than me. The agent I could have made of her.” I pause, pretending to think about it but really watching him. He’s sweating visibly now and his gun hand is dropping as he tries to figure out whether I’m telling the truth. If he was smarter or more experienced he’d realize that it doesn’t matter one bit whether I’m telling the truth as he’s the one holding the gun.

“She’s the reason it all ends for you today. She’s going to be your undoing, because it’s for her that I’m going to take you apart.” All the while I’m talking I’m distracting him from what I’m really up to. The ropes binding my wrists behind my back are too well tied for me to twist out of them, but the chair he’s bound me to is as rickety as the barn and I’m loosening the slat in the chair back more and more as each moment passes.

Peter’s hand clenches again and he realizes he’s becoming distracted.

“You’re not any good at this, are you, Peter? You don’t want to be here.” He should shoot me now and make it look like I attacked him but he’s too afraid of what Heydrich will do to him. Idiot. The only person he should be afraid of is me. He should at least have gagged me to prevent me from getting inside his head.

“All her fear,

all the pain that you and Heydrich have put her through, I’m going to make you feel it, and then I’m going to kill you.”

The slat comes free. I smile again, my coldest, most unpleasant smile, the one that sends a chill up the spine of the prisoners I interrogate. That makes them lose all hope. It works on Peter even though I’m the one tied to the chair. Finally, he looks around for something to gag me with and the second he does I launch myself to my feet and head-butt him in the nose. The cartilage cracks against my forehead and he howls in pain. A second later I’ve shaken the ropes loose and my hands are free.

Peter raises the gun but I knock it out of his hands. He backs away, his eyes wide with panic, blood pouring down his face, hands raised uselessly to ward me off. “Evony wouldn’t want you to hurt me. She’d want you to be merc—”

He dares invoke her name to try and protect himself? The world goes red and I grab his throat and start to squeeze. Peter struggles but rage is flooding through me, making me strong, making me pitiless. I remember Evony’s pale face at every border crossing. Her cry of pain as the Bulgarian soldier backhanded her across the face. I think of her alone with Heydrich and the torment she’s undoubtedly going through at this moment when I swore I’d never let anyone hurt her. All this inundates my mind and I barely notice Peter’s flailing becoming weaker and weaker.

Finally he goes still, his eyes wide and staring and I let him fall to the ground as floppy as rag doll. The muscles in my arms are shaking and black spots fill my vision. I can’t pass out. If I pass out now Evony will die. With every shred of willpower I possess, I force myself to move and go outside.

The dilapidated barn sits alongside a narrow, unmade road. The sunset is over my right shoulder and I turn to the north, one hand clamped to the side of my neck. I don’t know which side of the border I’m on but something tells me it’s the Bulgarian side, which means I’m heading toward the border checkpoint where I last saw Evony. If I’m wrong… I don’t want to think about the consequences if I’m wrong.

I’ve been walking through the woods for twenty minutes with no sign of anyone, let alone a checkpoint office. The blood loss is taking its toll. Adrenaline is keeping me going. Evony is keeping me going. The desire to murder Heydrich is keeping me going. If he’s hurt Evony I will make him suffer whole universes of pain.

There’s a gleam of a black car up ahead, a Mercedes-Benz. The checkpoint appears through the trees and the barriers are closed. The guards are sending cars back the way they came.

Looking down at myself I see bloodstains down the front of my uniform and dirt and leaves on the trousers. I have to keep out of sight.

As I’m carefully approaching the checkpoint office I hear her through the open window.

“Go to hell.”

Relief blazes through me. That’s my girl. I can picture the pale oval of her face, stubborn, defiant, as she once looked at me. As no one ever dared look at me. If anything happens to her I will kill everyone responsible and then myself. There is no world, no life for me without her.

“As you wish,” comes Heydrich’s reply. He’s fighting to keep his voice even but I can hear his frustration. “But I hope you know that there’s nothing to be gained in protecting your lover any longer. If you speak I can see to it that you don’t spend the rest of your life in prison.”