Forced to Change

Staring at Kathryn's unconscious body made me wonder if this was success or failure. Failure is unacceptable. I don't keep track of my successes with trophies. I don't take anything from my victims. I don't have a box of trinkets somewhere that can prove I killed the many people I have over the course of my career. There's no need to take a remembrance of my kills. I don't need a reminder that I can pull out to bring back that life-ending moment. I keep a running tally of the dead inside my head. I know every name, every face, every time I've killed someone.

Surely this was failure; she wasn't part of this plan. She was there too early, too soon. This wasn't the way she was supposed to die. Not now, not here. The reason I considered this a failure was that Kathryn Rollins wasn't dead, at least not yet.

I knew my night was off the moment she looked at me. Kathryn Rollins walked through the exit door, head held high as her brown eyes scanned the convenience store. The long brown hair, that usually flowed down her shoulders was tied back in a tight bun. She walked tall despite being on the short side. I couldn't nail down the specifics of what was askew, but it was in that moment that I knew something was very wrong.

That was a lie. It wasn't just tonight that was off. No, the truth was that everything had been off since I'd met her. Everything had been slightly off for six years. From the moment I first learned of her existence I'd been on a path. This was just the course I was set on and her walking into the store only brought the disparity to the forefront.

Find and kill. See, there's an order to things. There's a way that these things go, a pattern to the way my life worked, but not tonight. Tonight, everything felt just slightly off. I could sense it on a subconscious level. The disorder of how things should work was in complete chaos. Find and kill.

I found and killed people. That was my job—not that I enjoyed it. There were no feelings involved in my process. Finding a single person wasn't hard. Typically people are connected to the world. A name, a social security number. If a person doesn't know they're being hunted they don't hide. They log onto a computer. They open a bank account. They use a cell phone. Then I tracked them, located them. I found them. Find.

Then there's the person who doesn't want to be found. That was my typical goal. It was harder to do, but not by much. What about the person who does want to be found? Kathryn Rollins, the victim that needed rescuing. That wasn't my business—or it hadn't been until Cantana.

Cantana. Oh, I'd found her. That was a life-altering mistake. I'd saved her life—a mistake I was still paying for now.

Kill. Killing was a job and for me, it was a calling. Something I was always meant to do. It was as easy as breathing to take a person's life. Names like assassin, hitman, killer or monster should have defined me. At one time, the words that defined me felt like my label, my name. Then again, there were better names for me because 'Jared' wasn't my real name.

What would be a better name for me? I supposed Jonathon or Philip would have worked just as easily. I could have given the other man in her car any name. My real name had long since ceased to matter to me. I disliked my real name and Jared was as good as any other.

I looked unassuming, like any average person. She saw me, but she didn't

see

me. I was too common; my face was like one seen a million times over but never really noticed. Nothing was memorable about my features. I blended into the background in plain sight. Looking like any other person on the street made my job easier. If someone took the time to notice me, well, they were looking into the face of the last man they'd ever see. Death usually followed a meeting with me. Kill.

I'd exchanged names with the other man, CJ. I had identified myself as 'Jared' a little over an hour ago for the first time. I closed my cell phone and slid it into my pocket as I paced my living room. Before that phone call, CJ was nothing more than an IP address, digital numbers I associated with a person that had the information I desperately wanted.

Everything he'd said had checked out. He was dating Lana Rios's cellmate, Tina Burrow. They'd been in a relationship for two years. Confirmed. Their relationship started before Tina went to jail for credit card fraud. Lana wasn't talking to authorities, but a cellmate? I believed him. That was all that mattered. CJ had reasonable access to the information I needed.

Find and kill.

I walked the three miles to the gas station. I could see Kathryn driving into work that morning, singing along with the radio. I had knocked her out with my gun. I remembered her in a hospital room, bruised and broken, unconscious. I was back in the car, riding away from the gas station.

My mind played through all the events, everything overlapping but completely clear as only I could see it. I wanted my life to be set right. Everything was wrong. There was nothing left to debate. Things were in motion. I'd given a name and the meeting location to CJ, the partner I didn't want. CJ. What kind of name is CJ? Letters, not a name. I supposed it was better than C or even J. A name was better than "hey, you."

My mind's eye flashed to the monitors and I took another deep breath. The video had been from fourteen hours earlier. I'd seen it, but I watched it again in my mind. Kathryn would sleep peacefully and in four minutes her alarm would go off and she'd start her day. The same girl, the one now laying across the back seat of the Chevy Blazer. I was nervous then and now. Normally my nerves were solid, but tonight things were wrong.

I checked my gun. It was just as it was when I loaded it while I watched her pack up her lunch that morning. I did this check out of habit. I trusted my gun. I trusted the six-inch blade strapped to my thigh. I trusted the backup weapon in my left boot. I trusted the backup backup weapon in my laptop case. I didn't trust CJ. I barely knew the man.

Find and kill. One more time and then all of this could be over. It could end. This had to end. My mind wanted to split. It played both the present and the long-ago history over each other vividly and accurately. I needed to identify the problem, the wrongness of the night, of my life.

Why this girl? Why her, I wondered as my memory watched her slap the snooze button. She stretched out on the screen in my mind and, at the same moment, I was checking her breathing as she lay unconscious in the back of her car.

What I did was find and kill. That was my programming. It worked. It was how my life worked. Kill. Killing was a universal problem solver. I didn't understand people. I didn't understand her. I didn't want to understand CJ. I couldn't relate to them. When I killed someone, no matter how it was done, that was the fix. It more than fixed the issues outside of me; it fixed the ones inside me, too. For a little bit at least. How many people do you have to kill to be considered insane? One?

The mission. Find and kill. That was the easy part. The finding was done; now for the killing. I'd turned off the monitors and shutdown my laptop. The gun was in my hand, my grip light. I slid the laptop into its bag and gathered the rest of the things I needed for the night.

To an outsider my head would be confusing. I get that part, and for the longest time I didn't realize other people don't think the way I do. I'm just used to seeing what happened in the past and what was happening now playing out together, overlapping in my mind. It's just how I process the world, how I see.

Killing was like an addiction for me, perfect clarity and pure bliss. Getting my fix, fixed me. I was always meant to kill her. If there was one person I was going to take into the final death with me it was Kathryn Rollins. Not yet, but soon. Soon all would be right with the world.