No, he has no conscience, he thinks, climbing back out the window. It’s the only reason he’s still alive. He thinks he’d like to have one, sometimes, just to know what it’s like. But he knows it would probably kill him, feeling guilt over what he does. It’s easier this way.
Lay sticks the weapon in his belt and grips the top of the window frame, pushing off. He lowers himself slowly, dangling, and presses his bare feet against the brick wall below the window. He carefully looks down. The ledge is about a foot wide, maybe three feet below him. There’s another one above him, he sees, four or five feet above the window. Up or down?
He braces himself for impact and lets go of the window frame, muscles loosening as he drops. He lands on the balls of his feet and quickly rolls off the ledge, grabbing the edge with his hands and pulling himself back up. Slowly and silently, he walks along the ledge, carefully hugging the wall as he turns a corner. His face is wet, his mask trapping the moisture from his hot breath as it condenses. Despite the cold February, he sweats.
He continues along toward his destination—the fire escape—as he picks up the pace. They’ll be waiting for him. He fights the urge to pull out his phone to check the time. There it is. He squeezes between the wall and the metal staircase, grabs the back of a step, and begins to precariously climb. He has to swing his legs out from under him and grab the third step below him with his toes, then move his arms down to the next step one at a time. It’s weird, but he moves as fast as he can, dropping onto the landing silently the second he’s close enough. Then he descends the stairs normally, running, two at a time till he reaches the beat-up sidewalk. He stops for two breaths before running again. This is always his favorite part. He pulls off a glove to reach under his mask and wipe away the sweat, drying his hand on his pants. He runs faster, relishing the stinging in his muscles, the concrete slapping his bare feet.
It’s less satisfying as he veers off the sidewalk, his toes finding tickly grass and grainy dirt, as well as some squishy stuff he tries not to think about. He keeps running, past the buildings and lonely street lamps, then past trees, and more trees. The door to the van is already sliding open when he sees it.
He jumps through the square without thinking—mistake. He finds himself tangled indelicately on the floor, Mai’s foot in his stomach, as the van gently and lawfully pulls away from between the trees and starts down the silent path. Mai digs her foot harder into his stomach. As he groans and doubles over, he reckons the foot wasn’t there by accident to begin with.
“Shut up,” Lin hisses from the driver’s seat, sounding way too focused for someone driving at fifteen miles per hour. Lay is starting to roll his eyes when he’s yanked up by his armpits. He receives another kick, this time to his shin, as Mai pulls him to her eye level to glare at him before tossing him to the side. He would have been content to just stay on the floor, he thinks, as he pulls himself onto the seat. “Put on your seatbelt,” Lin whispers urgently. Lay manages to complete his eye-roll this time.
There was a time, he remembers, when he was afraid of these two. The thought makes him chuckle. He pulls off his mask and throws it onto the passenger seat triumphantly, pushing his dark, sweaty hair off his forehead. He wipes his face dry with his shirt contentedly.
“Hey! Is that what you call being subtle, poop face?” Mai growls, hands balled into fists.
“Yeah, what was that?” Lin frowns at him through the rearview mirror. “Why didn’t you take off your mask?”
Lay takes a breath, ready to fight. “I—uh, what?”
“Why didn’t you take off your mask?” Lin repeats. “If anyone was awake just now, they just saw a mysterious man dressed in all black with a ski mask sprinting in the middle of the night, literally diving into the back of some shady van!” Oh. “What do you think they’ll think they saw?”
“I mean,” he starts, against his better judgement, “technically, they would have seen what they’d think they saw.”
“Technically, I’ll kill you,” Mai says.
“How eloquent.” He makes sure his mumble is quiet enough that neither of the girls would hear it. He’s not the only trained murderer in the car. “Anyway,” he says at a normal volume, “why would anyone awake be in the middle of a forest at night?”
“They still saw you run into the forest, fart-for-brains,” Mai points out. At least her insults are getting more creative, Lay thinks dully, sinking down in his seat. Of course he had to get stuck with these two for this job. He knows they’re right—of course they are, they always are—but he still has a right to be petty about it.
He registers that thought and dimly thinks, This is why they always send three people on two-person jobs—to babysit me. He rolls his eyes at himself before settling down to enjoy the air conditioning. His fourth mark ever, completed without a hitch. More or less. Oh, well, he thinks, almost finding it funny. Whatever. He turns to the window to hide his smile.
They never know much about the people who hire them or the people they’re hired to kill. It’s best, Hale says, to not know anything about the marks. Lay knows he’s right, too, but sometimes he just wants to know why. What did this person do to bring this upon themselves? Do they deserve it? Lay also knows that the answers to these questions would only torture him if he found out, so he doesn’t try. Anyway, the more they talk to clients is the more the clients know about them. Neither party needs more of their information out there than what’s absolutely necessary. A name, number, address—that’s all. Better for everyone involved. Well, except the mark, but that can’t really be helped. Collateral damage. It’s a cruel thought, but that’s the only way one can think about it. Lay doesn’t think of the marks as people but targets. It somehow helps him.
The highway is zooming, but Lin never exceeds sixty miles per hour. Mai keeps kicking the back of her seat, trying to convince her to break the speed limit—things like, “You murder people for a living! You’re already a criminal!” Lin gamely ignores her. Lay doesn’t mind the speed, though. He never sleeps better than when in a car or a train, so he leans his head on the window and closes his eyes.