GILBERT

"Do you mind if I ask why you're a hitman?"

"Free country, ja?" We're driving in my car, and I'm trying to decide which suspected Raivis location to check. It's a little chilly tonight (for midwest summer), and Arthur is wearing a stitched red hat with a pompom on the top, which is just about the cutest goddamn thing I've ever seen in my life.

"Well, why are you a hitman, Mr. Bel . . ." She blushes a bit and proceeds to completely butcher my name: "Belsmit?"

I grin at her generously. "Beilschmidt. I know, German is crazy. They were probably drunk when they came up with it. We do like our beer."

Arthur ducks her chin, self-deprecating. "What's the answer to the question?"

I'd think she was screwing with me, looking shy and cutting to the point like that at the same time. But I can tell she's genuine. Must not be used to having a real conversation, where she doesn't have to pretend. Ain't I a white knight, huh? Yeah. Not quite.

"Well, I didn't always hurt people. It wasn't like, I was a kid and they asked me what I wanted to be and I said, A murderer! Nah. I was innocent once."

"Aren't we all," Arthur whispers, gaze on her lap. There's an ache to her voice that I want to ask about, but I know how it is with scars. When they're ready, they'll show themselves. Asking before that just picks the scab and gets blood everywhere.

"I grew up in Germany, on the edge of Berlin. It wasn't bad there. Warmer than here. Rougher, a lot of the time. But I liked it fine. It was home." I've said all this before. I've told Dominik this, in therapy sessions. This is easy. It's the next part that makes my chest feel tight. "Me and my brother always wanted to be soldiers in the army. He was better than me at just about everything, my little brother. Stronger, faster, smarter. He knew all his times tables, read books without pictures. He was the good boy. Our father was proud of him." I have to work to keep my voice from sounding bitter. My mouth tastes like almonds. Or acid. Or my hatred of my father.

Arthur glances at me. "Your mother wasn't proud?"

"She would've been. Died a couple months after she had Ludwig. She was small, weak. Bad lungs. Always white as a ghost. Maybe I got that from her." Shitty joke. "Yeah, it was just Dad after that. Papa, we called him. He loved Ludwig. He thought I was cursed."

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to." Arthur's voice is softer now, pitying, but understanding, too. She must have a piece-of-cunt father as well. No shortage of those.

"No, I don't mind. Good to talk. Bottlin' shit up is how ya go nuts." I stop at a red light, put on my turn signal. Tick-tock-tick-tock. "They wouldn't let me in the army. Said my albinism was gonna get in the way of being a good soldier. Gotta be top-notch to kill people for Germany. They accepted Ludwig, of course. Our father was all proud. Threw a party. Told me to stay outside. So I did stay outside. I left."

"You ran away from home?" Arthur's eyes are round, her lips a pinkish O. She's like a little kid, engrossed in a bedtime story. Damn adorable.

"Yup, I got outta there. Went to Austria for a while, but there wasn't anything for me there. Or in Hungary." Tiny bit of a lie there. "But when I got to Russia, I found what I was looking for."

"What was that?" Gotta love a girl who helps pull your story along.

"Somebody who'd give me a chance," I reply, but that sounds too nice, so I try again. "Somebody who'd give me orders." That's better. "See, my brother was better at everything, except killing. He couldn't stand watching people suffer. He didn't even like burning ants, or shooting squirrels with our BB guns. I liked that stuff. I liked causing harm. And I like doing it to people the most. It makes me feel good." Arthur looks kinda sick, so I wrap it up. "I started working for Ivan Braginski. He's a mob guy, mafia leader type. Pays a lot of bad guys to do a lot of bad things. Mostly his money comes from drugs, but he deals arms, too. Firepower. When he has a problem, like I said, he calls me. I solve his problems. He keeps me from being offed by God knows who wants to kill me. I've made a lot of enemies over the years. Fuck even knows who they all are. But the Russian keeps me hidden, from them and the cops, so long as I do what he says."

It ain't a half-bad arrangement, really. It's been enough for me so far. But now, Raivis Galante. A kid. I don't know what's gonna happen when I find him, but I have a seriously fuck-awful feeling about it.

But Arthur softens the anxious edges of me. Like beer, but more British.

"What happened to your brother?" Arthur asks, with a gentle hand on my shoulder. I can't feel her skin through my shirt and coat, but the pressure is there; light, but there. Contact. Connection.

"Killed in action. In a bus, actually, headed back to base. Bombed. IED. That's the story Papa gave." I spare Arthur the details of the last time I saw my family, how I watched my father weep over Ludwig's bloody, burned body. One dead on the outside, one dead on the inside. Both in tatters. And me, standing in the doorway of the hospital room, leaving without saying a word. "That was nine and a half years ago. I've just been a hitman since then. I bounce around countries every year, but I spend the majority of my time stateside. My boss exports a fuckton of drugs over here, and he has a hundred dealers in this state alone." Ninety-nine, now. RIP, Antonio.

Arthur keeps her hand on my shoulder, green eyes wide with sympathy. "I'm sorry, Gilbert. For Ludwig. Hopefully he's happy, wherever he ended up."

"Yeah." I glance over at him. "You believe in God? In heaven and angels?"

"No. There's too much evil in the world. Too much suffering. No benevolent god would ever let all this happen." Arthur makes a face like she tastes something sour. "Do you?"

"Hell no. I believe in myself, I don't need anyone else stealin' the limelight. What a showoff, that Jesus guy. Dying for our sins? Makes us all look like assholes. What a douche." I park the car at a little rest-stop place. We're in the middle of absolutely nowhere, miles outside the city. I can't believe Raivis would be out here.

Is that why I'm looking here?

Well, probably, yeah. Shut the fuck up, analytical voice in my head. Nobody asked you.

"What are we here for?" Arthur asks.

I get out of the car, lean down to speak through the window. "I'm not gonna lie to ya, 'cause we made a deal not to. Boss Man wants me to kill a thirteen-year-old kid he's been abusing."

Arthur goes still, looking horrified. "Abusing . . . how?"

"Physically, mentally." I nod, grim. Fuck stuff like this. Fuck stuff you can't joke about. "Sexually."

Arthur exhales slowly, then gets out of the car as well. "Is he here somewhere? In the woods?"

"I doubt it, but I gotta look in all the places the Russian told me to. I gotta do my job, or I'm fucked." I run a hand through my hair. "I ain't gonna hurt the kid. Believe me. I would never touch a kid. But I have to find him. He ain't safe, wherever he is."

Arthur's brow furrows. "Your boss doesn't live in Russia?"

"Not as much as I'd like. He's got big properties in America, Mexico. Italy. Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania. Germany. Guy's the fuckin' scourge of Europe. Well, one of 'em." Nothing more awkward than a German talking about bad guys in Europe. Thanks, Adolf. Prick. "He drags his favorite pets around when he moves from place to place. Bodyguards, people he fucks, me."

Notice how I'm always the odd one out. I don't mind much. People are only tolerable in small doses, anyway. Alcohol helps.

Arthur, walking beside me, looks nervous, so I tell her, "You're not gonna get tied up in all this, don't worry. I won't let that happen."

She looks up at me, a relieved sort of curiosity in those green eyes, face a pale circle in the silver light of the moon. "Why are you protecting me? Why are you being so kind to me?" Her eyes widen in brief terror. "I'm grateful, of course! Very grateful." Calm again, inquisitive. "But . . . why?"

I hesitate, for the first time in a long time. God, so this is what it feels like to worry what comes out of your mouth, huh? It's a weird feeling. Like my tongue is on a cliff edge and my words will fall out if I don't keep shit in check. Freaky.

"Because you're a nice person," I reply slowly. It seems like The Right Thing To Say, like in movies and after-school specials.

"But you barely know me." Her doubt isn't rude, but it's there, justifiably.

"Well . . ." This is like when I was first learning English, and I had to translate my thoughts from German in my head before I said them. But now I'm trying to translate emotion into words, and I don't know how. My brain and my heart speak different languages.

I turn to Arthur, raising my hands in a shrug. "I don't know. I just wanted to help you. You looked . . . brave when I first saw you. You are brave. You left your husband, right? That's brave as hell. And your eyes are gorgeous and your lips ain't that bad, either." Did I say the last part out loud? So much for not fallin' over that cliff. "And call me crazy, but I think people should be able to be whatever they want to be, regardless of the bodies they were born in."

Arthur looks up at me, and for the first time, she really smiles. It isn't forced or mixed with shyness or fear. It's a genuine, warm, beautiful smile, and it reminds me of how she hugged me earlier, when she was crying, and how soft her body was, how I felt the way she moved, how it's been so long since I let myself get this close to someone. Without killing them, I mean.

"Thank you," she says. "I think so, too. We should be what we want to be."

"Well, then." I grin up toward the stars, spreading my arms out. "Let's be the fuckin' greatest."