"I know."

"All right." She pulled back the covers. Jennifer took her hand as they walked to the kitchen. "Did you hurt your arm?"

"A little, yeah."

"Is it going to be all right?"

"Of course," Jennifer said. "Everything always works out all right."

15 Violet

Violet woke and a man was sitting on her bed. "Hi," he said.

She scrambled away, pulling the blankets with her. "Who are you?"

"I'm a friend of Hack's. But he didn't say anything about you. Are you his girlfriend?" He sat down on the bed. "You have nice shoulders."

"Where's Hack?"

"He went for a walk." The man's face was smooth. His suit was dark and anonymous. "He won't be back for a while."

"Please leave."

"But Hack invited me in. What's your name?"

"I want you to go."

"I'm John Nike." He smiled, his teeth gleaming faintly in the gloom. "Who are you?"

"Violet."

"Violet who?" He shifted closer. "Are you unemployed? It's all right. It happens, sometimes. I tell you what, unemployed Violet. I'll give you a hundred dollars for a kiss."

She tightened her grip on the blankets. "Get out. Now."

He raised his eyebrows. "That's pretty generous. Considering you're in no position to negotiate." His hand touched her thigh.

"Let go of me!"

"You need to be enterprising to get ahead, Violet. You need to take advantage of opportunities." He squeezed.

She reached for his hand. He grabbed her wrists and pinned them to the wall. The blanket dropped.

"Hoo," he said, looking down. "Those are nice puppies."

She bit his ear as hard as she could.

"Ahhh! G.o.dd.a.m.n!"

She rolled off the bed, landing on her hands and knees. She scrambled to her feet and ran. She had the front door half-unlocked before she realized just how bad an idea that was, running naked at night through this neighborhood. She ran into the kitchen and began pulling open drawers.

"You little b.i.t.c.h," John said, entering. "If I need cosmetic surgery, you're going to pay for it."

She found a knife, a long one. "Stay away from me."

"I don't think so, unemployed Violet." He edged closer, watching the knife. "I don't think you want to get in any more trouble than you already are."

"You attacked attacked me me" she said, and he grabbed her wrist and slammed it onto the kitchen bench. She cried out. The knife clattered to the floor.

There was a crumpet toaster on the bench, a shiny, heavy thing Hack had bought her for her last birthday. It had variable-sized slots for different bread and an auto-sensor so it never burnt. Violet grabbed it with both hands and swung it at John's face. It rang like a bell. John dropped to the floor.

He didn't move. Violet peered at him. He didn't seem to be breathing. After a moment, she prodded him with her foot. "Are you"

He grabbed her ankle. She fell backward and banged her head against the stove. His hands clutched at her legs. She shrieked and flailed at him with the crumpet toaster. She cracked his knuckles, then hit her own knee. She slammed the toaster on his hands, his head, his face, until she realized he'd stopped moving again. He hadn't been moving for a while.

She pulled herself out from under him, breathing heavily. John was limp. She looked at the toaster. There were spots of blood on it.

She dropped the toaster and circled around his body. She shut the kitchen door and went into the bedroom, pulled on a T-shirt and pants, and sat on the bed. After a while she started to bite her nails. She thought she may have just done something terrible.

16 Hack

"You sure we shouldn't drive?" John said. There were some teenagers across the road, listening to loud music.

"It's just up here," Hack said.

"Why do you even live here? How much are you earning at Nike?"

"Um...about thirty-three."

"Jesus!" John said. "What's the matter with you?"

"I...guess I'm not very good in pay negotiations," Hack said. Hack sucked in pay negotiations. Every year his boss sat him down and talked about compet.i.tive pressures and budget cuts; at the end he named a figure and Hack took it, grateful to be still employed.

"There are courses you can do. a.s.sertiveness training. You should look into it. Is this it?"

Hack looked up. The Police, the swirling blue light. "Yes."

John straightened his tie. "Now, this is what you're going to do. You go in, you ask for whoever you talked to last time. You establish exactly exactly how many other links in the chain there are. Then you leave. Nothing else." how many other links in the chain there are. Then you leave. Nothing else."

"Okay," Hack said. They went in. The same music, "Every Breath You Take," was playing. That must get pretty annoying, Hack thought. "Can I speak to Sergeant Pearson, please?"

"Certainly, sir." It was the same receptionist. She smiled at him. "Your name?"

"Hack Nike."

She looked at John. "And?"

"A friend," John said.

The receptionist eyeballed him. She was friendly so long as you didn't mess with her, Hack realized. "Take a seat."

They sat. "You gave your real name?" John whispered.

Hack said nothing. He was thinking about Violet at home with the other John.

Pearson didn't keep them waiting: within a minute he strode into the lobby. He was a real presence, Pearson, Hack thought. Pearson commanded respect. "Hack, glad to see you. Right this way." He led them into the same meeting room. "What can I do for you?"

Hack said, "I'm here to talk about the job."

"Uh-huh." Pearson raised his eyebrows at John.

"I know about it," John said.

"Uh, yeah, he does," Hack said. "I just wanted to ask who you, um, gave the job to."

Pearson was silent. "Are you happy with the results, Hack?"

"Happy?" he said, and almost laughed. "Isure, I guess."

"This was a significant enterprise. I'm not sure if you appreciate the complexity of the a.s.signment. The pricing we offered was extremely generous."

"Um, sure. I just want to know about subcontracting."

"I see," Pearson said. "You knew we reserved the right to do that, right?"

"Well...I guess. I mean, it doesn't matter if the NRA actually did it. I just want to know"

Pearson's eyebrows shot up. "What makes you think it was NRA work?"

"Oh!" Hack glanced at John, who looked disgusted. "I just...thought."

"Did you?" Pearson said. "Well, that's a very interesting guess, Hack. Because, as we discussed, we treat our business a.s.sociations with the utmost confidence. The utmost utmost confidence." confidence."

"That's what I want to talk about. I want to know if there were any other, um, business a.s.sociates, besides the NRA."

Pearson folded his hands neatly. "In our line of work, Hack, discretion is critical. I'm surprised you don't know this already. Did I give you a brochure?"

"Ah"

"I'll give you a brochure. We have safeguards in place to protect your confidentiality. They are incontrovertible."

"Okay," Hack said.

"But I see you want additional a.s.surance," Pearson said. "Which, given the nature of the job, I can understand. Very well. I can inform you that the directive pa.s.sed directly from us to a third party, who carried out the work. No intermediaries were involved."

"Right," Hack said, relieved. "Okay, well, thanks"

"I hope you appreciate the magnitude of what we've accomplished here, Hack. You will remember that when you make your monthly payments."

"Yes, Sergeant Pearson," Hack said.

"Senior Sergeant Pearson," Pearson said.

John was upbeat on the walk home from the Police. "They're a very focused organization, all right. John was one hundred percent right about that."

"Uh-huh," Hack said. He was thinking about Violet again.

John peered at the brochure. "Each case has a single contact. Everything's encrypted, so employees can't tell what their colleagues are working on. Even management can only access job numbers, not names. And it's the largest Australian-based company in the world! Did you know that?"

"No."

"You want to know why Americans took over the world, Hack? Because they respect achievement. Before this was a USA country, our ideal was the working-cla.s.s battler, for Christ's sake. If Australians ruled the world, everyone would work one day a week and b.i.t.c.h about the pay." He shook his head. "Then there's the British, who thought there was something wrong with making money. No surprise they ended up kissing the colony's a.s.s. The j.a.panese, they think the pinnacle of achievement is a Government job. The Chinese are Communist, the Germans are Socialists, the Russians are broke...who does that leave?"

"Canada?"

"America," John said. "The United f.u.c.king States of America, the country founded on free-market capitalizm. I tell you, those Founding Fathers knew their s.h.i.t."

Hack was silent.

"So here's this Australian company," John said, waving the brochure, "doing the only thing Australians still have a compet.i.tive advantage in: keeping their traps shut. Still, it makes our job easier."

"Does it?"

"Sure. It means we only have to kill Pearson."

"Oh."

"Although, when I say 'we'..."

Hack dropped his head.

"It's in your contract," John said. "Page eight. A clause called 'logical extensions.' "