Right on cue, a whisper crackles in the back of my skull, like a radio transmission from the dead, shaky and persistent: wait wait wait. The kid doesn’t even flinch. “You kill when you have to.” I knot my arms over my chest. “When I have to. Not when a gink with a bag full of change tells me to. Big difference.” A muscle in his cheek jumps. Brat doesn’t like it when someone tells him no. But to his credit, he doesn’t break form. He sucks in a breath, nice and slow, before exhaling. Class act, this one. If I ever meet his folks, I’m going to have to tip a trilby to them.
