Chapter 1: Smoking Gun

The door to the bathroom was unlocked.

Sophia was in the bathtub having a soak. Her clothes were dumped outside in the hamper. She hadn't checked them for bloodstains or gunpowder residue. She wondered whether he went through her clothing before coming into the bathroom. There was a chance he did but then why hadn't he bothered waiting for her to come out of the bath.

Sophia wondered why she wasn't shouting at him to get out. This was not normal behaviour by any standards. He should not be here. But there was a part of her which didn't want to be alone right now. It was silly, it was childish and it felt stupid. She was not a kid. She was not twelve. She was not fourteen. She was nineteen. Tonight she made a mistake. It wasn't a big deal. Stuff like this happened on the job sometimes. He wasn't perfect either. He looked tired and weary. He was still in his work clothes, bruised, battered, bloody but alive and kicking for another night.

"You left your gun at the crime scene. Never do that again."

"I -" Sophia didn't know what to say. She understood why he hadn't bothered waiting and walked inside the bathroom. This was a conversation they needed to have. She had screwed up big time and he didn't have the patience for such mistakes. "I killed a man."

"You shot him at point black range. It was a clean shot." He looked grim. "He will survive."

"That's a good thing, isn't it?" Sophia asked. "We were hired to put an end to his operations. We were not paid to kill him. Were we?" Michael Mitchell was a fixer. He was hired to solve problems. He didn't kill. He could be cold, calculative and a cruel bastard but he was no killer. Sophia believed this to be true. But the look in his eyes told a different story. He didn't look happy. Sophia didn't understand. She knew he didn't tell her everything, just the important things which would affect her part of the job, not the finer details which their client only felt comfortable discussing with him. She didn't like it but she understood. However, killing someone, he would have never taken such a job and if he did, he would have told her about it.

"Noah Jones is a child pornographer." He said and she sank further into the tub, trying to hide from the vile truth. "He used his own daughter in these films. Sarah Jones. She's eight. Think about it. Will she ever get over this? I know a young nineteen year old woman who lost her parents when she was twelve. What about her? Do you think she ever got over it?"

"What do you want me to say!? I'm a lousy assistant." Sophia shouted. Dammit. Thinking about it, even after all these years, she still grew teary eyed. He was trying to rile her up, trying to make her angry, why, she didn't really know. Shouldn't he be proud instead, she thought. The job had gone down without a hitch. Well not exactly, but things could have gotten worse. He could have been brutally murdered and she didn't want to think what would have happened with her. But like a silly girl who didn't know how to communicate her hurt feelings, she splashed water on him from the tub. He didn't avoid it, struck by how silly her antics were and looked at her with mild annoyance. It didn't help her calm down at all. "Are you rethinking about our deal?"

"Yes."

Sophia wanted to hit him. She didn't care that she would be completely naked and he would see how her breasts had developed over the years and how she looked incredibly fit because of the training she had to undertake to even be considered for the role that nobody in their right mind would have volunteered for, to be his protégé because that's exactly what she was. He was her mentor, teaching her how the underbelly of the city malfunctioned and how to set things straight, and she was the protégé who dreamed to one day succeed him in his responsibilities and duties or become a fixer in her own right because this city would clearly need one to survive the night even though she was also studying to be a lawyer or a police officer, because she would be dumb not to have other options in case this whole arrangement didn't work out, you know, in case he died, which from the looks of it looked really feasible in the next couple of minutes and by her own hands no doubt.

"You made a promise! Remember, I am your first client. You promised me you would help me find the people responsible for the death of my parents. You couldn't find them back then. So I changed the deal. I told you I would help you. I would become your assistant, your protégé. And now you are going back on your word because what? I couldn't kill a guy."

Michael looked at her like she was an idiot. He threw that look around everyone and everywhere. Sophia hated it when that look was leveled on her, especially when she thought she hadn't done anything to deserve it. But this time around, it had the needed effect. She felt like an idiot, worse, she felt like a stupid brat. Who drops their gun at a crime scene, she thought miserably as she remembered to wash her hair, wondering whether she was destroying evidence which could have linked her to a supposed crime in her book. He however read things differently.

"I couldn't care less whether he lives or dies. What's important is you put yourself in danger. You didn't follow my instructions. You didn't stick to the plan. You didn't listen to me. Let me repeat. You didn't listen to me." It didn't require a lot of intelligence on her part to realize he was mad. He might not sound like it, but the way he pronounced his words, the way his frown deepened and his mouth set into a dark scowl let her know she had screwed up. Despite what he liked others to believe, he had a heart and though he could have phrased it better, Sophia understood what he was trying to say. But he said it anyway. "I can't have your death on my shoulders. I just can't."

"You don't have to worry about it. I had the situation under control." He didn't believe her. The look in his eyes told him he had taught her better than this, to lie, to deceive, to manipulate the truth. But it was hard to pull the wool on his eyes, those same rotten eyes which had been patient and full of knowledge and taught her how the world works, those eyes which had been full of remorse and sympathy when her whole world came crashing down when she was twelve, those same eyes which lied awake at her bedside when she foolishly tried to end her suffering at fourteen, those eyes which didn't blink or waver and kept her stare and saw her as an adult trapped in a child's body when he made a solemn promise, the pair of eyes which she came to like over time and love as an adult, the eyes which were worried now as she tried her best to relieve them with her soothing voice of reason. "He is a horrible man, no, he is probably the worst humanity has to offer, but he wasn't dangerous. You should have listened to him talk. He tried to make himself out as the victim. Like I was gonna believe him. He had no chance. I had the situation under control. I-"

"He came at you with a knife." He said and she had no rebuttal. Sophia remembered kicking the knife away after she shot him. There was no way the police could have come up with their own theories on how everything went down. This was based on his very own deductions and he left no room for her to mount any kind of flimsy defense. "Don't bother. I was allowed into the crime scene. I found the knife. And before walking into the bathroom like a crazed pervert I checked your clothes. Your jacket had a tear which matched the knife. I'm thinking about handing it over as physical evidence."

The jacket he was talking about was completely ruined. She couldn't wear it anymore but the thought of it being put on display as a piece of forensic evidence related to this particular case was something which she didn't necessarily want to happen in a court of law. She was pretty sure it wouldn't come to that. They had recovered enough material evidence to put the creep away for years. But the way things were going downhill for her, she was pretty certain he would ask the detective in charge of the case to do the same for no other reason than to teach her a lesson. It made her a bit irritable as she turned her head away from him and addressed the conditioner kept at the edge of the bathtub. "If you wanted an excuse to root through my panties, you could have just asked."

There was a time when such a comment would have made him blush and grow all awkward but he was a different man now. Sophia figured women had to be a bit more creative and bold to get a reaction out of him. But there was a niggling, timid voice at the back of her head which told her, perhaps, he didn't see her as an adult woman yet. For being completely unhelpful, she smothered the voice with a pillow. Once she thought he looked at her with something close to a sexual definition, but he quickly averted his eyes. "What has Emily been teaching you? You shouldn't say stuff like that to a guy."

"I was just joking. And Miss Anderson hasn't been teaching me anything weird." Sophia said, thinking about the older woman. Not for the first time she couldn't help but wonder whether the two of them had anything going on. She had been their teacher and she had horrible taste in men, but now it wouldn't be all that weird. Emily was eight years older than him and Sophia was six years younger than him. Thinking about it made her head hurt. If they ever got together, she would end up being the step child no one ever wanted. But clearly he wasn't thinking about such nonsense. No, he was still getting worked up on making her feel miserable about her own stupid mistakes.

"You should take this more seriously, Sophia. You underestimated the enemy. He managed to get hold of a knife while you had him under gunpoint. I don't even want to know how you let that happen. He then talked, spun a sorry tale and had you distracted long enough to close the distance, get in your personal space and take an actual swing at you with a knife. If he was lucky, you would be dead."

"But he wasn't. And there's more to it than luck. In case you are forgetting you had me take martial arts classes. I can handle myself in a fight. You have seen me in action before. I don't have military training like you do, but you taught me how to aim and shoot. Tonight, I did just that. He came at me with a knife. I shot him. End of story."

"But that's not how it happened."

"I don't know what to tell you." She shrugged her shoulders and brought one of her legs up to wash it, thinking it might distract him. Ava Wilson once told her he was a legman, though she had been pretty young and innocent to understand the meaning behind the words. But now she knew and she wanted to give it a shot. But she didn't know how to go about it. Talking about what went down in the warehouse wasn't helping to build up a sensual mood. "You have a habit of over-thinking things." She kept the doubt out of her voice to make the lie more believable but she didn't have the patience to work him like a mark. She wasn't a con-artist. She was a young woman who didn't like to be told she made a mistake which could have cost her, her life. "Now, if you want to make yourself more useful, you can help me wash my back. Otherwise, leave."

She didn't think he would ever do it, but he could throw her out of the house. It was his place. She lived here, she worked for him, he was her benefactor. He was trying to tell her how she made a mistake, asking her not to repeat it in the future, like a mentor. He was doing nothing wrong. But he could have been kinder and he wasn't, he couldn't be. He was seldom like that anymore. And he used the truth like a weapon which he had mastered over the years and it got him the needed result.

"I know you panicked. You didn't want to shoot him. But when he came at you with the knife, you pulled the trigger. I know it's difficult. It's different than at a shooting range with paper targets. You thought you killed him. I'm here to tell you, even if you did, it wouldn't have made a difference. He already got to those kids. What happened to them will stay with them from life. Maybe some would get better, recover from the trauma, have a normal life, I don't know. What I'm trying to say is, if it's between you and a piece of shit, don't hesitate to pull the trigger. You deserve to live, they don't in my opinion."

Sophia believe this was as close as he would get to saying he cared for her and though she knew it wasn't like that for now, she still held out hope that maybe one day, he would recognize her feelings and return it in a heartfelt manner. But for the time being, she decided to accept her defeat with grace and a docile sense of belonging and appreciate the nature of their present relationship. "Anything else?"

"He murdered his wife, stabbed her through the heart. I found her body in one of the shipping containers." He looked at her pointedly before heading for the door. "Thought you should know, since you didn't consider him a real threat."

She gritted her teeth. So he was a murderer as well. Why wasn't she all that surprised. He didn't look like it, but the first thing he had taught her was that looks can be deceiving. She would do better to remember that in the future. And she also understood what he was trying to say. If she hadn't moved out of the way, if he had gotten lucky, she could have been dead. Sophia made a mental note to never underestimate her opponents in the future and treat them as all capable of the most heinous crimes and the most gruesome murders. She didn't think the world could be any crueler as she asked once more in a relatively solemn voice, steeled with fresh determination. "Is there anything else?" He was her mentor, she was his protégé. It was her duty to learn his teachings and adapt them to her own life.

"You should ask Emily to take you shopping. You need some adult panties. Something with lace."

The door to the bathroom closed shut from the outside just as the bar of soap she threw at his head made contact with the door frame and fell with a small splat on the wet tiles. Sophia Bieber had almost stood up from the bathtub, slipped and landed back down on her ass with a small hiss of pain. The warm blood rushing to her cheeks which was making her blush profusely refused to settle down and she made another mental note to teach him a lesson by dressing up in a skimpy outfit and heading out to his least favourite nightclub, the place he was forced to hangout because of his line of work.

Yes, that would teach him a lesson to critique her on her choice of underwear. She was certain spending more time with him would lead to her developing a twisted sense of humour. One moment they were talking about a murder and the very next moment he was saying stupid things about her panties.

Damn that man, Sophia thought, even as a smile crossed her lips for the first time during this horrible night.

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