“She’s a whore. I can get you dozens more, better than her,” the man says to me in Portuguese.

“He’s trying to sell me on the idea that there are other girls I can get if I give you up,” I translate for Regan. Then I say, “In English, dickwad.” I kick him in the shin, and he cries out and shakes the chair trying to escape the pain. “Want to kick him?” I ask Regan.

“Yes,” she says emphatically. She wants to do more than kick him.

“Hold on.” I pull out the chair that I’d used to secure the front door and break off the leg. “Use this. Don’t want you to have to shower again.”

She holds the chair leg like a bat and hits him, not across the knee like I thought she would, but across the face. Once, twice. I catch her on the next downswing and she fights me for a minute, panting like a wild dog until, I guess, reason finally dawns on her. “Yeah, we want to keep him conscious enough to answer a few more questions,” I say.

Turning back to our intruder, I see he’s nearly passed out. “Sugar, run to the kitchen and get me a pan full of water and toss it in his face. He needs to wake up.” I figure these tasks will help her stay focused. When she returns from the kitchen, her breathing is under control and she doesn’t even hit him with the pan. He sputters awake.

“She doesn’t like you much, and I don’t want anyone else but her. I mean, come on, where am I gonna find someone who swings a chair leg like Babe Ruth?”

He doesn’t get the reference or he’s out of it because he stares at me blankly. “The fact that you’re a hired guy kind of bothers me because Gomes isn’t the type to hire out. He’s stingy. And even if he wasn’t, he doesn’t have the kind of coin to maintain a little army full of mercenaries like you. Who hired you?”

The intruder doesn’t respond, simply looks away. He’s obviously had some training, and it’s kicking in now because he decides that’s all the information I’m getting.

“Should I hit him again?” Regan asks eagerly.

“Nah. I think he’s too scared of your Mr. Freeze to give any more information, and we gotta get going.”

She looks disappointed.

“You got anything in the bedroom? Why don’t you do a sweep and make sure we’re not leaving anything behind?”

She sets down the pan and the wooden stick with some reluctance but heads into the bedroom.

Once I see she’s out of eyesight, I turn and shoot the motherfucker in the head. Twice. The sound of the gunshots brings Regan racing into the living room. “What did you do?”

“Put him out of his misery.”

The dismay showing on her face makes my insides shrivel a bit. Of course having sex with her is only fantasyland for me because there’s no way this diamond wants my black hands on her. I strip the guy down and take everything out of his pockets, including a bag full of bullets, a knife strapped to his leg, and a thick white vellum card with my address on it. I run my hands along the hems of his pants and shirt, searching for any hidden pockets or secrets but find none. Dropping the clothes in the tub, I soak the entire pile with alcohol and then light it up.

“Why are you burning his clothes? Haven’t you left clues all over this place? You aren’t even wearing gloves.” She raises her hands. “Neither am I. Oh my god, am I going to jail for this?”

“No, you aren’t because no one knows you’re here, sweetheart. And I don’t care if anyone knows I’m here. I just want our late night friend to be a little harder to identify.”

In the living room, I toss a sheet over the dead man, as if the white cloth can somehow hide my sins. But all the bad deeds I’ve done have marked me with permanent ink. My soul is tattooed over with the faces of everyone I’ve killed. I like to tell myself that they’re all righteous kills. But the truth is that from the first life you take, you become a different person. And guys like me don’t deserve a woman like Regan, no matter how much I might want her. On that depressing thought, I grab both our bags. “Let’s go. We need to find a new base, and then we’ve got an appointment in Morro Dos Macacos.”

Regan

“THE WAY I SEE IT, BABY DOLL, we have three big issues,” Daniel tells me as he hands a wad of cash to the taxi driver that drops us in the middle of a disgusting slum and speeds away.

I’m sure the nickname is to distract me from the fact that we’ve been dumped in the middle of hell. I still fall for the bait. “Baby doll? Are you for real?”

“Oh, I’m real.” He gives me a roguish grin and winks at me. “One hundred percent prime specimen.”

I roll my eyes and shoulder my backpack. Daniel’s been needling me ever since we left the apartment. I know he’s doing it on purpose. It’s obvious. Normally he’s understanding and gives me space, but right now he nudges me with his elbow and calls me names like “sugar pie” and “baby doll.” I guess he figures if I’m riled up and want to choke him, I won’t flip out and go into another crying jag.

He’s right, too. I have to admit that I’m still freaked out. I’m trying to hold it together, but tonight Daniel executed a man in the middle of his living room. I turned my back for two minutes, and boom! Boom! The man was shot twice in the head. Daniel didn’t even blink.

I hated the man, but I’m still shocked to my core. This is the third man that has died in the last two days, each effortlessly dispatched by Daniel, who makes it look as if he hasn’t broken a sweat. He’s a dangerous man behind all of his laughing grins and teasing names.

Weirdly enough, though, I trust him. If someone had to die, I believe it. I don’t think Daniel would kill anyone frivolously. He’s had lots of opportunities, especially when he saved me, but he tried talking his way in first. The gun is the last course of action.

That he’s had to pull out his gun so many times the last few nights tells me how much shit we’re in.

Daniel eyes the graffiti-decorated slums of Morro dos Macacos. “Home sweet shithole,” he says. “Stick close to me, baby doll. This is one place we do not want to get separated.”

“Enough with the ‘baby doll’,” I tell him but move a little closer. His arm goes around my waist, dragging me against him, and I’m about to protest until I see a few men lurking in the shadows nearby. All right, if I need to hang off of Daniel to make things look good, I will.

“So, where are we going?” I ask in my sultriest, sexiest voice. I try to give Daniel a heated glance in the hopes that it looks like we’re heading for a midnight rendezvous. I’m hoping no one stops to ask why the hell we’d be doing that here.

Daniel must’ve guessed the reason for my new attitude because he flashes me an appreciative look. His hand is still at my waist, but I know it’s resting on the gun he tucked under my shirt earlier. “I told you. It’s a surprise . . . but you’ve gotta be good.”

We pass by the men lurking in the shadows, and I do my best not to tense up. I play along instead, and trail a hand down the front of Daniel’s shirt. “Oh, I can be really good to you, baby.” Strangely enough, the urge to vomit at his touch is gone. I guess I got it all out of my system earlier.

“Damn,” Daniel says hoarsely, and I want to laugh at his expression. He looks as if the pretending’s getting a little too real for him. But I keep rubbing my hand on his chest, looking like a devoted, slutty girlfriend who can’t wait to get him home.

We pass by the men without incident, and Daniel’s arm loosens around my waist a few minutes later—a sign that the danger has passed, but our charade needs to continue. We walk a few blocks in the slums, which Daniel tells me are called favelas. They’re concrete cinderblock and rickety wooden houses all held together by garbage and spray-painted graffiti, and they pile on top of one another like cockroaches. I’m sure the rest of Brazil is pretty, but so far, all I’ve seen are slums.