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an organization, I was joining a family.
    Yeah. It took me about three minutes on the job to realize that was just another line they fed potential recruits. They didn’t seek me out because I was special, or unique, or because they recognized some kind of latent possibility within me that they wanted to tap.
    I fit a profile.
    Loner. High IQ. Unemotional. Unattached. Aptitude for weaponry combined with a lethal appetite for vengeance. Enough anger at the world and its shitty circumstances to channel into something productive.
    Nothing more than another shiny, savage tool in their arsenal.
    I suppose I couldn’t put all the blame on their shoulders. After five years of doing what I did best, they offered me a desk job. Back in the States, filing paperwork and handing out orders. I could’ve had a life, a family, if that’s what I’d wanted. No more of this covert, chameleonic, undercover bullshit.
    Most guys I know would’ve jumped at the chance for a little stability, considering our work circumstances. The job paid well, sure. I had more money than I’d ever know what to do with. But it was also notoriously hazardous to one’s health. Too many of my comrades had learned the hard way that you can’t exactly spend that heaping fortune from six feet under.
    So, when you finally got your chance to get out, you took it. Unless, of course, you were me.
    I didn’t want the stable life, with the sprawling mansion and the Stepford wife. I didn’t want to be Agent Weston Abbott, settled nicely in a corner office at Langley.
    I had no use for that life, or for him.
    People with permanent positions at the agency, who’d never done deep cover missions or stepped so much as ten feet from their comfortable desk chairs, didn’t — couldn’t — understand.
    It must be exhausting — leading a double life, they’d say, shaking their heads in sympathetic disbelief. Constantly putting on a show, never letting your mask slip.
    But it wasn’t. It was a million times easier to live my life as someone else. To look in the mirror and see a total stranger. To slip into a new skin and slither around for a while, only to shed it for another when the time inevitably came to move along.
    I liked my new life of limitless identities and ever-changing characters better than I’d ever enjoyed being Wes Abbott.
    So why did one stupid, insignificant, staged conversation with Faith Morrissey have me wishing I could, just for a single moment, be him again? To look into her eyes, to talk to her, as the real me, rather than the asshole who was about to take a wrecking ball to her life?
    Disgusted by my own weakness, I took a step away from the punching bag, lifted my aching fists, and began another round, hoping this time it might drive her from my thoughts for good.

Chapter Seven: FAITH
     
     
    WORK UP A SPARKLE
     
    When I arrived back at the office to collect the parcels for my last run of the night, I was covered head to toe with a thin sheen of perspiration and in desperate need of some water if I wanted to avoid falling off my bike while cruising through Vörösmarty Square. Dismounting, I headed through the Hermes side entrance — the double-wide doors and dual access ramps had been designed specifically for speedy bike departures and, as an added bonus, using them meant I didn’t have to see Irenka when I was in and out a million times a day, refilling my black messenger bag with small parcels, documents, and packages for delivery.
      I entered, deposited my bike in its designated rack near the far wall, and nodded at Istvan, the beefy security guard who ensured that only employees made it through the back entrance. Hurrying toward the sorting room around the corner, I mourned the fact that there was no time for a leisurely pace or a sip of water. In the past five years, Hermes had overtaken the competition as Budapest’s largest courier service, which meant there was rarely a dull moment for anyone who worked here, from the bike