Most people would probably enjoy a job where they could travel to beautiful locations like Paris, but for me it was painful and a hassle. When I was still a girl living at home with my family, my parents used to take us on a vacation overseas every summer. I looked forward to it for the entire year, excited for where my parents would take us next. My parents would spend time with friends while I watched my younger brother. You might think that this would upset me, but I was always excited to be with my brother.
For the longest time, I had been an only child. I remember when my parents sat me down just before my ninth birthday to tell me that soon I would have a baby brother. Never before had I been as excited as I was at that moment, nor would I be again, except for the day mom said it was time to go to the hospital. My baby brother Peter was the perfect baby.
On our vacations, at first it was boring when Peter came along. Every day we went somewhere with our parents, but in the afternoons and evenings when my parents went out, I stayed back to watch the baby. Eventually, when we got older, the vacations became a lot more fun. Mom and Dad left a car and chauffeur for us, and I was able to go out exploring with Peter. Many times we spent more time talking and laughing than we did exploring, but I wouldn't have had it any other way.
But things were different now and it was painful to remember the joy of my previous life. My parents had died years ago and now, Peter was gone too. I knew where he was, but I couldn't see him. Instead, I had to spend my life doing work that I despised, work that made me feel like the scum of the earth. It was that work that had brought me to Paris on a cool autumn day.
The café was exactly what you would expect if you've ever watched a single movie with a scene shot in Paris. It was on a corner and had tables on the sidewalk that were filled with people talking and drinking coffee. If you looked down the street, you could see most of the Eiffel Tower, but from where I sat my back was to it. This helped me to block out the memories I had of the last time I had been here, which was with my family the summer before my parents had died.
As I sat there, sipping an espresso, pretending to read a book, I pushed the memories away by going over my story in my mind. At the beginning of a job, I was always nervous that something would go wrong, that I would slip up and tell someone something that would eventually lead the authorities back to me. Rehearsing the story was my way to preparing for what was to come.
The story went like this: I was pretending to be a girl named Chloe Springers, a graduate student from Atlanta, traveling here to hopefully be inspired for a story I would not actually be writing, about a young woman who’s true love is a man she has only met once, the man who has paid for her to attend college. When planning on writing a love story, where else would one go to be inspired but Paris?
This same story was used each time I travelled somewhere for a job and the only thing that ever changed was my name, where I was from, and where I was visiting. My passport and driver's license were new each time I took a job, but were made to look well used. Each set of documents was only used once, as they were burned once I returned home. I had several contacts, both in the states and overseas, who were able to provide me with the documents and weapons I needed, help me to change my appearance, and most importantly, smuggle me out of the country if something went wrong.
Luckily, I hadn't needed that last option yet. Actually, luck had very little to do with it. Most of my contacts thought I was just another highly trained contract assassin, and to some extent, they were right. I was a contract assassin, but the highly trained part was wrong. I worked for one man who gave me pretty much an unlimited source of funding. In the beginning, this was used to train me on the different weapons I now use and to help find and set up contacts all over the world. What very few people knew, what I would never tell anyone, was that I had abilities that go beyond what is normal that gave me an advantage in any situation.
