The Wrong Goodbye Read Online Free PDF Page A

hit his mark. I closed the gap between us in a flash, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt in my bony hands and hoisting him up out of his chair until his face was a scant inch from mine. "Who are you?" 
      "Easy, tiger! I'm a Collector, just like you," he said, his tone placating. "Name's Danny."
      "Why the hell are you following me around?"
      "I just wanted to talk to you."
      "So what – you thought you'd swing by, swap some war stories or whatever? Well you came to the wrong guy."
      "No," he said, not unkindly. "I don't believe I did." 
      "I don't care what you believe. Contact between Collectors is strictly forbidden. Do you have any idea what'd happen to us if our handlers caught wind of this? I ought to kill you just for being here." 
      "Perhaps you should, but I don't believe you will. It's my understanding you've got a certain affection for the living. You may wish to get rid of me, but I'm guessing you aren't going to sacrifice this perfectly good skin-suit to do it. Now, have a seat and let me buy you a drink." 
      "Why on earth would I do that?" I asked.
      "Because the way I hear it, we ain't so different, you and me. We both know this job of ours is designed to chip away everything decent and human about us, until we're no better than the monsters we work for. I, for one, am shitting myself at the very thought of that, and I reckon you probably are too. Look, I know it's a losing battle, trying to hold on to what makes us who we are, but I also know that isn't going stop me from trying. And if I had to guess, I'd say you aren't going to, either. All I'm saying is, maybe it'd be easier if we weren't going it alone." 
      He was right, about the job part at least. See, this vocation is punishment for a life misspent – and as punishments go, it's a doozy. Every time we take a soul, we experience every moment that brought that person to our grasp – every kindness, every slight, every gruesome act our mark inflicted. Mind you, I don't mean we see those moments; we live them, with painful, blinding clarity. Over time, it wears on you. Breaks you down. Not to mention, every time you leave a vessel behind, you lose a little bit of what makes you who you were in life, until eventually there's nothing left. It was the thought of that happening – that, and the horrors I'd experienced collecting nutjobs like Haas – that kept me up at night. It was these that kept me talking to Danny.
      "So what," I said, "you're asking if I'll be your friend?"
      "I'm asking if you'll let me buy you a drink."
      "You're fucking nuts, you know that? If anyone were to find out about this–"
      "Oh, for Christ's sake, Sam, all we're talking about is a drink. What's the harm in that?"
       What's the harm? I swear, over the years, I must've played that sentence back a thousand times. I'd like to think that if I knew then what I know now, things would've gone differently. And who knows? Maybe they would have. Or maybe I'm kidding myself, thinking I had ever had a choice. In those early years as a Collector, I was so lonely, so desperate – so scared of what I might one day become – there was really no other way for me to play it.
      So yeah, I took that drink, and we got to talking. Turned out, we did have a lot in common. As I said, those who wind up marked for collection are either contract kills or freelancers, and since all Collectors were once collected, that means the same holds true for us. Now, I don't want to tell tales out of class, but the guy who collected me? He was a freelancer, and if that sadistic bastard is any indication, they're not a group you want to hang out with come the company picnic. Me and Danny, we were contract kills. The deal I made saved the life of the woman that I loved. Danny made his deal at the tender age of fifteen when, in the wake of the First World War, the British economy took a bad turn and left his onceaffluent family penniless, and his once-loving parents