Goddammit.
There were two ways this could go. Either she was for real, and this was Geist’s big break after being on the back foot for his entire stay in London so far. Or she was faking, and this was just the next in a long line of attempts to stop him from ever making it to Bradley.
If she was on his side, he’d be a fool not to open the door. If not, he’d be a fool to open the door. It was days like these he really appreciated how exciting his job was. Of course, he couldn’t well shoot her out in the hallway. People would talk.
He took the chain off the door and invited her in, keeping the gun hidden.
“Oh, thank god. I thought you were just going to shoot me through the door,” said Ellie. The tears in her eyes looked genuine. She sniffed noisily and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “That’s what Hardin would have done.”
The woman suddenly lurched forward and threw her arms around his neck, sobbing softly.
“This guy… he meant a lot to you, huh?” Geist said, putting his arms around her in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. She nodded into his shoulder, then surfaced with a gasp.
“My brother,” she said. That was cold, even to someone in Geist’s line of work. He felt himself tense up.
“That monster!” he said. Listen to yourself. You’re talking like an old film serial. Something was nagging at him. “How did you get away?”
“He called us up after the police sting went wrong. Had two more guys hold our arms, so we couldn’t run away. Guess he thought John was a bigger threat than me. We grew up on the streets. Getting out of a hold like that was second nature to me. I thought he was behind me- then- I heard the shot-” she broke down crying again.
“Don’t worry,” Geist said, patting her on the shoulder. There it was again. That feeling of two and two making five. What was he missing? “I’m going to kill that bastard. I was on the fence about it, but now my mind’s made up.”
“Really?” said Ellie, looking up at him with eyes like reflecting pools. Geist nodded. “I can help you,” she said. “I know where he’s going to be. He gave us plans for the assassination. He’s going to do it during the keynote.”

The locked back entrance to the convention centre was child’s play for a man of Geist’s skills. The cold metal of the gun grip reassured him. Ellie had his “hunting” rifle in a bag slung over her own shoulder. She said she had been a sharpshooter herself at one point, so she offered to take care of Hardin while Geist handled Bradley. He didn’t trust her quite that much yet, so he came up with an alternative plan.
“We’ll kill Hardin before the show starts. He’ll set up as late as possible, but if your plans are right he’ll have to be on the maintenance gantry five minutes before Bradley goes out on stage. That’s our window. With luck, I can do it without alerting the audience. Then I just shoot Bradley from the same vantage point.”
“If that would make you feel more comfortable,” said Ellie. But Geist could tell she was wounded by the implication. “I’d rather pull the trigger myself,” she went on to nobody in particular.
They ascended the fire escape stairs together, keeping a watchful eye out for security.
“When this is over-” Ellie started, then cut herself off. “-never mind. Silly.”
“We’ll talk about over when it’s over. Got it?” said Geist gruffly. He wasn’t interested in speculating. Nor was he interested in taking on some kind of apprentice, which he guessed was Ellie’s next question. When he got paid for snuffing out Max Bradley he was going to disappear and resurface on a super-yacht getting drunk all day. Hmm. Best not to overdo it. Maybe a regular yacht. Don’t want to spend it all at once. Ellie was going to become a liability the moment Bradley hit the floor.
He’d probably be best off dropping her next. Make it look like she had done it. For political reasons or something. He ran through scenarios in his head.
“Hey, I guess James Brown isn’t your real name. Is there like an assassin codename you go by?” said Ellie.
“Geist is my handle. It means ‘ghost’,” Geist said. “It’s the only name I have that means something to me.
”Oh, a handle. That’s cool. Ghost like, you get in and out as if you can walk through walls?”
“Yeah, but in German,” Geist said. He was this close to putting a bullet in her now and damn the plan.

Their vantage point was in an office that overlooked the main hall from the third floor, a circular window running floor to ceiling. Geist broke the lock, muttering to himself.
“So much for walking through walls,” said Ellie.
“How long to zero?” grunted Geist. Ellie looked at the watch Geist had given her. Both of them were completely analog for this mission. Nothing that could send a signal or receive one.
“On stage in fifteen,” she said. “Why are you killing this guy again?”
“For an obscene amount of money.”
“But why are they offering so much money?”
Geist shrugged and continued setting up the rifle, a safe distance back from the window pane that the black protrusion of the barrel wouldn’t be noticed from below.
“Who-” he said, and then the window cracked and a bullet impacted in the wall beside his head. He was on the ground in an instant, diving to pull Ellie down as well and rolling out of view of the window.
“He’s seen us,” he gasped to her. He risked a peep out at the crowd. They were none the wiser. The sharp crack of the glass had obviously been buried under the noise of the crowd. Small caliber bullet, went through clean as a whistle. You had to admire the craftsmanship.
Another bullet thudded near his feet and he tucked them in tight, curled up in what he was pretty sure was Hardin’s blind spot.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ellie risk a peep, then another. Then all of a sudden she was crawling on her elbows to the rifle.
“What are you doing?” Geist hissed.
“I told you I’d pull the trigger on this creep,” she said, sighting down the scope quickly. “Watch this.”
She squeezed the trigger with the skill of an expert marksman. The suppressed gun emitted a thud like a body falling from a great height, and the glass splintered outwards. They hadn’t had a chance to cut a hole to shoot through. People were going to notice that.
“Got him!” said Ellie. Then she swore.
Geist risked a look. At that moment, the body was in mid-air. It didn’t remain that way for long. A dead man falling from three stories up can make quite a mess of a convention centre keynote, as the saying goes.
Before the body hit the crowd of still-oblivious people below Geist was already up and running, sprinting for the door. Security would be running to the green room as soon as the alarm went up. He had to get there first.

He came round a corner at breakneck speed, barrelling through a security man coming the other way to investigate the shot. Impressive. He’d go far, if he lived long enough. Ellie had the rifle though, so probably not. He knew the plans inside and out. Bradley would be in the ‘A’ room, which had the best facilities: including a fold-out bed that had, legend went, been installed at the specific request of a certain sci-fi convention regular. Geist didn’t have time for stairs: he leapt down them three at a time and took the last four in a single bound, rolling at the bottom and coming up with his gun at the ready, feeling like James Bond.
A twinge from his ankle reminded him that James Bond had a stunt double, and he pressed on. Two security men were outside room ‘A’. He dropped them both with a two-foot dropkick and scrambled to his feet. Killing civilians was distasteful. They hadn’t got a good look at him after all.
Another rent-a-cop turned to face him when he opened the door. The tiny suppressed pistol, barely bigger than Geist’s palm, made a noise like a door slamming in the next room and rent-a-cop’s head snapped back, blood bubbling from his mouth as he struggled to comprehend what had just happened.
“Max Bradley,” he said. The man himself, middle-aged with receding hairline and the broken nose he had gotten in a home invasion in 1992 (A story he loved telling in interviews), turned to face him.
“Ah. To who do I have the honour?” he said. “Geist? Or Hardin?”