I worked my way to my feet, dusted myself off, and looked out the completely naked window. I saw a shadow standing in the middle of the parking lot. I only caught a glimpse, but I recognized the small, slacked stance, the too cool pose of Phil.

I dove back down to the ground. I crawled on my belly as fast as I could to the bathroom. I figured the bathroom window was my only chance.

I made it to the doorway of the bathroom before I heard the glass of the window break. I screamed out something ridiculous, regretted all my earlier decisions in life. Why did I do what I did? All the lives I ended over the years, even if those people deserved it. The last breaths and images of so many men I snuffed out ran through my head.

“Please,” the word dribbled out of my mouth.

I winced, readied for whatever was going to happen to me. I watched black shoes walk towards me in the carpet, couldn’t bare to look up. I closed my eyes.

“I need your help,” I heard Phil’s voice say.

I opened my eyes.

—

Phil explained how he tracked me down and it made sense. The town was tiny and he knew I would head to the grocery store at some point so he camped out in a parking lot down the street from the grocery store and waited for me to drive by. He was spot on about the one fleabag motel I would hide out in once he didn’t see me come out of the front of the grocery store and he watched the front desk kid punch in the room extension to figure out which room I was back at the motel.

Phil tracked me down, not to kill me, but because he wanted help and protection. Well, what he needed from me was probably going to get me killed, and he would have killed me had I said no, but he wasn’t some Terminator-like assassin on a machine to simply snuff me out.