Being a killer was neither something he worried about nor reveled in; it was simply what he was. The assassin was a man who knew himself and accepted that knowledge. He didn’t feel what other people felt; emotions, to him, were mild and distant. Because of that, nothing ever overruled his brain. He was sharply intelligent, and physically he was strong and fast, with the extraordinary hand/eye coordination that all truly superb marksmen possessed. Everything about him was perfectly suited to his chosen occupation.

While he might not have standards, as such-because standards seemed to imply some sort of moral guidance system-he did have rules. His number one rule was: never kill a cop. Never. Under any circumstances. Nothing would bring the full fury of law enforcement down on him faster than harming one of their own. Nor did he ever take a job involving romantic affairs, because not only were they messy, they tended not to be lucrative. His prime targets were usually connected to the crime underworld, industrial espionage, or politics. The cops didn’t really care about the former, the second category tended to be hushed up, and he never took a political job in this country. That kept his life as tidy and uncomplicated as he could make it.

He went into his bedroom and removed his clothes, dropping them into a hamper in the closet, then went naked into the bathroom and carefully peeled the flesh-colored latex from his earlobes. He constantly changed his appearance in small ways, on the theory that he couldn’t be too careful. Surveillance cameras were everywhere these days, thanks to the bastard terrorists. He always did his homework and located the most obvious places for surveillance to be set up, assumed he was being filmed, and worked the angles.

He could have showered here, instead of in Drea’s bathroom, but she was far more astute than she wanted people to know.