It didn’t come. I wasn’t on their list, or they didn’t know what I looked like, which was a shocking omission. Which meant all kinds of things, like it was Nazari they’d come for the other night, not me. The vacuum started up again behind me, swallowing up the sound of my boots stepping across the damp floor.

Down the hall towards the stairwell. The first cleaner was standing by the stairs. The mop was leaning against the wall. The cleaner stood easy and relaxed with a nice wide and stable stance. His arms were ready and loose. He was thickly muscled. A trained and experienced killer. I smiled and spoke loudly against the noise from the vacuum cleaner. “It’s hard to keep up with friends these days. The world changes so fast. Makes the head spin.”

He nodded. “Yes, sir.”

I brushed past him and started down the stairs. I counted four steps down, then turned and grabbed the guy’s ankle with both hands and pulled hard. He lost his footing and grunted. Used all of his reaction time groping with his hands to avoid hitting his head on the stair, which left me an opening to grab his head with two hands and smash it hard against the edge of the second stair. The impact stunned him. I didn’t take any chances and did it again fast, twice, as hard as I could. The guy went limp. I came up with a Beretta 9mm, tucked into his waist at the back.

The Beretta had a long and thick suppression barrel screwed into the muzzle. I slid open the action, one in the chamber. Let the clip drop heavy in my hand. Decent load. Snapped it back in. I thumbed the safety horizontal and put the barrel behind his ear. I lay down on the stair, below his lower body, so that only my hand and the Beretta were at the level of his head. I shot him once from five inches. His brains and skull and blood painted a thick arc where the wall and stairs met. Some of it got on my hand, but otherwise I was clean. I wiped my hand carefully on the back of his blue uniform. The gun as well.

The suppressed Beretta had made a loud popping sound, nowhere near silenced. But the vacuum cleaner hadn’t stopped working. I looked over toward the second office, barrel up. Fully expecting the other cleaner to have heard the shot or the sound of the guy falling. Maybe not. I moved in a crouch towards the office, two arms extended loosely, eyes roaming. Not too fast, not too slow.