It's come down to this, you're sitting in a hotel lobby bar your cap pulled down low trying to not get registered on the cameras waiting for him. You don't know why you're feeling like this, you haven't felt like this since you were old enough to punch your old mans lights out, but the big guy scares you, scares you to the bone.
He walks in, he's not hiding just striding purposefully across the room, but from everything you've heard he won't be on any CCTV footage. It just doesn't seem to work when he's around, he sits opposite you fitting his huge frame into a seat that seems comically small. There's fat under that tailored grey suit, but muscle under the fat. He strokes his closely cropped white beard and glares at you with coal black eyes, eyes that seem to bore into you. Old eyes in a lined face, you don't know how old he is, you don't even know his name he's just "The Old Guy". The guy you call when no one else can do the job.
Your mouth goes dry, and you lick your lips pulling on all the reserves of pain and anger that have propelled you through life. Wordlessly you pass him the two envelopes. He opens the first thinner one and slide the picture out and looks at it the nods. He doesn't even look at anything else in there, the details of the security or the location, he doesn't care.
You've heard stories of people who hired "The Old Guy" to take out do-gooders who were getting to nosy. It didn't go well, you know he's picky about his targets but if he takes the job they are as good as gone, it doesn't matter where they hide or who's protecting them they are dead. Assuming the money is good of course. He looks in the other, thicker, envelope and nods, sighing slightly. Then he moves to get up.
"Wait." The word is out of your mouth before you can think, you don't know where it came from, somewhere deep in your soul are a million questions and you can't keep them in. He sits back in the chair and looks at you again and you realise he's searching your face for something. What you say next might mean you don't leave this hotel lobby alive but you can't help but think he wants you to ask him something.
"What do you want?" His voice is quiet and cold as snow but there's something under it, as if he's offering you a lifeline. A way our of all of this. You don't know why you're thinking that.
"If..." you lick your lips again. "If that was me in that envelope you'd do the job right?" He nods and you think for a moment you see sadness in the face. You carry on trying to understand.
"Why do you do it?" You can't think of any other thing to ask but you also have to know, the little child you've been hiding in your heart for years is screaming to know.
"Toys are expensive these days. And the naughty list just gets longer." he says with a sad sigh and gets up and leaves, leaving you cold and alone in the hotel lobby.