snippet one

Hush, now. Killing you is only one of my options. Don't make it an attractive one by whining at me. The thing is, I almost killed you in that alley--it would have even been good for me, an unrelated corpse would make what happened to Richardson look more like a random act of violence--but then I got a good look at you. While you were, hah, trying to make me a soprano. I got a look at you and I wondered if fate put you in my way.

Well, your face, and the way you were dressed... no one's looking after you, are they? No one's waiting for you to come home. No, don't lie. Watching people is part of my job. You aren't anyone's precious girl. Did you run away? Oh, aged out of the system, even better. Eighteen? Nineteen? Nineteen. Good. I don't care to do business with children.

What was I saying. Yes. I looked at you, and I saw a pretty thing with no leash around her neck. A pretty thing that fought me... alright, not very well, but passionately, at least. You never froze. Not half so many tears as I expected. I called you a nice girl, but you aren't, are you? You're the kind of girl who tries to tear a man's glory off with your bare hands. You're not the kind of girl who gets rescued, and you know it.

See, the way you don't answer, the way you try to figure out how to be what I want--I like that. I'll help you. Nice girls don't survive in my line of work.

Useful girls do. Do you want to be useful?