Chapter 1- A Killer Saved My Life Tonight

I started killing people for money when I was 17.

My mentor found me stealing out of his car. It was a new shiny BMW and the door was unlocked. I just knew there would be money in that car and I was hungry.

At first I thought the click I heard was the sound of the door locking. But the cold metal against my side of my forehead made me realize it was the click of a gun barrel.

"Turn around slowly", he said.

"Don't kill me." I turned around slowly and looked at the man's dark eyes and silently dared him to kill me. I wanted him to see that I wasn't scared of him or his gun.

"I won't as long as you don't make me."

And I never did. However that night, I had no idea what the future held.

He kept the gun on me and made me get in the driver's seat. He made me drive to a garage underneath an apartment building and made me walk ahead of him after we got out of the car. I kept looking for a way to escape, to run from this man and his gun. But no matter which way I turned, the man seemed to have a security lock on every door, window and access point.

Once we entered the apartment, he told me to sit. He continued to hold the gun on me and I thought for sure he was going rape me or kill me or both. But all he did was keep looking at me with his dark eyes.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"What's yours?"

He laughed. In all the years I lived with him, I never knew his real name. And he never asked my name again. He would just call me Skinny. After a while, I wouldn't answer to anything else. Not even my real name.

Apparently when I was planning on stealing whatever wasn't tied down in his car, he was picking up his Monday night order of Chinese. So that's what we had for dinner. I was so hungry, I didn't even care that I was eating while a gun was pointed at me.

After we ate, he motioned me toward a bedroom. Great, I thought, this is it... Chinese food and rape. I turned around to fight and I watched him turn to walk away.

"There is a bathroom through the door to your left. Good night." And he walked out the room and locked the door.

I looked around the room and mentally took note of how much I could sell each item for... 60 inch flat screen $100... stereo with iPod dock $50... various odds and ends... clock radio, vases, paintings... but how to get out of here...

The window actually had key locks on it. And the glass wasn't glass at all but some bullshit plastic composite. I really was trapped.

I slid under the bed thinking that if he came in, my being under the bed would give me enough time to hear him coming and wake up. I went to sleep with the dust bunnies.

The next morning, I heard the door unlock and I tensed. I watched the bottom of the door open and saw his feet walk over to the bed.

"Breakfast is ready", the feet boomed. And they turned and walked away.

I waited and thought. Lying under the bed, I thought about this man with the dark eyes and the gun. I figured if he was going to do something to me, he would have already done it. I seriously doubted serial killing rapists would cook you breakfast first.

So I followed the smell of food into a dining room. The man was sitting there reading the paper like it was exactly what he did every day- eat breakfast with someone he held at gunpoint off the street.

He didn't take his eyes of his paper. I didn't see the gun but I knew it was somewhere. I sat down and ate.

I never would be hungry again.

My mentor gave me a new life. He never said why and I never asked but I always imagined he felt sorry for the skinny, ragged looking girl looking at him defiantly in that parking lot, so many nights ago.