Author's Summary:
The money he'd stolen from Hydra has almost run out when he finds a black piece of card stock with blocky capital letters stapled to a telephone pole:
FUNNEL NO. 9
DO YOU HAVE KNIFE SKILLS?
WE NEED YOU
And then below, there's a phone number.
Knife skills? I have knife skills, he thinks. That part is pretty self-explanatory, though he has no idea what Funnel No. 9 could mean. He doesn't really want to get back into the hitman business, but needs must, and Bucky Barnes is a practical man.
Excerpt (chapter 2):
“Okay Jamie, that’s cool, no worries, all I really need to know is that you have knife skills and you can teach other people your knife skills because we want to run classes here, did I already say that? I don’t think so. Anyway, and you need to have a bank account where I can set up a direct deposit.”
“Uh, yeah,” Bucky says. “Yeah, I do.” . . . “I have knife skills,” he says, sitting up straighter in his chair and smoothing a gloved hand over his hair. “But I’m not sure I have the kind of knife skills you’re looking for.”
“What kind of knife skills…” Flannery says, narrowing his eyes. Then he makes an obvious decision not to inquire any further. “Nevermind. I don’t care, as long as you can bone a fish and chop a carrot. Can you spatchcock a chicken?” he asks, almost suspiciously.
“Uh, yeah, yes,” Bucky says. He’s never spatchcocked a chicken before, but that doesn’t mean he’s never spatchcocked anything else. Surely the skills transfer.
And Bucky? Bucky has had a lot of free time on his hands in the last two years. And one of the things that he’s done with that free time is learn to cook. He’s mastered the basics and has pretty much maxed out the potential for his tiny two-burner kitchenette. So Bucky does happen to know his way around a knife, in the culinary sense.
