Death of an Assassin (Saint Roch City Book 1) (12 page)

I reach him and peer into the room beyond.

He drops to a crouch in the doorway of a room that looks elegant but reserved, the dull lavender of the walls within more regal than feminine. The only reason I question if the room is meant to exude femininity is sprawled on the area rug, eyes staring to the wall.

Thomas is silent, staring down on the girl who looks to be his age, and I have to assume she’s the Donahue’s only daughter. Her body is smeared in blood, streaking down from her neck in such thick rivulets that it’s easy to recognize a jugular strike from so far away. Unlike the other kills in the manor, this one must have been up close, possibly even the first. A throat wound, like most respiratory injuries, is a sure way to inflict maximum damage without being heard. The victim has too much trouble breathing to scream for―

Thomas cries out and doubles over, pounding a fist on the body of his sister. She limply shifts at his touch, her glassy stare still winning the staring contest with the wall. Despite a hand covered in blood, Thomas grips his hair and stifles sobs.

“Why would anyone kill you? You didn’t do anything… Angie, come back. Please.” He reaches out and shakes her as though his quiet pleading would convince the dead to return. But she doesn’t, of course. He shudders in defeat as the tears burn across his cheeks. I leave him to grieve.

Much the same I would leave a bathroom for someone having a particularly difficult time in the stall.

Clutching the pistol, I walk quietly down the hall, checking the rooms as I go, but certain I won’t find anyone alive. Someone as destructive as this assassin would never have gone to the basement first. She was only checking the very last of the house. And when I reach the master bedroom, the double wooden doors ornately carved and swung wide, I confirm the last of her handy work.

The bedroom looks pristine. Minus the corpses.

Directly in front of the threshold, an older woman is sprawled on the floor as though she may have just been taking a nap there. If not for the three gaping exit wounds in the back of her soft robe, I might go on thinking she were just asleep. The blood has begun to run along the hardwood floor like so many rivers, and I have to shift back a few inches to avoid being caught in the flood of the mother’s life. Here and there, footprints mark the floor where the girl must have stepped among her victims.

Beyond the woman, the Old Man lies across an oaken desk, his hand mere inches from the revolver that put the holes in his wife. So fearful of what was coming, he fired on the first person through the door. I step over the mother toward the desk. Sketched across the Old Man’s face is the same tangle of black veins that I’ve come to dread seeing.

Because I know exactly what left them.

y apartment building sways beneath my feet as the wind outside assaults one side and then the other. The storm seems to be matching my anxiety beat for beat as I continue to haul my quarry up once-clean stairs now being soaked in the rainwater and grime from the circle jerk of events that have lead us here. Me, an assassin with an impeccable record that’s now as dead as any of the high-rise brokers I’ve made drink themselves into a coma. And Thomas, the damn reason I’ve got such a shit record now. Because he’s very much alive, as evidenced by his gasping breath. He’s not out of shape for a trust-fund baby, but he’s panicked.

As we vault the last set of stairs, I grip his collar tighter, the long-sleeved polo already stretched out from my forceful assistance of getting him into my apartment building. I slam him against the far wall with a little more aggression than my conscious mind intends, but probably not nearly enough for my subconscious.

I put hands to his shoulders, and even though they tremble with something I’ve never known lying just under my skin, I attempt to instill some confidence in him.

“Thomas, I need you to breathe for me.”

He looks at me, but I can tell his eyes are piercing through me―a feat not many men can achieve. His chest heaves as he blinks once. Twice. He doesn’t speak.

I smack his cheek and the crack of it echoes up and down the hallway as we puddle onto the hardwood floor. His eyes go wide for a moment, and he tests his jaw at the pain.

“Thomas. You’re okay. You’re safe here.”

“They’re dead,” he chokes. His eyes focus on me and then drift just as easily away. “They… all of them.”

I lean into his shoulders, pressing him harder against the wall. “Thomas. Listen to me. Breathe.” I demonstrate breathing like I would try to teach a kid to ride a bike. Something I never got to do.

With a deep inhale, I loudly exhale. “Like this. Come on, breathe.”

He watches me, gasping and trying to mimic my breathing if only because it’s something to do besides losing his mind. I’ve lost my family. They’re all gone. But I never had to watch it. I never saw their bodies contorted. Grotesque and marred for the entire world to see. I never heard their screams as life was torn away.

Black veins. Poisoned beyond repair.

Unmistakable.

Thomas, shaky breath and all, is now staring at me, focusing on my eyes. My hands relax on his shoulders.

“Good. That’s good, Thomas.” I smile and my twitching hands pat his arms. “Keep going. You’re okay. You’re going to be fine.”

I take a half step back, gripping him by the wrist as I pull him toward my apartment. My hand, slick with rain and muck, slips on the doorknob while I fumble the keys into the multiple deadbolts to get inside. Eventually the thick hardwood slides open and I fall inside, my hand dropping―ashamedly as an afterthought―to my ankle where I jerk out my boot knife and wave it around the empty kitchen. Thomas stands in the doorway, a feather’s touch away from having his legs give out beneath him. He’s still imitating my breathing as I survey the empty kitchen, dirty dishes and all. I hold out a hand to Thomas, as though he’s paying any actual attention to me.

Holding out my five-inch blade like Excalibur, I check the rest of the apartment, finding it as empty as it always is. I trudge back out to the kitchen, following the same path of mud I created coming into the apartment, and drop my knife on the kitchen table with a clatter. Thomas is still perched in the doorway like the worst department store mannequin ever seen. He’s stiff, but still buzzing with an undeniable panic attack threatening to bubble over. In spite of my exhaustion, I lead him from the doorway and place him in a nearby chair before closing the door and securing all the locks.

Thomas watches me with all the wonder of a puppy, and I can just about taste all of the questions just hanging on his lips.

What just happened?

Why is my entire family dead?

Who are you?

What
are you?

All things I more than know the answer to. Your family is dead. Because you’re not. My name’s Layla. I’m a siren. Now let’s try not to get killed ourselves?

Without letting him ask any of his questions or giving myself the chance to answer them, I walk into the bedroom and slide my safe out from under the bed and hastily put in my combination. After three tries I get in and drop the would-be assassin’s unfamiliar gun in and grab my own pistol with a few extra clips of ammunition. I’m not a perfect shot, but I’m also a pretty terrible assassin based on the fact that my mark is sitting at my kitchen table.

And I just taught him how to breathe even better.

I slide a clip into the gun and chamber a round before slipping it into the waistband of my pants, slam the safe shut, and kick it back under the bed where it rolls on the tracks and clangs on the metal. At the loud bang, Thomas jumps in the kitchen, knocking over a chair. On any normal day, I’d groan at the pesky human, so twitchy and frightened. But it’s very hard to make that condemnation as I lay on the carpet, reacting just as badly as that damnable human by dropping to the floor, certain that my home is about to erupt in gunfire. The only thing that smothers me is the silence that follows, punctuated by the rumbling of thunder high over my third-floor walk-up. Thomas’s shoes squeak on the other side of my wall. My hand grips the gun and I consider.

Three shots. Through the wall. You won’t even have to see the look in his eyes. Eyes of your prey. Just do it. Drop the body somewhere. It’ll be done. You’ll be forgiven.

Un-fucking-likely.

I pull myself from the floor with all the pride of a dog that’s just pissed in the house. Adjusting my pants for a moment, letting the cool metal of the gun on my hip attempt to soothe me, I walk back out to find Thomas pacing in the kitchen.

“Okay. So here’s what I’ve pieced together.” He’s waving his jittering hands before he lays it out for me. “You were at my house tonight to do some pretty bad stuff.” His mouth twists at his very blunt way of describing my profession. When I stand silent, he takes that as an affirmative answer and nods. “But based on how I found you, you’re not very good at what you do.”

I shift on my feet. He’s really only making an observation, but I can’t help but feel a little burned by the insult of it. He takes this as an affirmative response, though, and continues on.

“So who… what was… Who did that?”

“I don’t know,” I lie.

I step forward and he moves back, wisely if not unnecessarily. After pulling out the chair he was sitting on, I show my empty hands and sit down.

Thomas leans, his back pressing against the countertop nearest my fridge, and stares at the ceiling. “What I can’t figure out, though, and what I think is probably the most important thing is: why am I alive?”

While he was busy locking eyes on the ceiling, I studied the linoleum of my kitchen. A kitchen that would barely get used if it didn’t lead into the rest of my apartment.

I scoff. “I might not have been so great tonight, Tommy Boy, but the person who ripped up your house was even worse.”

Now it’s his turn to scoff, and he does it through clenched jaws and watered eyes. “My family―my whole family―is dead. I’d say they’re pretty fucking good.”

“They were sloppy.” I scowl. “And you’re standing here. So they didn’t finish the job, now did they?”