Elektra (9 page)

Elektra waited, a sai in each hand. It was only a few moments before Mark ambled across her view, then stopped in front of the window and turned his back, putzing around with something on the table, unknowingly lining himself up perfectly in her vision. It should have been the perfect shot, really, there was nothing at all wrong with it… but maybe she could wait for something better, something with the girl closer to the window so she could get them both with more speed.

In another blink of the eye, Abby stepped into view, standing next to her father, a classic case of actually
getting
what you wish for. Elektra’s hands were frozen on her sais—she couldn’t help listening to the warm, familiar banter between father and daughter, a casual conversation that showed affection and was never meant for someone outside the family to hear.

Mark moved, and Elektra heard the sound of a can clanking against something metal. He looked over and she saw him grin at Abby. “How about some canned plums?”

Even from this far away, Elektra could see Abby roll her eyes in amusement. “Dad, you are
such
a sugar junkie.”

“What?” he asked defensively. “I used to love these when I was a kid.”

Abby smiled but didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, instead of talking about breakfast, she asked, “When am I gonna see Grandma?”

Elektra saw Mark’s shoulders rise as he inhaled. “I don’t know, honey. Soon…I hope. Soon.”

Crouching above the window, Elektra pressed her lips together, growing more and more angry with herself for not just
doing
it, taking the two shots and getting this over with. But no, the timing wasn’t right, something wasn’t right…at least that’s what she tried to convince herself of as she finally moved away from the window. Still telling herself she could go with the shots, aloud she was muttering to herself. “Come on,
damn
it—just… push.
Push.”
She started to repeat herself, but all her air was gone, and she just couldn’t do it.

Out of the corner of her eye as she left, she saw Mark and Abby suddenly freeze. Had they sensed her out there? Had they
heard
her?

Without warning, Abby spun, fast, and made for the door. Her dad grabbed her before she could get there.

“Dad, let me,” she said urgently. “I’m—”

Time to go.

He shook his head. “Stay here,” he told her as he leaned over the sink and peered out the window.

But by the time he focused on the foliage outside, there was nothing to see but empty green, and nothing for him to do but exchange worried glances with his daughter.

Enough of this, Elektra thought as she stormed back into the warm front room of the beach house. She was absolutely furious with herself for not being able to do what she was supposed to. For God’s sake, it was almost as if she couldn’t even
think
the phrase, use the words in her own mind. Well, damn it, she could—she had to
kill
them, both of them. She was the assassin—the
paid
assassin—and they were her targets. She’d never met them before yesterday, and she shouldn’t care if they were alive tomorrow.

She strode to the closet and yanked out the tall box, then pried it open and began assembling the contents. The Martin Cougar Elite compound bow took shape rapidly beneath her experienced hands, and she barely had to think about what went where. This one had a hand-held trigger and a telescopic sight that made it almost as accurate as a firearm and could send an arrow off at nearly three hundred feet per second. She hated herself for admitting a weakness, but maybe if she could put some distance between her and her two marks— enough to where she didn’t have to hear them chatter at each other and therefore didn’t have to remember that they were
people,
people with whom she’d shared a Christmas dinner—maybe then she could do her job and end it the way she ought to.

With a final tightening of the limb bolts, Elektra shouldered the Martin and stood. As she grabbed a half dozen aluminum arrows, Elektra realized she’d be leaving a mess, a telltale sign of her presence here, if she didn’t clean up.

Too bad. She couldn’t worry about that right now. Right now she had to do something to stop the erosion of her own abilities.

Right now, she had to kill.

It took her less than five minutes to get back to Mark’s property, although this time she was well out of range of hearing, no matter how sensitive either of them might be. They were such innocent victims, the worst kind—only the inexperienced kept their curtains spread wide, only the most ignorant didn’t realize that doors and windows should be locked and covered at all times. As they had earlier, Mark and Abby wandered at will across the line of Elektra’s sight, easy prey for the killer neither had any idea was waiting outside.

Down on one knee, Elektra brought up the compound bow and pulled back on the bowstring, inhaling as she pulled against a nearly sixty-five pound draw weight. Mark was easy to fix in the center of the sight and Elektra’s hand was steady as she watched him; his back was to her again and rather than release the arrow, Elektra found herself wondering what he was doing. Paying a bill, chopping up a snack for Abby to eat, or spooning out those canned plums he’d talked about earlier this morning?

Elektra frowned but kept the bowstring pulled taut against her cheek. One more second and—

Abby stepped into the center of the window—obviously their nervousness of this morning had dissipated. She said something to her dad and he looked over at her and smiled; at that, Abby stepped slightly behind him and put her arm casually across his shoulders.

Now would be good, no, now would be
perfect.
They were at a slight angle to her and she could get them both with one shot, accurate enough to pierce both their hearts and likely kill them instantly. Very little pain, no fuss—

Abby’s arm dropped away and Mark stepped to the left, disappearing from Elektra’s view. Abby stayed where she was, looking downward. Maybe she was reading something, a magazine article her dad had noticed and told her about, a letter, a strip of brightly colored comics,
any
thing. She was right there, centered in the kitchen window and in Elektra’s telescopic sight, motionless and so very vulnerable. An easy target, over in a flash—

Elektra’s arm began to tremble from the pull of the bowstring. Ten seconds later she still hadn’t fired and the tremble turned into a full shake as her muscles hit their fatigue point.

Finally, Elektra eased the bowstring forward and lowered the bow.

“I’m not doing it.”

There was a moment of stunned silence on the other end, very rare for McCabe. He was a man who always had something to say, usually a comment sarcastic enough to annoy the person on his receiving end. Elektra kept up her momentum and her routine, flipping rapidly through her key ring until she found the only one she wanted before tossing the others into one of several filled plastic garbage bags on the floor.

“You mean now? Or ever?”

She kept moving, although even to herself she thought it was a little overboard. After all, she’d only been here for two days, barely time enough to use any of this stuff. On the other hand, she
had
unpacked it, which meant she had handled every single item she’d removed from a box. Yeah, best to bleach it or throw it all out just like she always did. “Too many variables,” she said into the cell phone. “Not enough background.”

“What do you need background for?”
McCabe asked irritably.
“You kill them, they’re dead.”
He sighed.
“How
about born in Minnesota, July ninth, a Leo. Is that enough?”

He was being sarcastic and she didn’t need to explain herself to him—hell, she
couldn’t.
Rather than argue, she said, “I’m out of here. I’ll call you when I land someplace.”

As she was closing the telephone, her sharp hearing picked up McCabe’s voice, and the last words in the world she needed to hear:

“They’ll just send someone else.”

Elektra put it out of her mind and started dragging the garbage bags across the floor so she could throw them away.

T
HERE WAS A STORM BREWING OVER THE OCEAN
.

Elektra could feel it, not just in the air but in her own body. Despite the humidity and salt-laden air, the ends of her hair crackled, and the finer hair on her arms was raised, charged by the static electricity in the air. There were huge thunderheads over the water, towering over the tiny island like cotton monoliths, and the wind screaming across the ocean surface did nothing to push them away. They boiled overhead, black and gray colors battling it out for dominance.

She wasn’t the only one waiting for the ferry. With the storm quickly approaching, even on post-Christmas night most of the island’s off-season residents had opted to travel back to the mainland and more stable ground to wait it out.

Finally the ferry was there, inching its way up to the loading dock. There were a few cars on it, maybe islanders gone mainland for Christmas dinner with relatives and who were now returning, some of the ferry’s crew. Waiting her turn to get on, Elektra wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck and scanned the people automatically. Her gaze skipped over the usual fisherman and the captain, then rested on two men wearing black sunglasses despite the day’s storm-induced dimness. Elektra frowned and glanced right and left—just checking—but when she looked back, the two oddballs were gone.

No, something wasn’t right. She could forgive the glasses—lots of people had supersensitive eyes or just didn’t like daylight, whether it was cloudy or not. But Elektra’s nerves were singing now, sending unpleasant little pulses of warning signals across her shoulders and to her brain. She had to find out.

Another quick glance around, then Elektra closed her eyes and concentrated, dropping into kimagure at a speed only successful because of purest necessity.

Abby was screaming.

The night was black and full of wind and rain, but the shrill wind that snapped open and closed the doors and windows of Mark’s cabin wasn’t loud enough to drown out the sound of Abby talking smack at the television. Mark glanced at her, but he was more worried about the windows; they were the kind that opened outward like shutters, and most were whipping back and forth with enough force to make his teeth chatter. It had been like this all day, and now he gave the sky a worried glance from out of the largest window, then reached into the darkness and snatched at the frame, pulling it shut and latching it.

A futile gesture, Elektra thought as she watched from the wet darkness, and one that would never keep out the two figures she could see approaching the small building. She’d been waiting here since abandoning her spot on the ferry, and finally it was going to pay off—not ten feet away from her, one of them took a running start and then, in an incredible feat of athleticism, literally leaped onto the low roof. The other looked to the left and right, then melted back into his own little puddle of darkness.

Elektra watched a still blissfully ignorant Mark go from window to window, first securing them, then putting Xs of tape across each to keep them from shattering beneath the storm’s force. Abby was in the living room and clearly visible through the X-marked window, seemingly transfixed in front of the television and focused on the Weather Channel’s Storm Watch, waiting for word of the weather front that was battering the undersized island. Every fifteen or twenty seconds the picture digitized away in tiny blocks of coded signal, then it returned. With each brownout, Abby grew more impatient.

“I’m going to go get sandbags from the shed,” her father told her.

Abby didn’t look away from the television screen. “Storm Watch,” she sneered. “What a crock. They make it seem so exciting—tornado, hurricane, typhoon. Whatever—then it’s just some stupid rain.”

Mark grinned wryly and tossed her the roll of tape. “When your brain starts to rot?” he suggested. “Feel free to keep taping the windows.”

Finally Abby turned away from the tube, ready to protest, but her father was already out the back door, pulling on his rain slicker as he went. So innocent, Elektra thought. He couldn’t see the figure crouched on the roof directly above him, a man clad completely in the black garb of a
ninjutsu.
But to Elektra he was quite visible…as was the razor-sharp wire, a garotte, he was slowly lowering in front of Mark Miller’s face.

Marked squinted at the shed across the muddy lawn, but he could barely see the tiny building through the rain pounding down. Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward.

He was barely an inch or two away from a sharp, hanging death when Elektra called out to him.

“Mark!”

He stopped, then turned back as he saw Elektra on the other side of the porch. His face registered his surprise at seeing her soaking wet figure.

“I need to talk to you,” she yelled, fighting with the wind for volume. She gestured toward the door and moved toward it, and Mark obligingly followed suit, automatically stepping away from the almost invisible wire. Elektra could sense the ninja’s surprise at seeing her, and his indecision. That indecision would kill him in another ten seconds.

“Can we go inside?” she shouted.

He cast a last look toward the shed, and Elektra could’ve sworn he looked relieved. No kidding—she wouldn’t want to drag stuff out of there in this downpour either. “Yeah, sure.”

She and Mark met at the back door at just about the same time, and she stood back while Mark twisted the knob and pushed inside. As soon as Mark’s back was to her, Elektra silently slid out one of her sais, and, with a practiced and deadly flick of her wrist and a sharp, upward leap, she thrust the weapon through the underside of the porch roof. Alone on the porch for just a couple of seconds, she heard the smallest of death gasps, followed by a low
thump
as the ninja on the roof fell on his side and died. Her trained ear detected something else, too—a faint, evil hissing. Yeah, he was dead.

Inside, Mark was shrugging off his rain slicker and Abby was actually doing what her dad had suggested— going from window to window and taping them against breakage. She turned to see her father, then her startled gaze stopped on Elektra. “Hey,” she said. “What’s up?”

Elektra tried to figure out how to phrase this, but she couldn’t. Finally, she said, “Abby, would you go into the bedroom for a minute? I need to talk to your dad.”

Abby frowned and opened her mouth, but Mark held up a hand. “Go ahead, Ab. Now.”

Abby rolled her eyes and mumbled something under her breath, but she reluctantly turned and headed for the other room. She went into the room, but stopped just beyond the door; she’d eavesdrop, but her dad knew there was nothing to be done about that.

Elektra nodded to herself. Somewhere outside was the other ninja—she could feel him—and by now he would know the fate of his partner, would have seen the green death mist rising from the body. There would be no mourning period, and the only thing this meant was that the remaining guy would be prepared to do the work of both men. That, Elektra knew, was going to be
big
trouble.

“Who are you?” Elektra demanded without preamble.

Mark blinked. “W-what?”

Elektra put her hands on her hips and took a step in his direction. “Mark, they won’t just kill you, they’ll kill Abby, too. So tell me right
now
who’s after you and why.”

For a moment, he was completely unable to speak, and he looked like a terrified baby rabbit trapped by a fox. His mouth worked as he tried to find a few words, but the only thing that came out was “Uh…” He took a step backward, trying to put some distance between him and Elektra—

Something cracked through the window and a silver dollar–sized hole appeared in the glass, right where his head had been only a half-second before.

“Dad!” Abby screamed. She charged out of the bedroom, aiming for her father, but Elektra literally swept the teenager off her feet, pivoted and shoved her into the small bathroom.

“Hey!” Mark protested. He tried to reach around her and grab Abby, but he missed. “You can’t—”

Elektra didn’t give him the chance to finish complaining. Hooking one foot in front of his ankle, she gave him a push; when he stumbled, he kept his momentum going and propelled himself into the bathroom after Abby, who was already trying to come out. He fell against her like a bowling ball and they both staggered back. “Stay there,” Elektra commanded. “And stay
down.”
She kicked the door shut and turned back to the living room, then paused for the barest of moments, just long enough to gather her concentration and blink her eyes closed—

Elektra sprinted for the front door, right before another hole crashed through the side window and a handful of six-inch razored compound bow bolts strafed across the living room. Glass exploded in every direction and bits of wood and plaster sailed through the air, pelting her in the face. The front door was almost within her reach when one of the bolts caught her square in the back, sinking deeply into the big trapezius muscle between her shoulder blades. She went
down on her face, feeling fire course through her back as she tasted blood, but she still heard the front door shatter as the ninja outside kicked it in. He stepped through the splinters and saw her as she forced herself onto her elbows and rolled, landing on her back and bending the bolt’s shaft sideways so that it ripped out a chunk of muscle and flesh. There was a noise, a sort of high-pitched keening, that she vaguely realized was coming from her own throat, and through foggy vision she saw the ninja whip out another arrow and load it into a Barnett Compound Crossbow. There was nothing she could do to stop or escape as he aimed and fired the bolt directly into her heart, then stepped over her body and went to look for Abby and Mark.

Elektra tilted her head and scowled toward the front door—clearly that was the wrong alternative. She squeezed her eyes shut again—

She spun and headed for the back door, just as the lone ninja leaped through the largest of the windows in the living room and fired directly into the spot where Elektra had just been standing. His bolts tore through the bathroom wall like it was made of paper. Most of them slammed into the mirror and sent pieces of spiked glass in all directions, but one found its target in the center of Mark’s throat, killing him almost instantly. Abby screamed—

—the same way she did in Elektra’s kimagure back on the ferry. So, the back door was also off the options list. She was running out of time here. She heard the door being kicked and tried one more time to concentrate, but she couldn’t do it; whatever was going to happen was going down right
now.
When she refocused on the here and now, Elektra heard the front door shatter and found herself face-to-face with the remaining ninja. His compound bow was pointed directly at her chest, and before she could think of anything else, he fired.

Elektra let herself go fully into instinct.

She did a sharp backflip that an ordinary person would have found impossible. The burst of arrows skimmed over her and, except for the one she literally caught in midair, the rest burst through the wall behind her, disintegrating the skimpy barrier between the bathroom and living area. They hammered into the mirror and it shattered, making Abby scream. Her father reached for her but missed as she flung open the bathroom door—

“Abby,
no!”

—then froze as the scene before her registered in her brain. Her gaze took in everything, as it always did: Elektra, still tumbling in the air with one of the arrows clutched in her hand, the room full of projectiles, the black-clad ninja with his finger releasing the trigger as the last bolt shot from his canister.

Elektra’s vision skipped around the room as she turned, over and over and over again. One, two—

“Thirteen arrows.”

Her whisper was lost in the sound of the bow’s firing. Elektra landed in a crouch as the last one whizzed past her shoulder and the ninja ejected the smoking bolt canister from his compound bow. It rolled across the floor as he jerked a fresh one from his belt—

She sprang.

Thunk!

The ninja’s eyes went wide with pain as Elektra embedded the arrow deep into his left shoulder, paralyzing his arm. His hand fell to the floor, palm up and useless as the full load of ammunition spun away. Then his eyes narrowed and he snarled at her.

“Abby—Jesus!” Mark cried. He grabbed his daughter and tried to pull her back into the nonexistent safety of the bathroom. The ninja threw a stiff-fingered punch at Electra that would have broken her cheekbone had she been stupid enough to let it connect; instead she ducked under it, then sent a vicious punch straight into the man’s solar plexus. When he doubled over, she pinned his calf in place, then dropped her full body weight on his knee; it shattered with enough force to where both Abby and Mark heard the bone disintegrate. The ninja gasped, but to his credit, he still didn’t scream.

He also still didn’t go down.

He careened backward on one leg, falling against the opposite wall and sliding down it at the same time he ripped a set of throwing stars off his belt. With a speed that was still like lightning, he brought his hand up—

One of Elektra’s sais pierced the ninja’s palm and nailed it brutally to the floor.

Elektra could hear Mark’s astonished intake of breath, but right now she couldn’t take the time to be concerned about how shocked he and Abby were at seeing someone they’d thought was an ordinary woman leave a professional killer bloody, broken, and paralyzed. There were things she needed to know, and she
would
get this information.

She crouched over the ninja and pressed the tip of her other sai to his temple. The skin indented and broke just enough to ooze a single drop of scarlet.

“Who sent you?” she snapped.
“Dare ga o mae wo okurikonda?”
When he didn’t answer, she used her other hand to rip the black mask free of his face, but there was nothing special about the thin Japanese man smiling benignly up at her. Well, if you discounted the fact that he
could
still smile given the amount of pain he had to be in.