Hunter's Rise (2 page)

Faith didn’t even seem to notice as she leaned in after a quick glance around the bar— it wasn’t even a
subtle
glance. “That’s why we’re here. I’m looking to meet this… person. Apparently she takes care of problems.”

“Problems?” The friend was looking more and more nervous with every passing second, Sylvia noticed.

Smart girl.

Some people talked about doing stupid shit.

Others actually tried to go through with it. Faith was dumb enough, arrogant enough to try and go through with it.

“Yeah.” Faith worked up a convincing little sob. “He hits me. All the time. He doesn’t leave marks, because he likes to show me off. But I’m so
tired
of being hurt…”

“Faith, you’re not…” Her friend tried to laugh, but it fell flat. In the end, she just cleared her throat and asked, “What are you talking about?”

A cold glint appeared in Faith’s eyes. “Doing what’s necessary. And it’s not like I can divorce him, either. There’s that damn prenup and everything. And if I screw around on him?
I’m
screwed.”

“Look, this isn’t funny.” Her friend didn’t just look nervous now; she looked outright sick. “I know you don’t much care for the guy, so just divorce him. If you disliked him that much, you never should have married him.”

She reached into her purse and grabbed some money, threw it down on the table. “You can sit here and feel sorry for yourself alone. I don’t want to—”

Faith snaked out a hand, curling it around the other woman’s wrist. “Sit down,” she said, her voice cold. “You think I called you just so you could whimper and whine? I need somebody with me tonight and it’s going to be
you
.”

“I don’t
want
to be with you,” the other woman snapped, trying to jerk away.

“Tough shit.” The smile on Faith’s face now was cold. Cold, mean and ugly. “Because if you’re not, I’m going to spill
your
secrets.”

The woman went white.

“Faith, this is insane.” The woman was trying not to cry now. “Just divorce him or something. You can’t… you’re going to…”

“I’m just trying to make sure I have a nice, easy life.” Faith shrugged, unconcerned. “Just like you have a nice, easy life. It’s only fair.”

Fair.
Fair?
The absurdity of the conversation was almost enough to make Sylvia choke on the wine. Except she’d actually heard more absurd shit in her long life. After all, she was an assassin— very often, people didn’t have good reasons for wanting to see another person dead.

“Fair…” Sylvia lowered her glass of wine to the bar and spun around, studying the blonde and her friend. “Life really doesn’t have a great deal to do with being
fair
, does it?”

“Excuse me?”

Sylvia James leaned back against the bar and crossed her legs, an amused smile on her lips, keeping a hand on her purse. “I mean, if you wanted to talk about
fair
, we could talk about the fact that it wouldn’t be
unfair
to expect a woman to actually
abide
by the vows she took.”

Faith went white, and then red. Not quite so pretty now that she was pissed. Sylvia smiled. She was going to make the woman even angrier shortly.

Next to Faith, her friend squirmed uncomfortably. “Hey, lady, we’re just…”

“You, my dear, were just avoiding a whole shitload of trouble,” Sylvia said, resting an elbow on the bar, flicking her a glance before looking back at Faith. “You, on the other hand…”

“Bitch, why don’t you mind your own business?” Faith narrowed her eyes.

“My own business?” Arching a brow, she slid off the stool and sauntered closer to the table the women shared. “Maybe we should just get down to business then…?” Without waiting for an answer, she reached into her purse and withdrew a small digital recorder, hit the play button.

Faith’s voice, recorded two days ago, came out.

And Sylvia didn’t need supersensitive hearing to hear Faith’s
breath catch as her eyes darted to the recorder and then back up to Sylvia’s face.

“Now, Ms. Dwyer, what were you saying about minding my own business?” With one hand resting on her purse, she leaned over the table, peering into Faith’s dazed eyes. “You called me. I told you I’d be here. I told you to take precautions. I told you to be discreet. I also told you…
no lies
.”

She paused and sipped her wine, studying the dark red liquid, desperately wishing it was something else. “Now I’ve been sitting here for twenty minutes. You weren’t discreet. You didn’t take precautions. And…” She drew her voice out, studying the woman through her lashes, watching as the blood slowly drained from Faith Dwyer’s face. “You lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie.” Faith blinked, rapidly working up some pretty convincing tears. “My husband beats me. All the time.”

Convincing. But not convincing enough. She reeked of lies. Humans couldn’t lie very well. Not to somebody like Sylvia, at least.

More than a century ago, she’d been made into a vampire, and she’d spent quite a few years refining her skills. One of them was learning how to read people— fellow vampires, other freaks in the world… mortals. This woman was lying. Vampires could smell a lie the same way a human could smell spoiled milk— lies didn’t smell much better, either.

“You’re lying,” Sylvia said gently. “I’m already pissed… don’t make it worse. I’ll be sending this on to the cops.”

“You fucking bitch. You
can’t
.” Faith stood up, shaking her head. One hand curled into a fist at her side.

Sylvia saw the muscles tensing in her arms and she chuckled, slipping the recorder back into her bag and stepping back. “I’d think twice if I were you— remember what you hired me for. Do you
really
want to try to grab something from me? Or worse,
hit
me?”

Then Faith decided to change tactics. Tossing her head, she settled back in her chair, legs crossed lazily. She studied Sylvia with practiced boredom. “That little thing doesn’t prove jack
shit
. Just a couple of voices… doesn’t even sound like me. Why waste our time? Look, I’ll just pay you the money and we call this quits.”

“So you can try to hire somebody else later down the road? I don’t think so.” She stroked a hand up the buttery smooth leather of her cross-body sling bag, patted it. “You see, I have this little problem with women who try to paint men as abusive, when the men aren’t. It just makes it that much harder for the real victims, you know. The recording will go to the police… as will this.” Sylvia pulled another device out of the concealed pocket in her bag, this one a sleek, little digital video recorder.

Sylvia loved that device. She hit a button and after it had rewound enough, she showed the display to Faith. It had captured the blonde’s pretty face with crystalline clarity, as well as her voice. It played a few seconds before the recording stopped and then Sylvia hit the record button again, careful to keep it angled away from the friend. She hadn’t gotten the woman on video earlier and she wouldn’t this time, either.

So far, the woman was only guilty of bad judgment in friends. No reason for her to suffer overmuch for that. “So, Faith Dwyer, wife to the Honorable Justin Dwyer, is sitting here and we just heard her discussing with an unknown party plans to have her husband killed— she was going to pretend to be an abused wife, if I’m not mistaken. Anything to say, Faith?”

“You
whore
!” Faith lunged for her.

Sylvia sidestepped, laughing. “Oh, that was perfect. I bet your husband’s lawyer is going to
love
this.” She stopped the recording and took a moment to wag the device at her before tucking it safely away. As the woman came for her again, she delivered a quick, easy jab, sending the icy bitch straight to the floor.

Behind her, she heard the bartender pick up the phone and calmly start to dial. She’d warned him earlier there might be trouble. And she’d paid him an extra hundred to keep calm if she had to get… physical.

Things had just gotten physical. He’d kept calm and earned that hundred. But it was time to go.

While her friend continued to stare, her mouth open in shock, Faith sprawled on the floor moaning, her pretty blue eyes dazed. Sylvia knelt down at her side and waited until that fog started to lift before she said anything.

“I don’t appreciate having my time wasted, sweetheart,” Sylvia said once Faith was looking at her. The arrogance she’d seen was gone now, replaced by fear and worry. Good. “You don’t want to be married? Listen to your friend… file for divorce. But don’t lie to get me here.” Rising, she went to take a step away when Faith clamped a hand over her ankle.

“You can’t go to the cops,” Faith said, the fear in her eyes taking on a desperate slant. “I… shit. I’ll
pay
you, damn it. Just don’t tell them.”

“Sorry. I don’t do bribes or blackmail.” She shook Faith’s hand away and kept walking.

Behind her, Faith sat up, pushing her hair back. At the sound of the sirens wailing out in the streets, she blanched and shoved upright onto her feet. “I’ll tell the cops it was
your
idea,” she said. “If you turn that in, you look as bad as I do— since you agreed to
meet
me.”

Sylvia paused at the side exit door and looked back, chuckling. “But I was never here, sweetheart. The cops don’t even know who to look for.”

“I’ll tell them. I’ll give them your name, your phone number… everything.”

“My name? My number? Faith, darling… do you
really
think either of those is real?” She smiled. It was a lovely, rather disturbing smile. “They’ve been looking for me for years… I’m nothing but a ghost.”

Y

Decades.

But she’d been evading them with ease. Sylvia had learned how to hide when she’d been running for her life, certain the monster who’d created her would change his mind, come looking for her. That never happened, but it had taken years for the fear to fade.

Years before she finally stopped hiding in the shadows.

Before somebody had all but
forced
her to stop cowering in those shadows.

Then, she had to learn to hide for a different reason, as she became a predator in her own way. A killer-for-hire,
one who hunted other monsters. Sometimes, people came to her for revenge, sometimes people came looking for justice… and she’d learned to hide her trail very, very well.

Hours later, Sylvia let herself into the little apartment that was the closest thing she had to a home. It wasn’t leased to Sylvia James— she used one of her other aliases, Alice Sanders. Boring, simple Alice.

Boring simple Alice and Sylvia had one thing in common… they only existed on paper. Kind of like the guy in
Shawshank Redemption
. She loved that movie… something about it just clicked for her. She’d escaped from the hell that had been her life. Andy Dufresne had escaped from the hell that had been his prison after he’d been falsely accused of murder. Both of them escaped. She had adopted a new persona— or ten. He had adopted a new persona.

Of course, Dufresne had kept his cool a lot better during his imprisonment than Sylvia had.

The “James” part was completely made up. Sylvia, however, was her real name, one she’d chosen for herself, years and years ago. She used it from time to time. She should probably shift away from it again for a while, but that was a problem for another night.

For now, all she wanted to do was sit down, relax with a better glass of wine than she could find in any bar and just zone out. It had taken hours to deal with that nasty mess involving Faith Dwyer. The vapid little bitch— she’d really thought she could hire Sylvia to kill her husband just so she’d inherit? Of course, it wasn’t the first time, but it still pissed her off.

“Stupid cow,” Sylvia muttered as she headed into the bathroom. She needed a shower. She’d managed to feed, but it had been late and she hadn’t had the luxury of being choosy. Now she smelled like the inside of a beer keg. She could blame that on Faith Dwyer, too.

The woman probably had her hands full right now. No doubt she was telling lots and lots of lies, and causing her lawyer many, many headaches while her husband’s lawyers rubbed their hands together.

The husband… bent over, she paused in the middle of unzipping her boots. She hoped the man hadn’t really loved
his wife too much. Whether he’d loved her or not, though, this must be one hell of a sucker punch. He might have been wishing Sylvia
had
taken the contract.

But there was just no way.

There were, Sylvia knew, more than a few killers-for-hire who would have taken the job. They killed for the thrill of it, for the hell of it, for the fun of it or for the money.

She didn’t operate that way— she killed because it was what she did. She was good at it. But she was selective. Very selective. Abusive husbands, yes. She’d actually killed her first abusive
wife
a few years ago. That had been a head-spinning job, for certain. Abusive spouses were fair game. Abusive parents? Absolutely. Any type of abuser,
if
she knew the abuse was real.