Death of an Assassin (Saint Roch City Book 1) (27 page)

Now, a picture of Andrew and his bride-to-be appears on screen, showing them as a happy and loving couple.

“Police are unwilling to speculate if this incident is connected with the drowning of their son, or the hit-and-run killing of Richard Donahue’s nephew, Terrence O’Halloran.”

A new picture appears of a college-aged kid. A face I know all too well because there’s likely still a photo of him sitting in the bottom of my safe at my apartment. A photo tucked in a manila envelope that was slid under my door by my broker.

“One source, a neighbor who has been unwilling to identify themselves, stated that multiple bodies were removed from the Donahue home, but there has been no statement released by
―
”

Tim turns the video off. “Your handiwork?”

I shake my head. “That… that was the person who replaced me. She was a little more indiscriminate than I like to be.”

“There’s more.” He loads up a new file.

Two news anchors are sitting at a desk, shifting papers around. One, a middle aged man with salt-and-pepper hair that he likely purchased, and a woman, not as peppy as the last, but no less annoying as she watches her co-anchor deliver every line like a dog watching a sandwich.

“Now, as you know we’ve been following the events befalling one of the greatest families in Saint Roch, and we’re going to play the video shot here only an hour ago. One girl’s desperate plea to have her family restored…”

A girl, only a little older than me, stands at a podium, so many microphones adorning the wood that it looks like a garden of them, each one sprouting to higher heights than the last.

“Most of you now know that my family has been attacked this week,”
she says, stifling a sob and sweeping back locks of curly brown hair as she reads a paper before her.
“Only days ago, my cousin Terrence was killed in a tragic hit and run while visiting our family. And on the day,”
she sobs but manages to go on,
“on the day of my brother’s engagement celebration, he too was taken from us far too early…”

I can’t place her until the video finally finds it worthwhile to label things for those in the audience not glued to their television.

Angela Donahue. And I see the glassy eyes. The blood streaked body. The girl I was certain was dead.

Not so much now…

“And last night, my parents were brutally murdered in our own home, and my brother was taken. So I come before you today not to speak to you”
—she gestures to the sea of reporters that up until now have only been apparent by the constant flashing of cameras
—
“
but to you.”
She locks eyes with the camera
. “To the person or people who have taken my brother. Please. Please, bring my brother home… I just want my family back…”
She breaks down, and a suited man approaches the podium to comfort her, leading her away from the cameras.

The video turns back to the two anchors, sitting at their desk, attempting to look like they care about Angela Donahue and her family’s woes.

“Such tragic events,”
the woman says.

The man nods.
“Yes. That was one courageous young woman, pleading to have her brother returned. And we can only hope that this story, though horrible, will have a happy ending.”

The video ends and Tim closes the laptop. He stands, looking down on me. My eyes wander, though. Staring around the car while I try to put puzzles pieces together. But I’m missing several pieces, and I don’t even know what the picture looks like.

A faint scratching at the far end of the car is enough to take Tim out of the moment, and he walks away from me to open the door and let the bounding dog come back in from the cold. She jogs across the train, panting before sprawling at my feet.

“Have there been any other news reports? Anything confirming that Thomas is back at home?” I ask.

Tim shakes his head as he sits down beside the dog, groaning a little as he does so. His hand rests on the tawny fur of the animal, lightly running over her. “They just keep replaying the poor girl asking for her brother.”

“She was dead. We saw her body. Thomas was a wreck he… He knew she was dead…”

“Well… my keen detective skills foresee two possibilities. The most likely of which? Thomas lied to you.”

I was hoping an outside observer would say something else. Anything else. For all the annoyance, hassle, and complete life-screwing-uppery that Thomas has caused, I don’t want him to be like that. I don’t want him to deserve to die. Because then I should have killed him. “And the other?”

Tim shrugs. “You saw her body looking very dead. But she’s human. They don’t come back.” He pointed to the screen. “She’s not dead now.”

“But why would she…?”

“Plenty of reasons. Maybe she played dead. Thought the assassin would assume her dead.”

I shake my head. “No. Even if she were dumb enough to do that, no assassin would leave a potential target like that alive. She killed his parents. And they were definitely dead. I confirmed that myself.”

“Well, then she faked it for Thomas. So that’s the golden question. Why would she play dead for her own brother?”

The leaves squish in wet, mucky clumps as I shift around. My knee is getting soaked, but I can’t help but try to force a feeling of nostalgia as I peer through the scope. In the early-morning light, the Donahue estate looks far more pristine than it should, having been the site of mass murder only a handful of days earlier. Being that I’ve been unconscious for so much time, I have no idea how many days, really. One of my first plans when I finish the job is to get to a newsstand by my apartment and pick up a paper to figure that out.

My rifle, a generous step up from the one I purchased from the undiscriminating Westie dealer to pop Thomas, feels solid in my arms. A payment from Tim for helping him waste a room full of “draggers.” Saint Roch racism at its finest. I’m not too ashamed to take the rifle and spend an hour learning more about it than I thought I could in a year. With a flash suppressor on the end, I’m prepared to take my shots, but can’t find any targets. As I go from window to window, I can’t find a single person on the estate, and it isn’t until a car pulls up the long driveway and parks on the other side that I’m certain someone is there. But there are no guards on the perimeter. Mistake number one.

It only takes me a few minutes to move from the tree line to the house itself, keeping to the shrinking shadows of the rising sun when possible. My borrowed sniper, great for the long-distance kill, is stowed in the forest now. An hour of training from my former partner wasted. The defenses of the Donahue estate have fallen far short of what they once were. For now, I’m armed with my old friends. A boot knife moved up to my hip and my pistol, lovingly clutched in my hands, freshly cleaned by Tim and loaded with ten rounds, with several other magazines ready for the reload strapped in pockets on the tactical vest he’s loaned me.

But, in truth, I only need three bullets. One for each of Angela Donahue’s kneecaps until she gives me answers and calls off the price on me. And a third to put in her skull if I don’t like her attempts to negotiate.

A shudder slips through me like a wave of cold winter air that is anything but. Because, deep down, I know I intend to use the knife on Thomas. Slip it up beneath his chin, slide the cold metal into his skin, and watch him bleed out. If he lied. Because he’s destroyed my career and flipped my life on its ass, and he better have a damned good reason for doing that.

I don’t know the layout of the mansion as well as I’d like, but I find a door at the back of the house that isn’t locked. And that’s as good an entry as any. Keeping my gun aimed at the door, I open it and jump into a darkened room smelling of fabric softener and linens. The laundry room. The house stands quiet around me but for raised voices echoing up the cavernous mansion. Feeling my old self returning, I glide across the linoleum to the far wall, finding a door that must lead to the interior of the house.

It’s the scent of blood on the air, Layla.

That rush, sweetie. That need to kill. You know that feeling, right?

My mother’s voice. Her hopeful tone. When she left me for the last time. Outside a cold fire station on the northern edge of Saint Roch, she put a coat over me even though I couldn’t really feel the rain soaking my body. I wasn’t really sure what was going on. Or where I was. Or who it was waiting in the car for my mother.

I wanted to beg and plead with her.
Take me with you. Don’t you love me anymore? Please, Mommy…

But I was still in shock. I know that now. I was a quiet little girl who could still remember the fury on my mother’s face while she held me under the water. The determination to kill her only child. And when she walked away, I watched her go. Get into the passenger seat of the car and disappear from my life forever. Nothing more than a memory.

I never made a sound.

A loud crash wakes me from the past, and I turn the knob of the door and the house lights up with noises.

“I want her fucking head!” a girl screams. Another loud noise as glass or ceramic shatters. “I didn’t pay you to―”

A low laugh crawls across the walls as I peer down the hallway, dark for lack of windows. She speaks slowly, with such burning malice that I can feel my stomach wanting to throw up what little food I have in it. “You haven’t paid me a freaking cent. This isn’t a business of credit. I do a job, you pay me. That’s how it works, princess.”

I know that voice.

“I told you, you get paid when you finish the job. When everything is lined up, you’ll get paid. I have a very wealthy backer―”

“To hell with your backer. And to hell with you. I’m not a bodyguard, and I’m not a whore. I’m here for one thing. My money. And if you don’t give it to me, I’m going to do to you what I did to your dearly devoted parents.”

Her. The assassin. The co-ed cheerleader-looking freak who took my job.

I stalk up the hallway, moving toward the voices, but being cautious not to make a sound as I do so. Because the house is silent again. Until…

“Shut up.” As quietly as Angela says it, I hear it from my position in the hallway.

I finally reach a room with light only to find that it’s a vast living room, bigger than my entire apartment and Cass’s combined. It’s empty, but the voices are coming from one of the rooms off this. There are more than a few doors to choose from, and I pause to try to gamble which door.

The dark laugh bubbles up again. “If you don’t have the stomach to talk about offing your mommy and daddy, you shouldn’t have hired me. Do you know what your father said before I drained him of life?”

Click.

Having been in similar situations before, I know the sound of a gun being cocked.

“I said shut up.”

I can place it now, and I move from hardwood to an area rug, surrounded by furniture that costs more than the life of an embezzling stock broker or a pumped-up frat boy who gets in the way of luxury cars. My footfalls are light, but not light enough. The floor creaks beneath, me and I freeze, raising my gun toward the room.

I hear movement coming from within. But it’s not fast. It’s not attacking. It’s casual. A confident stroll. The assassin. She’s wearing loud shoes as she walks on hardwood, the loud clacks being as discrete as a bomb in the quiet. “Oh, come on, Angie. You’re not going to shoot me. I’m your only hope here. Let me go and talk to the guy. I bet I can get whatever you need out of him.”

I move again. Testing a theory. The floor creaks. But now I’m right beside the door, not able to see inside, but perfectly capable of swinging the corner and firing where I’m certain the two women are.

“What are you talking about?” Angela says. But her voice trembles. She’s a terrible actress.

The assassin takes a seat, all too apparent by the sound of her getting comfortable and causing the furniture to crack and slide across the floor. She makes noise. Way too much noise. She didn’t hear me. She wiped out an entire mansion of people to get to one. Or maybe three, if the parents were on the contract, too.

She’s an amateur. She can kill, but she can’t assassinate. She was sloppy for a reason. And now I know enough about her.

“I know you’ve got your brother here. Or somewhere. I know you must need him for something, or why wouldn’t you have called off the flock of reporters still yammering about him being kidnapped? So he must be here, and you must be keeping him squirreled away for some reason.”

“I don’t know where my brother is,” Angela lies. Badly. I’m not the only one picks up on how fast she answers and the sharp tone her voice hits.

“Yes, you do. And you need something from him. You’re panicking. You pulled a freaking gun on me!” The girl chuckles grimly. “Why don’t you just let me have a turn with him, then? I take it whoever you hired hasn’t been having any luck with him?”

Silence.

The next sound is a pitying laugh. Not at all dark, and more like the noise that drunken girls make at clubs when they’ve had too many. “Shit, you really don’t have any money, do you? You couldn’t hire anyone. Did the slanty-eyed freaks from the Eastside clean you out?”