Elektra (8 page)

Off to the side were a couple of well-padded deck chairs that looked a little too inviting—she should really be heading back to the beach house and her own space. But it was nice to surreptitiously watch Mark with his daughter, to see them like this. It gave her good, solid evidence that despite the bickering, the two were close and affectionate. He disappeared from view, and she turned to face the ocean, telling herself that she could spare five more minutes; this late at night, with what little there was of the moon obscured by the evening clouds, Elektra couldn’t see the water. She could, however, hear the crashing of the surf, a sound both soothing and restless, never-ending.

Mark’s footsteps came from behind her and made Elektra turn. He was standing there and smiling; in one hand he held a bottle of wine with a holiday label on it from a local winery, in the other, two festive-looking wineglasses. “Suddenly I have a teenager on my hands,” he said apologetically.

Elektra nodded. “She’s hard on herself.”

Mark raised one eyebrow as he set the glasses on the deck railing, then pulled out a pocket corkscrew and went to work on the cork. “You can tell, huh?” He chuckled to himself but he looked pleased. “Most people think she’s a slacker.” In another second, he’d twisted the cork free and filled both glasses. He handed her one. “Here you go.”

She reached for it automatically, but her hand wavered in midair after her fingers has closed around the stem. “No…I shouldn’t.”

He blatantly ignored her protest, instead touching his glass to hers in a toast. “Merry Christmas.”

Another hesitation, but she could think of no good reason why she couldn’t relax just a bit on this holiday night. Finally, she nodded at him and took a sip. Mulled spice, thick and rich, slightly sweet—probably a treasured recipe from the local vineyard, something only brought out once a year. Nice. “Where’s her mother?” Elektra asked, hoping to keep the conversation from tumbling around back to her and sparking questions she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—answer.

Mark’s face darkened. “She died about a year ago.”

Elektra felt her throat tighten and she gave him a chance to continue. God, she knew firsthand how it felt to be Abby’s age and lose your mother. “Back in Baltimore?” she asked when he didn’t offer any more information.

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Drunk driver.”

Elektra looked away for a long moment, then met his gaze again. “My mother died when I was young.”

For a second, Mark looked almost comically surprised that she would share such a hugely personal piece of trivia about herself. “Really?” He looked at her, expecting more details.

But he wasn’t the only one surprised—she should never have revealed so much. And now that she had, Elektra could tell he was gearing up to ask more questions, things she didn’t want to go into. “I should go,” she said abruptly. “I have a lot of work to do.”

Mark’s expression fell. “Oh, come on—it’s early.” He glanced back to the window on the other side of Abby’s, where he could see the living room clock atop the fireplace mantel. She would never admit it aloud, but the inside
did
look inviting, filled with a warmth that had been too long missing from her life. But no, she couldn’t let material things like that tempt her. Things like… normalcy. “It’s only—”

“Thanks for dinner,” Elektra said, cutting off his words. He glanced at his glass and when he looked up again, she was gone.

While she slipped into the shadows and headed down the beach and Mr. Mark Miller tried to figure out where she’d disappeared to, Elektra couldn’t help puzzling over why his expression looked more worried than surprised about her leaving….

T
HE COLD WIND ALONG THE SHORE FRONT HAD
died away, leaving Christmas night—Elektra still couldn’t believe she hadn’t realized
that
—calm and silent. On one side the water was dark and still, waveless, and with the moon still concealed behind the clouds the ocean looked like a sheet of black ice stretching as far as the eye could see, shiny and ominous. On her other side, her sea-level perspective was enough to make the tiny island appear to stretch off into a blackness broken only by very occasional glints of night. There weren’t many houses here, and most of those were dark and empty, their families gone to spend the winter in an area with more amenities and, given the affluence of the people who generally owned property here, probably a warmer climate. While Harbor Island could be pleasant enough during the day in December, she could easily picture people wintering in Florida, Mexico, or even Hawaii.

Holidays, it seemed, were invented not just for celebrations but to foster memories. As Elektra headed down the beach at her usual measured pace, she was helpless to prevent her mind from wandering back through the years, touching here and there on times both painful and happy—

Beyond the bridge entrance, the maze on her parents’ estate was thick and green, and freshly cut—it smelled wonderful, like concentrated summer just released from a tightly stoppered bottle. She was supposed to be quiet or she’d be found out, but she couldn’t, no matter how hard she tried, and when her mother’s face peeked around a corner and their eyes met, young Elektra erupted into giggles and abandoned her attempts at stealth. Instead she ran full out, zipping around corners and laughing outright, her mother doing the same. It wasn’t long before the elder Natchios caught up with her—well, she might have
let
her mother do that—and then Elektra waited, trembling and jittery with anticipation, as her mother gently tied a white blindfold across her eyes. With her hand tucked into her mother’s elbow, Elektra let herself be led, and the sensation wasn’t as disconcerting as she expected. She was walking blind and feeling her way, yes, but she knew this maze as well as the crew who had planted the hedges in it, knew every turn and corner and how many steps long each corridor was; when they stopped so her mother could untie the blindfold, Elektra already knew they were at the maze’s center.

She was, however, surprised to find her father waiting for them… standing right next to a newly built wishing well.

“Oh, Daddy!” The circular well was beautiful, its waist
high walls hand-constructed of smooth river stones in a myriad of colors beneath a small roof of hardened cedar shingles. Elektra circled it, hopping up and down with excitement and happiness, then she threw herself into her father’s arms and hugged him furiously. He held on to her in return, his arms strong and tight. With her mother looking on and smiling, Elektra had never felt so secure. Her father was still smiling when she pulled away, and she eagerly took the silver dollar piece he offered her—she had a big future to wish for, long and bright and happy, and she would need a big coin to cover it all. Concentrating so hard that she was just on the edge of frowning, Elektra finally tossed the big silver piece into the well, watching it arc upward before it fell, twinkling end over end, into the darkness at the well’s center….

A good memory, but by the time Elektra finally reached the beach house and climbed into bed, it was followed by one much darker and unwanted—

Elektra stood off to the side, watching silently as members of her father’s staff worked together to drape dust covers over all the furniture in the house. Up and fluff, out and down. Up and fluff, out and down. They were quiet and efficient, talking in murmurs and being careful not to look in her direction. She followed them from room to room, starting with the foyer and working into each bedroom and the living room, counting each one without knowing it, watching as they spread the sheets in the air and let them flutter down like pallid, fragile snow ghosts that enveloped everything. They left only her father’s study, glancing uneasily at
each other as they passed the door without touching it, not noticing that Elektra, who had followed them everywhere until now, decided to stay behind.

When their footsteps had faded to nothing more than faraway thumps, Elektra grasped the handle of the study door and eased it downward, moving more quietly than she’d ever done in her life, more quietly than she’d ever thought she
could
. She felt the latch release beneath her hand but it made no sound, and she slipped into the room as if she were a ghost herself. This was a huge study, the room nearly as large as the library upstairs, and when she carefully pushed the door closed behind her, Elektra saw her father sitting at his desk nearly twenty feet away. His head rested on his hands and he looked almost as though he were sleeping, so she stayed in the shadows and just watched him. For a long time he didn’t move, long enough so that she began to worry; when she crept closer, she realized his eyes were open and he was staring at something on his desk—two large swords with wicked-looking handles that ended in a sharp point on each side of the main hilt. What were they called?
Sais
, that’s right. He had told her about them before.

He stood suddenly, and only a quick backstep into the shadows kept her from being seen. Where before his mood had seemed dark and introspective, now it looked like he had made up his mind about something. As Elektra watched, he picked up the two sais and strode over to the wall on the other side of the room, where the cherrywood cabinets were built in place from floor to ceiling. He took a key from his
pocket and twisted it into the lock of one of the upper ones, then slid the two blades inside, pushing them at an angle so they’d fit. That done, he closed the cabinet door and locked it, then went back to his desk and tossed the key into one of the drawers. He gave the room a final look around, then reached out and turned out the lamp.

With the darkness now giving her even more camouflage, Elektra ducked out the door and scampered up the stairs before her father could notice she was in there.

Elektra opened her eyes in the bedroom and frowned at the darkness permeating the beach house, ears straining. No, there was nothing wrong—no sound, no visitors. Just her and a traitorous mind that kept bringing back old memories that she would so much rather leave buried…

Elektra’s woolen funeral suit was black, heavy and uncomfortably itchy; the white blouse beneath it was starched to a fault, and every fold and crease dug into her sensitive skin and made her even more miserable than she already was. But she wouldn’t be bothered by insignificant things like fabric today—there was something she had to do, a very important task she had to complete. It had taken her a few days to understand the why and wherefore of it, to realize that her father had decided not to avenge her mother’s death, but she would have none of that. Maybe she couldn’t do it now, but someday… oh, yes. And even though such a day was somewhere in a faraway and unseen future, Elektra already knew what she would need when she got there.

Her father was off somewhere, talking with some servant or another, planning the closure of the house, the ride to her mother’s funeral, the wake where people would come to “pay their last respects.” He didn’t notice when she calmly walked out of the room, moving as though that was exactly what she was supposed to do. Last respects? This was something else young Elektra didn’t understand—why did grown-ups wait to visit until the people they loved were dead? Why not visit and “pay their respects” while that person was still alive to receive them? To her, it made no sense, but there was little in her life these last few days that had.

The furniture in her father’s study had been the last in the house to be draped, but his massive desk was still uncovered. Elektra hurried over to it and checked the drawers as quietly as she could, going through each one until she found the key she’d seen him put away the day before. Clutching it in her palm, she dragged one of the leather chairs over to the wall cabinets, then pulled the sheet aside and climbed on top of it. She had to stretch to get the key into the lock, and for a long three seconds she didn’t think she’d be able to make it turn. Finally, though, there was a click and the cabinet door eased open.

The sais were heavy and dangerously sharp, and she took them out of the cabinet one at a time. Moving as quickly as she dared, Elektra relocked the cabinet and tossed the key back into the drawer, then moved the chair back to its place and positioned the sheet so that it looked like it had never
been touched. Carrying both the sais was a struggle, but she would not give up—someday, she was going to need these.

It was bright outside, obnoxiously so. Today was her mother’s funeral—shouldn’t it be overcast? Pouring rain and thundering, crying from heaven? It always did that on television, but now that she was living the reality of it, Elektra realized it didn’t matter. No matter how bright the sunshine, how warm the breeze and sweet the birdsong, she was so sad that all she wanted to do was curl up on the cool, green grass and cry.

But there was no time for that—she had to finish her task.

Elektra found her way to the center of the maze and the well without thinking about it, and for a moment after she’d dropped the sais on the ground, she just stood there and glared at it. Wishing well? Where was the future she’d wished for, all the happiness and stars, and the live-happily-ever-after? She was just a kid, but already she knew that all that had died with her mother.

Shaking her head, Elektra squatted and began digging into the soft ground next to the well, being extra careful not to dirty her suit or the white cuffs peeking out from beneath her jacket. When the hole was deep enough, she dragged the sais over and pushed them into it, making sure that no part of their bright metal showed through the soil she meticulously pressed into place over them.

“Elektra! Elektra, where are you?”

Her father—it must be time to leave for the funeral. She gave the ground a final, hasty smoothing over, then stood and brushed the dirt off her hands. If she had to, she could hide her dirty fingernails in her jacket pocket. She gave the well one last glance, then hurried to meet her father, wondering why, of all things, she could hear a telephone’s muffled ringing in the maze—

Elektra sat up with a gasp and grabbed at the cell phone ringing on the nightstand. “What?” she demanded hoarsely.

“You just got a delivery,”
said McCabe.

She’d been dreaming, another nightmare; she was soaked with sweat and her feet were tangled in the sheets and she had to fight to get free. Cold, wet air blasted her in the face when she opened the door and looked down; between the outer storm door and the inside one was a manilla envelope—it was always amazing how McCabe could get something to her in the middle of the night, no matter where she was.

Back inside, she ripped open the envelope and dumped its contents on the table. For a long moment she was silent as she stared at what had been inside. Finally, because she knew McCabe was expecting some kind of comment, she said, “It’s a double?”

“That’s why the big bucks.”

She didn’t say anything back, just kept staring at the two photographs and the information sheets. They read like something out of a statistics class—cold and impersonal, height, weight, age, eye and hair color.

“What’s the matter?”
McCabe asked. She could hear the suspicion in his voice.

“Nothing.”

“Good,”
he replied, but she could tell he didn’t believe her.

Functioning on autopilot, Elektra scanned the sheets of paper. “A kid?” she asked at last. “What’d the kid do?”

“Talked back in class, had the wrong father, how would I know?”
McCabe’s voice was getting more and more impatient.
“It’s a job, E. When did you start asking questions?”

“I’ll call you when it’s done,” she said coldly, and hung up on him.

For a long time, Elektra simply sat there in the dark, head down and gaze fixated on the floor. Finally she made herself stand and go to the closet, where she pulled out the battered leather case. She carried it back to the living room and opened it, then almost reverently pulled out the fitted leather sheaths containing her sais. Working methodically, first she polished each blade with Simichrom, working it in with her fingers until the oil absorbed any dirt and turned dark. When that was wiped clean, she took a chamois and a tube of Japanese sword oil and meticulously oiled every ex posed area until the two blades gleamed like new chrome in the low light of her living room.

That done, she sat back and waited for morning.

She was up and dressed in a red leather jacket and jeans before the sunrise, with her sais tucked comfortably into her sleeves. The morning sky was painted rose and gold by the coming sun, making everything look deceptively warm even though the air was still holding on to the previous night’s chilly temperature.

Striding up the beach, almost marching, Elektra tried to keep her mind blank, tried to focus on the job at hand and block out all the doubts and guilt that wanted to inch their way into her brain. She didn’t have time for things like that in her life, and certainly not in her line of work—assassins,
professional
ones, didn’t feel doubts, guilt, or emotions. They got their job, they did what they were hired to do, they collected their money, and, if they were wise, then they disappeared. So far, she’d been very good at all of that.

Her pace picked up almost without her knowing it, but there was no outrunning the thoughts in her head. So be it—she would have to live with them, let them yammer away.

She could still do her job.

There was a small spillway behind the Miller cabin and Elektra used the sounds of the flowing water in it to disguise her approach. She ended up on a slight rise right by the kitchen window, which was more than adequate for her needs. She had a slanting view down and into the kitchen, and she could see both Mark and Abby as they moved around the house, passing in and out of her view as they got ready to meet the day. All she needed was a good shot—actually,
two
good shots—and then this job would be over and she could get on about the business of her life… whatever that was.