Old Wounds (Chance Assassin Book 4)

by Nicole Castle

  “That was...you can't do that, Frank. You'll get arrested.” Casey briefly fidgeted with the salt shaker, then put it back. “Were you trying to get arrested?”

  “That would be absurd,” Frank said. Trying to get arrested was yesterday's insanity.

  “Would it though? An epic tale of revenge? Prison break?” He huffed a laugh. “Killing him won't bring them back.”

  Becoming silent once again, Frank managed to nod. It wouldn't bring them back. But it might bring back Casey.

  “I don't want revenge. I want justice. I want Sylvia growing up believing that the system works.”

  “The system doesn't work, kiddo.” If it worked, Frank would already be behind bars. As would Sylvia's mother.

  “I know that. She doesn't. She thought Gideon was a superhero, doing what he does.”

  Frank wondered what she thought of him and V, but he didn't have to wonder long.

  “She thinks you're a count. Count Moreaux. I told her that. She thinks Vincent is a ballerina. That was Bella's doing.” He went back to playing with the salt shaker, no humor on his face. “Bell thought it might persuade her to wear a tutu but that's not really Sylvie's thing. She wants to wear a suit. Be a lawyer.”

  The waitress came over to give Casey a menu. Frank's complete dismissal of the daily special had dampened her enthusiasm about it, but Casey asked for a cup of coffee and took Frank's silverware to start picking at the food already on the table and spare her feelings.

  “Careful,” Frank said. “It's hot.”

  Setting the fork back down, Casey sighed heavily and put his head in his hands. Frank thought about what Joe had said, that they knew him well enough not to expect him to speak at all. Casey may not have expected it, but he needed it. That was clear from his repeated attempts at engaging conversation. And Frank could only sit there and wait for him to try again.

  It was agonizing to watch him like that, powerless while Casey suffered, but it was even more painful to admit, “I don't know what to do, Case.”

  Casey sat back and rubbed his face, looking at Frank with sympathy instead of disappointment. “I know.” Reaching into his coat pocket, Casey slid a worn paperback across the sticky table, then leaned against the window and brought his feet up to get comfortable.

  The Count of Monte Cristo.

  The drawing Casey had done of Maggie's boss with his exploding head was stuck between pages. Casey had asked how much blood there would be, so innocent, so removed from death that he hadn't known the answer. That he'd asked a stranger.

  Frank recognized the book as the same copy Casey had been reading when they met. Stamps in green ink, showing it was school property. “You stole this,” Frank said, flipping it over in his hands.

  Casey smiled just a little, a devious smile that usually wouldn't find itself on his face. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

  There were worse crimes. Frank shrugged and started to read.

  Part Two

  Chapter Six

  He was screaming, the tried and true sound of someone being killed echoing through our hallway. Normally the screams of the suffering were music to my ears, but now it felt like I was the one being tortured. I groaned, rolling over in bed as if that could somehow make the little beast quieter. “Just because they named him after you doesn’t make him your responsibility,” I said to Frank, who was once again getting up to tend to the screeching infant.

  “I’m awake anyway,” Frank said. He was rarely anything but awake. High alert at all times, in permanent assassin work mode which was great for our sex life but pretty rough on his mental health. But being on baby duty was more than just a matter of sleeplessness. Frank was doing everything he could to prove to himself, and everyone else, that he was still a functioning member of the human race.

  Frank tucked me back in before leaving the room. There was talking in the hallway, and I felt an exhausted body flop down beside me. “Wrong bed.”

  “Shit,” Casey said. “Sorry, Vincent.”

  “It’s okay, you can stay.”

  He snored a response. I could understand Casey being exhausted. After giving birth nearly killed her, Bella ordered him to get a vasectomy, or she’d do it herself. Him I sympathized with. The screaming child and his sleeping mother, not so much.

  I waited until there was silence again as if I could actually fall back asleep, then rolled out of bed and headed down the hall on my way to the kitchen. Sylvia was at the table eating the last of what would've been my sugary chocolate breakfast cereal. Our dogs, Charlie the three-legged mutt and Hugo the gigantic Mastiff, were sitting around the table. The teacup Pomeranian, Killer, was on Sylvia’s lap.

  “There’s a car outside,” she said, patting Kiki rather roughly on the head. The dog knew better than to snap, but I could tell she was thinking about it. So was I.

  “There are lots of cars outside,” I said, grabbing a spoon and taking what was basically candy from a baby. Then I went to be an adult and check out our vehicular visitor. Out of habit, I grabbed the shotgun from the umbrella stand, but it was only Joe. Holding Frank's coat over my head to keep the rain off my hair, I ran outside to Joe's car.

  Joe had become a nearly permanent fixture at home since the baby arrived. It turned out none of us actually knew what to do with an infant, and Maggie's loss would've been even harder to deal with if it hadn't been for him. Joe taught us how to hold him and taught everyone but me how to change a diaper since there was no way in hell that was happening. Most importantly, he talked Bella through her postpartum insanity like someone who'd been through it before. Since he had. He also reminded her that she was already a good mom, which was a white lie at best, and would continue to be a good mom once she was feeling better. I was just glad she and Casey had finally moved out, even though they kept coming back to spend the weekends like a family of bad boomerangs.

  “You could’ve called,” I said, accepting his offering of my favorite pains au chocolat from the patisserie near where he and Miranda the wonder surgeon lived in the city. It certainly made losing out on my cereal more palatable. “Or just come in.”

  “It’s early.”

  “There’s a baby inside.”

  “Two of them. It’s still early.”

  “I hope you didn’t mean me.” I actually did hope he meant me. Having two children in the house meant far less attention coming my way, even though it also meant stocking up on Nutella and having plenty of cartoons on TV.

  “The little girl,” he said. “Still not you.”

  I punched him, then remembered he was kind of a cripple and shrugged a sheepish apology. “She’s actually basically a person now. She likes to watch Law & Order with me.”

  “She’s a bit young for that.”

  “She used to watch it with Gideon,” I said, surprised by how sad that made me even now. Things had been tense between me and Maggie before they died, but even though she thought I was a psychopath I hadn't stopped thinking of her like a mom. And I couldn't get it out of my head that I'd offered to kill the guy for them and Gideon said he had it under control. So much for that. At least the next person I had reason to kill would actually be killed. Of course, reason was relative when we were asking a hundred grand a pop. “You got a job for us?”

  Joe sighed heavily. “I've got a problem for you. Simon called me last night...”

  “Simon?” I sneered. Simon had been a potential ally, at least as much of an ally as someone you wouldn't trust to pick up your dry cleaning could be. We'd even shared a job with him: the final job from Silva's unfortunate book of hits, which had turned out to be fatally unfortunate for the guy he assigned it to. But when Simon called Joe to look a gift horse in the mouth and complain about the job we'd so generously offered him, he'd let something slip that may as well have been a horse's head in our bed.

  Frank's last name.

  The man worked with some of the wealthiest men in England, and if he knew Frank's father had been one of them it could only spell trouble for us. A proble
m, like Joe said. We'd been waiting months to find out just how big of a problem it would be.

  “He said he has a job for us.”

  “Yeah, I'm sure it's just like the one we gave him.”

  “No doubt about it that it's a setup. But...”

  “But what? We don't need his stinking job.” We actually did, since work was nonexistent after finishing the book. Between Maggie and Gideon's murders, the trial, and then Bella and her baby drama, Joe hadn't even gone looking for people for us to assassinate. And job or not, Frank needed to kill someone. Every day that passed without bloodshed made him that much closer to snapping. If he didn't look so hot while losing his mind, I would've brought him a victim myself, gift wrapped with a bow.

  “I think Frank might want it,” Joe said. “That's how Simon presented it too. I played dumb, but he insisted.”

  “And you agree with him?” Unless the mark was Simon himself, I couldn't see why we would want to walk into something that was so obviously an ambush.

  “Well, in the event that Frank doesn't want it, you certainly will.”

  I wanted to kill a lot of people. So did Frank for that matter. But who would be worth walking into a trap just to get a piece of? My heart started to race as I figured it out.

  A member of the family.

  Bluebloods that put a hit out on Frank when he was just nineteen. Frank’s father had strategically married into wealth and bumped off his rich wife, then tried to leave the family fortune to his bastard from another mother. Frank had wanted nothing to do with the money, and Frank’s former boss, the recently deceased leader of an empire of assassins, didn’t want that kind of attention. Frank was banished to America, where he could kill people in peace. If it hadn’t been for these people, and Frank’s father, Frank may still be running around Europe killing people with Bella, instead of babysitting her children while she caught a few more winks. It's funny how things turn out.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Lord Rupert Alcott. The patriarch on that side.”

  “Who ordered it?”

  “The guy's wife. Lady Helena Alcott.”

  I rolled my eyes. “How very Upstairs Downstairs.”

  “Regardless, this is where the pissed-off-Frenchman part comes in. If we decide to take this job, Frank is out. He isn't to come anywhere near it. I don't even want him in the country.” Pissed-off-Frenchman was an understatement. Even when he'd kinda sat out the yacht job that brought on our brief-but-painfully-long retirement, Frank was still closely involved with the marks. Stalking didn’t even begin to cover it. He learned them. And so did I, even though I would’ve been just as happy to kill them quickly and return to my regularly scheduled program on television. “I need you to back me up on this one, Vincent. He's the target, and I'm not about to lose both of you.”

  If I'd actually needed convincing, that would've been the way to do it. After we'd had a big looking-down-the-crosshairs scare courtesy of psycho fanboy Miko the German recruit, Joe had promised Frank that he would take care of me, by taking me out, if anything ever happened to him. Pulling the euthanasia card probably would've convinced Frank even without my backup, but I nodded my agreement anyway. “You got it.”

  “Thank you. I'd honestly rather tell Simon to go fuck himself but if he's determined to have Frank killed this won't be the last attempt. At least this way we have some control over the situation until we can figure out who's coming after us.”

  I rolled my eyes. Questions about the comings and goings of Simon Reeves only meant one thing: Ze German. As if he hadn't already caused enough trouble last year by stealing our hit and pointing his rifle at Frank, he'd gone and gotten himself famous by attacking the dead actress's parents. Ophelia Marlowe's mother went on the news to get “support for her daughter's savior” after he told her it was murder instead of suicide, and she even put up a website for information. Then whoever killed the actress went after her parents as well, and now Miko was hot on the trail thanks to Joe and his ever-present politics. Even Frank had gotten in on the action, calling Miko with advice on who the possible culprits could be based on the foreign release dates for Ophelia Marlowe's newest biography. But so far we'd gotten nothing useful out of him, and yet Joe kept trying to help him because Joe was the best handler ever.

  Sometimes I wished he wasn't.

  “We may as well get this over with,” I said as I opened the car door. Joe followed me inside, moving slowly since the rain made his bones hurt, but nowhere near as slow as he used to be.

  At least some of Joe's pain had been psychosomatic, brought on by survivor's guilt after his beloved handler and Miranda's beloved grandfather had been killed by rogue cops that had their own method of policing. Joe had only been maimed within an inch of his life, most of his bones broken and left as a cripple. When we massacred those responsible Joe had practically danced a jig. Then Miranda introduced him to acupuncture, which was a far more conducive method of pain management than being a miserable grump. I'm sure it helped that he was getting laid on a regular basis as well, not that Miranda could ever compete with the happiness I provided to my own soon-to-be-even-more-miserable-than-usual grump.

  Frank had ditched the baby and was now in the library with a cup of coffee and an unlit cigarette in his mouth as if he knew Joe had bad news. The dogs sat loyally at his feet.

  I squeezed into the chair beside him, handing him the last pastry with an encouraging smile. “Joe brought me breakfast.”

  “What else did Joe bring you?” he asked, staring pointedly at our regretfully burdened handler and slipping his arm around me. I stared at Frank, not wanting to miss his reaction to the news. It took a lot to elicit an emotional response from Frank. Even if he was feeling something, he rarely showed it. When Joe said the name Rupert Alcott, Frank merely blinked. “Well that answers that question.”

  “What question?” I asked.

  “Simon knows about the hit,” Frank said. “I'm a target in this, so naturally I won't be involved.” I glanced questioningly towards Joe. Frank was taking this surprisingly well. “You told Vincent about it first so he would back you up, assuming I would even want the job.”

  “Uh...”

  “Why would I want it? I know him. That's personal.” Frank knew a lot of stuff. More than he reasonably could. Simon wasn't the only one setting us up.

  I smacked my head over my stupidity, realizing that of course Frank would've seen Joe's car before I got out of bed, and figured out that he had bad news if he was here this early without calling first. I reached in Frank's coat pockets for the baby monitor he'd placed, since naturally I'd wear his coat to go outside. “Sneaky fucker.”

  With a smug smile, Frank held me tighter.

  “Whether you want it or not, you're still out,” Joe said firmly.

  “I know.” Frank tore the pastry in half, eating one side and giving me the other.

  “So how would you like to approach this?”

  “Disguises at all times. Bella would be helpful, she knows more of the men's faces than either of you.”

  “That's what I was thinking too. Should I tell Simon we'll take the job?”

  “Mais oui,” Frank said with a glint in his eyes. “With pleasure.”

  Chapter Seven

  Blowing cigarette smoke after Joe's car, Frank stood on the porch and pondered the situation. From the moment Simon had inadvertently said Frank's surname to Joe, they had to consider that Simon knew about the hit. Perhaps it wasn't as much of a slip up as they'd thought at the time; Simon clearly had no problem showing his hand now. But he was wrong about Frank wanting the job.

  Frank didn't want it. At least, not for that reason. What he wanted was information, to find out exactly how much Simon knew and how long he'd known it.

  According to Miko, who judging by his accent was not actually German, Simon had been at Silva's when Bella got hurt. He would've seen Frank's face, but it would be a considerable stretch to liken his resemblance to a poor quality photograph in
a newspaper from over ten years ago. That left them with the question that had been gnawing at Frank for months: where else had Simon seen him?

  Simon knew all the noteworthy families in England, but if Simon had been a threat, Silva would've warned him. Had they really been on neutral territory until the final job from Silva's book that they gave him went bad? Simon could've known who he was all along, even if he didn't know about the hit. He certainly knew about it now.

  Frank stared at the trees surrounding their home, remembering the crumbling country house where his father had lived. Frank would lie awake all night watching the trees out the window, pretending he was Jane Eyre, pretending he was afraid of the big house when really he felt nothing.

  He saw Lord and Lady Alcott only once. They came to dinner. Frank did not. He watched them from upstairs, behind the curtains with his father's dog. A Mastiff, like Hugo. Frank could still see them, effortlessly aristocratic while his father made no attempt whatsoever. Frank hadn't understood it then, why the man would be so gauche with company but perfectly mannered around his son. But his father had hated them so much that he would go to any length to spite them. To humiliate them. Even if it meant humiliating his son in the process.

  With all the hits he'd performed throughout his career, Frank honestly could not fault them for the hit they'd put on him. He understood it at its most basic level: there was a problem, here was a solution. The notoriety bothered him more than their resentment ever could. But now that he knew what would become of Vincent if he were to be killed, Frank's life had taken on a greater importance. Now the attack was truly personal, and Frank would be unable to control himself.

  The moment Alcott was killed, Frank's face would be back in the papers as the number one suspect. It had to be done subtly, look accidental, and Frank would rip him to pieces. But Vincent wouldn't. Vincent had no qualms about killing someone he knew. He'd probably fantasized about killing Rupert Alcott a hundred times already. And Frank wanted to watch.