Old Wounds (Chance Assassin Book 4)

by Nicole Castle

  Frank checked into the sleaziest hotel this side of the Atlantic by himself and I followed him to his room like I was any of the other hookers passing unnoticed by the front desk. “You have outdone yourself,” I said when I saw the room. It could barely be called a room. More like a closet inside a closet. There was no TV. How was that even possible?

  “Joe picked it.”

  “The last place he picked for us was way nicer.” I sat on the bed, which took up most of the room. It didn't squeak; it screamed to be put out of its misery.

  “We didn't come here for nice,” Frank said.

  We didn't come here to have sex either, but hearing him say those words was all the foreplay I needed. “When's he meeting us? Or Miko, really.”

  “Just before dawn.”

  “Plenty of time.” I bounced on the bed again. He shook his finger at me. “You, sir, are a killjoy.”

  “You knew that when you married me,” he said chipperly. “He's an associate. You remember how efficient Joe was when he was an associate. He'll likely be early.” Frank took hold of my arm and pulled me off the bed, placing me in the corner which just got me even hotter, and then lying down on the bed himself. He gave me a shit-eating grin as he got comfortable and I rolled my eyes, switching off the lights.

  The knock at the door came early, just as Frank had said. Frank called out in German and the doorknob jiggled but it was locked. I counted one breath, two, and Yuri used a credit card or driver's license to force the lock. I waited behind the door, ready to spring.

  Yuri said something in German and reached for the lights. I smacked him in the face with my gun, but it seemed to just annoy him and then Frank had him around the neck, trying to strangle him. Yuri kicked his foot against the wall, sending them both falling back onto the bed. I jumped on too, trying to hold his arms so he'd stop pounding Frank in the head with his fists, but I kept having to pull away when he got too close since if Yuri hit me Frank was liable to decorate the ceiling with him. The room was all bed and nowhere to maneuver and we were throwing each other around like it was a slumber party and we were pillow fighting over which boy was cuter.

  No one called out. We were all professionals. No matter who won the battle, the victor didn't want people to come investigate screams.

  I finally grabbed a pillow and shoved it between them so Frank could choke him in peace.

  “Thank you, mon chaton,” Frank said, still being jerked back and forth like a fish on a hook as Yuri gave it his last bit of strength.

  Yuri looked to be in his late fifties, a precise military haircut of mostly gray. He wasn't especially tall, barely taller than me, but he was stocky and heavy enough that I helped Frank lug him out to our car once Joe gave us the all clear. Yuri hadn't brought anyone with him. He trusted Miko.

  We brought him to an abandoned factory building. Yuri was already awake when we parked, trying to kick a hole in our trunk. “Oh, knock it off!” I said, then asked Frank to translate.

  “I speak English!” Yuri yelled from the trunk and kicked it again.

  “Well you don't listen English very well, do you?” I stood back and popped the trunk so Frank could have his hands free, since despite not being Joe's best assassin, he was the strongest. Frank just let Yuri wriggle himself out of the trunk, which he did with an admirable efficiency even with bound hands and feet. He squirmed to his feet so he was standing, then hopped out and did a kind of almost graceful roll when he tripped on his immobile legs. He made his way back to a standing position, his knees a little bent to keep his balance. Then Frank shot him in the foot and knocked him right back down again.

  “That was mean, Frank,” I said joyfully, leaning up to kiss him on the cheek.

  Frank shrugged and dragged Yuri inside. “I told you we didn't come here for nice.”

  Yuri hadn't screamed when Frank shot him, and by the time we got him situated in his chair, he was smiling. “Were you tailing him?” he asked. “Or did he fuck me?”

  Frank took great pleasure in saying, “He fucked you.”

  Nodding, Yuri grunted a “Hmm.” Then he smiled again. “So what do you want to know?” His accent didn't sound German. He sounded more like Karl the Russian. That made me hate him even more than him offering information before I'd had the chance to torture it out of him.

  “Simon sent you some photographs,” I said. “Who'd you give them to?”

  With a dismissive glance at me, he turned back to Frank. “You have children doing your job as well as Miko?”

  I shot him in his other foot. I was more than ready for my turn being mean.

  Frank held his arm out to keep me from getting closer. “Who did Simon send after us?”

  “Do you know why we work alone, Frank?”

  Raising his eyebrows impatiently, Frank sighed a response. I started pawing through my bag of goodies we'd brought from home: hedge clippers, pliers, a nice claw hammer and some nails to accompany it, Snickers bar. I'd start with that one.

  “Because our friends, they do not die easy. That is not their luxury.” Yuri tapped his fingers on the arms of the chair and did that grunting sound again. “István was my friend. Do you know how he died?”

  “Not easy?” Frank guessed.

  “A fatal case of sucking at his job,” I said between bites.

  “He was shot. Gut shot, the most painful. And slow.”

  I'd show him the most painful if he didn't get on with it.

  Yuri kept tapping his fingers. I was about to nail his hands to the chair. “I volunteered to help Simon. To help take away your luxury.” He mimed a sad face. “But you believed it, didn't you? You believed they could die easy. Bang bang and never wake up.”

  I shuddered involuntarily, my whole body burning hot like I was embarrassed. He wasn't lying. I knew he wasn't lying. I could feel it in my stomach, this vile sickness that we'd caused it after all. That Maggie and Gideon were dead because of us. That anyone else who died was because of us, and they wouldn't go easy. I'd thought it would be better for them to be assassinated; it was familiar. It felt safer. No questions. But it wasn't better. I wished Roger Foster had killed them. I wished they weren't dead.

  Picking up the claw hammer, I stopped to stare at Frank. He was perfectly still, not blinking, his eyes focused on Yuri. Tap tap tap, and then that smile again.

  Now Yuri screamed.

  “Frank!” I yelled, but he was gone, ripping those grinning lips right off Yuri's face, tearing at the ropes and the chair just to get at him, beating him over and over and all I could do was stand there.

  Stand there and take out my cellphone to record Frank disassembling our only lead an inch of flesh at a time. Yuri did struggle, as much as he could. He kept screaming as Frank smashed his face into the floor and broke his jaw, punching out his teeth until all Yuri could do was moan. Frank left Yuri's head alone then, trying to do I don't even know what to Yuri's spine. I kept recording, bits of gore dispersed haphazardly across the room like seeds in a flower garden. Yuri was dead for a long time before Frank stopped.

  Approaching slowly, I ended the recording. How could I tell my husband, my mentor, that he fucked up? That he'd ruined this because he was legitimately insane. Too insane to keep killing people for a living.

  It took a little while for him to come back. I didn't have to tell him anything. He knew it. His face, usually so expressionless, was filled with shame. And fear. “I'm sorry,” he said quietly.

  The apology was the worst. That hurt more than anything, more than their deaths, more than knowing the truth. It broke my heart. “He wouldn't have told us anyway.”

  “He could have.”

  “We have Miko's information. We know who they are, so we'll just stick with the original plan and kill anyone who looks remotely like an assassin.

  Frank brushed a piece of Yuri's scalp off his pants and said nothing.

  “You never know. We could get another shot. What's that saying, if one door closes over and over on someone until they're a pile
of goo, another door will open?”

  He finally looked at me. His eyes weren't cold like I'd thought they would be, they were just broken.

  “We'll tell Joe that Yuri didn't talk. It's technically true. If he was gonna say something, he would've screamed it.” Unless he had screamed it. I wasn't an expert on languages, but Frank was. “Wanna watch a movie?”

  He scowled but it was more in confusion than his usual hostility. I pulled up what was left of the chair and sat beside him, balancing on it while he was still on the floor in the puddle of Yuri. “I thought you might want to see it, instead of only hearing me describe it to you.”

  Frank's crestfallen face brightened a little and I held the phone out for him since his hands were just plain gross. But the initial intrigue gave way to renewed depression as he watched his mental illness presented in high definition on that tiny screen. By Frank's reaction, I imagined that Yuri did not happen to scream any names that sounded a lot like aaaahhh.

  “The camera does add ten pounds,” I said just in case. He was French.

  “I guess you're Joe's best assassin after all,” he said dejectedly. My ego prevented me from disagreeing with him. Frank put his head in his hands, which was really not a great idea considering the state of his hands, but the rest of him was pretty bloody too. He took a moment to collect himself, then shook his head. “Do you have any kitten videos?”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Vincent lit the fire to destroy the evidence. Vincent drove them home. He told Joe that Yuri refused to talk. That they had failed in their interrogation. Frank didn't speak. He couldn't look at anyone. And yet, Vincent still loved him. Unconditionally. Opened the car door for him and stood beside him with Frank to his left. The weaker side, where V's peripheral vision was gone.

  Clearing his throat, Joe rubbed the back of his neck and said, “It is what it is,” as if Yuri's total annihilation were merely an inconvenience. “I'll tell you what, though. Simon's phone has been ringing steadily. Some numbers from Paris. Some from London. None match the contacts in Simon's phone.” Joe checked his watch and continued, “London stopped calling about forty-five minutes ago. Our friend Nasir hacked Simon to pieces with a machete. I imagine he's been found by now. Anyone call Yuri?”

  Yuri's phone had been in Frank's pocket when they got to the warehouse, but it had somehow ended up submerged in Yuri's abdominal cavity during the slaughter. They'd had to fish it out from under his pancreas. Vincent suggested they try putting it in a bowl of rice, but that could've just been him being hopeful. Or hungry.

  “Phone got wet,” Vincent said, handing it to Joe. If the callers tried getting a hold of Yuri instead of Simon it would be another dead end, and Simon's phone wouldn't keep ringing once word got out.

  Joe looked the phone over, then sighed and headed to the kitchen to try and resuscitate it.

  “There's at least two guys,” Vincent said cheerfully. “One for me and one for...” Frank sighed. Vincent didn't finish that thought. “At least the secret died with him,” he said quietly. “Casey never has to know.”

  Only, the secret didn't die with Yuri. Frank knew it, Vincent did. Roger Foster knew he was innocent, and he'd spend the rest of his life in jail. Others may know as well. Any of Simon's men. Nasir. Miko. And Frank had had just about enough of the secrets of dead men. “Tell Joe the truth. I'm going to talk to Casey.”

  “Are you really in the best place mentally to make that kind of decision?”

  “Nope.” Frank headed to the library, everyone gathered together in his home, the people he cared about. Every one of them in danger. They all stared at him expectantly, Frank somehow appointed their leader when he was the last person who should be in charge of anything.

  Frank must've really looked like he needed a cigarette. Casey stood from the sofa without a word said between them and followed him outside. “I take it your...uh...thing didn't go well,” Casey said, lighting a cigarette for Frank before feeding his own addiction. They were the only two smokers left in the house. Bella had quit and Sophie hadn't yet started.

  He avoided answering until they were some distance from the house, nearly to the impromptu graveyard. “Silva lied to me. About how we met, about my father's death, and why I had to leave. It was a job. Simon killed him.”

  Casey abruptly stopped walking, his eyebrows knit together in that way that made him look so much like Maggie. “Maybe Silva figured that you'd find out. That you'd want to...do him in for not telling you about it. So you could proactively do him in. Or he felt guilty about lying to you.” Leave it to Casey to come up with a scenario that made Silva nearly honorable again.

  “I don't care what he felt. I don't care if this was how he cleared his conscience. I had a right to know the truth.” Frank glanced down at the glowing tip of his third or fourth cigarette. Casey had just kept lighting them. “And I don't want to lie to you.”

  Sitting heavily on the trunk of a felled tree, Casey just nodded in understanding. “It was Yuri?”

  Frank remained standing. “Yes.”

  “Because of the sketchbook? They know what everyone looks like? Who we are?” Casey asked, his voice barely over a whisper.

  “Yes.”

  “You always told me not to.” He closed his eyes for a moment, but he didn't cry.

  “I asked you to draw Vincent for me, when he was in the hospital,” Frank said. It had been all he could do not to shut down, when losing Vincent seemed inevitable. Casey gave a wan smile, which somehow looked closer to the real thing even though it was far from it. “I'm sorry, Case.”

  Casey smiled a little wider, and nearly laughed. “You're handling it a lot better this time.”

  With an incredulous scoff, Frank shook his head. “You didn't see what I did to Yuri.”

  That sort of statement used to make Casey queasy. Now he just looked casually at Frank's hands. “You're not missing any thumbs.”

  Frank was fairly certain Yuri had been missing both. “We didn't get any information from him. I—” He trailed off, unable to admit how he'd failed. Not to Casey.

  Raising his eyebrows, Casey said, “Sounds like you got plenty of information, Frank. Just not the information you wanted.” He held out his last cigarette and Frank sat beside him on the tree to smoke. “I've been drawing with Nasir all day. We have everyone who worked for Simon now. All of them. Even people who might've worked for Simon.” Casey grinned and patted him on the shoulder. “All you gotta do is kill them on sight.”

  “You couldn't have told me that ten minutes ago?”

  Casey shrugged. “You looked like you needed to talk. I let you talk.”

  “You're handling it a lot better this time too.”

  “Must be a coincidence,” Casey remarked smugly, taking the cigarette. Frank preferred not to believe in coincidences. “I guess you got your revenge after all, huh?”

  “And Sylvia got to see justice served.”

  “How's that for the system working?” He offered Frank the last puff but Frank just shook his head. “You know that library book that I accidentally stole?”

  Frank laughed. “You returned it?”

  “No. It's ours, I couldn't bear to part with it. I paid the fine.”

  “Justice served.”

  “Justice served,” Casey agreed, and he put out what was left of the cigarette.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Even though Miko was only with us for a few days before going home to Boston to bleed on his boyfriend instead of our sofa, Joe took it upon himself to dub our side as the “Pink Team” in the battle to end all battles that was to be our Assassin War.

  “Whatever,” I grumbled at our round table of killers. And Casey. “Just because there are homosexuals present doesn't mean we're the pink team.”

  “I like pink,” Bella said. Miranda nodded in agreement and Casey confirmed that he too liked pink, and was technically bisexual, as was Miko. Frank and Nasir, who were both in the habit of not speaking and therefore seemed to be gett
ing along fine, simply glanced at each other and said nothing.

  “There you go, then.” Joe grinned from the head of the table, doing this purely to annoy me.

  “Well what's the other team called?” I asked. Casey's drawings were spread over the table, the faces of our enemies staring up at us.

  Joe looked questioningly to Nasir. “Did Simon have a favorite color?”

  Nasir paused in his attempt at fixing Yuri's blood-logged cellphone. “Not that I am aware.” He'd replaced Miko as our resident couch surfer, and would remain indefinitely. At least he was just as unamused by Joe's mocking as I was. Nasir was unamused by everything.

  “Yellow team?” Miranda tried. “For cowards?”

  “I like yellow,” Casey said.

  The phone in Nasir's hand chimed as it came back to life, and we all turned to him at the sound of technology working in our favor. Simon's phone had officially stopped ringing, and until Nasir got his skeletal hands on Yuri's, we'd given up on putting a voice to any of their faces. Nasir barely acknowledged the success or our eyes on him, treating the phone like a fascinating toy. It took him all of two seconds to guess Yuri's password: YURI, which meant that the fingers I'd brought home with us just in case we needed them for touch ID could officially be taken out of the freezer and fed to the dogs. “Only one number called both of them. Shall I?” He used his own phone to dial the number.

  “Everyone quiet,” Joe told us as if it needed to be said. He looked at me specifically. I scoffed silently in his direction.

  Nasir hung up, then waited a few minutes and dialed again. And again. And again. He had no loss of patience, just kept repeating the action mechanically. After what must've been ten minutes of retrying the number, he politely said, “Yes, I'm trying to reach someone. What is your location there? Thank you.” He disconnected the call. “Bond Street tube station.”