by Blake Pierce
Satisfied he hadn’t been noticed, the man stepped from the shadows, moving across the floor, stepping ever so lightly as he approached Robert from behind. Masterpieces took time. He would take his time as he always did.
And so he reached into his black bag, pulling out a thin knife. A gift the knife had been. From his first ever friend. A kingly gift, made of whale bone and pearlescent inlay. The blade itself was only six inches, yet sharp and ridged. One side for smooth strokes, the other for texture. Both involved in the creative process.
He held the knife out and stepped quietly forward, approaching Robert Henry from behind in the darkness of the mansion’s gloomy study.
***
Robert heard another noise. This one from directly behind him. He went stiff, his eyes flicking away from the smoldering coals in the fire toward the red leather chair nearest the window. A pile of books, some of his favorite Greek epics, had been toppled like dominoes and lay discarded across the ground.
Robert felt a prickle along his shoulder blades, his one hand gripping his phone against his thigh. He felt a shiver near his neck, this time coming from a draft ushered through the window. His eyes flitted up, still facing the fireplace, breathing shallowly as he stared toward the glass.
He’d locked that window. He knew he had.
“Please,” said a voice from behind him. “Put the phone down.”
Robert stiffened, his whole body going cold. Trust your instincts. He should have known—he should have listened. He stood for a moment in the dark, still facing the fireplace, not bearing to look at the source of the voice.
“Phone down, please,” said the voice again. It wasn’t snide, nor did it mock. A simple request. Not the voice of a man in search of fear. Not the voice of a cur hoping to enjoy terror. What then?
Slowly, phone still clutched in his hand, fingers trembling against the cool surface, he turned to face the source of the voice.
A small man stood across from him. Or was it a man? The voice itself was soft, lilting. Feminine? The form of the person in front of him seemed that of a child. Bone-thin, shorter, even, than Robert. Next to a man like John Renee, this fellow wouldn’t have seemed any more than a child.
The figure wore a metallic mask, hiding his features, with the thinnest of holes poked in the mouth and across the lips, forming a crooked smile. Eyes glittered behind the mask, staring out the holes in the face.
“Robert,” said the intruder. “Please lower your phone.”
Then Robert spotted the knife. It caught in the light from the moon streaming through the open window. Robert licked the edges of his lips, feeling the roughness beneath his tongue. He kept the phone gripped, raising it a bit as if offering it to the intruder.
The masked fellow glanced down, staring at the phone. Robert’s other hand, though, which had been using the poker to probe at the fireplace, gripped the iron tool behind his back, pressed against his bathrobe.
“Here,” Robert said, softly. “Take it.”
He didn’t have time to call. Not now. Not yet. He needed the intruder distracted, though.
The masked fellow tipped his head sideways, as if confused by a spectacle. He reached out with his free hand, gloved, groping toward Robert’s offered phone. The old DGSI agent waited a moment, waiting for contact, waiting for those twig-like fingers to wrap around his phone.
Then, as the intruder pulled the device away, his knife dipping just a bit, Robert swung with all his might. The poker whipped around, streaking toward where the masked man stood. Robert shouted with the exertion.
But he missed.
The masked man was fast—far faster than Robert had anticipated. One moment he’d been standing still, it seemed, holding Robert’s phone, cradling it in one hand. The next, he darted forward. Rather than lunging back to avoid the blow, he lurched closer. The poker hit the man’s thin shoulder, but the momentum near the base was nearly nothing and it ricocheted harmlessly.
Robert cried out in pain, his fingers aching all of a sudden. The frail form of the intruder tutted, drawn in close. Two eyes, one of them dim and dull, flashed behind the metal mask. “Bad boy,” said the intruder, giggling now. And then he jammed his knife into Robert’s arm.
The poker dropped, clattering to the floor.
Robert cursed and tried to shove the killer off him. But despite the frailty of the intruder, Robert felt his own weakness come upon him all of a sudden, like a freezing glaze of ice, stopping all motion and chilling his bones.
Robert gasped now, bleeding from his stabbed arm, staring up at the metallic mask. It took him a moment to realize he was now on his knees, trying to catch his bearings, his legs having given out from the adrenaline of it all.
“You’re weak, old friend,” said the intruder, softly. “Pliable. A perfect canvas.”
“Fuck off,” Robert snapped, staring up and gasping. He began to cough, the sudden flood of rapid air in his lungs stimulating them to reject the flood of pressure.
As he coughed, gasping, he dropped to his hands, his knees still rough against the floorboards.
He looked up and glimpsed the metallic face twist, staring down at him.
“Who are you?” Robert said, though he had a guess.
“A friend,” the man said, cheerfully. The knife was still clutched in one gloved hand, Robert’s phone in the other.
Robert stared at the glowing device, bleeding from his arm, feeling droplets speckle the floorboards. He winced, glaring up. For a moment, he faked another cough, if only to have an excuse to bunch up, preparing to lunge in one last desperate attempt for that phone.
But the masked man seemed to sense Robert’s intent and skipped back, again far too quickly, like a dancer.
Robert’s fingers swiped empty air and he landed face first, chin jamming against the rough floor. He felt one of his old books pressed beneath his ribs. He could feel blood swelling down his arm now.
The killer was murmuring to himself, scrolling through Robert’s phone, which was left unlocked during the night in case of a medical emergency. Now, though, it allowed the killer to scroll through his texts. The bastard paused at once, going stiff.
“Adele,” he said, uttering the word breathlessly like a lover at the sight of his bride. He looked up now, his eyes—the one dull, the one vibrant—staring out from the metallic mask. “She is coming tomorrow?”
“I don’t know who Adele is,” Robert spat. “Wrong number.”
The intruder laughed, a hearty, authentic sound. He shook his head and chuckled, holding the phone a moment and then pressing it into his pocket. “It will be nice to talk to Adele,” said the killer. “In a way she’ll receive it. It isn’t fun to go without seeing one’s friends for so long.”
Robert snarled now, trying to rise, but finding his injured arm insufficient to bear his weight. “You leave her alone! Hear me? Leave her out of this, you sick twist!”
The intruder paused, contemplating these words. Then his expression behind the mask seemed to darken, as if a light dimmed in his eyes. “I don’t think I will, thank you,” he said, quietly. “Adele and I have unfinished business. And I’m afraid you’re standing in the way. Don’t worry, Mr. Henry, we only have tonight together. I wish it were a week, maybe two. But I’ll have to work with the time we have.”
And then the intruder stepped forward, fast—far too fast, his knife flashing down, a foot planting firmly in Robert’s weakened chest and shoving him back against the floorboards in his own home.
All that remained was a glimmer of regret, sheer fear, and a white-hot anger with nowhere left to go.
Then… all of these faded too, replaced by a sudden cold.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Adele slumped more than strolled out of the sliding glass doors of the airport, John Renee marching at her side. She glanced at her phone. Two a.m. Night had fallen complete and beckoned starlight in coaxing breaths from the ebony horizon.
Adele paused on the sidewalk outside the airport, listenin
g to the quiet buzz of airplanes in the background. The sparse terminal itself had emptied rather quickly, leaving Adele and John both standing by the curb, witnessed only by a distant traffic warden leaning against an old security vehicle and chatting with a guard through the window.
John sighed, glancing at his phone and muttering, “Ride is going to be late,” he murmured. Then, after a moment, he added, “Sorry.”
Adele glanced up at Renee where he stood illuminated by the safety lights above the sign for the terminal. His scars traced the underside of his chin and his eyes fixed on the asphalt ahead of them, flicking expectantly toward the roundabout where the passenger vehicles would come to pick up their fares.
“It’s all right,” she murmured quietly, closing her eyes for a moment and resisting the urge to rest against John. She was so tired. The airplane ride had proceeded in the same quiet that had existed between them for the last few days.
A quiet she’d grown to hate, but one she didn’t quite know how to shatter.
She looked up again, and the tall Frenchman was staring at her. She blinked, looked away, glanced back, and now John was looking off at the road again, as if embarrassed she’d caught him watching.
“What is it?” she asked, offering the question like a gift, but also wincing as if fearful he might slap it away.
John, though, just sighed and regarded her for a moment with a soft, sad glimmer to his gaze. “I was just thinking,” he said, standing in the quiet.
“Thinking about what?”
“Nothing,” he murmured. “Nothing important.”
Adele nodded, feeling a flutter of disappointment. Again, in the distance she heard the churn of an airplane engine, listening as it carried the aircraft away and over the airport.
Adele sighed softly to herself, her mind wandering away in the cool darkness of the isolated terminal. “John,” she ventured softly, her eyes flitting up to him once again,
“What?” John said, his tone similarly hesitant, it seemed. She tried to remember if he’d had more than one drink on the plane, but couldn’t recollect.
She met his gaze, her own heart still. He looked back, his expression soft for the first time, it seemed, in weeks.
“John,” she murmured.
“Adele?”
She swallowed, then said, “You… you can be a right bastard sometimes, you know that?”
John blinked, then frowned. He turned now, facing her, feet set at shoulder width. His eyes flashed for a moment and he sniffed. “What the hell do you mean?” he demanded.
Adele shrugged now, looking away and staring out across the abandoned terminal. She looked to her phone. It was 2:05 now. Too late to have this conversation. Too late for much. Then again, she’d never been able to muster up the courage to confront him during the day, while on the job. If not now, then when?
“You are,” she insisted. “But… not in a bad way. Not really. I sometimes think I have you figured out, but then you go and do something that makes me question it.”
“Ah, the trait of every bastard then.”
“I’m not joking. You’re impossible. But useful. You act like I don’t exist anymore. And yet you still have my back when I need you. You’re a strange one, John Renee.” Adele wasn’t sure where this sudden spurt of honesty was coming from, but she also didn’t want to lose the current of it, so she pressed into the words, her brow furrowing as she did.
“I… I think I’m sorry,” she said. “For how I treated you after… well…”
“After I let your mother’s killer get away?”
“Yes.” Adele bit her lip. “But you saved a life. That’s all we can do sometimes. You saved a life. I’m sorry for treating you like… well…”
“Like a bastard.”
“I guess so.”
John stood with his eyes fixed on her, solemn and sincere. “I… I thought you were tired of me,” he murmured, quietly. Now he turned, facing the road again, as if plotting an escape route. “It doesn’t matter.” He went still, quiet.
“No,” she insisted, propelled by some summoned courage from a hidden place. She didn’t know why she was pressing, why she wouldn’t let it go. But in that same moment, she realized she didn’t want to. She knew John—and when he acted like himself, his true self, there was no one she trusted more. When he acted like a shadow of himself, he was the most obnoxious, unprofessional, ridiculous man she’d ever known. It was infuriating…
And yet part of her enjoyed the two-sided coin that was Renee’s personality. Part of her also loathed it. For a brief moment, she thought of Agent Leoni. Of Christopher. His kindness, his self-sacrifice, his willingness to care about her regardless of what she seemed to do.
She felt a flutter of guilt and frustration in her stomach, and she glanced off now, staring at the road heading in the opposite direction from John’s own gaze. Both of them continued to stare in different directions for a moment. And John muttered, “Taxi should be here soon.”
“Great.”
“Yeah. Great.”
Adele waited, hesitant. She hadn’t known what she wanted John to say, but silence wasn’t it. She’d broken open the dam, cracked the seal, voided the warranty, as it were. Now, it was John’s turn. But what had she expected? It wasn’t like Renee was a wind-up toy she could force into her bidding at a moment’s notice. Hell, half the time, John didn’t seem to have rhyme or reason behind anything he did. And yet he was an effective agent.
An effective companion… after a style.
The silence continued a bit longer, and Adele found herself getting angry. She didn’t even understand why, and yet as John refused to speak, as she stared off and away from him, her imagination churning, her own mind began to grow restless. Her lips drew in a thin line and she muttered. “Damn it, Renee. Why can’t you ever just say what’s—”
“I hate what you do,” he said, suddenly, interrupting her.
Adele blinked and turned back now. Both of them were watching each other like two cats in the dark, searching out the boundaries of new territory.
“How nice of you to say,” Adele murmured.
“You’re the one who called me a bastard.”
“I did that for emphasis.”
“So am I. I do hate what you do. I hate…” He hesitated, scratching at his jaw, but this time not quite looking away. “I hate how you make me feel.”
Adele blinked, staring now. She found her breath came a little more quickly.
John gritted his teeth, his jaw stretched, the scars along his chin standing out rigid and pale in the poorly illuminated outside terminal. He sighed, then passed a hand through his hair. “Christ, Adele,” he said. “You’re a strange one—I’ll give you that. I wish I didn’t… you know… care.” He shook his head as if puzzled. “Really, I do,” he added, glancing back at her as if in emphasis. “But you’re just… you’re an odd bird, aren’t you? You’re… You’re…” He sighed and shrugged.
“An odd bird,” Adele said, softly, trying not to smile. “What every girl wants to hear.”
“I might not be able to tell you what I’m thinking… but I know how you make me feel,” he said, nodding adamantly. “That Leoni fellow, he’s an asshole. I hated him. Hated him the moment I saw him. Couldn’t quite place why, to be honest with you. Then I saw him hold your hand, and I swear, Adele…” John inhaled deeply. “I swear I wanted to put a bullet in him then and there.”
“John!”
“I didn’t—just to be clear. Need I remind you? I didn’t. But also, the thought of him driving us to the airport. Of taking us in that stupid limousine.” John shuddered, shaking his head. “I could’ve punched him.”
Adele hesitated, feeling a panic rising in her. Was this what she wanted to hear? Part of her thought so, another part wished he would shut up, or lie. But in that moment, ever the investigator, her curiosity got the better of her. She said, softly, “John… I don’t care what you think about Leoni. I know what you’re trying to say. But I want you to
say it. Leave Leoni out of it. Leave your anger at the door, just for one moment. Can you do that? Or is it so much a part of you, you’re not even able—”
“God damn it. Just shut up, will you,” John growled. Then he leaned in, reminding her once again just how tall the Frenchman was. He didn’t hesitate, he didn’t ask, he didn’t do anything or speak any more words except place his arm around her lower back and press his lips to hers.
The faintest of moments passed where she could have pulled away, where she felt his breath against her cheeks, warm and soft.
And then, he pulled her in complete. For a moment, the two of them stood there, beneath the flickering lights of the airport terminal. John holding her close, sharing breath, their mouths drinking the other in. The warmth from him, the scent of smooth cologne and sweat. The sound of his breathing, the gentle gust of air from his nose against her cheek as he exhaled a soft sound of pleasure.
He leaned in, holding her tighter now, practically lifting her from her feet. The kiss itself seemed so… John. Aggressive, passionate, intense. There was a sort of kindled rage to it as well, a declaration—it seemed—a howl against any who might intrude on that moment, intrude on the space between them. But there was no space, not where John was concerned. His frame blocked out any glimpses of shimmering fluorescent lights, his back to the road now, fully facing her at last.
They remained like that, the intensity rising and falling in swells like rolling waves dashed against the shore. For a moment, Adele felt a flicker along her back where his fingers pressed, felt a sense of tingling along her spine.
John Renee… unprofessional, obnoxious. But damn, was he a good kisser.
Not the first time, but this second kiss was more… honest… than the first.
At last, though, she pulled back, panting and staring up at him wide-eyed. He didn’t blink, didn’t look away, but also breathed, gasping, his chest heaving as if he’d just sprinted up a flight of stairs. A faint flicker of delight flashed across his eyes, the corners of his lips turned up into a sort of tomcat grin. He winked at her. “Call me a bastard again,” he murmured.