And as I blaze down the road, something tells me the longer I spend with her at my side...the harder it’s going to be for me to get rid of her, however that is.
I know the safest thing to do that doesn’t rob me of my humanity is to come back where I left her tied up after the job is finished, collect her, and leave her blindfolded somewhere. Preferably somewhere remote but close to a place where she can find help and be long gone before she can get a read on where I’m going.
Worst case scenario, she tries to report me, with nothing more to go on than my looks. I know she didn’t get a look at the license number on my bike. By then, I’ll be long gone.
Best case scenario, she plays it smart and forgets about me while I try to forget about her.
But that face is imprinted on my mind, and I keep thinking back to it. I can still smell her on me, even as the wind whips around my body along the road. I need to clear my head, damn it, but she won’t leave my mind.
In another life, maybe.
That is the best comfort I can offer myself. In another life, I’d like to imagine the two of us running into each other at a bar, maybe at work. I could see myself taking her out somewhere for a nice dinner and a little romance, maybe a ride along the coast with nothing but the moonlight lighting the way for us.
I know it’s foolish of me to let my imagination run wild like that, but I sometimes find comfort in thinking about the life that I could have had, if fate hadn’t intervened. I didn’t choose this life. I wouldn’t be in it, if there were another way.
But as beautiful as she is, from her rich, dark hair to those large, expressive eyes to that figure that I can’t shake from my mind, her appearance isn’t the only reason she’s in my mind. There was something about that look in her gaze. There was so much fear mixed with defiance, and it looked all too familiar to me.
I know what living with those two emotions is like. I grew up with almost nothing but them, all my young life. They were my comforters and tormentors until I was a teenager. They were my only means of survival. Fear kept me motivated, and defiance kept me pushing. One always spurred the other on in an endless cycle until I left home.
Until I got out of my step-father’s shadow.
That is one thought I definitely can’t let infest my mind right now. I blaze onward, seeing the scattered lights of the sleepy town of Sheffield in the distance, and I know I’m closing in on my prey. I keep Charity in my mind as I draw near, and the thought of coming back to collect her is the one thing that keeps me focused.
Half an hour later, I’m carefully making my way through underbrush, approaching the house where my target lives. I parked my bike behind an abandoned mechanic shop a few blocks away after slowing down enough that it would be difficult to hear me coming into town. In a small town like this, that kind of caution is necessary. It isn’t like Philly. People notice more out here, especially a city-slicker like me blazing in with a motorcycle and a gun.
I creep through the bushes and trees toward the house’s backyard, which doesn’t have a fence. The lights are on inside, illuminating nearly every room. I case the property carefully, making a detailed mental note of every little thing. Circling around to the front, I see two cars parked—one per parent, I imagine. A basketball hoop hangs over the garage door, telling me the children probably take their hobby outside the practice court. I watch the windows for a long time, trying to get a read on the residents.
The first thing I notice is the lack of children. As expected, they must be at practice. But I only have a half hour or so before they get back, given the time. Taking care of Charity took longer than I expected, and I’ll have to be quick.
I see a middle-aged woman appear in the kitchen, looking disheveled. There’s a very specific kind of tight frown on her face as she gets out a pair of rubber gloves and starts washing dishes. I’ve seen it many times before, and I’ve come to recognize it. I can see someone else moving far behind her in the living room, but I can’t make out the details. If all is going according to plan, it’s my target.
The man is facing the woman from the living room, and it looks like he’s saying something. The wife doesn’t turn her eyes away from her dishes, nor does she respond. I see the husband put his hands on his hips and gesture with his hands as he says something else, but the woman keeps her gaze steady. She has been washing the same plate for nearly a full minute. Finally, the man moves into the kitchen, and at the sound, the woman jerks her head a little toward him, but doesn’t look at him directly.
The husband comes into view, and I see clearly that this is my target, there’s no mistaking him. The face I committed to memory is the face I see now, shouting at the woman at the sink. She tries her best to avoid eye contact, but he steps forward and leans around the counter to force her to look at him. She’s on the verge of tears. His face isn’t even red. It looks angry, but otherwise, there’s no sign of intense emotion or being flustered.
This is natural for this man. He moves his arms wildly as he shouts, and I see the woman wince in a way I’m all too familiar with. I feel my jaw tighten and my glare bore into the home, watching the scene unfold. Whenever the man isn’t looking at the woman, I can see her close her eyes and try to breathe carefully, keeping her composure.
This is the only time she can let herself show this kind of stress. While the kids are around, she can’t show weakness. She has to be strong for them. God knows their father wouldn’t put that much thought into their wellbeing.
The husband moves to the fridge and gets out a can of beer, cracking it open and saying something else to the woman. His face has changed. He isn’t shouting anymore, because he can visibly tell he has upset her. He’s annoyed, but my own experience and his face tell me he isn’t backpedaling or apologizing. He’s pinning the blame on her. I wonder what imagined crime he’s blaming her for tonight. Maybe she said something he didn’t like in front of some guests. Maybe she tried to make plans he didn’t agree with. She may well have just made dinner a little later than usual tonight.
It brings me back to my own childhood, and I try to block out the memories. I didn’t have the luxury of basketball practice to keep me distracted from what was going on in my home. But as I watch the scene unfold before my eyes, any shred of doubt I have for Gabe’s testimony about what this man is like evaporates.
Finally, I watch my target wave a dismissive hand behind him as he makes his way out of the kitchen, and there’s just enough light in the living room for me to see him heading upstairs.
According to the schedule provided for me by Gabe, he’s right on time.
I have to move now.
The wife continues to wash dishes intently, sniffling occasionally, while I make my way around to the side of the building. It’s a large, beautiful house that suggests wealth, even out in a run-down small town like this one. I imagine the owner likes being a big fish in a small pond. Watching through a different window, I wait until the wife finishes washing dishes, pulls her gloves off, and takes a deep breath, trying to find her center. She then turns and makes her way to the cabinet, taking out a full bottle of red wine. She picks up a glass and a bottle opener from the cabinet, then heads out of the kitchen toward a downstairs bathroom, shutting the door, presumably to distract herself with a hot bath while her husband is preoccupied upstairs.
I make my way to the sliding glass doors as silently as a shadow.
Gloved hands on the handle, I slide the door open. It is unlocked, and no alarm goes off.
Just as promised in the dossier.
I hear the sounds of running bathwater from the bathroom as I make my way inside, as well as the sound of her voice on what sounds like a phone call. There’s no trace of the anxiety I saw in her face in her voice now. She does a good job of hiding it, just like my mother did. I do not crouch. I glide through the home like the reaper himself, my eyes roving over the little details in the place.
I pass by some framed pictures in the hallway, hanging on the walls. There ar
e few pictures of the husband and wife together. The few that do show them arm in arm always feature the kids in the picture as well, usually on what looks like a vacation. I see many pictures of the husband with his friends, a few of him holding up a fish on a boat, but none of the woman on her own or with friends of her own. The closest to that I see is one of her and the kids without the father in the picture.
It’s the only one where she looks vaguely happy. I can tell the difference in her eyes. It’s subtle, but once you know it, it is unmistakable.
I make my way up the stairs, passing by the two closed doors of the kids’ rooms. Their names are Edward and Anthony, according to the dossier in the briefcase.
I have very specific instructions regarding them.
Once I reach the door to the study, I put an ear to the door and listen for a moment. I can hear movement, but no other sounds. I reach into my holster and take out my gun, no suppressor tonight. Things aren’t supposed to look too professional. I put my gloved hand on the doorknob and turn it so slowly it nearly takes me a full minute to complete the action.
Darkness greets me in the room, save for the dull white light dancing from the single source at the far end of the room.
The husband is in the room, seated at a desk with his back facing me. Past his silhouette is the light source—an open laptop with graphic pornography playing, and the sound I heard from behind the door was the sound of him massaging himself as he watches the girls on the screen. They hardly look like they’re of legal age, and the site doesn’t look like one of the mainstream porn sites. He has a seat of headphones on as he listens, presumably in order to keep his wife from hearing what’s going on.
She knows better than to intrude on him, by now.
I take careful steps forward, closing the door behind me as slowly as I opened it. My eyes never leave my target.
Desmond Lamar.
His name, his face, and his crimes burn in my mind, and I have no guilt on my conscience as I step forward, preparing my soul for what I’m about to do. The headphones are both a blessing and a minor complication, but I mean to act so swiftly that it will be no matter.
I hear his heavy, intense breathing as I get closer. There are trophies of his life all around the room, just barely lit up by the light from the porn on the screen. I see glimpses of plaques from his high school glory days, old novelties from some fraternity in college, and endless fishing pictures. The dossier told me just how much was stewing under the surface of all that, and between what I saw in the kitchen and the grotesque scenes playing out on the screen in front of him, I have no doubt that every bit of it is true.
I stand behind him so closely that I’m surprised he doesn’t feel my body heat. There’s only so long that I can tolerate the sound of this man beating his meat furiously to people young enough to be his daughter.
I reach forward and rip the headphones off his ears.
He’s so stunned by the sudden silence that he freezes for a moment.
His head whips around, and in the glow of the laptop, he sees the barrel of my gun.
“This is for Edward and Anthony,” I say, exactly what my contract demanded.
BANG.
I hear a scream from downstairs as Desmond Lamar’s brains and splintered skull splash across the laptop screen, which still plays its haunting video. By the time the headphones hit the floor with a clatter, I’m already halfway to the office window.
I slide it open, and as quickly as I entered, I climb down from the second story of the house down to the bushes. I keep low and move fast, so fast that by the time I hear the sounds of the neighbors opening their doors to see what the commotion was, I’m already in the woods behind the house once again.
Adrenaline courses through my body, and time loses meaning. One moment I’m in the woods, the next moment I’m keeping low near a building as cars pass by, and soon, I’m back at my motorcycle, hopping on and pulling away slowly and quietly until I’m a safe enough distance that I can start driving into the distance.
I left no traces of myself behind. Nothing but a single bullet remains to prove that anyone was there, and the gun can never be tied to the woman, whose alibi will surely be the phone call she was on when I fired the weapon.
Like I’ve done so often in the past, I have become nothing more than the reaper, gliding through a home and leaving with nothing but another life. Another notch in my belt. Another kill.
But this time, laying low isn’t an option.
I still have one more target before this contract is fulfilled.
And that one witness to handle before my mind can rest easy...to be dealt with one way or another.
Charity
Every muscle in my body aches. Every nerve is twinging as I sit pressed up against the tree. I must have been here for hours by now, just roped to a trunk, blind to the world around me.
It must be dark outside, after the hours I have been stuck here, and after the hours it took to get here in the first place, on the back of my captor’s motorcycle. I have a feeling that even if I manage to take off the blindfold, I still won’t be able to see much. Not this far out into the forest, where the canopy itself is so thick and impenetrable that the light of the moon and stars is kept out, resigned to the sky.
Even without the blessing of sight, my other senses are on fire. I can hear the skittering of insects, the rustling of bushes and dead leaves as small, quick, nervous animals scamper around on their instinctual paths through the woods. And beyond them, far greater and more worrisome beasts lurk around.
I am distinctly, viscerally aware that I am no longer in my own element. In the city, in the suburbs, humans are in control. They are at the top of the food chain—in fact, they supersede the food chain altogether. But out here? In the velvety blackness and the dank, dense brush? I am nothing more than a guest.
An unwelcome guest.
Plus, this is the wrong time of night for a small, blinded young woman to be tied to a tree like a slab of gift-wrapped meat for some hulking predator with white gnashing teeth. I bounce back and forth between lamenting the fact that I can’t see and feeling almost relieved that I’m not able to see just how many mysterious creatures are stalking through the trees on either side of me.
I could make a fine meal for a bear or a wolf. And even beyond the simple, expected need for sustenance, I could easily become a target for a rabid fox or something. I remember one summer when I was a little kid, our neighborhood became a stalking ground for a fox with rabies. Sightings of the little orange troublemaker started rolling in. Breaking into garbage cans, lurking around backyards and front porches. The local animal control center sent out emergency bulletins to everyone’s mailbox, warning us to steer clear and keep all children safely indoors or under direct supervision while outside.
That terrified me back then; the idea that a small, cute animal like that could get sick, go mad, and wander out of its own habitat and into mine with the sole purpose of causing mayhem. Or at least that’s how it seemed to me. My sister Chelsea and I spent that week playing inside, occasionally sneaking to the windows to peek outside with our hearts pounding like crazy, on the off chance that we might catch a glimpse of the culprit.
We never did see him, though. Eventually, the fox was trapped and taken away, and I never found out what happened after that, but in my research about veterinary school, I can now piece it together.
I sit here wondering if I might encounter something like that out here in the woods, alone and vulnerable. I have been working at the ropes binding me for hours, wriggling and squirming, trying to break loose. My captor pinned my arms behind me when he tied the cords, so I’ve been doing everything in my power to wiggle them outward, thinking that if I can just get my hands free, I can figure out how to locate and unravel the knot.
In the process, I’ve been forced to scrape my bare arms against the coarse tree bark, rubbing my skin almost raw. My upper arms sting like hell, and by now they are starting to go tingly and numb. T
hat matches pretty well with my legs, which have gone to sleep from being stuck in this same straight-legged sitting position for hours.
I’m grateful that Mr. Murderer at least had the foresight to lay down the leather jacket for me to sit on, which has insulated my butt and thighs from the damp, mulchy earth. I just know it’s got to be crawling with blind worms and fidgety insects, though I’ve been trying my very best not to think too hard about that.
I’m not especially squeamish, especially since I have been helping my mother in the family garden ever since I was old enough to carry a watering can. But the thought of being forced to sit still while bugs crawl all over me… that’s a little much for even me to handle.
I’m exhausted, mentally and physically, from this harrowing and bizarre day I’ve had. I was already tired from almost a full shift as a maid, but adding in hiding under a bed while listening to a discussion about a real-life murder plot, clinging to my captor as I rode on the back of his motorbike, being led blindly through the deep forest, and now my hours of painfully wiggling out of my binding—it’s a lot.
It would be so easy for me to give up. To just sit here quietly in defeat as I wait for Mr. Murderer to come back and… do what with me? Kill me? Stash my body in a shallow grave? Toss me into a ravine?
And that’s if he even does come back for me. What if his promise to return for me was just a lie? After all, it would be easy enough for him to just leave me here tied up, to let the wild animals eliminate me. It’s the tidy, lazy way of getting rid of the evidence, isn’t it?
I swallow the lump of fear in my throat. I used to think my parents’ fears about the world were paranoid and unfounded, but I’m beginning to think maybe they’re smarter than I realized. All those times my father warned me about getting mixed up with “the wrong kind of company” come floating back to me. I always thought he was crazy. That he was exaggerating to scare me into following their strict rules. They just wanted to keep me fearful and nervous so I wouldn’t leave. After all, nothing like that ever happens in King of Prussia, right? Not in our quiet neighborhood, anyway. But now I’m seeing the truth in their worries. They didn’t want me to get that job at the hotel. They fought me on it, insisting that it was too dangerous. Too big of a risk.
The Assassin’s Heart Page 5