The Assassin’s Heart

by Alexis Abbott

  I can’t believe they were actually right.

  “Come on, Charity,” I murmur to myself, surprised at how hoarse my voice sounds. I suppose it makes sense. Right after my captor left me here, I started screaming again. I was desperate for someone to hear me. But it was pointless. I gave up. I’ve been silent for hours, too petrified and overwhelmed to even think straight while I listen to the sounds of the forest getting louder as the woods come alive at night.

  But now something is changing. I have managed to get my arms out from behind myself. They’re at my sides, the rope still strained over my elbows, but now I can finally reach up to tug down the blindfold!

  It takes a few seconds for the strength and feeling to return to my arms, and as soon as it does, I bend my head and reach up with my tingling hands to pull the handkerchief off my eyes. I can’t get it up over my head so I drag it down my face to let it rest loosely around my neck. I blink rapidly, seeing stars... But my elation is short-lived as I realize that even though my eyes are definitely open now, I still can’t see. The stars are simply my eyes adjusting to sight once more.

  The darkness of the forest is too dense to see the real stars.

  I begin to pick at the rope, slowly regaining sensation in my fingers. I know the knot must be around the back of the thick tree trunk. No point in stretching to untie it—it’s beyond my reach. Still, I’m encouraged by the small victories, and I hurriedly fumble around the ground for something sharp or pointy to start scratching at the cords around me. It takes me a few minutes to find a stone with a sharp edge to it. My heart skips a beat and I start to feel more optimistic and determined as I rub the sharp rock against the rope at my hip, careful not to drop it and risk losing my only shot at freedom.

  At first, it seems to make no difference. The rope is thick, meant to withstand serious abuse. But I keep at it, too stubborn to give up. It takes me forever, probably a good hour of awkwardly dragging the sharp edge over the rough, slowly relenting fibers of the cord, before I see results. Or rather, feel results. Hope surges in my soul and I pick up the pace, even though my hand is cramping and my wrist hurts. Finally, with a little yelp of triumph, the cord splits!

  My hands are trembling as I rush to shrug free of the ropes and fumble to my knees. I know it’s probably not a good idea to try and stand up yet. My legs are still tingly and my body aches. Besides, I can’t see a damn thing. So I start fumbling around, slowly stretching my arms and legs to bring the strength back to my limbs.

  “Ouch,” I whimper. A pang of incredible agony streaks through my body, up my legs all the way to my shoulders, and I all but collapse on the forest floor. I lie there for a moment, feeling defeated. A tear prickles up in my eye and rolls slowly down my cheek. This is a level of fear, sadness, and fatigue that I have never known before. It feels like my entire body is just on the verge of giving up on me, urging me to just rest and wait for whatever cruel ending fate has in store for me. I can feel the muddy earth cool and damp against my cheek, my forearms sticky with mossy dirt.

  I wish my cardigan had long sleeves, just to protect more of my skin. And this skirt is the exact kind of clothing that is not conducive to surviving being lost in the woods miles and miles from any semblance of civilization.

  I don’t even like these clothes. They’re outdated and overly conservative and I don’t see anything like them in those fashion magazines I read in secret.

  My whole life, I have been dressing and carrying myself and living my life according to what my parents want, rather than following my own desires and my own path. As I lie here on the mucky forest floor, I make a solemn promise to myself that if I manage to somehow survive this strange and frightening episode of my life, I will finally stand up to my folks for real.

  I’ll tell them exactly how I feel about these knee-length skirts and crew-neck tops and grandmotherly cardigans. If I ever get the heck out of these woods, I’m going to finally work up the courage to walk into a shoe store and buy a pair of strappy high-heels.

  Even if I never find an excuse to wear them, I’ll walk around in them at home. I’ll look at myself in the mirror and finally find something about my appearance that I like. Something that’s mine. My choice.

  But first, I have to survive.

  Reaching up to rub the locket charm around my neck for comfort, like I always do when worried or scared, I slowly bring myself up to my knees again. I brace myself against the rough trunk of the tree with my free hand, letting my wobbly legs gradually strengthen. Once I feel a little more steady, I begin to rise, still clinging to the tree for support. It strikes me once again just how dark it is here, without a single human-made light source or even the light of the moon.

  Finally, I’m standing, albeit a little shakily like a newborn fawn. I tilt my head back and blink up at the canopy, letting my eyes adjust to the incredibly low light until I can just barely make out the faint shadows of leafy branches swaying gently in the breeze overhead. And behind that, the inky black night sky, dotted with soft glowing stars like freckles between the clouds.

  There’s no moon in sight. No wonder it’s so dark. A foreboding voice in my head begs the question: did my captor intentionally choose a moonless night to carry out his plot?

  “No,” I say aloud, shaking my head at my own query. Of course he didn’t. That would be ridiculous. Besides, from what I can tell, I was never meant to be a part of his plan. I’m just an unfortunate by-product. Collateral damage.

  I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “Damn it,” I murmur. “The first time in my life something exciting happens to me, and it’s getting kidnapped. Bullshit.”

  I freeze up, stunned at how easily the swear word came rolling off my tongue. I have a split second of panic before I remember that my parents aren’t anywhere around. They didn’t hear me curse. I could almost laugh at how silly and crazy I must look right now. Cursing to myself, then getting paranoid that some judgmental elder might pop out of the dark underbrush to scold me for it.

  Boy, I really need to get my priorities straight.

  First of all, I have to figure out a way out of these woods in the darkness. I wish I had my phone, but Mr. Murderer confiscated it and put it in that stupid briefcase. I wrack my brain for a solution, but come up empty. Well, I can’t just sit here and wait for dawn. I have no idea what time it is, and besides, I don’t want to be a sitting duck for predators—or worse—for my captor to come back and find me here.

  Surely whatever he has planned for me is not ideal.

  So, with great trepidation, I start shuffling away from the tree, hoping that I’m going in the direction we came from. I’m too blind and afraid to take big steps, so I just trudge along, my arms out in front of myself as I wade through darkness. I don’t get very far before I trip over what I think is a log, and go tumbling to the ground with a yelp.

  I land flat on my butt, and for a moment I’m discouraged, until I feel around and realize that what I tripped over is not a log—it’s something leathery and square-shaped. With a pounding heart, I run my hands all over it, making a mental picture in my mind’s eye.

  “Oh goodness,” I mumble, realizing it’s the briefcase. Maybe it still has my phone inside! To my dismay, the case seems to be locked shut. But I’m determined.

  I get to my feet and lug the briefcase with me back toward the great tree. Summoning all of my strength, I fling it against the trunk again and again, hoping to shatter the lock somehow. To my amazement, it actually works! The whole briefcase springs open and a rain of papers and cut-out articles go fluttering down to the ground, along with my cell phone. I pounce on it immediately, my fingers shaking as I unlock the screen.

  “Crap,” I grumble. I have no service at all out here. But at least I can use my phone for a light. I flip on the flashlight app and shine it all around me. The light doesn’t penetrate very far, only a few feet, but it’s a major improvement to the pure darkness I was in before. Now I just have to watch the battery lif
e and get out of here before my phone dies and I’m plunged back into darkness again.

  But first, I’m a little distracted by the other items in the briefcase. I kneel down, using the light to read over the articles and notes. It takes me a minute or so to realize that all of this information centers around one man, who lives hours away from Philadelphia in the small town of Sheffield. Is that where we are?

  What’s more: this guy is a complete dirt bag. There are accusations of and arrests for counts of child luring, explicit photos of minors, underage pornography, abuse—it’s a nasty portrait of a sick, evil man. Every arrest ends with a sealed plea deal.

  It dawns on me that this must be the man Mr. Murderer is out to kill. I feel a little conflicted. On the one hand, this twisted man sure seems to deserve serious punishment. But on the other hand, does he really deserve vigilante justice?

  Does he deserve murder?

  I decide that’s a moral quandary to think about once I get my butt out of this forest, so I push the papers back into the briefcase and get back to my feet. Holding my phone out in front of me to light the way and grasping the briefcase in my other hand—I want to bring proof of what happened to me tonight—I start running.

  I assume I’m going east, but I can’t be sure. I uninstalled my compass app ages ago to make room for secret ‘what would you look like in makeup’ apps. Had I known I was going to be kidnapped by a contract killer, I likely wouldn’t have cared so much what shade of ruby lipstick would suit my skin tone.

  Too late for regrets. All I know is that if I keep running long enough, surely I will find a way out of here eventually. It’s all I’ve got left to hope for.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been running. Could be minutes, could be an hour. Even with the light from my phone, I’m so disoriented, watching the battery indicator drop further towards dead. My chest is heaving, my legs aching and threatening to collapse underneath me. My lungs feel like they’re on fire as I struggle to fill them with oxygen, gulping down air with desperation. My legs are scratched by the underbrush, my sensible shoes causing blisters to form and my ankles to strain as they keep getting suctioned by the mud.

  But I’m going to make it. I’m going to be the survivor.

  I can hear the news reports changing in my head. No longer is it poor Charity Rivers who walked to her death and was too stupid to live. Now, I’m Charity Rivers, survivor. The girl who got away from her killer kidnapper.

  I’m hardly paying attention to where I’m going, my eyes watering from the wind blowing into them, my vision blurring. And then out of nowhere, I run smack into something large and hard, which knocks me right back onto my butt. I look around, confused and stunned, thinking I must have somehow hit a tree. Until I grab my phone and pick it up, shining the light in front of me.

  My eyes go wide and I gasp with fear, my heart sinking.

  It’s not a tree.

  I have run right into my captor.

  Jake

  Charity’s small frame collides with me with all the force of a wadded-up newspaper being thrown at my chest, and she bounces off with about as much grace. Before I can react, she falls hard on her ass, shining eyes looking up at me in terror. In the white light of her cellphone flashlight, I can see the fear in her face, and if it weren’t for that, it would have almost been funny.

  My blood is still racing, fueled by adrenaline from my latest kill. There’s no blood on me to give it away, no trace of the deed being done, nothing but the mental scar of another life snuffed out by my hands.

  I can justify the death. I can say it made the world a safer place, and I believe it did. I can say that in the checks-and-balances of the world, the death of that scumbag was a net positive. And I can confidently say that the people in his life will be happier with him gone.

  But his death is still on my hands, even if his literal blood is not. I made sure to check myself over as soon as I stopped my motorcycle. I knew Charity was going to be scared, so I wanted to do whatever I could to lessen that.

  Of course, looming over her with my wild eyes and body of steel probably isn’t doing much good in that regard, right now.

  Somehow, in the course of an evening, I went from cold blooded killer to concerned kidnapper. Maybe I am no better than my victim, able to change at a whim. I’ve always hoped to grow up better than my stepfather, but maybe his mark on me was inevitable.

  She tries to crawl away from me, but I step forward slowly and calmly, my long legs making it easy for me to close the distance between us. I stoop down and reach out to take her hand. She tries to jerk away from her, and I raise an eyebrow.

  “Planning on spending the evening on the cold ground?” I ask. She glares at me, jaw tight and eyes shimmering. I know she can sense the energy around me, radiating off my body like a drug. It’s the adrenaline. I swear it’s contagious. I can’t get enough of it. When I’m fresh from a kill, I feel like I’m high for hours afterward.

  The two things I’d like more than anything right now are a woman in my bed and a drink in my hand, but neither is an option...no matter how much more real Charity seems to me now. I remind myself it has to be just the adrenaline high, but as I clasp her smaller hand, I can feel the warmth and softness of it, and it’s electrifying.

  I pull her up on her shaky legs and help her get stable, brushing off the dirt on her clothes before she pulls her hand away from me as if I burned it. She glares at me accusingly, with that same mix of fear and defiance that haunts me.

  “You…” she starts, but the next moment, the defiance in her face gives way to the fear, and she takes a step back, her voice quivering. “You did it, didn’t you?”

  “Charity…”

  “I can see it in your eyes,” she breathes, putting a hand to her mouth.

  While she panics, I stoop down to pick up the two items she dropped when she bounced off my chest: her phone and the briefcase. I pocket the phone and put the briefcase under my arm, giving her a cocky smile.

  “I was wondering if you’d get this open,” I say. She doesn’t need to know that I had forgotten about it until halfway back from the job. “Smart girl. Don’t worry, I know you didn’t get a call out. Not all the way out where we are.” I try to make my words as calming and matter-of-fact as possible, but the edge to my voice is unavoidable. I feel primal and powerful, and that bleeds through my every word and movement.

  She looks horrified that she didn’t think to grab her phone before I did, and the look of despair on her face as I tuck it away is heartbreaking. She thinks she has lost everything, and the only question is what she plans on doing next.

  I reach forward and brush a stray lock of hair out of her face, her skin so soft against my rough fingers. I step closer, but as soon as she realizes what I’m doing, she pushes my hand away and takes a step back to mirror me. I chuckle, narrowing my eyes at her.

  “Did you read the files?” I ask, patting my briefcase. “You went through all the trouble of getting it open, and I was gone for more than enough time. What did you read?”

  “Nothing!” she blurts.

  “Liar,” I say casually. I take another step forward, and she mirrors me again, moving backward. “You’re clever enough to free yourself and get through the locks on my briefcase, so you’re clever enough to do some digging. You saw his file, didn’t you?”

  “You did do it,” she breathes, her voice getting shakier. “You killed him. You left me here and went and killed him, you murderer!”

  “You saw what he did,” I say firmly, confident that she did exactly that and knows everything I know about my target. “Are you a fan of that kind of person?”

  “It was murder! How do you even know it’s all true?”

  “I saw it with my own eyes, Charity,” I say. By now, she has begun to back up, and I follow her slowly, never making any sudden movements but never stopping, either. “I saw the way his wife winced away from him when he spoke. I saw how he shouted her down. I saw the misery in her face and the callous
ness in his. I saw the signs around the house, Charity. I saw what he was looking at on his computer, something that I’m sure you saw he was let off with multiple times. I don’t trust the dossiers either, but I know from what I saw that he was responsible for every single item on that paper and more. Much more. How long do you think it would have been before his wife couldn’t have taken it anymore? How long before he went too far and there was a murder?”

  We cleared nearly ten paces as I spoke, feeling my blood racing faster. I would admit to being a criminal, even a killer, but I would not let myself be called an unjust killer. I believed every word I said. But the further we went, the more terrified Charity looked. Her eyes had grown wider, and she threw more glances over her shoulder.

  I know what’s coming next.

  I do nothing to stop it.

  As soon as I finish speaking, Charity turns and runs in the direction she came.

  She’s quick, I’ll give her that. Quicker than imagined when I wondered about having to chase her down through the woods when I was on my way over here. But in that skirt, there’s only so fast she can go, and these woods are dark.

  Far darker than the suburbs we left hours before.

  I take off after her.

  It would be simple enough to run her down, but I don’t want to send her into more of a panic than she’s already in. She needs to settle down on her own, if that’s what it’s going to take.

  I don’t run at my top speed, but I keep up with her, calling after her as she runs.

  “I saved his wife’s life, Charity!”

  She doesn’t reply. She darts off the path, to my surprise, and tries to weave through a deer trail leading through the brush. She nearly stumbles when her skirt snags a branch, but she just pushes on through it and barrels forward. My thick jeans are better equipped to handle it, and I have no trouble keeping pace.