If the murderer had planned to unsettle Luc with the location, it was a poor attempt. Luc had checked the address before leaving Umbra Motus and knew that it was in a residential area. The houses in that neighborhood were shockingly similar to the one he had grown up in and watched burn to the ground. Even so, upon seeing the house where he was supposed to meet his phantom, Luc couldn't suppress a chill. Even the temperature regulation of his skinsuit couldn't protect against that sort of freezing beneath his skin.
The house was currently unoccupied. Wisely, the Robinson family who owned it had chosen to spend their Christmas vacation at Disney World. Luc did a cursory inspection of the exterior. This wasn't only to find his own ideal entry point, but to search for evidence of his quarry's entrance. If the murderer was there already, they were very good. That, or they had a key. There was no sign of trespassing. Luc left none himself as he slipped into the house.
Inside, Luc couldn't help but think it was not that different from one of callous horror movies where foolish teenagers wander in the dark. Rather than wisely leave the premises or turn on the lights, they would call aloud for their friends even though they should have kept quiet lest the killer hear them. Hundreds of times, Luc had been that killer in the dark, though things were never as campy as a horror movie.
As Luc crept through the house, more and more evidence pointed to this being another ambush. Knowing he was likely being watched didn't make it any easier to relax into his role as the alerted prey that could spring the trap to his advantage. Hair stood up on his arms as he waited for the snake to strike.
Rather than strike, the serpent spoke. "Bonjour, L'arrêt de la Pensée."
15
Luc did not like the stranger knowing his professional name. He'd thought before that it was bad enough for Thomas to know it.
The French was flawless, of course, and the voice sparked memory in him. It was indeed the same person who'd attacked him in Vienna. Being shot had thwarted Luc's vengeance then.
Not this time.
"This isn't France," Luc replied in English. "Not anymore. It's not even Austria. Who are you, and why are you so determined to destroy me?"
He continued moving as he spoke. Every curtain in the house was drawn, and the thick draperies blocked out even the streetlights and the late sun's attempt to shine through the snowstorm. Luc had expected this and had cultivated his dark vision before entering. Preparation is eight-elevenths of success, Luc's old mentor had told him. He'd never forgotten it, though he still thought the fraction was made up. Perhaps that was the reason he remembered it so well.
Luc scanned the massive living room he'd just entered. With his eyes properly adjusted to the dark, he could make out the outlines of furniture. Besides the couches and recliners, there were some small tables that could threaten his movement and shelves that would make pressing against a wall impossible. He even noticed that a corner of the area rug was slightly bunched. It would be enough to trip someone. Back in France, a young Luc might have stumbled over something like that. But that clumsy Luc had died long ago.
What he couldn't see was the speaker. The specter moved too well, the same way Luc knew he himself did. Back when he was in training, he'd turned off all the lights in the academy's sub-basement. Slinking across the room, he'd searched for signs of his reflection in the wall-spanning mirrors. In the dark, he moved around as nothingness. So did his quarry.
"Poor little Luc."
The voice came from his left, possibly from behind one of the recliners. He couldn't see her--it had to be a woman--but that didn't necessarily mean she could see him. At the first audible intake of her breath, he'd crouched in the slightly deeper shadow beside a large sofa.
"I'm so glad you got my little message," she said. "It has been a long time."
Luc paused, trying to come up with an appropriate response. Only the professional courtesy of assassins came to mind. There were protocols for introduction. She knew who he was; he was tired of not knowing this phantom's identity. "Luc Bertrand, Order of Release," he said, ghosting to find new concealment so she couldn't trace his voice to his location.
Her laugh was so distinctively French it made Luc's gut ache for home. "Orders... I never passed my apprenticeship test. But that is about to change."
What was that supposed to mean? The test to move from initiate to apprentice was a first contract. She'd killed his family...he was sure this woman was the killer. But how could she never have finished her exam? She'd clearly disposed of targets before. "You did not finish?" he said stupidly before moving again.
"It was a multiple quarry. One escaped."
His mind seized on those two words. One escaped.
The writing on the corpses' backs flashed before Luc's eyes.
Remember the night you couldn't breathe.
Luc was still alive.
"The multiple quarries," he said. "My family."
Her voice came back, heated and possessive. "My family."
The heavy curtains at one window parted, spilling the last desperate daylight onto a patch of carpet. The shadow stepped into that patch. Her hood was pulled back, exposing straw-colored hair and eyes Luc recognized only from memories.
"Bonjour, L'arrêt de la Pensée," she said again. "Such a cute little name you've given yourself. Stopper of Thought."
"Esme..." he said, the name catching in his throat. He'd thought of her less and less in the last decade, and he hadn't said her name for years. It hardly seemed to fit the woman before him. It belonged to a young girl, yet there could be no mistaking her. "You've grown."
"Still nursing the dumb jock stereotype, Luc? Play any lacrosse lately?"
Air parted next to his ear. A tiny chink of dart against wall came from behind him. A warning. So, there was at least some professional courtesy there. Either that, or it was familial love. But considering what she'd said moments ago about killing their family, he doubted it. She'd missed on purpose. "You planned the fire."
"Oui. I couldn't have my death questioned."
Luc didn't recall anything for months after the fire. His sister's remains could easily have been reported unfound. Or destroyed beyond recognition. Had any of his siblings' or parents' remains been recovered, or had it all burned to ash?
"You slit their throats first. Mother, Father, Inez..." His throat wanted to close over the names, but he forced out the last one. "Henri."
Esme smiled. Luc remembered the smile whenever his sister had some triumph, like a good grade or a competition victory. It looked horrific on the woman before him. "Henri was first," she said. "And easiest."
The light behind her was rapidly dying. Another few minutes, and she would again bathe in shadow. Then she'd be free to move without Luc so easily tracking her. For the moment, he hoped he was still not quite trackable by her. He couldn't help but postulate, though. If the fire had been part of her test for apprenticeship, that meant she'd been training in the assassin's arts for years before then. Which meant she had that many years of experience more than he did.
She'd been twelve when the fire ruined his life. Back then, he'd had little idea what she did with her time. Martial arts, he'd thought. But it had clearly been more than that. So much more. He doubted their parents had known. If either of them had...
Luc's sixth sense told him a dart was coming, and he leaned away, turning the motion into a spin that put him in the hallway and out of her immediate sight. Just in case the shadows weren't enough. They certainly felt thin at the moment. There were two doors on each side of the hallway, and one in the ceiling which led to the attic. He could very easily begin a lethal game of hide-and-seek here, if he wished to. But then his brother Henri's face flashed in his mind's eye, above a slit throat. His parents' faces, and little Inez...
He could still hear the cries of his baby sister. She would be a grown woman by now, had she lived. If the woman who had claimed sisterhood to them had let her live.
Luc decided then that he couldn't run and hide. Esme had
killed them in the cold blood of a contract. But that contract remained incomplete, barring her full acceptance into the Guild. If she completed it now, finally...
She couldn't be allowed to join. Not in his territory. She'd burned down his home in Tours. She'd played to his vengeance and made him lose everything in Vienna. She would not steal a third home from him.
The problem was, she had already demonstrated her accuracy and skill. She was as good as he was. And he could never forget how competitive of a child she had been.
While Luc hadn't been particularly skilled at anything as a youth, he had been competitive, too.
Perhaps it was time to play a game.
Two of the hall doors stood right across from one another. It took some stretching, but Luc was able to twist the two doorknobs at the same time. They both opened, but there was only a single shared noise between them. Tying a bit of invisible thread around one knob--it wasn't truly invisible, but near enough--he slipped into the opposite room, taking the slack of thread with him. Tugging on it as he closed his own door, he closed both doors at the same time. The click was louder, as he couldn't dampen the other doorknob by twisting it. But if Esme happened to be looking down the hall, she would have seen two doors shutting. It was a simple illusion, but simple did not mean ineffective. Especially considering how quickly he'd had to throw it together. The extra choice of doors for Esme might give Luc a few precious seconds to prepare an ambush of his own. Until she discovered the thread, anyway.
Luc had closed himself in a bedroom. The windows were tempting. Sundown had passed. TJ would be with Thomas already. Even if Luc did leave at that moment, Thomas had the information and would be acting on it before Luc could get across town to help. He could only hope that the information and the apprentice assassin might help him. Thomas always seemed to be in some sort of mess.
Luc would still count this as a favor Thomas owed him, even though he wasn't there himself.
With barely a click of contact, the doorknob turned. A crack appeared in the dark, widening gradually until the door stood open a few centimeters. Then it stopped. From his concealment in a tiny space between a little girl's bed and a chest of drawers, Luc could see into the hallway through that crack.
He couldn't see Esme, but he knew she was there.
Luc considered his weapons. Darts had always been his preference, though he was no stranger to knives or even the occasional use of throwing stars. Luc made a face at the darkness, remembering when Thomas had once suggested he change the throwing stars' shape to a bat. Not wanting to rise to the bait--or admit to the detective that he'd been a Batman fan in his youth--Luc had only replied that it would be difficult to get the balance correct. Statford had claimed to be joking and told Luc to lighten up.
Thomas hadn't noticed how afterwards Luc had begun bleaching his hair a few shades paler than his natural blonde. He just couldn't get a good punchline in. Thomas was right, though; the look was good on him.
A dart waited in Luc's fingers. With a flick, he sent it through the crack in the door. It tinked in the hall. There was no subsequent slight whump of it hitting the floor, so he knew it had embedded itself into the wall.
"You missed, Luc."
She was inside the room in an instant, and Luc sprang from his hiding place to tackle her. It was a classless move and without technique, purely driven by emotion and the need to act. He wasn't about to let her send another dart of her own at him.
"Just like when we were children," she said, her voice strained with Luc's weight pulling and pushing against hers. Esme was built more like their father had been, all dense muscle and thick limbs. Luc was slim and wiry, had been even as a child. Then and now, Esme had grown into her frame and was bigger and stronger than Luc was despite their height difference. He never would have expected her to gain so much muscle, visible or not. The grapple could only go one way if Luc pursued it, and that way was not in his favor. He needed another way out.
His surroundings played through his head. Bed? She could probably do him in in the seconds it would take him to gather the blanket. Chest of drawers. It looked heavy and usable, but again, it would take too much time to do something with it. Unless he could slam her head into a corner. But that would take overpowering her. He wasn't sure he could. Closet door? Promising, but Esme was between him and it. It was more likely she'd slam him into it than the other way around. There were plenty of little trinkets on the dresser, but nothing that might neutralize her.
It was down to what he had on him, and he couldn't get to any of it. His hands were tied in his sister's grip. The plus was that her hands were tied up in keeping him at bay, so she couldn't use any of her weapons against him.
Luc had thought he'd been prepared. He was horrifically incorrect. He should have kept a blade in his hand. Eight-elevenths of success was preparation. He should have known better. He should have...
Fingers closed around his throat. The room seemed to get darker as air became harder to take in.
Was he really doomed to die so easily after all he'd survived? He'd figured his eventual killer would remain hidden, a face unseen. If someone wanted him dead so badly, it would take a very skilled assassin. No one he knew of was capable of it, but he had always assumed he would die the same way he killed others. It would be a secret. He would...
He had a free hand.
Esme had released one of his hands so she could grab his throat. She was not ready to be a true assassin if she assumed he was helpless just because she was killing him. Luc's fingers twitched, reaching for one of the pockets concealed in his clothing.
His fingers closed around a dart. Poison, clean and effective. Esme wanted to kill him; he would kill her right back. Except, he would survive this. Ignoring the dark spots dancing around his black vision, he snapped his thumbnail on the plastic bead covering the dart's tip, breaking it off. His arm took some convincing, but it began to flex at the elbow, raising the dart towards skin. Just a few more centimeters.
An alarm went off. Not the clang of a fire warning or the stringent blare of a wake-up call. It wasn't the high beep of a security alarm or the shrill pierce of a siren. From the dark cloud of Luc's perception, the gentle beeping was pleasant.
Bee-bee-bee-beep! Bee-bee-bee-beep!
Air rushed back into Luc's body as his sister's hand let up on his throat. His head swam, and his vision remained blurred. He heard the single beep as Esme silenced the alarm. It had been a watch timer. He hadn't even noticed she'd been wearing a watch. Her hand put pressure on his chest, pushing him onto the bed where he'd collapsed after she released him. He hadn't even realized he'd hit the mattress. With her other hand, she plucked the dart from his grip.
"Close, Luc, but like in Tours, you are too late."
He tried to say something, but his voice only rasped weakly.
"Time is up for tonight. Perhaps we will do this again sometime n'est-ce pas?" Her weight loomed over him, and he felt the barest wetness of lips on his cheek. He thrashed weakly, knowing she'd poisoned him.
But it was only a kiss.
"I will leave the front door open for you."
He didn't hear her leave. He did, though, hear a strange metallic stretching clang, like springs loosening.
It took too long for him to recover his vision enough to start his departure. Esme had closed the bedroom door, but he could see light in the hallway. When he opened the bedroom door, he noticed the ceiling door to the attic had been pulled open. That explained the spring sound.
A body was lying in a heap at the bottom of the attic stairs. The poor soul must have been up there the entire time he'd been confronting Esme. She'd released the body for him to find afterward. How much of this had she planned?
There was a message on the man's back.
Tu as encore beaucoup de leçons à tirer.
You still have many lessons to learn.
He shook his head and rolled the shirtless body over. He could not leave the man here for the Robinsons to find whe
n they returned from holiday.
The corpse's face stared up at him, all too familiar.
TJ.
Esme had had time to prepare this message for him. The night whirled in Luc's head.
TJ was dead. He'd been intercepted, killed, and brought here to be secreted in the attic.
He wasn't with Thomas. There was no way he'd been able to relay the information to the detective.
It was long after sundown, now.
It couldn't be coincidence that all this had happened tonight. It was part of a bigger picture. Esme could have chosen any time to come after Luc. Why now?
Because she was working for someone else. Someone with a reason to keep him from helping Thomas. Someone who would waylay and kill a messenger...and probably replace him with their own to give Thomas the wrong information.
Thomas was in trouble.
16
Thomas needed him. This had been nothing but distraction. Something in the information Scout and Betty had uncovered for Thomas had to be tied into Esme showing up tonight. It had to be. Someone had wanted him away from Thomas. but he'd missed it. Could it be the Knights Templar and the Order of Hell, once again tampering in his life? It seemed too much of a stretch. Then again, reality had been frighteningly stretchy over the last few years.
He had to find Statford. He racked his brains for any bit of information he might have gotten from his casual glance over the pages Betty and Scout had given him. He couldn't say anything with certainty, but something in his mind kept saying "Newport News."
Flouting safety in the face of the epic snowstorm, Luc rushed to his Audi and started the car. In the best of weather and traffic, it would take him nearly an hour to get to Newport News from where he was, and that didn't even include trying to figure out where in the town Thomas might be. But the man did keep his base in the Hampton and Newport News area. Surely this conspiracy or plot against the investigator wouldn't take him far from home.
Luc Bertrand- American Assassin Page 22