Les Recidivists (Chance Assassin Book 2)

by Nicole Castle

  “’Scuse us,” I muttered to Casey, his fingers still shaped as if holding her hand. The expression on his face was one of unspeakable injustice, like a little boy who can’t believe a strong wind snatched a balloon out of his grip.

  I jogged to catch up with them, knowing that once the door was shut between the prying eyes of art patrons and this family reunion of killers, it wouldn’t open again until somebody’s feelings had been hurt.

  Frank came very close to slamming the door in my face, a fact that I wouldn’t let him forget about any time soon, but Bella was on the defensive before I could share my discontent.

  “Let go of me!” she shouted, a surefire way to get Frank to back off. Or silence you forever. He hated noise. Especially in such a quiet setting. She wrenched her arm away and straightened her dress, which was so short that the scuffle had revealed more than I ever needed to see. Again. “What the fuck are you doing?” Her voice echoed off the tile walls. If the rest of the gathering hadn’t noticed that everything wasn’t cozy and artistic here in the land of pretentiousness, they were on to us now. I pressed my back against the door, using what little body weight I had to block anyone from entering.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he asked back, at a much politer decibel despite his homicidal tone.

  Bella smiled widely as if he’d just complimented her wardrobe. The two of them used to be inseparable, and she was clearly ever-too-pleased to be back in his company.

  He obviously felt different. “Is he dead?”

  “Is who dead?” she asked, toying with him. Even I knew he was referring to Silva, her lover and his former boss. Apparently he’d been ill for years, a slow-eating disease that was the last thing anyone thought would end the former warrior’s life. While Silva was still alive, Bella would need to have a pretty good reason to leave his side.

  She only worked once or twice a year these days, after a hit went bad and nearly killed her. I didn’t know much of the specifics, but it had been serious enough to make Frank be cold to beautiful, injured little me for weeks, and to distance himself from the Evans family. Out of fear more than tact I’d avoided asking Bella for more details. As for Frank, I had a limit to how much information I could get out of him per year, and since I was still learning his secrets, I wasn’t about to waste my meager allotment on someone I thought I’d never see again.

  “Why are you here?” he demanded, enough threat in his voice to get an honest answer out of damn near anyone. But Bella was the exception to every rule.

  “I missed you.”

  “Irrelevant. Why are you here?”

  “It’s good to see you, Frankie boy,” she said sweetly, taking his tough guy act and doing her best to cancel it out with feminine charm. It actually seemed to work. He was calming down.

  “What are you doing here, Bell?”

  The door behind me budged. Enter legal council. “Is everything all right, Frank?” Gideon asked from the other side. He always addressed Frank instead of me. Like Casey and Maggie, Gideon was under the impression that I’d never been more than a sparkling accessory to murder. They couldn’t help it. I had an innocent face, and the orphan back-story to get me sympathy from any jury.

  Gideon was Casey’s stepdad, and he’d gotten Frank cleared of some pretty serious wrong-doing by claiming the discrimination card. Of course, no open-minded officer of the law would ever look at me beaten beyond recognition and tied to a chair, blood from a still missing third person all over the floor, and Mr. If-looks-could-kill-the-world-would-be-a-lonely-place-Moreaux in the middle of it refusing to speak a word of English, and come to the conclusion that a crime had been committed.

  Calling the police force homophobic in a small town full of people who likely thought a homosexual was someone who fucked sheep was pure genius. Added to the fact that Frank was an illegal immigrant who obviously couldn’t call for help when his beloved was kidnapped by a psychopath, and the cops didn’t even dare to charge him with trespassing, or bother calling ICE. No one could’ve gotten away with it but Gideon.

  “Everything is fine,” Frank said, coming and standing by me to put his hand against the door. He was skinny too, but Frank had more strength in one arm than I did in my whole body, and the determination for privacy to use it.

  I ducked under his arm, taking the opportunity to go stand by Bella. It was like playing with fire, and I could tell it stressed Frank out to no end that she and I knew each other at all, much less got along. He was as secretive as a person could be, and the idea of anyone discussing him made him even more paranoid than usual.

  Frank opened the door just wide enough to show Gideon that he wasn’t covered in someone else’s blood and was therefore in no need of a lawyer. Then he told him to go back to the party. Gideon looked suspicious but obeyed. I suppose it was easier to proclaim your client’s innocence when you didn’t know firsthand that they were guilty.

  Bella hooked her arm through mine, standing barely chin-height even with those ridiculously high shoes. That was another thing I liked about her. She was one of the only people I knew who was shorter than me. “He’s a bit cranky, isn’t he? Have you been fucking him too hard?”

  Frank glared at both of us, co-conspirators. As if anyone in Paris would believe for a second that I was a top. Not only was I made for being manhandled, I was far too lazy to be anything but a bottom. But speculation about our sex life wasn’t what bothered Frank. He must’ve realized that Bella and I were a hell of a lot closer than we could’ve possibly been after just one previous meeting.

  I lowered my head and went to him, playing submissive to avoid the lack of punishment he’d use to show his displeasure with me. Frank gave cold a whole new meaning when he was upset, and having our bed transformed into an icebox didn’t make the couch any more comfortable.

  “He didn’t tell you that we kept in touch?” Bella said maliciously. Whose side was she on?

  “I must’ve forgotten,” I mumbled, shooting her a look.

  “Why are you here?” he repeated, and there was a finality in his voice that meant he wouldn’t ask again.

  “I’m on a job,” she said.

  Frank sighed. That’s what I’d feared. “Who?”

  “You’re not in this business anymore, Frankie. I’m not fucking tell—”

  “Who?” he asked through clenched teeth. Frank could be a scary, scary man when he wanted to be. There were still times when I wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley, and dark alleys were some of my favorite places to take him.

  Bella got a look of a petulant child. She may have stamped her feet in protest if it wouldn’t threaten the wellbeing of her shoes. Then she nodded ever so slightly toward me with a rolling of her eyes.

  My heart stopped. Me? Who on earth, apart from people who didn’t know I was in France, could possibly want me dead?

  “You had better be joking,” Frank said, his voice so serious that I was momentarily more afraid for Bella’s life than mine.

  “Not him,” she groaned as if it were obvious. “I didn’t even know he’d be here. Or you for that matter.”

  Time paused again as it dawned on me, and Frank and I glanced behind us toward the door. Toward who had been at the door. “Gideon?”

  “He’s a lawyer, isn’t he? Don’t sound so surprised.”

  “He’s our lawyer!” Frank hissed. He was also our friend, but he didn’t say that. Frank had an eerie ability of switching off between seeing marks as human beings. It was part of what had made him so good at being a killer. My work technique tended more toward revenge, and imagining my victims as people who’d caused me harm. It was no wonder I missed it a hell of a lot more than he seemed to.

  “You can’t kill Gideon!” I said, realizing with a sinking feeling that I may very well have been the only one in the room on his side. Gideon had helped us out with retirement, getting us legal documents for our emigration and even studying a bit of French law so we wouldn’t have to get another lawyer while overseas. If I’d g
one for it, and Frank hadn’t already torn my tormentors to pieces, Gideon would’ve sued the county where I’d grown up over my mistreatment in foster care. He was also the only adult male in my life who I’d never so much as flirted with, which gave him a special place in my heart. And made me a bit hesitant to be alone with him. Old habits are hard to break.

  “Of course she won’t,” Frank said, with a look that dared her to object.

  My hits had always been hand-me-downs from Frank, jobs he thought I could handle. He was my boss. He paid me, and he supervised. I hadn’t experienced the real world of assassinations, where there were repercussions if you used two bullets when the job called for one, or if the mark fell on a rug that his client wife specifically requested be kept clean. Or heaven forbid, letting a mark live.

  “Who ordered it?” he asked.

  “Frank—”

  “Who ordered it?”

  “It was anonymous.”

  “Then we will just have to find who they are and take them out first,” Frank said.

  Before I could put in my request to perform the taking out on whomever it may be, Bella squealed in excitement like he’d just announced that the three of us were going on a homicidal road trip across Europe and she’d be allowed to drive. “Oh, Frankie! Silva will be so glad to see you!”

  “I am not going to the fucking Czech Republic to ask a question, Bella. You call him. He’d do it for you.”

  “He’d do it for you,” she said accusingly. She no longer looked overjoyed. Perhaps Frank’s return to the den of murderers was exactly what she wanted. I didn’t know her well enough to decide if she’d lie about the identity of Gideon’s persecutor, but from what I’d seen, it certainly seemed a possibility.

  Bella had slapped him when he told her he was going to retire. And when she requested our address to send us a wedding present, we’d received envelope after envelope filled with confetti that smelled strangely like old books. She also sent a very nice set of knives, the blades dull from chopping countless novels into countless pieces.

  “Why don’t you ask your friend if he has any enemies? Are you afraid to know the answer?”

  Frank flinched. It was hard enough knowing firsthand how little it took for someone’s life to be on the line. Frank and I had met over a murder that was perpetrated because of a stolen parking spot. But proactively asking a man, a friend, to rack his brain over every psychopath he cut off in traffic or bumped into on the sidewalk while rushing to court was like letting him in on the horrifying secret that the boogeyman really did exist. And he wanted Gideon dead.

  I could just imagine the list. Opposing lawyers were one thing, but contact with criminals was part of his job description. How many had he sent to prison in the last year alone, much less during his lengthy career?

  And then there were the men he kept out of prison. He’d already cleared Frank’s name once, what if we needed him again and he wasn’t around? What if Gideon’s death was part of something bigger? It wouldn’t be the first time Frank’s past had come back to kill his present.

  “Fine,” Frank said coldly. “We’ll ask him. But until we find out who ordered it, you need to be out of sight.”

  “Subtlety is my middle name,” she said. If the situation wasn’t so serious, I would’ve laughed out loud. Bella couldn’t do subtle if her life depended on it. Only her life wasn’t the one in danger.

  “You’ll have to stay with us,” he said, and with the sadistic expression I was so fond of, added “in the countryside.”

  Bella looked like she was about to puke and faint, in no specific order. We didn’t actually live in the country. We lived in the woods. But saying countryside to a woman like Bella was like punching her in the teeth and making her get blood on her dress. The closest she ever got to the country was deviating from the sidewalk onto a patch of grass to avoid mucking her shoes with dog shit.

  “Do you have a car?” he asked. “You can follow us. Otherwise you’ll never find it.”

  “Let Vincent take the children home. I have some things to do. You can ride with me!”

  But there was a problem. “Vincent can’t drive,” he said.

  I could drive. He’d taught me when I was seventeen, much to my dismay at the time. I’d been terrified of the action, after seeing how easily the seemingly innocent dashboard and steering wheel had killed my parents. But now the only time I got behind the wheel was when I was doing maintenance on the neighbor’s Peugeot, which like anything French, only worked when it wanted to. Not only were the French the world’s scariest drivers, but with my little issue of passing out, it was safer for me and everyone else if I was in the passenger’s seat.

  “Then he can show me the way,” she said.

  “What are you driving?” I asked hopefully, ignoring Frank’s protests. Even though I was on the effeminate side of the gay scale, sports cars gave me a hard on. My father had been a mechanic, making it slightly ironic that he and my mother were killed in a car crash.

  The last time I saw Bella, she was driving a candy-apple red Corvette. Having just been released from the hospital, it was a bit much for me to request a ride. I’d regretted it ever since. Especially after living in Paris and realizing that what I considered psychotic driving on her part was quite normal.

  “A Maserati,” she said, pulling out her keys as if further evidence was needed. “Want to drive?”

  “No,” Frank said for me. Then he held my shoulders and turned me toward him, his habit of forcing eye contact whenever he had something serious to say. “You have one hour.”

  “It takes longer than that to get home, Frank,” I laughed.

  “Not the way she drives.”

  “Relax, Frankie. I won’t get him dirty.”

  He glared at her. I slipped away from him, taking her keys and dropping them back into her tiny purse to show him that I had no intention of letting her coerce me into something dangerous. At least not something more dangerous than letting her loose on the road to begin with.

  “Be home by eleven.” He ignored my disgruntled eye rolling at being given a curfew at all, much less an eleven o’clock curfew. I stayed out later than that when I was eleven. He turned to Bella and added, “Do not go shopping.”

  Bella pouted. So much for her errands. “You’re no f—”

  The door budged again, and this time Frank opened it wide, ready to slug whoever dared bother us. Alan smiled demurely at him and batted his eyelashes. An embarrassed sculptor darted out of sight while Alan apologized foppishly about having no idea the loo was occupied.

  When he spotted Bella, Alan held his hand out to her, wrist limp and fingers draped downward, expecting a kiss if not full on worship from his latest acquaintance. Bella seemed to consider behaving herself for about a half a second, before extending her hand in exactly the same way, like this was some sort of feminine curtsy competition.

  Alan was not amused. He shifted his stance so Bella was no longer directly in front of him and could therefore be ignored. “Frank, I think your poor family is ready to go home. I’m afraid the evening is dwindling to a close. We’ve run out of food…” He glared at me as if I were solely responsible for the food shortage not only at the opening, but in several third world countries on top of it. “And champagne.”

  I glanced past him to our houseguests, standing before Casey’s portrait of Barack Obama wearing a glittery purple Hannah Montana T-shirt. They had an empty glass of champagne each. Casey spotted me and smiled, lighting up the room like he’d stuck his finger in a socket. Then he transferred his gaze to Bella, and his smile got even wider.

  Maggie and Gideon looked bored, though they both sized up Bella. Gideon’s face was always hard to read, but Mags did not approve of her son’s latest object of affection.

  “Eleven o’clock,” Frank said, pulling me into a one armed hug and kissing my hair. “Be good.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said sarcastically.

  Alan smiled like he hoped I’d lose my way and followed Fr
ank out of the bathroom, letting the door shut as if all it would take to get Frank in his bed would be to get me out of the picture.

  “You want me to kill her for you?” Bella asked, apparently as unimpressed with Alan Barker as I was.

  “I’ll get back to you on that,” I said, wondering whether she’d give a family discount.

  Chapter Two

  It was not murder which consumed Frank’s thoughts as blood dripped from his fingers, but rather torture: gleaning information from his mark by any means necessary. He set aside the chunks of raw meat that he’d hewn from the bone, and he reached for a sturdier knife. There was no question of innocence. Gideon was not who he said he was, therefore he could no longer be trusted.

  Frank had known Gideon for two years. He had depended on him, and considered him an ally. A friend. In light of Bella’s hit, he’d begun to think of him as a mark. Facts: he was five foot ten. One hundred and ninety pounds. A lawyer. A good lawyer. He was Jewish. He came from a wealthy family, but was disowned while at university for marrying a poor black woman of whom his parents disapproved. His first wife was shot and killed as she attempted to break up an argument between two strangers. Gideon was not present, and had an alibi. His second wife was still alive. She divorced him, then later remarried and divorced him again. He was recently married to Margaret Evans. He had no children, apart from a stepson. Casey. Gideon knew everything about Vincent: where he grew up, the foster care, the abuse. And he knew about Frank: his true name, and his profession. He knew about the money Frank stood to inherit, and the money he had already acquired through murder.

  But they didn’t know Gideon at all.

  Frank felt the betrayal deeply. He had spoken very little on the drive home, and not uttered a single word since using Bella’s presence as an excuse to methodically unload every gun in their home. Casey had followed him throughout the house like an excited puppy, inquiring repeatedly after her. Casey’s words moved through him, barely registering. Frank listened only for sounds of danger: footsteps from the library or the gravel in the driveway signifying an intruder. He heard nothing. He heard everything.