Firmly gripping the butcher’s knife, Frank pressed the eight-inch blade down until it broke clean through. It kissed the cutting board with a clap that echoed through his spacious kitchen like suppressed gunfire. Having removed all bullets from their respective guns, he felt comforted to be the only one in the house with a legitimate weapon. Blunt objects could be used, undoubtedly, but his enemy would need to be a great deal closer.
At the moment Gideon was at a tolerable distance away in the library, along with his wife. Frank did not suspect that he would harm Maggie, but he refused to take even the slightest risk with her far more important son. Casey was safe with Frank in the kitchen, although he would not stay safe for long if he mentioned Bella again. “I mean, wow, Frank! Bella! What a name. She was gorgeous! I feel like—” He paused, using his hands to orchestrate every enthusiastic word while Frank moved on to an unsuspecting onion with a ferocity that would’ve made it cry. “I feel…inspired!”
Frank glanced back at him, studying Casey’s face as his smile reached the far corners of the room. Since the death of his father, Case had been in what Vincent called “a funk.” He was himself of course, there was no dampening that joie de vivre, but at the same time there was something missing. He had been spacier than usual, which had brought Maggie to desperation and Casey to France.
The kid was a flake at the best of times, but after Rick the Prick Harper met his well-deserved demise, Casey’s brainlessness had taken on a mind of its own. The real problem, they all agreed, was that he had seemingly lost his artistic divinity. His hands looked aberrant without holding a paintbrush or pencil, and yet he couldn’t pick one up without it appearing out of place. Then he had crashed his motorbike, an event which could have been life threatening had he not been going thirty miles under the speed limit at the time.
Hearing Casey mention inspiration was nearly enough for Frank to let this fascination play out, but Bella was bad news. The worst news. Short of telling him exactly why she was here, there was not much he wouldn’t do to discourage Casey’s affections for her.
“That’s good, kiddo,” Frank said, and he looked at his watch. The hour hand was distorted by a smear of salted water across the glass face. It couldn’t be that late. He wiped it off and glared at it, hoping to see the correct time. The time it should have been while l’enfant terrible was off God knew where with Bella. They had been gone over four hours.
“She knew me!” Casey said, interrupting Frank’s quiet brooding yet again with another splash of colorful enthusiasm. Frank would have given just about anything to be back at the gallery, in those moments before Bella returned to his life. Only there was no going back. Not after learning the truth about Gideon. “How do you suppose…”
Frank smiled, the small victory giving him an evil satisfaction. “You went to Europe on your own when you were eighteen. Did you really think that I would let you go unsupervised?”
Casey’s face fell, his sharply arched eyebrows knotting momentarily in distress. “You had her watch me?”
“The term babysit comes to mind,” Frank said, hoping Casey would get the hint that Bella was out of his league. Bella was out of everyone’s league. He turned back to his dinner preparations, only then realizing just how long Casey had permitted him to go on with his tirade. It was supposed to have been a simple provincial stew. Now he had chopped enough meat and vegetables to feed a revolution. “Where are they?”
“It is so cute that you’re having separation anxiety after being together this long.”
Frank scowled. Having separation anxiety was not cute. It was agonizing. If Casey only realized what it was like to doubt every instinct, to lose complete faith in himself over one moment, and to relive that moment every time Vincent so much as woke up late, he would understand what anxiety really meant. “I would know it if he were dead, wouldn’t I?” he asked, fretting and wringing his hands like an old maid.
“Come on, Frank!” Casey laughed. “Vin’s fine. I’m sure they just got lost.”
“Vincent and I lived in Paris for over a year. He knows his way around, and so does she.”
“You’re being awfully hard on her.”
“It’s no less than she deserves. She’s a wicked woman, Casey Evans.”
“But is she single?”
Frank groaned. It used to be only Vincent could give him such a headache. Could this be why he had begun going prematurely gray? “As a matter of fact, she is not. She’s with our boss, a man who could track you down anywhere on the planet and kill you for sport.”
“Her boss,” Casey corrected as if it changed her availability. The mild threat of death passed right through his airy head. “You own a bookshop, remember?”
“Mon Dieu,” Frank exclaimed. Casey had never been this exasperating. Seconds of Bella’s presence had turned him from a shining ray of light into a blinding irritation. “Where is your mother?”
“Mom!” Casey shouted. “Frank’s feeling tense, can you cook?”
Frank sighed. It was not their dinner that he planned to pawn off on the woman.
“Oh, no problem,” Maggie grumbled, kissing her son warmly on the cheek despite sounding as if she were being put out. In truth, Maggie loved to cook nearly as much as Vincent loved to eat. She had been trying to claw her way to full control of Frank's kitchen from the moment she crossed the threshold. Now that permission had been officially given, Maggie was not likely to relinquish that control for the remainder of her vacation.
Frank allowed Casey to lead him away from their late-even-by-Parisian-standards dinner, but he paused in the hallway to stare pensively out of the fleur-de-lis shaped accent windows on the front door. It had started out as such a beautiful evening, but Bella brought a storm with her. He could see the leaves being whipped right off the trees surrounding their home, the color barely having had time to shift with the season before becoming victim to her tempest. Frank closed his eyes, willing Vincent home before the rain started.
Casey said, “Here,” and scooped up the snow-white teacup Pomeranian from underfoot, plopping her into Frank’s arms. “Play with your dog.”
“V’s dog.”
“Sure she is,” Casey teased. Everyone knew that the six pound canine equivalent of a dandelion was Frank’s dog. Vincent’s only contribution to the dog’s acquisition was picking out the black leather spiked collar and naming her Killer, which Frank immediately and affectionately shortened to Kiki. But while he was secure enough in his masculinity to own, as Casey put it, “the gayest dog ever,” Vincent was not. Whenever anyone asked, the one hundred and fifty pound Mastiff named Hugo was Frank’s, and little Kiki was V’s.
And then there was Charlie. The family favorite, a hideous mutt they brought with them to France despite the harsh customs laws. Moving from the States had been a huge step, but Charlie, like her namesake, had too much of a history to simply be left behind.
The dog had been the final gift from a man closer to being Frank’s father than his own flesh and blood. He’d bestowed Charlie upon them the day Frank killed him, and Vincent, with his natural talent for naming pets and sensitivity to the mourning process, thought the dog was ugly enough to carry the torch.
Charlie, the man, was a manipulative fraud. Frank was twelve years old when he first met him, and utterly insane. He did not recall meeting the old man, nor did he remember the subsequent visits to the infirmary where Charlie had worked as the staff physician. But it had been Charlie more than anyone else who slowly lifted Frank of that darkness, brought him back to himself, and for better or worse molded him into the man he was today.
Kiki barked at the sound of thunder and Frank bitterly turned from the door, conceding that he had once again let Vincent into harm’s way and now Bella had most likely killed him for being prettier than her. Frank would somehow have to murder Gideon without alerting Maggie or Casey, get them safely on a plane back home, massacre Bella, and then find Vincent’s body to give him a proper burial before he could kill himself.
The library was easily the largest room in the house. Vincent had built the shelves for him by hand, and they spanned the entire library from floor to ceiling, with volumes upon volumes of the same hundred or so novels. Frank couldn’t help it. If variety was the spice of life, he had inherited his English father’s taste for boiled potatoes and rubbery meat. Although, he did enjoy the books about the boy wizard that Casey brought over, and unlike everything else he’d ever read, their author wasn’t buried long before Frank was born.
Frank set the dog on the floor and slumped into an oversized stuffed leather chair, briefly catching Gideon’s eye from where he sat across the room, reviewing the case file for his only losing trial in the past two years. He was still irritated by the outcome. Frank wondered whether the identity of the person who ordered his death would be revealed within those pages.
“Has Vincent been kidnapped?” Gideon asked, removing his reading glasses and placing them on an overflowing bookshelf nearby.
Frank turned away. Gideon's ill-timed comment regarding Vincent's whereabouts was only made worse by his unfortunate word choice, and Frank was suddenly quite angry at him. But more at himself.
He remembered hearing Gideon’s voice for the first time, hollering at the small town police officers while Frank was locked in a holding cell. It was loud enough to bring him out of himself, out of the insufferable guilt spreading through his mind over Vincent's attack. By the time Gideon had finished yelling, Frank was cleared of all charges. Frank hadn’t even seen the man’s face before he was free, and they did not exchange a single word until they were at the hospital, waiting for Vincent to recover. Or to die. Gideon had looked him right in the eye and said, “I cannot promise you that everything will be okay. But I promise I’ll do everything in my power to help you.” Frank could not bear to look at him.
“Not you, too,” Casey said, going to sit by his stepfather and taking the file from him. He tossed it across the room, nearly bowling over Kiki. She yapped at him for a solid thirty seconds, the force of each high pitched bark lifting her body.
Killer was a nickname that Frank sometimes used for V as well. It was the resemblance that made him bring the dog home in the first place. Little V was also all bark. Until you put a gun in his hand.
It had been Charlie who introduced Frank to Vincent, on a record-breaking cold night the second to last day of January. V, the waif, was to be Frank’s replacement. Charlie had seen the kid, jacket-less in the blistering cold, and given him a job: break into someone’s home, return to him with the proceeds. It was simple enough, a task Frank had more than mastered at that age, yet Vincent nearly got himself killed in the process.
V still had the scar, a knife wound to the side that a clean towel and a little pressure could have fixed right up. Instead, he returned to Charlie’s hotel room on foot like a stray kitten looking for a saucer of milk, and collapsed into Frank’s arms from loss of blood.
There were few moments of absolute clarity in Frank’s life. Seeing Vincent for the first time, his skin so pale it was translucent, his eyes the color of home, evoked a passion in Frank that he had never experienced before. It was not simply lust or a coup de foudre, though it was certainly both. He felt, at a time when he was so alone, and the numbness that consumed him after his mother’s death was looming over him once again, threatening to return. He actually felt.
It lasted only a few seconds before the darkness swelled, panic flooding his mind when Vincent lost consciousness, fear that he would die. Frank was frantic as he held Vincent in his arms, pleading with Charlie to save his life. But he wouldn’t. Charlie knew the boy, and he did not hesitate to tell Frank exactly who he was.
Charlie refused to help him. Frank may have also let him die, had it not been for Vincent’s shoes: thin blue canvas trainers, the worst possible shoes for walking through slush. Or through the perpetual rain in Portland, Oregon. Casey had the same pair.
Taking it as a sign, Frank had ripped off Vincent’s shirt without another thought. He ignored Charlie’s protests of infection, of contracting AIDS, and he did what he could to stop the bleeding. He even gave Vincent a pair of his own socks to warm his feet, the kid’s toes minutes from frostbite.
He knew something had to be done about the man who stabbed Vincent. He told himself that it wasn’t out of vengeance, it was a mere practicality. If the man called the police, it could lead back to Charlie. Charlie could lead them to Frank. And Frank would kill himself before he ever went back to incarceration.
The man was dead when he arrived at the house. He had already bled out. Looking at that floor, at that mess, Frank absolutely lost it. For everything that had happened over the last several months, this boy, trying to replace him and making such an inconceivable mess, was the drop that overflowed the vase. Frank tore the man apart. He was completely and uncharacteristically out of control.
Frank acknowledged after the fact that it had been partly in defense of Vincent; even then he felt a natural inclination to protect him. But mostly it was the pain he felt over Charlie’s betrayal, and the isolation that he knew was to come.
Only hours before meeting Vincent he had spoken with Casey for what was to be the last time. Frank had decided to never again allow himself these inauspicious relationships, to withdraw from those he loved before it was too late. As it had been with Bella.
Gideon pleaded with Casey to return his file, but Casey was more concerned with apologizing to the dog for throwing it at her. He sunk down to the floor to offer treats and condolences. Casey loved that dog. He’d once dyed it pink just to paint its portrait. Vincent was in the painting as well, though he never would have sat for it had he known his hair would be painted the same shade and he’d be given angel wings. Vincent may have hated it, but the boy looked radiant in pink.
“Are you going to tell us who that woman is?” Gideon asked.
“Bella,” Frank said. Soon he would have to tell Gideon the truth, and then he would wish he never asked.
“Yes, you’ve given us that much.”
“Bella used to babysit Case,” Frank said maliciously. It was not likely that embarrassment would discourage a kid whose hair had once fallen out from being dyed too many colors, but it was worth the attempt.
Casey frowned, albeit briefly. “She’s cute, huh, Dad?”
Gideon had been “Dad” long before he and Maggie were married, a title Casey’s father had never been bestowed. “She looks dangerous,” Gideon stated.
Frank muttered, “You have no idea.”
“You two used to work together?” Gideon avoided saying what caused Frank and Vincent to need a lawyer on retainer in the first place.
“Of course they did,” Casey said. Like Vincent, he had learned from experience the gentle shift of mood in which Frank would, or would not, respond to a question.
Gideon’s expression became stern, the “I’ll advise my client to plead the fifth” look that had aggravated half of the lawyers in Portland. “I think you should leave this Bella person alone, Casey.”
Frank smiled to himself. Casey was about to protest when his mother, a silent spectator until that moment, intervened. “He’s right, honey. You don’t need to make friends with everybody.”
“What, it’s okay for Frank to kill people because he has testicles, but it makes Bella a bad person?”
Frank flinched. That was the first time either of the Evans’ had verbalized what he did for a living. Used to do. And why were his testicles involved?
“Don’t you pull that women’s lib shit on me, young man,” Maggie said. Bella had been on the scene less than a day and already the close-knit bonds were unraveling.
“For all we know, she’s in France to kill somebody.”
Now they’d both said it. The three of them looked inquisitively to Frank, leaving him shrinking away from the attention, consumed with dread over what could possibly come next.
Charlie’s one crooked ear perked up straight to match the other one, and she darted from the room. Hugo barked a loud, gruff woof from his sentinel post by the front door, but he knew this was no intruder. He was wagging his tail frantically while Charlie made every effort to raise the dead. Kiki yipped and hopped circles around them both, not caring who was coming up the drive so long as they gave her plenty of attention.
The powerful engine of Bella’s sport’s car gave one final growl and stopped just as Frank made it to the door. “Where have you been?” he snapped, directing his rage toward his spouse because Bella would only yell back and frighten the dogs.
“We got lost,” V said innocently, coming right into his arms as if dousing a fire with ice water wouldn’t nevertheless create scalding steam. Frank roughly grabbed his collar, preparing to flog him right in front of their guests. If Vincent had any idea how worried he’d been, he would have come straight home like he’d been told.
“Frank!” Maggie scolded, on the defensive as always. Little did she know how much angelic little Vincent relished in the savagery. But then, everyone who met him wanted to shelter or strangle him. Only Frank had been granted the privilege of both, until he no longer fully trusted himself with either.
“I bought you something,” Vincent said sweetly, standing on his toes to kiss Frank’s cheek.
“A peace offering? It won’t work.”
“Ease up, Frankie boy,” Bella said, inviting herself in. Hugo whimpered like he’d been neutered, his tail limp between his legs.
“Hi!” Casey exclaimed, the quick smack to his shoulder from his mother going unnoticed.
Les Recidivists (Chance Assassin Book 2) Page 3