The Assassin

by Rachel Butler

  It was only fair, then, that he should be the biggest threat in her life. Killing a man in cold blood would be hard enough, but killing a man who made her feel safe at the same time he roused her own protective instincts . . .

  The man behind the counter called that the prescription was ready, interrupting her thoughts. She paid, then, as she headed toward the exit, opened the slim bag, and removed the pill bottle. Percocet. Some part of her had hoped for an elephant-strength painkiller, something that would knock him out for the next few hours so she could take the opportunity to snoop. No such luck.

  They were both silent during the ride and were back on Princeton Court in a matter of minutes. She parked next to the Corvette, got out, and started toward his house, then realized he wasn’t following. She turned back. “Detective?”

  Slowly he eased that one eye open.

  “You’re home. Do you need help?”

  “No. No, thanks.” He got out, then moved carefully as if trying to minimize the jostling effects of walking.

  Part of her wanted to see him to the door, then beat a fast retreat. The other part knew that wasn’t possible. This was her best chance to learn the code to his alarm, her best chance to get inside and look around without arousing suspicion. No matter how much she hated doing it, she couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

  Adjusting her pace to his, she accompanied him to the stoop and up the steps. After missing twice, he fit his key into the lock, opened the door, and punched in the alarm code. She managed to catch the first two numbers—seven and six—but he swayed unsteadily on his feet as he input the second two, blocking her view. She swore silently.

  He didn’t seem to notice the calico darting up the stairs or the black cat watching him balefully from the living-room door. The dog’s excited barks registered, though, making him wince. “Thanks. If I can have the pills . . .”

  She moved forward, forcing him to back away, and closed the door behind her. “Lie down. I’ll get you a glass of water.”

  For a moment he looked as if he might argue, then he turned and walked into the living room. The black cat hissed at him before slinking up the stairs to the landing.

  As she walked down the hall, Selena made a mental note of the motion detector high in the corner above the front door. There was another in the kitchen, and a quick glance through the double doors into the dining room showed a third. The dead bolt on the kitchen door was double-keyed, just like the front door.

  Detective Ceola liked to feel secure. Of course, the man was a police officer. No doubt, he had more than his share of enemies. He’d certainly made a powerful one in William. For the time being, until she found some other way out, that made her his enemy, too.

  She filled a glass with water from the sink and carried it and the pill bottle into the living room where Detective Ceola lay back on the couch, his feet propped up on the coffee table. “It’s late. Have you eaten?”

  “Not since breakfast.”

  “Here.” She pressed the glass into his hand, then shook out two pills. “Take these, and I’ll fix you something. You do keep food in the house, don’t you?”

  In spite of the stitches and bruising, he managed to look insulted. “Of course I do. I’m Italian.”

  She watched him swallow the pills before returning to the kitchen. Despite his boast, the refrigerator was half empty, and most of its containers held either condiments or leftovers of indeterminate age. The small pantry wasn’t much more encouraging, with its selection of Hamburger Helper, rice, and canned soup. She decided on soup, and stretched onto her toes to check the offerings. Tomato, tomato, and . . . “Looks like tomato wins,” she murmured.

  After zapping the soup in the microwave, she located a small cookie sheet that would do as a serving tray, added the bowl, a napkin and spoon, and a sleeve of crackers from the pantry, then carried it all into the living room.

  He was sitting up now, his loafers kicked off, his feet still propped on the table. She handed him the tray and sat down across from him. He crumbled a handful of crackers into the bowl, then fixed his gaze on her as he stirred the soup. “Why did you come to get me?”

  “Because your nurse friend asked nicely.”

  “She’s not my friend.”

  “She wanted to be.”

  His only response to that was a disinterested shrug. Selena had known more than her share of attractive men, but she’d never known one who didn’t appear to care that women found him attractive. Would he care that she found him so?

  “Maybe you should have taken her up on her offer to bring you home. I’m not very good at coddling.”

  His gaze was steady. “If I wanted coddling, I would’ve called my mother. She’s very good at it, and she doesn’t expect anything in return.”

  She let him eat a few more spoonfuls before asking her own question. “Why did you call me?”

  She knew the answers he might give—she was close, she was convenient, she was available. She was prepared to hear them. She wasn’t prepared for the grin that was far more boyish than any grown man had a right to, or for the words he offered. “Because I wanted to see you.”

  I wanted to see you. She’d heard the words before and knew better than to read any real meaning into them. She’d learned not to read real meaning into anything most men said. Everyone had an ulterior motive for everything they said and did, and Detective Ceola was no different. She certainly wasn’t.

  Oh, but they were lovely words that she wanted to believe more than she could say.

  “The way you look, you probably see either two of me or a very blurry vision of one.”

  He nodded, then winced. “I couldn’t be lucky enough to see two. Jeez, my head hurts.”

  “Getting pounded into the floor will do that to you.”

  “You know that from experience?”

  “I don’t have to experience it to know it hurts.” But she’d had plenty of experience. She’d been Rodrigo’s favorite target for years, and had taken as many beatings from her surrogate parents as she’d dodged. Greg Marland had gotten in a few blows, as well, before she’d managed to grab that statue and leave him dying on the guesthouse floor.

  Only William had never laid a hand on her in anger. No, his preferred punishment was far more subtle—looking at her in a certain way, speaking to her in a certain tone. For years it had bent her to his will in an instant. But where he had counted on it breaking her, instead it had merely taught her to give, then bounce back.

  Ceola’s big dark eyes were starting to droop. Rising from the chair, Selena took the tray from his lap and set it on the table, then lifted his legs onto the sofa.

  “You don’t have to . . .” His words were slurred, his breathing slow and heavy.

  “The medicine will help you sleep. You should be comfortable.” Guiding him with her hands rather than words, she pulled him forward, removed his suit coat, worked the shoulder holster free, then unbuttoned the shirt that was stained with his own blood. By the time she helped him lie back, he was more asleep than awake. When she covered him with the throw from the back of the chair, he sighed heavily and was out.

  A good neighbor would go home now, checking back periodically. A friend would make herself at home in that easy chair and keep an eye on him.

  She did neither.

  With a deep breath, she crossed the short distance into the dining room. The blinds were closed, the curtains drawn, and she left them that way. She twisted the knob that lit the chandelier, then turned on the desk lamp. Papers covered the dining table, along with file folders, a few issues of magazines geared toward law-enforcement officers and a couple of forensic-science books.

  Drawing out a chair, she sat down at the table, opened the nearest file folder, and found herself connecting with a blank, unseeing gaze. There was no question that the man in the close-up photo was dead. Though the camera angle didn’t show the full extent of the damage, clearly a large portion of his head was missing.

  Her first impulse was t
o drop the folder, jump up from the chair, and run away, but she forced herself to remain steady and calm. To breathe slowly in and slowly out. To look. She had seen dead people before, two of them up close and personal. Both had been the victims of intimately violent death, but they hadn’t looked like this. They had appeared somewhat peaceful, as if they were merely sleeping. There was nothing peaceful about this man.

  She stared at the photo, taking in the blood and tissue splatter, the gaping wound where his cheek and jaw should have been, the subsequent distortion of his other features. She looked until she could do so as calmly and dispassionately as she imagined Detective Ceola did. Only then did she go on to the next photo, and the next, until finally she reached the notes underneath.

  Ceola’s handwriting was far too elegant for a cop, though exactly what one might expect from a rigid Catholic-school upbringing. The man in the photos was a drug dealer who had been murdered a few weeks previously. His body had been found in an abandoned building in east Tulsa, with very little evidence to process. It appeared to be one in a series of murders committed by a man who left calling cards that suggested a religious/vengeance motive, though Detective Ceola seemed to hold the minority opinion that the killer was another drug dealer looking to expand his share of the market.

  William was a drug dealer. In their early years together, he’d never mentioned the nature of his work. All she’d known then was that he had a great deal of money and didn’t mind spending it on her. She had been in college before she’d begun to suspect that his business was less than legal, a fact he’d confirmed when he’d offered her a job upon her graduation.

  She shouldn’t have been surprised. She had been raised by people who’d forced her to steal. But she had been surprised, nonetheless. William—elegant, sophisticated, her savior—was no different from those people, just more successful.

  Was that why he wanted Ceola dead? Because he was killing off his competitors and feared Ceola’s trail would lead back to him?

  Selena read every scrap of paper on the table, examined every photo, and even scanned the pages in the forensic books that Ceola had flagged, but she found no mention of William’s name. Not in the notes. Not on the “Known Associates” list for each victim. Not in the meandering theories Ceola had penned on a legal pad.

  Frustration surged anew at William’s refusal to share details with her. How could she find anything when she didn’t know what she was looking for? Was this a test to measure her resourcefulness? Or merely a demonstration of his power, that he could force her to such an impossible undertaking?

  The sofa creaked as Ceola changed positions. She looked but found no sign of the black attaché he normally carried. That left the computer. She moved to the desk, plugged the power strip into the wall, and turned it on, but when her finger touched the power button for the CPU, she didn’t push it. Instead she walked into the living room.

  If possible, Ceola looked even worse than before. His eye was puffier and surrounded by a rainbow of dark hues. The black of the sutures and the red line of inflammation that backed them stood out in stark contrast against his olive skin. He looked tired. Defenseless.

  She could take the forty cal from the holster on the coffee table, aim at the smooth, undamaged skin of his left temple, and pull the trigger. Douse everything in the dining-room office with gasoline, light a match, and walk away. That easily, her job could be done. The method wasn’t quite what William had instructed—he wanted the evidence first, then the murder—but the end result would be the same.

  That easily . . . except she couldn’t force her feet to move from the doorway. She couldn’t stop hugging herself—holding herself together—long enough to pick up the gun.

  Most murders were the desperate acts of desperate people. She wasn’t desperate enough.

  Yet.

  With long strides, she walked out the door and across the lawn, letting herself into her own house and shutting off the alarm before starting toward the kitchen. She hadn’t taken more than a few steps, though, before she stopped, senses on alert. Something was wrong, different. She was sure of it, though a cautious walk through the first floor revealed nothing out of the ordinary. The locks on the kitchen and sunroom doors were secured, the windows undisturbed. Still, she felt . . . something.

  She stood in the middle of the kitchen, listening, breathing, concentrating. There were no unusual noises— just the tinkle of chimes from outside as a light breeze stirred them, and the ticking of the clock near the door. The glass of tea she’d been drinking when the call had come from the hospital stood in the same place on the island, its ice long melted, and the phone book was still next to it, the cover showing a view of the downtown Tulsa skyline at sunset. Beside that was a notepad, bearing the name of the gym she’d chosen, and an ink pen, ready to write the address of the firing range she . . .

  Slowly she reached out, her fingertips grazing the thick book. She’d been looking for a shooting range—had had the phone book open to the business listings when she’d answered the hospital’s call—and she didn’t remember taking the time to close it. She couldn’t swear that she hadn’t. After all, she had been concerned about Detective Ceola’s injuries. But she didn’t think she’d bothered.

  Unease pricking her spine, she walked slowly upstairs, looked in the bathroom, every bedroom, and every closet, and found no sign of an intruder. The Beretta was still in the nightstand drawer, at least until she took it in hand. The forty cal was still on the top shelf in the closet, and the dagger was tucked between towels in the hall linen closet. Her emergency stash—new ID, cash—was untouched in its hiding place.

  After inspecting the house outside, she returned to the kitchen. Though she would have a difficult time convincing anyone that her security had been breached, she was sure of it herself. Someone had let himself in, walked through her rooms, disturbed her peace, and then let himself out again.

  The who was fairly obvious—one of William’s people. No run-of-the-mill burglar was going to break in, then leave without taking anything. And entry had been gained with a key—the only way the double-keyed dead bolts could be locked again—which, no doubt, William had obtained from the real-estate agent. As for the why . . . to remind her to be careful? To keep tabs on her? To warn her how easily he could get to her?

  She reached for the phone, then drew back. Calling him would accomplish nothing. He would admit or deny it, whichever suited his purpose. More important, he would know that he’d succeeded in rattling her, which was most likely his primary purpose. He liked keeping people off balance. That was why he’d insisted they have dinner at the guesthouse the night before. He had taken some perverse pleasure in making her sit and eat fifteen feet from where she’d killed a man . . . just as she had taken pleasure in hiding her discomfort from him. He’d wanted upset and distress, but she’d saved them for later, when she was alone. She had maintained her composure.

  She wasn’t about to jeopardize it now.

  8

  “Daddy, read me a story.”

  James Tranh looked up from tying his running shoes to find four-year-old Jesse holding a book and wearing a hopeful grin. Most days he arranged his schedule so he could be home until Jesse went to bed. Having dinner together, reading stories, tucking him in—they were all an important part of the family routine.

  And family was important. He’d learned that after leaving most of his behind when he’d escaped Vietnam nearly thirty years ago. His mother, grandmother, and two sisters had begun the journey with him. Only one sister and his grandmother had completed it. They’d worked hard, made a new home in Los Angeles, and saved every penny to bring his father over to join them.

  But his father had died before they’d had a chance.

  “Sorry, buddy,” he said, swinging Jesse up onto his shoulders. “I’ve got to get to work. Mom will read to you tonight, okay?”

  Jesse’s sigh collapsed his entire little body until he draped over James’s head like a rag doll. “Okay . . .
this time. But tomorrow I get two stories. Deal?”

  “It’s a deal.” James swung him upside down and set him on the floor, then walked down the hall to the kitchen. Jesse hitched a ride on his leg.

  His wife was standing at the stove, fixing Jesse’s favorite dinner of beef stir-fry over crispy noodles. She tilted her cheek for James’s kiss, then shifted the baby on her hip so he could kiss Maya, as well. “Why are you going in so early?”

  “So I can support you in the manner you’ve become accustomed to.”

  Nancy’s delicate little face screwed into a pout, just like Maya’s before she burst into tears. “I don’t like this, Jimmy. Why can’t you take a few weeks off? Give the police time to catch this crazy.”

  “The police have been looking for him for two months. Do you know how broke we can be in two months?”

  She swatted at him. “As tight as you are, you could quit working for three years before you ran out of money.”

  He grinned. “The word is frugal, and I’m proud of it.” In Vietnam, his family had been poor, and in California, it had taken years for things to get better. Now he had a $150,000 house in a nice midtown neighborhood, and his van shared garage space with Nancy’s BMW. He’d bought a cottage in a retirement village in south Tulsa for his grandmother, and a restaurant for his sister to run. Their lives were good . . . but he worried about the vigilante killer.

  Not that James shared anything more than a common business interest with the dead men. Unlike them, he knew how to be discreet. He’d never been arrested, never flashed big wads of cash. He didn’t drink or party or sample his own goods.

  For him, the drug business was strictly a business, not a way of life.

  Nancy’s worried look drew his attention back to her. “This vigilante—”

  “—doesn’t know I exist. I’m careful. You know that. Besides”—he planted his feet wide apart and his fists on his hips—“I’m Superman. Bullets bounce off me.”

  Nancy giggled as she always did. “Superchump is more like it. Go on. The sooner you get out of here, the sooner you can come back.”