The Assassin

by Rachel Butler

  He kissed her again, on the mouth this time, thrusting his tongue inside. They’d been married eight years, and just a kiss could still make him hard.

  “I’ll be up when you get home,” she said with a soft sigh.

  “So will I,” he said. After kissing Jesse and Maya, he took his keys from the hook near the garage door and left.

  The restaurant was located on Memorial between Sixty-first and Seventy-first, a congested area he would avoid forever if it were possible. Since he put in an appearance there every day, it wasn’t.

  He was sitting at the stoplight at Yale and the bypass when the cell phone rang. It was strictly a business phone. The people who mattered knew how to reach him at home, the restaurant, or on his other cell phone. The people who didn’t matter . . . well, didn’t.

  He checked the caller ID, saw that the local number was a pay phone, and decided against answering it. As he turned into the restaurant parking lot ten minutes later, the same number called again. Twenty minutes and two calls later, he finally answered.

  “Mr. Tranh, you’re a difficult man to reach.” The well-educated male voice lacked the local accent and seemed vaguely familiar. Someone he’d done business with in the past, or maybe one of the restaurant’s regulars?

  “Who is this?”

  “I’m the solution to your problems.”

  Just his luck—a salesman. “Sorry. I don’t have any problems.”

  “So it would appear. You’ve done well for yourself in your adopted country. A lovely home, a beautiful wife, two wonderful children. Jesse and . . . Maya, isn’t it? Named for your mother, My.”

  Though his office off the restaurant kitchen was a cool sixty-eight degrees, sweat popped out on James’s forehead. His fingers clutching the phone tightly, he demanded, “Who are you, and what do you want?”

  “As I said, I’m the solution to your problems. I want to meet to discuss how we can help each other. Deal?”

  The echo of Jesse’s earlier words—But tomorrow I get two stories. Deal?—made James’s blood run cold. “I can’t talk right now. I’m not alone,” he lied. “Call me in a few hours, okay, and we’ll discuss it then.”

  “Then it’s a deal. We’ll hammer out the details later. And Mr. Tranh? Don’t fuck with me. You won’t like the results.”

  James continued to hold the phone to his ear long after the line had gone dead. The man’s tone hadn’t changed at all—had remained genial and cultured through the vulgarity.

  Maybe that was why James felt so threatened.

  A sharp slap echoed through the night. “I swear, that mosquito nailed me on the ass. You can stay out here and commune with nature all you want, but I’m going inside.”

  Damon watched as Lucia stood, unmindful of her nudity, and strolled across the grass to the patio. The sway of her black hair, the curve of her hips, and the seductive grace of her movements were enough to make him hard again, as if they hadn’t just indulged in amazingly hot sex for the past hour or more. He could go months without, if the situation warranted it—and had, until meeting Lucia. The problem with that was he then tended to get obsessive about it, to feel the need to make up for lost time.

  That was why he’d spent the better part of the past week with her. Why he thought about her even when he wasn’t with her. Why, after coming three times tonight, he could go inside and fuck her another three times before he got close to being satisfied.

  He had plans for her, even though he hadn’t yet decided how he could best use her. Was it enough to just screw her every which way—to dirty the pampered-darling image clung to by those who loved her? Even if no one else ever found out, he would know, and that, he’d learned from William, could be enough.

  Or was it better to use her to throw a kink into William’s careful plans for Selena? Killing her would send a powerful message, and would be so easy. But what a loss, he thought as a light came on in her bedroom.

  She stood at the window, beautiful, delicate, managing to look demure despite the fact that she was buck naked. She was brushing her hair, a sensual act in itself, made more so by the fact that she was naked, bright lights all around her, and an illicit Peeping-Tom feel to the whole scene. His gaze shifted from her hands to her face, her expression dreamy and provocative, to her breasts, rising and falling with each stroke of the brush, and his cock swelled to life. First, though, there was something he had to do.

  He reached for his clothes, neatly folded next to the careless tangle of hers, found his cell phone, and dialed a number stored in memory.

  Twelve miles away, the phone rang three times before a husky voice answered, “Hello.”

  Two syllables, no more, yet they told him so much. She’d been asleep, or nearly so, which meant she was in bed, and she was wary, wondering who would call her this late at night, who would even have this number. William did, of course, but he would have called her on her cell phone rather than the land line. She knew he didn’t run his empire alone, but he’d always kept his lackeys from her. Damon and the trusted few who reported to him weren’t good enough to make her acquaintance, though the old man fully expected them to one day take orders from her.

  The odds of that happening were somewhere between nil and none.

  “Hello?” There was less sleep in her voice this time, more wariness.

  He lowered his voice, masking it. “Hello, Selena. I stopped by to see you this afternoon, but I guess I missed you.”

  The silence on the line was palpable. Did her breathing quicken a bit, her heart rate increase? Probably. She had such hang-ups about personal safety. She was easy to tweak. “Who are you?”

  “No one you know . . . yet. But we’ll remedy that soon.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m not looking to make any new acquaintances.” That was her cool, superior tone, designed to keep most people at arm’s length. But he wasn’t most people. He knew too much about her—her fears, her desires, her secrets. He knew how the rejections she’d endured had scarred her, and how William’s twisted manipulations had shaped her.

  He could even relate to her, because William had manipulated him even longer. Other than that, though, he had no real feelings for her. Even his resentment that she was William’s chosen heir was directed at William rather than her. In fact, if not for William, Selena wouldn’t even register in Damon’s life.

  Her voice penetrated his thoughts and his fingers clenched around the phone. “If you have nothing else to say, I’m hanging up now.” She sounded bored, though he knew she was anything but.

  “We’ll have plenty of time to talk later,” he responded smoothly. “Sleep tight, Selena. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” With a laugh that sounded uncannily like William at his most treacherous—as it should, since that was where he’d learned it—he hung up, gathered his and Lucia’s clothes, wadded up the comforter they had fucked on, and headed for the house.

  Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.

  When she’d lived with the woman who’d repeated those words to her, Selena had had far more pressing concerns than bedbugs. The woman had gone by many names, but her real name, or perhaps merely the name she’d liked best, was Dorotea. She hadn’t been the motherly type, though she’d claimed Selena as her own anytime she was questioned. With her fair skin and red hair, and her even fairer-skinned husband, Philip, she was a poor candidate to produce a half-Latina, half-black child, but nothing had swayed her from the lie.

  As mother figures went, she hadn’t been bad. She hadn’t hated Selena as her real mother had, or been jealous of her, as her second mother had. She hadn’t beaten her, starved her, or sold her services by the hour. In Selena’s world, that had constituted “good.”

  She rolled onto her side, facing the window, and slid her hand under the pillow until she could feel the reassuringly solid mass of the forty cal. The night was quiet. No lights shone where they shouldn’t, no dogs barked, no cars idled on a street where all the residents were in bed. For the moment, all was safe in her world .
. . but safety, as she’d been reminded yet again, was an illusion. She’d felt safe that night two years ago with Greg Marland. She’d felt safe the night she’d nearly died in a garbage-strewn alley.

  She’d relived that night often enough in nightmares and in quiet times. The night she’d made a mistake that could have been fatal. The night her entire life had changed. The night she’d met William.

  Just a little loosening of her control, and she was fourteen again—tall, gangly, forever outgrowing the secondhand clothes Dorotea provided her. That night she’d worn a brightly colored skirt that barely reached her knees and a white blouse stretched tight across her chest. Her dirty white sneakers were worn through over her little toes, but made running easy if it became necessary. She was so good at what she did that it rarely was.

  It was nearing two A.M. on a Sunday morning, but you couldn’t tell it by the activity on the streets. Revelers still wandered from bar to bar, diners sought late-night meals at busy restaurants, and drug dealers and prostitutes sold their wares on corners and in alleyways. No one noticed a scrawny kid who moved swiftly and silently through the shadows. She liked to think she excelled at becoming invisible, but the truth was, she was an urchin, a street rat, unworthy of anyone’s attention.

  She roamed the city at all hours, but night was her favorite. Tourists were easy then—tired, intoxicated on booze, drugs, or plain good times. Bump-and-runs were simple when your mark could hardly stand on his own feet. She’d pocketed a good haul, close to six hundred dollars, and was on her way home when she spotted a mark too tempting to ignore. A fat Latino staggered out of a bar, clutching a wad of cash in one hand, while the owner of the bar stood in the doorway, yelling insults and threats after him.

  She was through for the day, she reminded herself. She was tired. Best to go home and leave him to the mercy of someone else.

  But the roll of money kept drawing her gaze, even after he shoved it into his coat pocket. As drunk as he was, he probably wouldn’t notice a thing. Even if he did, as fat as he was, there was no way he could catch her. She would be safe at home, counting her prize, before he’d wheezed two blocks.

  He lurched to the opposite side of the street, and she followed. When an alley opened a few feet ahead of him, she began walking faster. Just a foot behind him, she deliberately stumbled, crashing into him with enough force to make him stumble, as well. She neatly transferred the money from his pocket to hers, all the while apologizing profusely in Spanish. With the cash safe in her possession, she disentangled herself and turned smoothly into the alley, grinning at her easy snatch.

  Then a hand yanked her hair hard enough to bring tears to her eyes, and she was slammed facefirst into the faded brick wall. Pain swelled through her, and she tasted blood where she’d split her lip, felt it drip from her nose. She blinked, trying to catch her breath, to force the tears from her eyes so she could see.

  All she could see, though, was the brick biting into her skin as a smelly, soft body pushed against her from behind. Sour breath brushed her cheek when the mark pressed his face near hers. “You thieving whore! You think I’m stupid enough to fall for your trick? Nobody steals from me, and sure as hell not some dirty little street trash!”

  Every breath she took reeked of sweat, stale smoke, booze, and her own blood. She breathed through her mouth to settle the roiling of her stomach. If she could wiggle free, get even the smallest of head starts . . . Then she felt his hands on her, searching for his cash, and she stopped breathing, stopped thinking completely. “Please,” she whispered as his dirty hands pawed across her breasts and down her stomach. “No . . .”

  Just when she was certain she was going to be sick, he located the roll of money and pocketed it. Before she could fully appreciate the relief that his hands were no longer touching her, he yanked the backpack from her shoulders. All too aware of the consequences if she went home empty-handed, she spun around and grabbed for it. “No, that’s mine! Give it back!”

  He answered her demand with a slap across her face. She stumbled several feet before hitting the ground, the wall at her back, too stunned and too hurt to move.

  He looked inside the bag, then grinned broadly. “Now it’s mine, you little bastard. To make up for the trouble you’ve caused me.”

  Fear trembled through her. Dorotea understood that sometimes things went wrong, but Philip didn’t, and Dorotea wouldn’t lift a hand to protect Selena from his rage. She had to get that bag back or there would be no place to sleep, nothing to eat, no home to go to, until she’d made up her losses. If she lunged at him, kicked him, gouged at his face and his eyes, surely desperation would give her enough of an advantage . . .

  The mark’s drunken gaze moved over her as he licked his lips, and her blood went cold. Men had looked at her like that before. Philip looked at her like that on occasion, always around the time he began discussing whether she would be of more use to them as a prostitute than a thief.

  “I’m thinkin’ I need a little more than money for my trouble,” he said, his breath coming harder as he reached down to rub his crotch.

  Heart pounding so violently it hurt, she looked desperately for an escape. She wasn’t sure she could get to her feet without help, wasn’t sure she could run once she made it up. She could scream, but no one would come to her aid. Even the stupidest of tourists knew to avoid the alleys in this part of town.

  Still grinning, he moved nearer, and she kicked, her foot sinking into the flab of his belly. She got little more than a grunt for her effort, and he struck back with his own kick. She crumpled into a ball, hugging her middle where the pain was worst, and whimpered, “P-please . . . h-h-help . . .”

  Bending, he grabbed a handful of her hair, hauled her to her feet, and propped her against the wall. His beefy hands ripped open her blouse, exposing her to the hot night air. While one hand groped her breast, he slid the other to the hem of her skirt, yanking it toward her waist.

  Then he stopped. He gave a harsh grunt, and his eyes widened an instant before he sank to the ground, unmoving. She stared at him, too dazed to understand, until she saw the red spreading over the back of his jacket and the ivory knife handle protruding there.

  The trembling started inside and worked its way out. Her legs gave way, and she slid to the ground again, huddling as far from the mark as she could. She heard footsteps but couldn’t move, couldn’t jump and run away, couldn’t scream or do anything but shake.

  Shoes stopped near the body, and long slender fingers slid the knife from his back and wiped it clean on the dead man’s jacket. The newcomer came a few steps closer, and those same fingers reached toward her—clean, uncalloused, with manicured nails—but when she shrank back, they stopped short. Instead, the man crouched, then ducked his head so they were on the same level.

  “It’s all right,” William said in the kindest, most reassuring voice she’d ever heard. “He’ll never hurt you again. No one will ever hurt you again.”

  Eyes wide, fingertips still resting on the pistol, Selena stared into the darkness. William’s promise had been the sweetest words she’d ever heard, even if they hadn’t been true. Greg Marland had hurt her physically, and William himself had hurt her in so many little ways. How much more pain was he willing to cause before this whole mess was over?

  She was afraid she would soon find out.

  “Do you feel as shitty as you look?”

  Tony would have glared at Simmons if every movement hadn’t hurt. Instead, he eased into his chair, removed an aspirin bottle from the desk drawer, and washed down two tablets with a swallow of Coke. “Don’t fuck with me,” he said at last, fixing his one good eye on him. “I’ll have to hurt you if you do.”

  “Christ, Chee, why aren’t you home in bed?” That came from Lieutenant Nicholson, their supervisor. He’d been a cop a lot of years, was the son of a cop and the father of three cops, and Tony’s Uncle Vince’s best friend. No one teased him about that the way they did about the chief, though. Nicholson didn’t cut
anybody any slack. Family, friend, or fuckup—he treated them all the same.

  “I feel fine,” Tony said, straightening in his chair, ignoring his body’s protests.

  “Yeah, right. You get any finer, we’re gonna find you stretched out on a slab in the M.E.’s office. You have clearance to be back here today?”

  “Yeah, Chee, where’s your note from Mommy?”

  Below the desk and out of the lieutenant’s line of sight, Tony flipped off Darnell Garry. “The ER doc said as long as I didn’t have any problems last night, it’d be okay to work today.”

  Nicholson grunted, then directed his next words to Simmons. “Keep an eye on him.” Then his gaze narrowed on Simmons’s own bruise. “And learn to duck, for Christ’s sake.”

  “The guy broke a fucking chair over my fucking head! I didn’t have time to duck!” Simmons made a disbelieving face as the lieutenant walked away. “Jeez, I can’t believe the sympathy I’ve gotten. Let someone break a fucking chair over their heads and see if I give a shit.”

  Yeah, yeah, Tony thought, pretty damned unsympathetic himself. “What did you and Collins find out from Spradlin?”

  “He says only him, Samuels, and Cousin Lewis knew the code to the gate. No one else ever went out there, and everybody who ever met Lewis wanted him dead. He thinks it’s cops doing the killing—make a phone call, set up a meet, then blow ’em away. Crazy fucker.”

  “ ‘Make a phone call’?” Tony repeated. “Did Dwayne get a phone call setting up a meeting?”

  Simmons shrugged. “Pretty boy sent over Samuels’s phone records in case you want to match ’em to what we’ve already got. I put ’em on your desk.”

  Tony opened the folder that topped everything else on his desk. He’d barely had time to register the sheer volume of numbers when Simmons’s voice turned wheedling.

  “After we finished with Spradlin, I went by the hospital to see if you needed a ride home, and they said you left with a woman. An island-girl woman, by the description. You get lucky and forget to tell your partner about it?”