Game of Shadows

by Amanda K. Byrne

  I lean in for a better look. “No.”

  Muttering a curse, he pulls the keyboard toward him and begins a new search. “What I’m more interested in is how you do it in the first place.” He glances over at me. “You don’t look like a cold-blooded killer.”

  This is the part I don’t understand myself. How it’s so easy to switch on and off, easy to distance myself, and know that it’s all waiting to crash down around my shoulders. That if the wall I’ve erected crumbles, I may not survive.

  After the last couple of jobs, the struggle to return to normal college-student, pulling all-nighters and partying Cass, took more effort than it should have. It would have been easier to become the cold, emotionless robot my father is.

  I turn around and lean against the desk. “You don’t look like one, either, but I’ll bet your kill list is longer than mine.”

  He doesn’t. He’s as dangerously hot as Nick, the same dark hair and eyes, same strong jaw covered in stubble, and when he smiles, his dimple winks into existence. It’s disarming, that dimple, and it’s probably melted many pairs of panties. He uses his charm like a dagger, coming up under your guard, and you don’t realize you’ve been taken until the point is buried in your stomach.

  A sneaky reminder I shouldn’t be so quick to trust.

  “Touché,” he murmurs. “What about this one?” He nods toward the screen, and I glance over my shoulder, prepared to give the same answer I’ve given the last twenty times.

  A pudgy, pasty face stares back at me. Wide, guileless blue eyes, dark brown hair without style and in bad need of a trim. Thin lips, double chin.

  “I remember him.” Remember how much he’d thrashed around. I came away with bruises on my stomach from his elbows punching me repeatedly as he tried to free himself. Tying him down had been exhausting. “Overdose.” The amount of heroin I had to score had gone a long way toward convincing me this wasn’t the life I wanted, skirting the edges of pits I was in danger of falling into.

  Constantine stares at the picture. “Fuck. Remind me never to piss you off.” He regards me with narrowed eyes. “There was enough heroin in his system to kill him four times over,” he says quietly.

  “Then don’t request the target die of an overdose.”

  He sits back in the chair. “Don’t you do research?”

  “Only enough to confirm the schedule I’m given and find the best way to get him alone. Insinuating myself into his life would have drawn suspicion, and that’s what I would have had to do to confirm tolerance. My way ensured he was dead.”

  Nick’s been quiet all this time, a laptop balanced on his knees as he sits in a corner of the room. He lifts his head. “Heroin habit? Is that Steven?”

  “Yeah.” Constantine clicks a few keys, oblivious to the earthquake trembling inside me.

  He has a name. Target number six from roughly two years ago has a name to go with his violent curses, the bruises he left on my skin, and the disgusting smirk he laid on me when I cornered him.

  I remind myself it’s not my place to judge if he’s deserving of death.

  He has a name.

  Soon he’ll have quirks and friends and people who miss him and people who despised him enough to wish him six feet under. He’ll be human instead of a number.

  Nick sets the laptop on the floor, rises to his feet, and wanders over to the desk before coming to a stop on the other side of Constantine. Considering he had to veer left to do so, it’s obvious he’s done it on purpose.

  I shouldn’t be surprised. Or hurt. He’s been blunt about his issues with me. But I’m both, and I curl my fingers into the desk, scratching the surface. The guys argue over who would mourn for Steven, who would be smart enough to track me down.

  “Cass? If someone wants to contract you, how do they do it? How do they know who you are?”

  I blink, bringing myself back to the conversation. “E-mail. I’ve never met a client face to face. As for how to find me, it’s word of mouth. You ask someone who might know something or who might know someone who might know something, and it spirals from there.”

  “Alias?”

  I fist my hands on the desk. “Is that necessary information?”

  Nick catches my eye. “If you’re done, does it matter?”

  They’ll find out eventually. “Sydney Bristow.”

  Constantine frowns. “Why is that name familiar?”

  “TV character.”

  He lifts a brow. “Oh. Going for obvious, then.” He pushes away from the desk and drags a hand through his hair. “We’ve got a dead junkie that no one’s particularly broken up over. I don’t see the connection.”

  I cross my arms over my chest. “No girlfriend? Wife? Close family?”

  Nick answers. “Kid brother who thought he walked on water, but he’s not smart enough to figure out how to contact you and pull something like this off.”

  Assumptions will blow this whole business to hell. “It’s the stupid ones you have to look out for. They’ll take you by surprise every time.” The walls are closing in. I don’t like the way they’re watching me, Constantine cataloging every word, every gesture, Nick’s expression icing over until there’s an inch of frost on his skin. I have to get out of here. “I’m going for a walk.”

  “You’re staying inside. It’s too risky.”

  I cross through the bathroom, Nick trailing behind me, and rummage around in my bag, locating Josef’s knife. I hold it up for him to see before tucking the handle in the waistband of my jeans, the blade flat against my spine. “I’ll be fine.”

  I walk out of the room and down the hall, grab Nick’s keys from the counter, and head for the beach.

  * * * *

  I’m frozen. I can’t feel my fingers. I’m sure my lips are blue. The wind cuts through my T-shirt, goose bumps springing up on my exposed skin.

  I can’t bring myself to go inside.

  It’s not working. The push-pull of the water, the billions of droplets breaking apart and reforming, isn’t doing its job. I stare harder at the horizon, the sun a miniscule strip of light growing smaller by the second.

  The faint crunch of sand has me reaching for the knife at my back. My body relaxes when I see who it is. Nick walks toward me, hands in his pockets, hair mussed from the wind. It’ll storm tonight. “Cold enough?” He takes off his jacket and sits beside me, fitting the jacket around my shoulders.

  I nip the edges with my fingers and pull it closer, wallowing in the warmth. “Thanks.”

  The sun sinks into the ocean, darkness creeping in to put out the light. The beach is deserted. We keep our gazes trained on the fading strip of sky, the distance between us mere inches and as wide as the Pacific. “Did you guys make any more progress?” I ask.

  “You walked out before Constantine could show you the rest of the pictures.”

  I huddle into the jacket. “So you don’t think Steven’s brother is involved.”

  “I think you need to come back and finish what you started before we start jumping to conclusions.” He gets to his feet and holds out a hand.

  I shake my head. “I’ll be there in a while.”

  The wind blows a strand of hair over my eyes, stinging them, but they’re clear enough to see Nick’s not moving. He bends over and yanks me up, the move knocking his jacket from my shoulders. “We finish this.” His voice is cold and flat. “Then you can come back out here and freeze.”

  Doesn’t he get it? Doesn’t he understand what he’s asking me to do? “I don’t want to be her anymore.” I thump a fist on his chest. “Every time it’s harder to come back. Harder to care, harder to keep everything separate. I’m either going to end up like my dad, or I’ll be locked up in the psych ward on suicide watch.” I punctuate each sentence with another thump.

  He holds my wrists together to keep me from hitting him again. “The quickest way to move on is to help us. Once we figure out who sent Josef after you and whether it’s tied to the hit
on me, we can deal with the threat.”

  I lower my head to his chest. “At least be honest. You mean eliminate the threat. And whose responsibility will that be?” It should be mine. He shouldn’t have to take care of it for me.

  “Mine.”

  “No.”

  “Cass—”

  “No.” I tip my head back. “There’s a high probability he was sent after me because they know you’re still alive. I took the job. I have to finish it.”

  “Someone in my organization sent him after you. I’ll handle it.”

  More bodies. Either way, there’ll be more bodies. I pull on my hands, and he releases me. Full dark has fallen, and the wind’s picked up even more. Bending over, I pick up his jacket, and he holds it while I thread my arms through the sleeves. I study the sand, searching for answers. “I guess it doesn’t matter,” I say, ending the standoff. “You take care of it, people die. I take care of it, people die. What happens if we work together? Twice as many people die?” Could we pull it off without adding to the body count? The only way I can think to make that happen involves running away with my tail between my legs. It’s appealing since it means there won’t be any more deaths on my conscience. I’ll only have to live with the ones I’ve already taken.

  It also means I might be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.

  “I’m going to have to drop out of school.” Bye-bye degree. Bye-bye normality. It could be years before this cycle ends. I kill someone and there’s a respite. I think it’s over for good and then it happens again.

  “Take a leave of absence.”

  I glance up at Nick. He shrugs. “One of my sisters did that. See if UCLA has any sort of

  leave policy. Leave means you don’t have to re-apply as long as you come back within a certain period of time.”

  A bubble of hope rises and expands. I can put my life on hold for a little while. There’s an end date. I like that.

  “Look.” He steps forward and stops when he’s inside my personal space. Close enough to touch. Close enough to set my body humming. “We don’t have to figure it out this minute. We go back inside, have some dinner, and you go through the rest of the pictures. Maybe something will pop. Maybe Steven will be the only lead we’ll get. But standing out here isn’t going to get anything done. Like I said, we finish, you can come back out and freeze your ass off.”

  He has a point. Also, I’m hungry. I reach for his hand and lace our fingers together, ignoring his jolt of surprise. “This dinner you speak of,” I say, as we head up the beach to the sidewalk. “Would I be the one cooking it?”

  “You saw the extent of my kitchen skills. Unless you want take-out or something completely inedible. Constantine’s worse than me. He can’t even order a pizza without fucking it up somehow.”

  I slide him a glance. “How do you fuck up a pizza order?”

  “I’ll let him show you someday.”

  Someday. Like I’ll be around. With him. Someday in the future. We reach the sidewalk, and the question I’ve been waiting to ask pushes out. “How do you do it?” I ask quietly.

  “Do what?” He rubs his thumb in lazy circles over the back of my hand, the gesture absent-minded enough I think he doesn’t realize he’s doing it.

  I choose my words with care. “You’ve killed. Whether it was justice or because someone told you to, you’ve done it. How do you keep it from crushing you?”

  We dodge a couple of teenagers giggling behind their hands, eyes wide as they stare at Nick. “It’s how I was raised. Always been like that, handling mistakes within the family. You put it in a place you can shut down or cover up, and you go on with your life.”

  That’s exactly what I’ve done. And now he’s asking me to tear down the walls. The admittedly shaky walls, but he wants them gone all the same. “Do you get it? Do you get what you’re asking of me?”

  He stops and turns to me. “Yeah, I do. I wish there was a way around it, Cass. But it’s the only way this’ll end. Otherwise, you’ll never be safe.”

  I slap at a strand of hair. “You’re sticking your neck out awful far for a girl you’ve known a few days. I think we’ve gone past you owe me and are firmly in the I owe you line.”

  He starts walking again, tugging me with him. “Maybe that girl’s gotten under my skin. Maybe she did it the moment she walked up to me and offered to help me out.”

  Maybe his words will squish my poor, scarred, blackened heart.

  “You can fall apart. Later. When this is over, if you want to drown yourself in remorse, regret the choices you made, turn yourself in to the police, whatever you want to do, I’ll let you do it. For now, I need you to hold it together until this shit’s straightened out and no one’s coming for you.”

  I don’t want to fall apart. I want those memories to stay where they are, encased in concrete. He’s also right. I have to hold it together, somehow, long enough to figure out the next move. “We need to go to the grocery store.” I’ll worry about this later. Much later.

  “There’s still food in the condo.” He pulls me closer as we walk around a wagon someone left in the middle of the sidewalk.

  “Yeah, but I want spaghetti. So. Grocery store. And you’re buying.” I bounce up and give him a smacking kiss on the cheek.

  After letting go of my hand, he slips his arm around my waist, fingers working their way under my shirt to brush over my skin. “You know, you’ve never asked me why our age difference doesn’t bother me,” I say, tucking my hand into his back pocket.

  He squeezes my hip. “I’ll bite. Why?”

  It’s my turn to stop and face him, and I slip my other hand into his pocket, palming his ass. “Because it’s hard to relate to guys my age. Hard to relate to any guy of any age, really, who hasn’t seen a lifetime of trouble. Sick, probably twisted, and I can’t tell you the number of times I wish it wasn’t true, but there you go. And I think, if you shut off your brain for a little while, you’ll discover our age gap isn’t such a big deal. The disturbing thing is, we’re more alike than you’d think. Might as well turn a really big minus into a sparkly plus.”

  Before he can think about it, back away, before he can fire off a response he may or may not mean, I rise up and kiss him, using my mouth to silence his doubts. “It’s just sex,” I whisper against his lips. “It doesn’t have to be anything more than that.”

  He kisses me harder, his tongue slipping between my lips. He swallows my moan and eases away with a nip of teeth at my upper lip. “Love, you don’t know what just sex is yet,” he whispers back.

  Oh, shit.

  Chapter 15

  “What’s this?” Constantine pokes one of the bags as Nick sets it down.

  “Dinner.” I shed Nick’s jacket and lay it over one of the bar stools, pull Josef’s knife from the small of my back, and set it on the counter. I move to the sink to wash my hands. Metal clanks as Nick removes the cans of tomatoes from the bags. “Put the meat next to the stove.”

  “You cook? Dammit, Dom, you always steal the good ones.”

  “No stealing involved this time,” Nick says mildly. “She came on to me.”

  I take my time inspecting the selection of kitchen knives. “That was before I realized the error of my ways. He thinks I’m too young for him,” I explain to Constantine.

  His dimple makes an appearance. “I have no problem robbing cradles.”

  It’s a sad, sad day when a wickedly hot guy fails to spark my interest. Under normal circumstances, Constantine’s smile would have made me drool and trip over my own tongue.

  Then Nick happened.

  I take the chef’s knife from the block and sharpen it, keenly aware of two sets of eyes on me. The sound of steel scraping steel always sets my teeth on edge, and I clench my jaw hard enough to see spots. “You two planning to stand there the entire time?” Nick and Constantine are both leaning on the counter, Constantine opposite me, elbows on the hard surface, Nick on my side, the
edge of the counter biting into his back, his arms crossed over his chest. I wave the knife around. “Go do something evil. Take over a small country. Send someone to sleep with the fishes.”

  Constantine’s brow wrinkles as the corners of his mouth draw down. “Are you even old enough to know what that means?”

  I roll my eyes. “Mafia speak for killing someone who turned traitor or otherwise needs to be eliminated.”

  “Yeah, but where’s it from?” Nick drawls.

  The knife becomes the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen.

  He laughs. “Someone’s education has gaps. It’s from The Godfather.”

  Of course it is. “I figured it had to be either that or Goodfellas.”

  “That comment implies you haven’t seen either.”

  I shrug, set an onion on the cutting board, and slice off the ends. “Haven’t gotten around to it. Too many other movies to see. And old TV shows.” Which reminds me I was in the middle of watching one. “Any chance I might be able to access my Netflix account?” I blink away tears as I peel the skin from the onion.

  “Dom’ll set up a new one for you. How are you not cutting yourself?” Constantine’s attention is focused squarely on the knife, flashing under the glare of the kitchen lights. “Last time I tried to cut something up, I ended up bleeding all over it.”

  “Curl your fingers under.” I lift my hand to show the tips of my fingers bent inward to touch my palm, leaving my fingers straight to the second knuckle. “First thing I learned. You have fewer accidents that way.”

  “Trick from your dad?”

  I shake my head. “Mom. She taught me how to cook. Nothing fancy, but she figured I’d eat better once I was on my own if she got me in the habit of cooking. She was right.” I smile, forgetting for the moment how seriously angry I am with her. “When some of my classmates are down to ramen because they’ve blown most of their mad money on take-out, Neese and I are eating actual food.”

  Mom gave me that, and it was fun, sometimes, making dinner, her teasing me about boys, discussing my college plans and the schools I’d applied to, what Denise and I were planning for the weekend. She’d kick Turner out if he ever wandered into the kitchen.