Assassin (20 page)

Rain went ahead in her mind, following the path that Cutillo was taking, and set up her shot between two bulbous glowing lanterns. All she had to do was wait for Cutillo to enter her sights again. She kept both eyes open and let the overlapping images tell her exactly when the man walked into the shot. He didn't pause, and neither did Rain, when his eyes passed through her crosshairs.

"You killed my brother, you bastard," Rain mumbled, as her finger squeezed and she saw Cutillo fall to the ground.

Rain watched for another moment and saw the hole just above his left eye where her bullet had tunneled into the hard bone of his skull and then easily entered the soft tissue of his brain. A quick scan down his body showed that there was no pulse in his neck and his chest wasn't moving. She aimed another shot for the heart and pulled the trigger again. Sometimes people survived shots to the head against all odds, but adding a shot to the heart would be pretty much impossible for anyone to survive.

"It was only supposed to be one shot," Case whispered, as she pulled on Rain's shoulder to help her up.

"I wanted to make sure," Rain replied calmly, and quickly collapsed the gun and shoved it into the waiting bag Case was holding open for her.

Case shook her head and handed the goggles to Rain after the tall woman had slung the rifle bag over her shoulder.

"Come on, we've gotta go," Case whispered, and took off into the bushes.

Rain flipped on the goggles and took one last look at the dead man below her.

"I got him, Timmy," she whispered, and then turned to chase after Case's retreating form.

CHAPTER 19

Rain stared out into the darkness beyond the passenger side window. She'd been ordered to strip off the clothing and boots and shove them into a plastic garbage bag in the back seat, as they'd left the scene of her first hit. She'd pulled out clean clothes and shoes from her duffel bag and put them on before climbing back into the front seat. Then Case had pulled over and Rain had taken over driving while Case had changed and then gathered everything together for disposal.

Now, Case was back in the driver's seat and they were headed for a hotel room almost two hundred miles from Cutillo's estate. Case had made the reservation by cell phone, so their room would be waiting for them when they arrived, which would be soon.

The dashed lines of the road had a hypnotic effect on Rain and she spent many long minutes not thinking about anything. The adrenaline high of killing Cutillo, and then making the sprint to the truck, had worn off and left in its place a kind of mild depression. When Rain did actually have coherent thoughts, they were focused on her family.

There were images of her brother, mostly from times spent alone with their mother when they'd been children. Timmy, as she'd always called him, even after he'd told her he preferred Tim, had been seven years old when she'd been born. They'd looked almost nothing alike, his wavy blonde hair duplicating their father's, while her own straight black hair mimicked their mother's. But they'd been best buddies from the first day Rain had been brought home from the hospital.

Rain remembered the often-told story concerning how a seven-year-old Timmy hadn't even asked, he'd just picked up the baby from his mother's arms and held his new little sister.

"Timmy! Be careful," Patricia Raines scolded her son, and attempted to get her baby back safely into her arms.

"It's all right, Trish, he's not hurting her," Dennis Raines tried to soothe his wife's fears.

"But..."

"Timmy, why don't you sit down, so you stop giving your mother a heart attack," Dennis offered as a compromise to them both, and then helped Timmy find a comfortable place on the floor in front of the couch.

"Now, be careful with her head. Her neck is very weak and she has a soft spot on the top that you can't touch, or you'll hurt her," Patricia said, not quite letting go of her nervousness just yet.

"I wouldn't never hurt her, Mama," Timmy gave his solemn promise. "How long 'til she can play with me?"

"Well, it'll probably be a long time," Dennis told his son, knowing time was a fairly new concept for the seven-year-old at this point.

"How long?" Timmy persisted.

"I'd say about another two years and then she'll be walking and talking a little."

"But I can hold her 'til then?" Timmy asked hopefully.

Both of his parents nodded, so he proceeded to make his way slowly to his feet, with a little stabilizing help from his parents, and then walked off with her to his room, apparently expecting to keep her to himself until the baby was old enough to play with him.

Rain smiled at the many times her mother had told her that story. Timmy had always acted embarrassed and she'd laughed at her brother's innocence. But looking back now, she knew how special her brother had truly been. She'd only been five when he'd become a teenager, not turning six until a few months later, but only on a few occasions had he ever made her feel like her following him around wasn't appreciated.

She had practically worshipped the boy. Everything he'd said had been "The Truth" in her eyes and there was very little that could have shaken her faith back then. Even the time he'd gotten caught stealing a pack of cigarettes when he was fourteen hadn't been enough to tarnish her view of him. She'd argued for him against their parents, citing peer pressure from his friends and even quoting from their parents' own lectures about how everyone made mistakes and that was how people learned what not to do.

Patricia and Dennis Raines had been so impressed with their seven-year-old's verbal skills, that they'd shortened their son's grounding from three months to only one, and signed Rain up for testing to find out her IQ. She'd hit genius level and her parents had immediately hired a private tutor to help their daughter put her little super brain to use. She'd skipped several grades that way, so when her mother had died four years later and she'd been sent to a boarding school, she'd ended up being housed with girls three and four years older than she was.

At first, she'd thrown herself into the schoolwork, trying to forget her mother and the rejection of her father, as well as not having her brother there to constantly lean on anymore. Timmy had been in the process of moving out to start his own life when their mother had been diagnosed with the cancer. He'd put his own plans on hold to offer support to Rain, knowing their father was incapable at the time, but he'd only stayed until the funeral. He'd moved out the next morning, really only having a suitcase left to take with him, having already packed his things and taken them away piecemeal to his new apartment over the previous few months.

Rain had been put on a train later that day by their father with barely a word of good-bye from him. She'd kept in touch with her brother through letters and phone calls and he'd encouraged her to work hard in school, which she'd done to the best of her ability. But then she'd received a phone call from her father, telling her that she wasn't to speak with her brother anymore. Timmy had refused to give into his father's wishes and work toward a law degree after finishing at the police academy, and as punishment, he'd been denied access to his sister.

Rain had spiraled into a deep depression after that. At the end of the year, she'd been told she would have to repeat the entire grade, that no amount of resubmitted work or retaking of tests would get her passed on. Her father had finally relented, after being advised by the school's counselors that Rain needed her older brother in her life, and the letters and telephone conversations had resumed.

Then, less than a year later, Timmy had been gunned down. Instead of sending Rain back into a depression, though, it had hardened her resolve to do the best she possibly could in school, just as Timmy had wanted. After learning about the circumstances of her brother's death, Rain had chosen a career in the FBI, but it had been her father that had led her to the psychological foundation she now possessed, though he hadn't intended it that way at the time.

Rain remembered that pivotal conversation, which she'd had with her father the day after Timmy's funeral.

"I'm going to get him," Rain said confidently.

"Get who?" Dennis replied absently from the portfolio he was looking over at the breakfast table.

He would have to call his stockbroker and get him to invest a little more in this particular company; it looked like a gold mine.

"The man that shot Timmy. I'm going to send him to prison and all the people that he works for are going to join him."

Dennis looked up momentarily from the papers and then quickly sent his gaze back to the black and white pages. The older Rain got, the more she looked like her mother, and that blade was still razor sharp in his chest.

"Rebecca, be reasonable. You're fourteen. There's nothing you can do about it. The police will handle it."

Rain's face twisted in disdain at the use of her given name; she'd hated hearing it since the day her mother had died. She'd told Timmy to call her Rain and he'd gone along, understanding what she'd needed from him, and all of her school associates - she couldn't bring herself to call them friends - had said Rain was a cool nickname. But her father had refused to call her anything but Rebecca.

"Maybe not now, but someday. I told you I'm going to join the FBI, so then..."

"And I told you that's not going to happen," Dennis said with finality.

"You can't stop me. What are you going to do, take me out of school?" Rain sneered.

"Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you? And pray tell me, how do you expect to get into such an elite profession, Rebecca, when you can't even keep up with your schoolwork?" Dennis replied with more sarcasm to his child than he knew was appropriate.

"I'll do better," Rain promised quietly and Dennis got the distinct feeling that she wasn't speaking to him.

"I hope you do. And stop all this nonsense about the FBI. You're an intelligent girl; you can be anything you want to be, a doctor, a lawyer, a psychologist. Just get your head out of the clouds and think practical. Go where the money is and you'll be fine."

It wasn't until later, doing research on what an FBI Agent really did, that Rain had seen the one real requirement for acceptance into the law program, which was a J.D., and had added that to her recent discovery of the occupation of profiler. She'd remembered her father's remarks about what he considered to be a respectable profession for her and in their next telephone conversation, she'd told him she'd decided on a career in either law or psychology. He'd gladly promised to pay for her tuition fees as soon as she graduated and he'd made good on that promise two years later.

It was after she'd turned twenty-three and had finally earned her Ph.D. in psychology that she'd revealed to him her true intentions. That had been the last time they'd spoken; she could still hear the dial tone of the cut connection sounding in her ear after her final refusal to change her mind.

He couldn't touch her trust funds, which had been set up before she'd been born and had been released to her when she'd turned twenty-one, but he'd closed every single credit card account, her savings account, and her checking account in the next twenty-four hours, since they'd all been in his name. She'd hardly used the cards, and had only written checks for food and rent, and there was plenty of money in the trust funds that were still at her disposal, so she hadn't missed the money.

But the message behind the acts had cut her deeply and she'd finally lost that last vestige of hope that she might ever have the kind of relationship with her father that she'd had with him before her mother had died. She'd entered the four-month New Agent Training program and had never looked back.

Until now.

The dashed lines were replaced with a single thick white line and Rain looked up to see Case pulling them onto an exit.

"Almost there," Case said, having noticed that Rain had finally come back from wherever it was she had been.

Rain nodded and went back to staring out the window until they pulled into the parking lot in front of the hotel. Case found a spot towards the back of the building and they walked around with their bags to the front desk.

"We have a reservation?" Case prompted the sleepy-looking man behind the counter.

"Name?" he asked.

"Smith, Laura," Case gave the name she'd used over the phone.

The man typed it into his computer and then tried to offer a smile through his tiredness when the reservation popped up on his screen.

"ID?"

"It's in the suitcase somewhere. Will this do?" Case asked, as she passed over a fifty-dollar bill.

The man studied the greenery and then gave a genuine smile as he pocketed the money.

"I'd say it's a close enough likeness. Sign here, please?"

He slid the register over for her to endorse. Case signed the receipt and then paid it, handing over several more medium-sized bills.

She received the keys in exchange and was given directions to their room and then told which floors contained the vending machines. A few minutes later, the two women were dropping their bags by the door and checking out what the room had to offer.

"Hey, you need to call Doc and confirm the hit," Case told Rain, as the tall woman stretched out on one of the beds.

"Now?" Rain asked, looking at the time and really just wanting to go to sleep already.

"Yeah, now. I should've had you call him earlier, but you seemed a little out of it. Just let him know it's you and then tell him the job's done. Then he'll send the money to your account and that should be it," Case instructed.

Rain struggled to sit up and groaned theatrically at the effort it took. Case rolled her eyes and went to her bag to get out her flashlight.

"I'm going to go take a look at the truck. I'll be back in a few," Case informed Rain as the woman pulled out her cell phone and hit the first memory button to make it dial Doc's number.

Rain nodded her consent, or understanding, she wasn't sure which, as the blonde left the room, and then she listened to the phone ring once before she heard the click that signaled the connection had been made.