Death of an Assassin (Saint Roch City Book 1) (10 page)

Cold.

That’s the first thing I notice. My senses are only just dancing with the idea of coming back to me, and my body erupts in shudders. I blink and my hands clench on splintered wood.

Cold. I can feel cold.

And it hurts.

“Ya keep her alive, y’hear?” the voice rings again. It’s coming from a nearby blob of gray that I can’t quite focus on.

My body aches. Pain.

Like a drug-addled co-ed, my coherence skips along with all the direction I could want.

Ouchie. Like that time you cut your finger, remember? You cried. And when Mom found out, she punished you.

Two weeks locked in the closet was easy to deal with.

But now, everything is sore. Everything burns.

“Don’t worry. She’ll live.” A deeper voice. Eastern European accent. I focus on that fact, the knowledge, because it’s some sort of foothold.

The burning increases on my arm, and my eyes snap to clarity. My arm pulses with my heartbeat, and I see blood oozing from a slice.

“Ivan sees you are awake. Is good,” the deep voice says in my ear.

When I turn my head, my field of vision is filled with a face even a mother wouldn’t be fond of. A beast of a man with burns up and down his cheeks flashes me a grin of crooked teeth and grime.

I blink, trying to chase away any lingering memories, and concentrate on my current situation. Above, a dim light swings. I’m tied to a chair. And not a comfortable chair. All along my skin I feel the pinpricks of splinters digging into me. My body is bound in almost every way imaginable, and I can only just move to look around the room.

By a nearby door, a man stands, cheeks gruff and a cigarette dangling off his lower lip, only a few cinders from the filter. “Why do ya question ‘em, Ivan? Do they ever answer?”

I open my eyes wide, letting in what little light the room has to offer.

“They always answer Ivan.” From behind me the sound of metal on metal scrapes, making my spine tingle. “Or they lose an eye.” The tip of a blade presses to my cheek, and my skin pops. A warm rivulet streaks down to my chin.

From the doorway, the thug tosses his smoldering cigarette to the ground and steps on it as the thick wooden door swings open.

“What sonofabitch had the balls to―” An older man roars as the cigarette thug leaps out of the way, dodging the door slamming into the wall.

The Old Man looks me over and stops just short of laughing at me. “What’d you guys do, pick up a Girl Scout? Did you bring her cookies, too?”

The thug snorts a chuckle, and the Old Man glares. Ivan grunts as he lifts my rifle to the Old Man. “The girl had rifle. Jessie said she was aiming for Mr. Donahue and family.”

Donahue snatches the rifle from his burly Russian’s hand and inspects it with far more skill than I ever did. He lifts it, bringing the scope to his eye and peering down the barrel.

“Beautiful piece of weaponry.” He levels the rifle at me, and even in my haze, I can see his finger twitch on the trigger. “So is the gun.”

“Sir?” Jessie, the thug who got the drop on me, asks from behind the mountain.

Donahue turns and passes the rifle to Jessie who barely manages to hold it without looking like a kid with an oversize water pistol.

The Old Man pulls over a metal folding chair that looks much more comfortable than mine, sets it up in front of me, and straddles it. He’s a muscled man, much like my new Russian friend, Ivan. But Donahue’s got the face of a movie star. The look of a man who has slept well every night of his life and not had a care in the world.

“Has she told you anything?” Donahue asks, glancing at my interrogator.

“Girl hasn’t spoken, Mister Donahue.” Ivan slaps my bloodied arm with the flat of his knife. “But she will.”

Donahue laughs grimly. “Probably not.” He peers at me and unzips a grin that borders on grimace. “She’s not human.”

Jessie, vaguely attempting to look badass with my rifle, steps forward to look at me like I’m a zoo animal. “She’s one of them?”

Donahue nods. “Sure is. I tell you, I was just a little boy when they started pouring in. ‘Course some of them were here long before that.” He smirks. “But this is our town. Us normal people.” He extends his hand and snaps his fingers to the side of my face. “Listen up, princess. I can make this quick. I can have Ivan here put you out in a few seconds, or I can have him take a few weeks. You tell me the truth. Did you kill my boy? Did you kill Andrew?”

I stare back at him as a sharp spasm of pain spears up my arm from my wound.

“And you came here to kill
me
, was that the plan?”

Despite my extensive training to never give anything up―ever―a snort escapes me.

He watches me with the intent gaze of a hungry raptor. His talons―hands clawed in anger―flex on the chair’s back.

“Well… I suppose that answers the first question.”

“Sir?” Ivan asks.

“She’s here for something. And I refuse to believe my son’s disappearance last night is unrelated.”

He stands and reaches behind his back, then pulls out a pistol. Before I can make out how much this is going to hurt, he’s pressed the barrel to my forehead. My skull vibrates as he cocks the gun, chambering a round to blow through my brain and end it all.

The cold metal pulls away and a flicker of doubt goes over the Old Man’s face.

“Ivan. Find out who hired the little bitch. Then kill her. And be careful. I don’t know what she is, but she’s not human.”

Ivan laughs. “Will be no trouble, Mister Donahue. You will have name by end of hour.”

Donahue grins with the malice of a kid using a magnifying glass to burn ants. “Good.”

he searing pain in my arm marked by the clean cut of Ivan’s knife turns out to be my best-feeling body part before long.

“Mr. Donahue asks Ivan to get answers from you, pretty. Sooner you give Ivan answers, sooner he ends all this.”

With that, he places what looks like the Devil’s remote control to my neck. After a click, my body erupts in agony, electrical current coursing through every part of me.

I’m not ashamed to admit I scream. And piss myself.

Ivan places the Taser down and picks up a pair of cruel-looking scissors. When he opens them, I almost want to hear the metal screech, but the silence of blade-on-blade is what nightmares are bred from. He methodically leans down and starts to cut off my gear. My black tactical vest is really only held on by a zipper and some ballistic lines. He peels that off me, and after admiring it for a moment, sets it aside.

“Mmm.” Jessie smirks as he looks me over, pleased with my less mercenary look. “Ya know, Ivan, I bet I could get her to say a few things.” He leans in, sitting on Donahue’s chair to watch an interrogation/sadist’s wet dream.

My Russian friend lets out a grinding laugh. “Yes. You think Ivan should leave you alone with little boy?” He prods my cheek with my own boot knife, warmth trickling down to my chin. “He will make you wish you were dead.”

Jessie laughs, but I can see his pride is wounded. “I bed more women than you, big guy.”

Ivan smiles before holding my boot knife in his brute hand, slicing my shirt and the skin underneath. “Girl will be too broken before long, little boy. If you want her before Ivan kills her, you should get her to talk.”

“I’ll make her scream,” Jessie says with all the truth of the frat boys and wiseguys that make up my once flawless record.

That’s your cue.

Trying to ignore my injuries, I smile and look up to Jessie. “I bet you can.”

Ivan backs away and looks me over. “How girl is doing that?”

“Doing what?” I look up at Ivan and force out a sniffle.

Jessie is silent as he watches.

“Girl had darker hair before.” Ivan holds my knife to my skin, and despite my blood loss, the look of the burly man wielding a four-inch blade amuses me to laughter.

He’s not wrong. I can tell by the spark in Jessie’s eyes and the fidgeting that he prefers blondes.

With pouty lips.

And blue eyes, of course.

I sniffle. “I’m sorry, someone else put me up to it!” I start to cry. I don’t have to pull out my tears often, but when I do, they’re award-worthy.

Jessie watches my faux confession and nods in agreement. He looks at me with equal parts heartbreak and lust. A very disturbing―but common―appearance in my life. “It’s okay. Ivan will stop, won’t you, big guy?”

Ivan looks incredulous between the two of us. I imagine it’s not often someone like him gets to watch the intricate dance of predator and prey. I smile at Jessie, ignoring the behemoth beside us, and try to force what little blood I haven’t spilled to my face. Rosy cheeks. Full, crimson lips. His mouth parts just enough to let me know my hook is in.

“Ivan will not stop until girl says who pays her to kill Mister Donahue.”

Once I’ve pinned my prey, elaboration is really unnecessary. There’s no need to sink a separate hook once you’ve caught the fish. “But I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to hurt anyone!” I cry, the warmth spreading across my face refreshingly not blood.

“Tell Ivan, witch!” The beast of a man lurches toward me with the knife.

Jessie launches up from his chair and grabs the curved butcher’s blade from Ivan’s table of instruments and swings it at the man. Ivan grunts as the blade sinks into his shoulder. “What is Jessie doing?” He may as well have been bitten by a mosquito.

Jessie reaches for the next largest blade on the table and turns to Ivan, but before the knife can find a home in the torturer, Ivan swings a fist and grabs Jessie around the neck.

“You will not hurt Ivan again, little boy!” Ivan shakes his fist, and with a sickening crack, the thug who bested me earlier in the night falls limp. Ivan flexes his hand and several more pops and crunches follow as he drops the lifeless body and turns on me.

“What is this power, witch?” he bellows. He reaches up, and with a wet
thunk
pulls the butcher’s blade from his own flesh and levels it at me.

I stare at him and sigh, fidgeting in my own chair. “What are the odds that Donahue’s torturer is gay?” I ask in annoyance to no one in particular.

Ivan stares at me dumbfounded, his face showing the shock at my guess―the only explanation for why he’s not cutting my bonds to try to have me all to himself.

He opens his mouth, but before he can utter a word, Jessie’s body crackles audibly.

Ivan and I both glance at the lump of a man as the electrical static noise grows louder and voices begin to fill the room.

“Contact! Contact! Contact!”

From somewhere beyond, gunfire splits the night.

“Who’s shooting?”

“Where is it?”

More blasts from guns. The pops of pistols.

“East wing! East wing! Can’t get a lock on it, she’s moving too fast!”

She?

Ivan leans down and fishes a radio from Jessie’s coat pocket, and he fiddles with the knob.

“She’s not going down. No… no!”
A shriek of pain. Choking sobs. Then nothing.

“Dodgson, get a grip!”

The repetitive booming of what I think is a shotgun.

Moments of thick silence pass, and I fidget, trying to escape my ropes. Ivan stares intently at the radio, but I know damn well that no assassin ever had the pleasure of experiencing a rescue mission. Whatever hell is being unleashed past the four walls of my interrogation room, it’s not to my benefit.