Dylan (Bowen Boys)

This
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed
as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or person,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

WCP

World Castle Publishing, LLC

Pensacola, Florida

Copyright
© Kathi S. Barton 2013

ISBN:
9781939865915

First
Edition World Castle Publishing, LLC September 1, 2013

http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com

Licensing Notes

All
rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in articles and reviews.

Cover:
Karen Fuller

Editor:
Eric Johnston

Chapter One

The house sat empty for the better part
of the early afternoon, but now there was enough activity going on inside of it
that she wished she’d remembered to bring an extra cell phone with her. Hers
was being used for something far more important than recording the idiots in
front of her. She didn’t move from where she was hidden. If she did, any one of
them could find and kill her. Jack Crosby wasn’t going to die today if she
could help it.

Glancing at her watch, she knew it was
time to move. Pulling out her modified cell phone, she punched in the code to
activate the small chip that hung around her neck. It had been in her head
until recently, and she’d not been made aware of it until she’d gone to a
friend of hers. They’d been afraid that whoever had put it there would know
that it had been found and removed, but apparently not. Now she was doing her
last job for these people.

Dropping to the ground from the tree
she’d been in for over six hours, she stretched a little. Practice had made her
able to stand the lack of movement, but she was still stiff. Moving along to
the alley a street down from the target house, she moved in from the rear. The
house was now as silent as a mouse.

Waiting until the last light was turned
out, she thought about the chip again. Twice now in the past two weeks someone
had set up an appointment for her to come into what they’d all called the shop
and get a physical. The first time she’d missed it, she’d been in another
country. She’d told them that she’d gotten food poisoning and couldn’t make it
back. The next time she had simply told them she was too busy. She had been,
too. She was packing for her move out of the country again…this one permanent. Casey
Snow, a veterinarian by trade and a good friend, had told her that she’d live
longer if she left.

“Whoever put that sucker in you wanted
to know where you were at all times. And now that I’ve removed it, they’re going
to want to put it back. Or maybe decide that you’re too much of a risk now that
you know and put some other piece of steel in you.” She’d laughed, but Casey
hadn’t. “Do you know when they put that in there?”

“I’m thinking when I went to work for
them or shortly thereafter. I had to go in for a physical, and I got my ass
handed to me by one of the big boys when I was told to take him down. Of course,
he was the third one they’d sent to me to show them what I had, but I was out
and woke up in a hospital. The company hospital, not the normal kind.”

Now it had been a few short weeks since
she’d had Casey remove it, and she had been pulled from an assignment in
Germany to come back and take care of a man she knew nothing about. And she was
going in blind. Her assignment had one line and a single picture.

Kill the male and leave the others. Other
what? His wife? Children? For as long as she’d done this work, she’d only
killed one female, and that was because she’d been about to kill her and never
any children. She had refused that from the very beginning. When the small
device in her ear sounded, she made her way through the yard.

The light had gone off nearly twenty
minutes ago. She knew that she was walking into a trap and hoped to Christ that
they didn’t have any idea that she was aware of them. She moved along the fence
line and around the large pool. Jack knelt down in front of the security system
and took care if it with a short break in the line. Moving to the door, she had
it unlocked in less than four seconds. Opening it carefully, she moved into the
house.

The kitchen had a jar of mayo setting
out on the countertop, so Jack reached out and touched it and signaled to her
that it was cold. Moving through the room, she saw that a set of stairs moved
up from the back of the room. Ignoring them, she went through the dining room
and into the living room. There was another set of stairs moving upward which she
took, careful to hang to the outer part of them so that if they were squeaky
she would more than likely miss them. But halfway up, she stopped.

She saw a spot of blood…not a great deal
of it, but enough to let her know that she wasn’t the only one in the house
with her target. It smeared when she touched it with her gloved hand…it was
fresh. Standing there, trying to decide if she’d had enough, she looked up and
saw a shadow pass by what she thought was a window.

Moving up the stairs quickly now, she
shot at the movement to her left as she dropped and rolled. The bullet that
tore through her left forearm had her turning and firing to her right and
dropping that person as well.

Jack moved to the open door, knowing
that if there were indeed any more people there, they’d have to come from that
room. The door behind her exploded when a shot was fired at what would have
been her chest had she been standing. Crawling into the room in front of her,
she left the door opened and moved quickly to the other open door. But she
rolled under the bed when someone came through the door after her.

“Jack, my girl, you might as well come
out. We’ve got the house surrounded.” She didn’t move when she heard the voice
of her boss, Kirby Mann. “I want you to know it’s all your fault that this is
going down this way. You should have left well enough alone and kept to the
program. What did you think when you found that little piece of hardware in
your head?”

Another voice mumbled, and Kirby
laughed. “And so you know, we found your little vet. Too bad about that vicious
attack from that cat she was caring for at the zoo. Tore her up something
horrible. I’m sorry to say she didn’t make it, either.”

The door where she’d been headed moved,
and a light nearly blinded her. She watched Kirby’s shiny shoes as he moved
around the bedroom until he was near where she was. Reaching down to her waist,
she took out the knife and waited. It didn’t take him long to rip the mattress
off the bed and expose her.

“Got you.” She heard the sound of a
close gunshot and moved quickly. New pain in her arm made her breath catch, but
it was going to be the least of her problems if he caught her. When she was
jerked from the floor, she rammed the knife into his face and moved to the
large patio door, firing her gun at them as she burst through it.

The pool was right below her, and she didn’t
hesitate to drop into it. She had a fleeting thought as to whether the cover
was going to tangle over her when several shots were fired at her. Three hit
the plastic below her, and two more caught her. As she landed, she heard
screams and then more gunfire. As soon as the water went over her head, she
blacked out.

Knowing that she’d only been out a few
seconds, she waited, knowing that it would take them longer to come out of the
house the normal way. She reached for the tiny air tank she’d shoved in her
pocket at the last minute when she’d found out there was a pool. Preparedness
was her middle name, and she was glad now that she’d found it in one of the
little out of the way shops she’d visited in town. Lying as still as she could
and using only her feet, she moved to what she hoped was away from the house.

She stopped when she touched the wall
and heard someone speak. She waited, knowing that she was as dead as Casey if
she tried to move now. When Kirby spoke, she knew that she’d hurt him but not
killed him, more’s the pity.

“I want you to get her out of that
fucking pool. And when you do, you’ll have to change her fucking clothes and
drag her fucking ass back into the house. Mother fuck, this is a cluster fuck.”

“Yes, sir, right away, sir,” said a
voice she didn’t know. “I’ve talked to the hospital. They said for you to come
in, and they’ll…you’re going to have to go in for them to remove the knife,
sir. They said if it’s that close to the eye, if you try taking it out yourself
you might lose your whole eye.”

Kirby screamed something she couldn’t
make out, and told the man that she’d fucking stabbed him in the eye, so he was
pretty fucking sure it was gone. “And I’m going to make sure she pays for that,
too.”

The man who answered “yes, sir” sounded
farther away. When Kirby spoke again, she realized that he, too, had moved. Touching
the wall again, she slowly reached up to the side of the pool and lifted her
head to look. No one was looking her way, and the one man who might pose a
problem for her was currently looking in the pool house. Moving now for the
sake of speed rather than stealth, she pulled herself up and out of the water,
and took off running.

She was just getting to the fence, a
large wooden structure, when she was hit again. Her head felt as if they’d hit
her with a steel bat, and she tumbled over into the lawn next door. Turning
toward the house rather than away, she slipped into the doghouse she’d staked
out earlier. Grabbing up the things she had left there, she tore off her wet
things and put on dry clothes. Still dressed in the same fashion but with considerably
dryer clothing, she slipped out of the makeshift changing room and got going.

Her head was pounding when she stepped
in front of the target house again. Blending into the crowd of people that were
gathering from the other houses, she moved across the street. She took off the
chip and dropped it to the sidewalk, where it shattered. She picked up the
pieces and put them into one of the many pockets on her clothing.

Jack moved up the street and toward her
car. She was sick with pain, and dizziness was making her lose her way. Twice she’d
had to back track until she realized at some point she was not anywhere that she
knew. Walking because she knew they’d find her if she didn’t, Jack moved along
houses until they thinned out, then farther out until she came to a wooded
area.

By the time the sun was coming up she
wasn’t sure of much of anything. That’s when she saw the house. It had a light
on in the back and one on the front deck. She made her way there and sat down
on the swing, not really sure how she’d managed it, having blacked out again. She
laid her gun across her lap and closed her eyes. She was going to die; she only
hoped that she lived long enough to be able to convince the person that lived
here to bury her in the backyard and not call for help.

Closing her eyes, she let the blackness
finally take her.

~~~

“I’m leaving now. I don’t know how long
it will take me to clean out my classroom, but once I get it done I’ll come
over.” Dylan looked at his watch. “The longer you keep me on the phone, the
later I’m going to be to dinner.”

“All right, but you’re going to be there,
right?” He told his sister-in-law he would, for the tenth time. “I know you
hate blind dates, but I didn’t know until after Monica told me. I’m so sorry,
Dylan, I won’t do it again.”

He knew she would, and so did she. He
hung up the phone and made his way to the front door. He had had plans to clean
out his classroom for the summer months, to get on his bike, and tour around
for a while. He took a deep breath when he thought of the date he had tonight.
He fucking didn’t want a date. He wanted his vacation. Picking up the two boxes
he had left to throw in his truck, he stepped out into the beautiful June afternoon.
The first thing that hit his nostrils was the scent of blood, and a great deal
of it. He turned slowly to his left when he heard someone clear their throat.