Killing Game
Authors: Felicity Heaton
Tags: #Assassins, #American Light Romantic Fiction, #Murder, #American Light Romance, #Romantic Fiction
| Killing Game | |
| Felicity Heaton | |
| Alinar (2007) | |
| Rating: | ***** |
| Tags: | Assassins, American Light Romantic Fiction, Murder, American Light Romance, Romantic Fiction |
Lily Walker thought true love was real, until she ran away to New York City to be with her older lover, only to find him in the arms of another woman. Desolate, friendless and with nowhere to go, she stands alone in the freezing January rain until the echo of a gunshot reminds her how dangerous the city is at night. In the space of a moment, in the blink of an eye, she finds herself face to face with Cain.
A professional killer, Cain is hardened by circumstance to the point where he no longer feels human. When he drops into Lily's life, she stirs feelings in him that he's forgotten existed. He finds himself wanting to protect her from the dark side of New York City, and even from himself if that's what it takes to keep her untainted by his world.
The trouble is, he can't keep away from her and as he begins to spend more time with her, it becomes more impossible to tear himself away from the girl he's fallen in love with.
Can Cain change his destiny and have the future with Lily that he so badly wants? Will he be able to protect her, or will his feelings for her draw her into the underworld and into danger? When the truth about Cain is revealed, will Lily be able to love and forgive a killer?
Lily Walker thought true love was real, until she ran away to New York City to be with her older lover, only to find him in the arms of another woman. Desolate, friendless and with nowhere to go, she stands alone in the freezing January rain until the echo of a gunshot reminds her how dangerous the city is at night. In the space of a moment, in the blink of an eye, she finds herself face to face with Cain.
A professional killer, Cain is hardened by circumstance to the point where he no longer feels human. When he drops into Lily's life, she stirs feelings in him that he's forgotten existed. He finds himself wanting to protect her from the dark side of New York City, and even from himself if that's what it takes to keep her untainted by his world.
The trouble is, he can't keep away from her and as he begins to spend more time with her, it becomes more impossible to tear
himself
away from the girl he's fallen in love with. Can Cain change his destiny and have the future with Lily that he so badly wants? Will he be able to protect her, or will his feelings for her draw her into the underworld and into danger? When the truth about Cain is revealed, will Lily be able to love and forgive a killer?
Lily stumbled out into the cold dark alleyway, her tears practically blinding her as she tried to escape the apartment building. She grasped her stomach tightly and bent over, dry heaving and screwing her eyes shut as the weight of her muddled emotions tore her up inside. Rain poured down her neck, soaking her thin clothes through in an instant and serving as another painful reminder of just how naïve she was; thinking that the weather in New York in January would be similar to that of her native California.
“Stupid Lily,” she groused and straightened up, smoothing down her clothes in an attempt to smooth out her emotions and suppressing her desire to be sick.
Taking in her surroundings, she shuddered at the sight of the murky wet side street. The orange lights high up on the walls barely illuminated it as the rain poured down on her. Terrifying images from movies flickered into her head and she shook it in an attempt to shift them, not wanting to think about how dangerous it was to be standing in an alley in the middle of the night. She had more pressing matters to attend to.
It was no use thinking about how foolish she’d been to run away to New York for a man, because it was done now and there was no turning back the clock in the real world. She had to face what she’d done and learn to live with it. Her life was inexorably changed. All she could do now was look forward and hope for a solution to this mess she’d got herself into.
Last week she’d hopped a Greyhound out of Los Angeles and had made her way across the country to be with her lover—or so she had thought. Andrew had left her two weeks ago when he’d moved to New York to work in his company’s new head office as the chief executive, effectively ending the somewhat taboo and secret relationship they had been involved in. Lily remembered how deaf he’d been to her protestations when she’d discovered his intention of leaving her to travel to the other side of the country. He’d simply told her that he loved her and he’d see her around.
She’d really thought he’d meant something by that, by those three simple but beautiful words: ‘I love you’.
Tonight, she had surprised him with a visit, wanting to tell him that she felt the same way about him as he felt about her, but when she’d knocked on his door she’d found him with another woman—one a lot nearer to his age.
Turning her face skywards, she closed her eyes and let the large, heavy drops of rain wash away her tears. She wished they could wash her feelings away with them. How could she have been so naïve?
It was easy when you were only seventeen.
The cold water ran down her face, numbing it.
Heaving a sigh, she went to move out of the alley but realized that she didn’t know where to go. The only certainty was that she couldn’t go home. Her father would just throw her straight out again her for what she’d done. They never had been on the best of terms since her mother had died.
Deciding that there had to be a safer place for her than the side street she was standing in, she looked around and finally settled on walking out into the main street and seeing if there were any cafés open in this neighborhood at this time in the morning. She fished around in her pocket and pulled out the few remaining coins she had left. The money she’d taken from home hadn’t stretched far. It had barely got her across the country to New York. She sighed. There was barely enough for a coffee. Closing her eyes, she felt sick with the realization that she didn’t have enough money for a place to sleep. She’d just have to slum it tonight. Hopefully tomorrow would bring her a brighter outlook, and less rain.
She placed one foot down on the fractured and flooded asphalt.
A loud crack like thunder rang out and echoed around the walls.
Lily’s heartbeat accelerated as she froze to the spot.
It wasn’t thunder.
It was a gunshot.
Adrenaline raced through her veins.
Her first instinct was to run, but her feet wouldn’t cooperate. Instead, she stood stock-still and tried to get a fix on the direction the shot had come from. Its echo confused her and the last thing she wanted to do was run towards it. Staring blankly at the long alley ahead of her, she could see a sharp bend in it and she thought it was possible the sound had come from around the corner.
From up above her, the silence was penetrated by the sound of feet pounding metal and then a splash. Lily continued to stare blankly ahead of her, her whole body numb with cold and shock.
“Bollocks.”
The British accented tones roused her, and she turned to see a man straightening up nearby. In the low light, she could just about make out that he was dressed head to toe in black and had disheveled dark hair that looked as soaked through as she felt.
Cain stared at the girl and slipped his right hand behind his back. He noted just how cold she looked standing in the rain and wearing nothing but a halter-top and jeans. It was early January, what the hell was she thinking?
Their eyes locked and their rapid breathing subconsciously fell into synchronization as they searched each other’s eyes. Cain was the first to look away. He could feel the girl watching him as he bit his lip and squinted into the alley ahead of them. He frowned as he assessed the situation and realized that he couldn’t leave her here. It was too risky.
Grabbing her arm, he pulled her in the opposite direction to the one they had been looking in.
“Come on, love, you don’t want to be found anywhere near here.” Picking up the pace until he was forcing her to run alongside him, he tried to figure out if she’d seen what had happened. This night was not turning out well.
At least the girl was running with him. He was surprised she wasn’t putting up a fight. Most girls from this neighborhood would’ve maced him by now. Most girls from this neighborhood wouldn’t be out in an alley at this ungodly hour though. Whoever she was, she wasn’t local.
He ground to a halt by his car where it was parked at the end of the alley, his grip on her arm jerking her backwards. Her eyes widened and she looked at him, and then at his car. He looked at it too. It wasn’t much, but it ran and it was relatively inconspicuous.
“Get in.” Cain opened the door and watched her, waiting to see what she was going to do.
For a moment, he thought she was going to say something, but instead she just slipped in and he closed the door.
He had seen in her eyes when she’d looked at him that she was sparking back into life. He’d at least expected some kind of protest from her, some kind of argument, but she had just taken it all in her stride—or at least that was the way it appeared. He wondered just what had happened to her to make her care so little about all the possible dangers of her situation. He couldn’t imagine anyone in their right mind getting into someone’s car without even stopping to question them first.
He rounded the car and stopped by the trunk. On opening it up, he paused for a moment to give his heart rate a chance to level out and then dumped his Dragunov rifle into the trunk and covered it with the long leather coat he’d been wearing. If she’d seen the gun, he was royally fucked.
He opened the driver’s side door and slid into the seat next to her. Turning the key in the ignition, he revved the engine into life and then tilted his head as he looked at her.
Cain drew his eyes away from her and focused them on the rear view mirror; he could see the blue lights of the squad cars bouncing off the damp walls of the alley.
“Response time is on the up,” he muttered as he drove out of the alley and onto the main road.
* * *
Lily stared blankly ahead of them as he drove, watching the rain in the headlights and listening to the steady squeaking of the windscreen wipers. She was slowly coming around to the reality of the evening, and it was making her feel sick again as she thought about how Andrew had lied to her and used her for the past year, and how she was trapped in a city with no friends, no clothes and no money. Holding herself tightly around the waist, she tried to make sense of what had happened both at the apartment and in the alley.
She hadn’t noticed anything after she’d heard the shot. She’d been too stunned by the events of the evening and when she’d come to her senses, she’d found herself sitting patiently in a dirty old black sports car that looked at least twice her age and staring blankly at the dashboard. A tiny voice inside her had said that she was in a strange man’s car in a strange city in the early hours of the morning, but she’d reasoned with it that she was at least out of the rain, and it wasn’t like she had any other option. Lily swallowed the aching lump of muddled emotions in her throat and took a deep breath.
Her mind felt like a void again as she remembered his tight grip on her arm when they’d been running. It had been the only thing she’d been able to concentrate on. It had felt pleasantly warm. Looking across at him, she caught glimpses of his well-sculptured features as passing lights flashed on it. He looked to be in his late twenties and, from his
grip,
she could tell he was strong.
“You’re terribly quiet. You always like this?” He looked over at her as they sped down Manhattan. It was like a ghost town. The pavements were empty and she’d seen no more than three cars since he’d started driving.
She didn’t answer him. His voice roused her a little more and caused her stomach to tighten up as she looked at her surroundings. She was in a strange city with a strange man, going somewhere, she didn’t know where, and she knew it should scare her.
Only it didn’t.
She felt so numb to everything, so uncaring about anything other than her immediate predicament of nowhere to sleep. All she wanted to do was sleep. Maybe then this would all turn out to be a horrible nightmare.
Cain reached over and touched her shoulder. Her skin was freezing underneath his fingers and some spark of sympathy inside him made him turn the heating on in an attempt to make her a little more comfortable.
“Somewhere I can drop you?” He kept his eyes on the road. They were practically on the Brooklyn Bridge and he hoped she’d answer him this time or he was going to have to just dump her. Either that or take her home with him.
He arched a brow at that thought and tried to dismiss it but it refused to go.
“Anywhere,” she answered quietly. “I don’t have a place to go to.”
She curled up on the seat and hugged her knees to her chest.
Cain gave her a sideward glance and could see how upset she looked. There were tears shining in her eyes as she held herself, curled into a defensive ball on the seat. He couldn’t help feeling for her. He’d been right when he’d thought she wasn’t local. Now he knew that she was a long way from home, with nowhere to go and had obviously had one hell of an upsetting evening.
