Silas (5 page)

CHAPTER THREE

“
You guys have to work this
out,” said Leigh. She was in the living room at my house, twisting
her hands together as she paced.

I was sitting on a couch. It
was later that night. The dinner had kind of fizzled after I got
punched. Griffin had told me that he didn’t want me to be his best
man anymore, and that he didn’t want to look at me anymore, and,
well, it had been ugly.

Leigh was still pacing.
“You’re the best man. He can’t kick you out of the
wedding.”

“
He did,” I said.

“
Well, the wedding doesn’t
work without you,” she said. “There need to be two groomsmen to
balance out the two bridesmaids. And if you’re not there, then
there’s no balance. It’s completely screwed.”

“
I feel for you, Leigh,” I
said. “I really do, but I don’t see why you’re talking to me about
it. Griffin’s the one who made this decision.”

She threw herself down on a
couch. “Well, I can’t talk to him about it. He’s only reacting the
way he is because he’s stressed out about the wedding. I mean, I’m
stressed out, and that makes him stressed out, and then with this
happening... It’s not cool.”

I sighed. “This is why I
don’t see the point of relationships. You guys are constantly
fighting.”

“
We are not,” she
said.

“
Well, you complain about
him all the time.”

“
I do not.” She glared at
me. “I’m not complaining about him now.”

“
You are, though,” I said.
“You want him to not be mad at me so that it will fix your wedding.
What he’s doing is making your life harder. And that’s what
relationships do eventually. They make your life needlessly
complicated and difficult.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh,
whatever, Silas. I can see that I’m not going to have any luck with
you, anyway.”

“
Luck?”

“
I thought maybe if you
convinced Griffin that you weren’t just using Christa, then maybe
he wouldn’t be so pissed.”

“
So, you think it would make
him happier if I wanted to date her?”

“
Yeah,” she said. “He likes
you. You like his sister. That’s a good thing. And I think you’d be
a good boyfriend. I mean, as long as you didn’t cheat on
her.”

I furrowed my brow. “First
of all, I don’t see how it would even be possible to have anything
serious with Christa, because she lives in Texas. Second of all, I
don’t think I’d make a good boyfriend in any way. I’m a freaking
ex-assassin. I’m violent and unstable, and I don’t really function
under a moral code. Third of all, there’s nothing about me and
Christa together that would make Griffin less pissed.”

She got up off the couch and
resumed pacing. “So, you were an assassin? So what? Griffin’s an
ex-assassin. He’s a great boyfriend.”

“
Sure he is,” I said. “I
mean, who wouldn’t want a guy who gets you shot at all time and
teaches you how to torture people and—”

“
Stop it,” she said. “How
can you just bring that up like that when you know how it affected
me?”

Leigh’d had some kind of
psychotic break after she and Griffin tortured and killed Griffin’s
rapist. She hadn’t been okay for months, and she’d been utterly
freaked about it. But Leigh tended to take things like that way too
seriously. I’d tried to explain to her before that she didn’t have
to torment herself, but it didn’t seem to have stuck.

“
Because the more we tiptoe
around that crap, the more power it has over you,” I said, sitting
up straight on the couch. “You need to face your fears, not hide
from them. You’re afraid that you’re some sort of awful person, but
you need to stare that fear square in the face and decide that you
can handle it.”

“
You know, Silas, maybe you
don’t worry enough about whether or not you’re a bad person,” said
Leigh. “I mean, Griffin’s not wrong about the way you usually treat
girls. You’re not very nice to them.”

“
Exactly,” I said. “I’m not
very nice. And I’m okay with it. I don’t worry about it. That’s
what I tried to tell you before. Do you remember?”

“
I remember. I was
worried about the abortion. And you did help me with that.” She
folded her arms over her chest. “But I don’t see how this is
helping me with my current problem, which is that my wedding
is
ruined
.”

I shrugged. “Maybe it’s a
sign. You shouldn’t get married. Making a commitment like that to
one person? It’s craziness. Get out while you still
can.”

She shook her head at me,
looking thoughtful. “Why is it that you’re so against
relationships?”

“
I told you. They’re
stupid.” I leaned back into the couch. “People get hurt. People get
jealous. One person lets the other person down. In the end, it’s
just not worth it.”

She sat down next to me.
“Were you badly hurt in a previous relationship or something? You
used to have girlfriends, right? You told me about the girlfriend
you had in high school who had an abortion.”

“
Sure, I had my share of bad
relationships,” I said. “High school girlfriends included. And,
sure, that’s part of the reason why I swore off them
entirely.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Who
was she, and what did she do to you?”

I smirked. “Nah, there was
nothing like that, Leigh. I wasn’t in love with some chick who
screwed my best friend behind my back or something.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I
don’t know if I believe you.”

“
Look, the thing is, I’m not
sure that human beings are biologically monogamous. For instance,
we seem to have evolved with much larger penises that other
primates.”

She started to get up. “Eww,
I don’t want to talk about your dick.”

I caught her by the sleeve
and tugged her down. “No, just listen, okay? I’m talking about all
human dicks. Proportionately, they’re bigger than chimps, which are
really close cousins to us.”

She made a face. “Chimp
penises? Seriously? What does this have to do with
anything?”

“
They theorize that we
evolved bigger penises to push the semen of competitive males out
of the way.”

“
What?” She looked
confused.

“
Back in the cavemen days,
when we were becoming humans, it seems like it was probable that
one woman had sex with a lot of different guys, and that’s why we
have big dicks.”

She got off the couch,
shaking her head. “But we’re not cavemen anymore.”

“
I’m only saying that the
reason that having a relationship is so hard might be because it’s
not natural.”

“
I don’t know what’s natural
or biological, Silas. All I know is that I don’t want other men. I
only want Griffin. And even when I was sleeping around, I didn’t
find it satisfying. Deep down, I always wanted to settle down with
one guy.”

“
That’s social programming,
though,” I said.

“
No,” she said. “It’s…” She
bit her lip. “Griffin and I have a thing. When I’m around him, I
feel how connected we are. It’s powerful. Haven’t you ever felt
connected to someone? Like you can’t stop thinking about them? Like
you’re just happier when they’re around?”

“
No,” I said. “Not really.”
Out of nowhere, I wondered what Christa was doing right
now.

“
Okay, fine,” she said.
“You’re a lost cause, and you’re not going to make an honest woman
out of Christa by dating her. But you need to apologize to
Griffin.”

“
I
did
.”

“
Do it again,” she
said. “Beg him to forgive you. I will
not
have an unbalanced wedding.” She
swept out of the room, her long, blonde hair
flying.

* * *

I strode through the lobby
of the hotel, my phone at my ear.
“I see
him, Sloane. He’s getting into the elevator, and he’s heading
upstairs.”

“
You going after him?” she
said.

“
Yeah, I’m taking the next
elevator.”

“
The curtains to his room
are still closed. I’m in position, but I can’t see anything. You
make sure you get those open if you want backup.”

We were using the same kind
of setup that we used to use when we worked for Operation Wraith.
Sloane hung back with her sniper rifles. She was on the periphery,
watching everything. She was my insurance policy in case things
went south. I went in up close and personal and did the
hand-to-hand stuff.

I still wanted this to be a
relatively clean operation, but Sloane had been right. I had to
look in Rolf’s eyes when I killed him. It wasn’t going to work any
other way.

“
Got it, sis,” I said.
“Don’t worry.”

She snorted in my ear. “You
kidding? Of course I’m going to worry.”

An elevator door opened. I
got inside, and the doors closed after me. “I’m in the elevator.
Going up.”

Sloane was quiet and so was
I. We were trained to keep the chatter low when we were on a
mission, but back then, we’d had all kinds of state-of-the-art
gadgets to keep us in communication. Nowadays, we had to rely on
cell phones.

The elevator dinged up the
floors, heading for Rolf’s. I’d discovered what floor he was on
from Megan, the helpful work-study.

It halted two floors below
his, and the doors swung open.

A man in a suit peered
inside. “Going down?”

I shook my head.
“Up.”

He waved me on my way. I shut the
doors.

“
What was that?” asked
Sloane.

“
Some guy,” I
said.

“
You think he got a good
look at you?”

“
Sloane, there are tons of
people in this hotel. No one’s going to remember me.”

“
We better hope not,” she
said. “Because you’re in there preparing to commit murder, and you
can go to jail for that.”

The elevator reached its
destination. I strode out into the hallway. “Don’t say that word
too loud. Someone will hear you and get suspicious.”

She sighed. “Someone will
hear me over the phone? I don’t think so.”

The walls were covered in
cream wallpaper, decorated with little flowers. The carpet was
green. I made my way down the hallway.

“
Light just went on in his
room, Silas,” she said.

“
So, he’s only a couple of
seconds ahead of me,” I said. “Good.”

I stopped in front of Rolf’s
doorway. I took a deep breath. “I’m in position. I’m hanging up,” I
told Sloane in a low voice.

“
Affirmative,” she
said.

It was funny how we switched into our
Op Wraith manner of speaking so easily.

I pocketed my phone and
banged on the door. “Room service,” I called.

Shuffling inside the room.
“I didn’t order room service.”

“
Room 214?” I
said.

Then the door was yanked
open. “Silas Drake. What a surprise.”

He must have seen me through the
peephole. That was fine with me. I cocked my head to take him in.
He looked the same as he ever had.

Blond hair caught in a ponytail at the
nape of his neck, a white-toothed smile, thick neck muscles. He was
like a Ken doll. One that liked to shoot people with pump-action
shotguns.

I pushed the door into him and forced
my way into the room.

I darted across the room and
opened the curtains for Sloane.

“
What did you do that for?”
he asked.

“
It’s a nice view,” I
said.

He hit the floor. “You got a
shooter on me?”

I pulled a pistol out from
where I’d kept it at the small of my back. “I got a gun on you,
Rolf.”

“
I got one on you too,
Drake.”

And there was a sharp, ripping pain in
my gut.

I stumbled backwards to see
that Rolf was pointing his own gun at me. It was fitted with one of
Dewhurst-McFarland’s state-of-the-art silencers, which actually
muffle the sound. I’d barely heard the shots.

I returned fire.

He rolled under the bed.

Dammit. Sloane couldn’t hit
him under there.

I hit the floor too, lifting up the bed
skirt.

I got a face full of
bullets.

One shattered my cheekbone. The other
smashed into my nose.

I felt the world closing in
on me. I was going dark. That was what we called it when our bodies
sustained so much damage that we seemed to die for a few minutes.
I’d lose consciousness, and I wouldn’t come to until I was
healed.

I staggered through the
room. I couldn’t go dark here.

It would raise too many questions when
I revived.

I clutched at furniture to
keep myself upright. “You are going to pay,” I managed as I knocked
the alarm clock and the remote control to the floor. “For what you
did to Sylvia.”