by Eve R. Hart
“I know you’re a badass and all, but you really should lock your door, it’s just inviting trouble in,” a very familiar voice said and I sat up with lightning speed. “Shit! Since when did you start sleeping in the nude?!” He whipped around giving me his back as if the sight had scarred him.
“The fuck, Silas?!” I growled as I reached for my shirt and slid it on, then found my panties and did the same. “I’m covered,” I said in an unhappy tone once I was decent and standing. “Why are you here?”
“This place is…uhh…real great,” he said sarcastically doing a slow spin and taking in the crappy surroundings.
“You and I both know that I don’t need much. And I wasn’t supposed to be here this long anyway,” I said as I crossed my arms over my chest and narrowed my eyes at him.
It wasn’t that I was mad he was there, it was just that it was weird as fuck. Sure, we’d caught up now and then through the years, but he’d never hunted me down and invaded my space like this. Something was up and I needed to know what. The only thing was, I had no idea what was going on in his head because he was as hard to read as a book in the dark.
“I’ll ask you again, what are you doing here?” I repeated, clearly annoyed.
“I was sitting there, drinking my coffee a few days ago, and I had a gut feeling all of a sudden. So, I tracked you down, and here I am.” He sat down on the chair and crossed his ankles as he put his feet on the coffee table, his black boots speckled with the tiniest amount of mud.
“I’m fine,” I lied. “You can go now.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” he said before a flinch of a smirk crossed his face. “See, I know you better than anyone, and I’d say that right now, you are anything but fine. So, tell me, why have you been here for so long? And why is some mammoth of a beast walking out of your door at an ungodly hour of the day when you are supposed to be on a job and watching your target. Hmm?”
As much as I wanted to lie and make up some excuse, I couldn’t—not to him.
“He is my target,” I mumbled, my eyes going to the floor. I knew I’d failed him, everything he had taught me was the complete opposite of this.
“What?” he roared, shock and anger evident in his voice. His feet slipped off of the edge of the coffee table and his boots made a hard, heavy thump as they hit the floor. The sound echoed through the small space making me flinch an unnoticeable bit. After a long second of watching me, he opened his mouth to speak again. “So, let me get this straight. You have not only made yourself visible to your target, but you have fallen for him? How do you think this is going to end?”
“I haven’t ‘fallen’ for him,” I snapped, throwing my fingers up to quote the distasteful word. It was bitter in my mouth and I completely rejected the idea that he could be right. “And it’s more complicated than that.”
“I’ve got all the time in the world,” he said, his body relaxing back into the chair to prove his point. “Tell me about it then?”
So I did. I told him how I’d taken this job because I was getting nothing else at the time. He already knew about the fiasco of the last, so there was no need to rehash that. Then I explained to him how Noah had come into town and how broken he seemed to be. And I went on about how he had shown up at the bar and how this odd thing began to grow between us. I left out a few details, knowing he didn’t care to hear them, but I was sure he could read between the lines and all.
And when I was done I didn’t feel any better. If anything, I felt even more confused and the dread started to set in deep inside of my chest. A feeling I wasn’t used to and I could definitely say I didn’t like very much.
“I’ve failed you,” I whispered, the words tasting like dirt as they rolled off my tongue.
“No,” he said in a firm tone and my eyes snapped up to meet his. His brow furrowed as his eyes stayed dead set on mine, but his gaze wasn’t on me. It was almost as if he was looking through me as he became lost in his thoughts. “I’m the one who has failed here.”
There was a long stretch of silence and I waited for him to speak first. I knew it would happen, he just had to get his words in the right order, because he and I were much the same. We calculated everything in our lives, down to the last word.
“People like us walk a fine line. I always assumed that you understood what side of the line to lean on.” His eyes came to focus on mine and I could see regret swimming in his deep green eyes. “I may work for the Devil, but I always make sure to bring him the right soul.”
“What the hell does that even mean?” I thought I understood but I was in no mood for his cryptic mumbo-jumbo. I needed some sort of blatant answer to help me through the shit pile I was currently buried in.
“It means, that just because you take a life doesn’t mean you should do it without care. The bad guys, Nadya. You take out the bad guys.”
I could swear I saw flames burning in his eyes. And just like I’d been pushed into deep water, all the air escaped out of my lungs and I couldn’t pull in a breath.
The one thing I’d been missing this whole time. The one thing that I’d never thought about. It hit me then, all the targets—all the people—I’d never taken the time to find anything about their past or their lives. I kept to my plan and learned a little of their day to day life. And while I could pretty much say that everyone I’d killed had definitely had a hand in something less than kosher, I’d never made it a point to make sure of that.
I started to grasp what he was saying. So, yeah, I may work for the Devil, but that didn’t mean I had to tarnish my soul. Sure, being a killer didn’t exactly make me clean, but as long as I was taking the evil out of the world, did that make it wrong? Or was I just like them? Was my judgment somehow just or was I just another demon in disguise?
“Why do you think your last job fucked up?” he asked, snapping me out of my thoughts. “You had that gut feeling and you didn’t pull the trigger. You did the right thing then, and I get that you are paying the price for that now, but that’s how life goes. I’m not saying the world is a better place because you let that fucker live, I’m simply saying that you were dealt a hand and you played the best cards you had.”
There was a long pause as he let the words take root in my brain. I did my best to brush it off and act like it was nothing, but the truth was, I still felt like I’d fucked up. Like I was weak and a failure somehow even though I knew that wasn’t what he was saying. In fact, I understood it was the opposite and I had no idea why my brain wanted to fight against that.
“And then you freak about it, take the only job that was being offered to you, and now you have that gut feeling all over again. Only this time it’s different and you can’t see the end to know what to do. But the thing is, you shouldn’t have taken this contract in the first place.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said.
I finally got it then. Ten fucking years I’d been doing this and I never once stopped to think about it. Closing myself off had been the only way I knew how to survive. The only way I knew how to make it through each job, each day. That was my fuck up.
“Maybe it’s your time,” he said in a heavy tone.
Perhaps he was right. The past few weeks had sent my world into a tornado. Everything was all mixed up and I doubted I’d ever get back to where I was before. But then again, I was didn’t think that I wanted to.
The thing was, once your eyes are open to something, that becomes the only thing you can see.
With the realization right in front of me, I had no way to go but forward. The scary thing was that I didn’t know what that meant for me. I had no idea what a life would be like outside of the one I currently had. Retirement wasn’t a word in my dictionary. I had never given it any thought and while it might have been unrealistic, I kind of just envisioned I’d be doing it forever. Or until it killed me, ya know, because that was always a huge possibility.
“You like him.”
It was a statement, one that I didn’t need to give
an answer to and the longer the seconds ticked on, I realized that like wasn’t even the right word for it. I had this connection to him and what I felt for him was on some strange other level than anything I’d ever felt before.
“Then you should save him,” he said like it was that fucking simple. I snorted and resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Me? I wasn’t one to intentionally save people, ever. I’d never even had the urge to do so. “I think I’ve given you enough for now. See ya around, Nadya.”
I stayed there, my feet seemed to be stuck in place, as he walked to the door and let himself out.
After I was able to pull myself together, I made a cup of tea and settled down in my chair.
With my phone in hand, I felt utterly torn between wanting to check on Noah and feeling like I had no right to. I needed to come clean and tell him everything and then after that, I needed to get us the hell out of here.
The longer the days went on and Noah stayed alive the more dangerous it became. Savage wouldn’t leave me alone for too long. While I got the feeling that he didn’t like to get his hands dirty, I had no doubt that if he was pushed far enough that he would handle things himself. That was something I very much wanted to avoid. Not that I doubted that I could handle it, I just didn’t want to take the chance that something could go wrong. Savage struck me as the type that didn’t deal with not getting his way very well. Case in point, Noah losing his son. I had no doubt it wasn’t a senseless act to Savage. He was making a point and my stomach turned at the thought that Noah’s poor, innocent little boy had paid the price.
Then an odd feeling washed over me. I wondered what Noah was like before his world went dark. And I found myself thinking what his son was like. I imagined his little boy was beautiful and happy. Because, through the little glimpses I’d seen when Noah let go of the darkness, I had seen a caring, gentle, light man. Gentle seemed like such a strange word to describe a man who was so massive, but he was.
A heavy sigh escaped my lungs. His sadness had started to eat away at my soul. I hated that he had to go through this and maybe, in a way, I wanted to save him. I wanted to be the angel he thought I was.
I had no idea why I called Lucy but as her sweet voice filtered through the phone, I knew I’d made the right choice.
“Glad to know you didn’t forget about me,” she said and I knew she was referring to the fact that she had tried to both call and text me since the night Noah had shown up at my door. She’d tried to warn me that he was on the move that night, but I had my phone on silent and was so out of it I didn’t even notice. Then I was just too plain distracted to even check the damn thing.
“I’m guessing since you didn’t answer me and you never called me back that he was with you?” she asked and I could tell she was half-distracted. I made a noncommittal noise in the back of my throat. “How’s it going there?”
“What can I say, I have no idea what I’m doing anymore.” I let out a weighted sigh.
A light laugh filled my ear and it made me smile.
“Not for nothing, honey, but you haven’t known for a while now. I mean come on, this guy comes into your life and your world went all wonky, whether you want to admit it or not,” she said with such ease.
“Okay, fine. Yes, killing him is not an option anymore. So now I need to figure out my next move,” I said running a frustrated hand through my thick hair.
“Why the sudden change? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m all on board for this, but what made you realize this all of a sudden?”
“I, um…”
I what? Fuck. What was going through my brain was ‘I slept with him and then spent actual time with him, talking and shit’ but I couldn’t say that out loud.
“Oh my God! No,” she said in a harsh, shocked whisper. Apparently, I didn’t need to tell her anything because she could read me clear as day.
“Yep,” I said as short as possible. I didn’t want to talk about it and I definitely didn’t want to fuel her overly hopeful, romantic mind. “So anyway, he left this morning and didn’t really say when we would see each other again. Something in his face told me he wasn’t planning on sticking around here much longer, though.”
“Have you watched him since he left your place? Are you just going to let him go? What about this Savage guy? Aren’t you afraid he’ll find out? And what are you going to do now? Did you tell him about, ya know, who you are?” Her questions shot out of her mouth at an impressive speed, it almost seemed like each word blended into the next.
I would have laughed if it hadn’t been such a heavy thing to take in. Because all those questions were the ones I was trying to avoid.
“First, no I haven’t pulled up the cameras. I just can’t. It feels…” I let the answer hang in the air and I was sure she got what I was saying. The more I thought about it, the more twitchy I became. “And secondly, I have no answers for anything right now. But come on, say I went after him, then what? I tell him everything. ‘Oh hey, I’m a contract killer and I’m actually here to kill you. Want to go out?’ I don’t think that will go over so well.”
Because I knew that once I told him everything there was no way he couldn’t hate me. Any sane person would then walk away from me if not try to kill me themselves out of self-preservation. But no person would actually be like ‘yeah, that’s cool. I love you.’
“Oh shit!” Her tone made my back snap ramrod straight as the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. “You’ve got to go! Savage is there now! He’s got him tied to a chair.”
I jumped up and started pulling out weapons from all my hiding places around the apartment. My hands shook as I frantically tried to load myself with as many as I could.
“What’s going on? How many are there?”
“I see five. Not sure if there are any out—” Her words were cut off suddenly and I heard a banging in the background like someone was beating hard on her door.
“Come on, Lucy. Let me in, I’m a little exposed out here, doll,” a strange voice floated through the speaker, sounding slightly muffled like they were yelling from the outside of her apartment.
What the fuck?
Lucy didn’t get visitors unless it was the delivery boy and even then, he wasn’t the type to knock like that.
“I gotta—shit. Uh, can you handle this?” Her voice sounded panicked and I understood the urgency.
It was clear that she had something going on that I wasn’t a part of and now wasn’t the time to even ask. Truth was, I probably didn’t want to know, it more than likely having to do with her work and all. I didn’t give it another thought as I turned my attention to what I needed to do. I had to get to Noah as fast as possible. I had to save him.
“Yeah, no worries. I got this.” With that, she hung up. I could handle it, I just needed to take a breath, calm down, and go in using my head.
I raced out the apartment and down the stairs, strapped to the teeth with guns and sharp implements.
See the thing was, if I had been as calm and ready as I should have been, I would have sensed the guy that took me by surprise as I hit the bottom step. But since I didn’t, he was able to get close to me, and the next thing I knew, pain ricocheted through my head as it hit the wall beside me. The next blow was the one that took me out, my eyes rolling back in my head as my body crumpled to the ground.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Nadya
I came to feeling like there was a jackhammer in my head. I did my best to stay still and keep my breathing steady. If they thought I was still out, I could use that to my advantage.
I didn’t open my eyes to look around but I could tell that there were at least three different sets of footsteps. One heavy. One light. And one skittish, almost like he was shuffling from side to side with a nervous kind of energy. Lucy had said she could see five, and add in the one that got the jump on me, that made six. There was no telling how many might be outside and that made me feel uneasy.
From my slumped over position, I could tell I was
in a chair. My legs were tied to the legs of the chair and my hands were bound behind my back. As slowly as I could, I twisted my hands around trying to feel what I was bound with. Standard handcuff zip ties. I wanted to laugh. I had no doubt that they probably patted me down and took every single weapon they could find, but I could feel the heaviness of my bracelet still around my wrist.
The thing was, sometimes jewelry came in handy. Especially the ones I wore. Be prepared for anything at all times, and I always was.
The only problem I had, I couldn’t get myself free without moving, and moving would alert someone to my now awake state. All I could do was bide my time and wait for the right moment.
“Looks like the big one is comin’ ‘round,” someone said from across the room. His voice was whiny and nasally, it grated on my ears like nails on a chalkboard.
Shit! Shit! Shit! Noah was somewhere in this room. The good thing was, if he was coming to then he must still be alive. I wasn’t too late, I still had a chance to get us both out of this. There was no way I was walking out of here without him. Come of us what may after I told him everything, I was still going to do my damnedest to save him.
“Get another dose ready,” his evil voice rang out through the silent cabin. Savage. The Devil himself. Because there was no other name to call a man that was such a monster. “Get her up. I’m fucking done waiting!” he barked and footsteps hustled across the hardwood floor, coming closer with each step.
“Come on, sweet thing.” I held myself limp and relaxed as he slapped my face. The pounding in my head increased and I resisted the urge to wince. “Fuckin’ wake up, whore!” he spat out as he gripped a handful of my hair and wrenched my head back, and it was all I could do to hold back a yelp.
