“You have a fucking knife? Why didn’t you say so?” Her tongue felt heavy and thick in her mouth, but the pain seemed to leave her alone for a moment as her adrenaline began to kick in with the glimmer of hope. “But I’m not breaking your hand. What good would you be one-handed anyway?”
“You’d be surprised.” But he didn’t ask why, instead he looked at her. She could feel his eyes on her from the darkness. She had seen his grey eyes before and she could picture them now. Searching, wary, but lacking in some way she couldn’t define.
She ignored his words and she ignored those eyes. Taking a deep breath she brought one leg up onto her chair, and then the other. She squatted as if she meant to spring up but instead she leaned forward, taking care not to throw too much weight forward lest she face planted on the concrete floor. She pushed her butt up, making sure it cleared the back of the chair, then as slow as she could move, while maintaining the balance of the chair, she lifted her left leg up and leaned her head down between her feet. The chair rocked forward a bit as her body weight shifted, but it fell back again as she cleared the back of the chair and with one foot still on the seat, it rocked backwards just in time to be caught by her clear foot. The front legs lifted up, and the back legs of the chair skidded forward, making a quiet scraping sound as the legs scratched against the floor. Kira moved carefully as she lay the chair down at an angle between her legs and then lifted her other foot off of the seat and pulled it behind the chair as well. Then she was holding the chair in front of her as if she were merely carrying it from one end of the room to the other.
“Impressive. If I had both my hands I’d clap for you.” His tone seemed different to her somehow, tighter perhaps.
“Fuck off. So where’s the knife?”
“In my boot.” He lifted his left leg.
She narrowed her eyes. “They didn’t frisk you?”
“Of course they did. False heel.”
She nodded her head. It really was quite brilliant. She had never heard of people taking their captives shoes, but she certainly would, in the future. Kira walked the chair over to him and grabbed the heel he placed on her chair as if she were going to tie his laces. She grabbed the heel and pulled it down and away from the toes of the boot. It slid out and around and the smallest black handle, no more than three inches long, was nestled in the crevice. The blade of the knife ran through a slot that reminded her of a sheath. It disappeared in the sole of the boot and under his toes. She pulled the blade out and though it was small, it was sharp and the cold metal seemed to shine in the gloom.
She angled the blade upward in her palm while he rolled over and she cut his binding on one hand and then dropped the blade. She held her breath for a moment as a sudden fear gripped her.
What if he doesn’t cut me loose? What if he knows?
But her fear was unfounded. The hitman took the blade and cut his remaining bind and after rolling his wrists to get the blood flowing, he flicked her binds apart with the blade. She eased the chair to the floor, remembering that there were people up above. She examined her wrists. They were raw but otherwise unharmed.
“Thanks,” she said, moving her gaze from her wrists to his face. She stifled a gasp. He was battered near to a pulp. She couldn’t find an inch of his face that wasn’t bloodied or bruised. She remembered he was a handsome man, his cold grey eyes piercing. She couldn’t even see his eyes now; so puffy were the lids above them and the cheeks below them. His nose had definitely been broken and his teeth were caked with blood.
He grunted and turned away from her. “You’re not looking too great, either.”
She felt her face and winced. He was right. She had definitely taken a beating as well. Kira watched his body limp towards the stairs. She couldn’t believe he was walking in that condition. His every breath was a wheeze.
“You know, maybe we can go out the window over there.”
He stopped walking, one foot on the staircase. She saw the back of his head turn and look at the slender window that lined the upper basement wall, just above ground level. He looked down. “No. I have a promise to keep.”
Kira looked at him as he walked up another step, and then she looked back at the window. She wanted to run, regroup and figure out how to exact her revenge. She was sure she could slip out of the window undetected. She certainly didn’t want to be anywhere near the dangerous assassin when he found out her role in his present situation. Quelling the urge, she swallowed and followed him up the stairs. When they reached the top they paused. The assassin placed his ear against the door and listened for footsteps. He held the knife in his hand, his elbow extended for a quick thrust if he needed it. They stood there on the top steps, the darkness hiding everything except for their shallow breathing. After a few heartbeats, he placed his hand on the doorknob and tried to turn it.
“Locked.” He whispered. Then he took the blade and pressed into the door jam where the bolt nestled into the wall and blocked their exit. In one fluid motion he brought his other hand down like a club and punched the blade into the jam, popping the door open. Unfortunately the hit on the lock made a loud cracking noise with a metallic twinge.
“Shit,” Kira said in a quiet hiss.
“Come on.” He swung the door open and the light of an adjacent room temporarily blinded both of them. Their eyes adjusted to the new light quickly though and Kira noticed they were standing in a kitchen. There were rooms that curved around on either side and she had the feeling they were in the back of the house. The assassin held one hand in front of his eyes as they fought against him, but he didn’t pause. He walked immediately to a small kitchen knife that lay on the counter. Scooping it up, he felt its weight in his hand and then put a finger to his mouth signaling for Kira to remain quiet.
As if I don’t know to be quiet.
The hitman placed his head around the corner and Kira watched his body drop into a cat-like crouch. She crept along behind him, her breath still coming in shallow rasps. Her body was running purely on adrenaline, and for the moment she forgot the painful bruises and splits in her face. When she peered around the killer she saw why he had assumed that posture. About six feet away, lying prone on the sofa, was the man from the mall who pretended to be a cripple. The hitman took a step forward but Kira grabbed him by the arm. She didn’t want him going over there and being the only one of them armed. If something happened to him, she wanted to make sure she had protection too. She pointed at the kitchen knife and waved for him to give it to her.
He hesitated but handed the blade over then continued a silent walk over to the cripple. Kira swung out wide of the two of them towards the foot of the sleeping Russian. She glanced out of the corner of her eye into an adjacent room and saw the front door of the house. But her attention snapped back towards the man when she noticed he slept with his gun on his stomach and his hand on the gun. The hitman circled up towards the man’s head and Kira waved a hand towards him. He looked over at her from over the man’s head. She mimed pulling a trigger and pointed at the man’s lap. The hitman nodded his head and then continued his silent approach.
When he was a few inches from the man, he moved so quick his hands blurred in Kira’s vision. One moment the man was asleep on the couch and the next a thin red line seeped from his throat and his eyes widened as if some nightmare became his last reality. The hitman had a hand over his mouth, not that it would have mattered. The blade severed half of the Russian’s throat. His feet kicked on the couch, not in resistance so much as a sputtering end to his nervous system. Kira watched the cushions turn to red underneath his shirt and the hands that alternated from trying to pull the hitman’s hands off of his throat and attempting to stem the flow of blood from the crevice in his neck.
But she barely paid attention to all that.
She watched the assassin’s eyes. Or they watched her, rather. The grey orbs flashed in the dark and as the blood drained from the face of the man on the couch, his gaze never left hers. He cocked his head and Kira shra
nk from his stare. She wished he would stop looking at her like that.
“What?” she whispered.
He didn’t respond but grabbed the gun off the dead man’s chest. Somehow most of the blood missed the weapon, but it still fell in silent puddles in front of the couch. Grabbing the gun with one hand, he pointed up at the ceiling with his knife. Kira nodded understanding. He walked to a staircase that led upward in the other room. She followed him but cast a wary glance at the unguarded front door a dozen feet in the opposite direction.
Why did he look at me like that?
Part of her wanted to bolt out the front door and down the street. But she couldn’t. Her feet followed the assassin. He tucked the knife in his belt which held up a pair of pinstripe pants that must have looked nice half a dozen beatings ago. His torso was stripped down to his blood stained wife beater, revealing dark purple bruises on both of his shoulders and biceps. Even as injured as he was, Kira couldn’t help but admire his muscles in the dim lighting. Even simple movements revealed the strength in his corded limbs.
He looked nice too, half a dozen beatings ago.
If she hadn’t hated him so much she might have had a twinge of regret. Instead, she looked again at his bruises, as they ascended the stairs, and smiled. At the top, a hall ran perpendicular to the stairs.
The hitman paused and leaned on the wall of the stairwell, angling his body as best he could to see around the corner, and kept the gun pointed in that direction. Not seeing anything, he silently crossed the hall and checked the other side. When he was sure it was clear as far as he could see, he climbed the last step looking left and right. He pointed Kira to the left and he turned and began to creep towards the right. Kira followed his instructions and held her knife in front of her like a blind man’s cane, probing the gloom.
Fuck this, I’m turning on the light.
If anyone awaited her they would have been able to hear her breathing from a mile away. She glanced along the wall and could vaguely make the outline of a white light switch.
If they can’t hear me breathing they can definitely hear my heartbeat.
It seemed to knock against her chest with desperate ferocity. Holding the knife in her left hand, she groped to her right for the light switch. She forced herself to keep her eyes forward. She tried to see into the dark but she couldn’t make out anything much further than a foot in front of her face. The hair on the back of her neck began to rise upward and Kira lunged towards the light switch and flicked it on. In the second before the bright light blinded her she saw him.
The large Russian from the mall crouched in the hall. He had a lead pipe in his front hand and his other flew to his face, shielding it from the abrupt light. Kira shielded her eyes too and tried to bring her knife to bear, but the man sprang forward and pushed her into the wall. Her body bounced off it with a hollow thud and she fell to the floor onto her knees. The air left her body and she gasped when her lungs tried to pull on air that wasn’t there. Still shielding her eyes with one hand, while she supporting herself with her free hand she looked up to see the hitman peering into a dark room at the end of the hall. The Russian ran towards him, his feet falling heavy on the second story floor.
Why isn’t he turning around?
She tried to call out but her throat caught her voice for a moment. Still the Russian charged and still the hitman didn’t turn around to confront him. She forced herself to gulp in oxygen and her lungs expanded allowing her to wheeze, “Rafael!”
Still he didn’t turn right away. “Rafael!” The Russian closed in. He raised the lead pipe for a vicious baseball swing, lining up the assassin’s ribs as if it were tee-ball practice. He brought the pipe around in a ferocious hack, but the assassin ducked into a roll that sent him sideways and forward, just out of reach of the metal club. He spun and sprang into a crouch against the hallway wall and pointed the barrel of his gun at the man. The Russian was too fast though and pulled an incredibly rapid back swing that knocked the gun from the assassin’s hand as the pipe smacked against his flesh.
The hit might have broken the bones in Rafael’s hand if he hadn’t gone into another sidelong roll, sending the pipe glancing off of his arm and into the plaster of the wall. The momentum of the miss threw the Russian to the side and left his ribs exposed. He grunted and tried to pull the pipe free of the plaster.
The assassin came out of his roll, slipped his blade free and lunged up and under the mans armpit, sending his knife in between the rows of the Russian’s ribcage in two quick jabs, his free hand holding the larger man’s bicep from pulling back. Rafael Rontego pulled the crimson blade out again, trying to angle for a third thrust but the Russian’s adrenaline seemed to shield him from his fresh stab wounds. He threw his arm wide, swinging his elbow for Rafael’s head.
Rontego ducked, avoiding the elbow by a narrow margin, but the swing served its purpose, allowing the large man to drop the pipe and grab Rafael by his collar. His muscles bulged, and despite the dual rivers of blood streaming from under his arm, he lifted the assassin clear off his feet and threw him into the wall just above the fresh hole from his backswing. Plaster fell down in clumps and a painful stream of air hissed from Rafael Rontego’s nose. He hung six inches from the floor, the Russian holding him aloft with one hand still clutching his collar. The other jerked upward and clasped the assassin by the throat.
Kira tried to stand up but her body was slow to react as her lungs struggled to comply. She stumbled to her feet and staggered sidelong into the wall. Her shoulder propped her up as she made her way towards the assailants. Rafael’s face turned a bright red that looked to be creeping towards purple. Somehow he managed to look at Kira and the Russian followed his gaze.
The assassin took the distraction. His hand still clutching his black-handled blade, he brought it up and shoved it into the Russian’s forearm. The blade went in clean, slicing through the skin and shredding muscle and tendon as it scraped past bone. Rafael let it go, his strength clearly fading with the last vestiges of oxygen clinging to the inside of his lungs. He struck out at the Russian with his boots, one caught the man in the groin but it just caused him to tighten his grip around Rafael’s purple neck.
The knife poked through the bottom of the Russian’s forearm, blood trailing out from the puncture wounds in his torso, but he leaned his grizzled face back and laughed. “Little man. You die now. Little man.”
Kira continued her slow creep along the wall, her lungs finally pulling in the air she needed. She crept up behind the Russian, his eyes focused on the now gasping assassin. She lifted the blade with her left hand, and with her right she pressed the hilt against her palm. She knew she would need all the force she had in her small frame if she were to have a hope of succeeding. She inched forward, behind the mountainous shoulders of the Russian. They bobbed up and down as they contained the struggling assassin. For a moment, Rafael’s bulging eyes shifted over the man’s shoulders and made eye contact with Kira. Her breath hitched as she thought it might alert her target. She recoiled, prepared to thrust. In a low crouch she held the pose and waited to see if he would turn around. He didn’t.
In one quick motion, Kira sprang forward. Her aim was true and the knife plunged into the base of the Russian’s skull. The knife slipped past vertebrae and severed the spinal column where it met the brain. For a second the Russian twitched and then he dropped the assassin completely and fell to the ground. His large body thumped on the floor in a heap. Rafael fell on top of him gasping for breath. Tears rimmed his eyes and mucus hung in strands from his nose. He rolled off of the Russian, who lay there unblinking, but very much breathing on the floor. He was on his side and Kira pulled her knife out and rolled him onto his back.
Still his chest moved up and down in spasmodic motions.
She glanced at Rafael. The color seemed to be normalizing in his face but dark bruises lined his neck. “Are you okay?”
He coughed and looked up at her, “What took you so long?”
“R
ight.” She looked down at the Russian. “Let’s get out of here before anyone comes back. What should we do about him?”
“What do you mean?” Rafael looked confused but his grey eyes didn’t leave hers.
“Should we leave him there? It’s not like he can tell on us.” She nudged him with her toe to emphasis the point.
Rafael wrinkled his eyebrow at her. Unblinking grey eyes.
“We end it quick. Whatever he’s done, he’s a soldier. Unless he has information, which thanks to you he can’t divulge, he gets a soldier’s death.” He pulled the blade from the large man’s forearm. Even as he yanked the steel clear of his arm, Rafael didn’t take his eyes off of her. When he stooped over the Russian and pulled his blade across his jugular, still his cold grey eyes would not deviate. A spray of blood speckled Rafael’s face and still the eyes didn’t blink. The Russian’s breath became a gurgle and in the silence of the hall it echoed between the two still among the living.
Then all became quiet.
When the man lay silent on the floor, the assassin finally broke his stare. He shut the Russian’s eyes with his fingers and wiped his blade off on the dead man’s shirt. He picked up the gun and slipped the blade back into the belt of his pants. Then he rifled through the man’s pockets; found a wad of cash and a set of keys. He shoved the cash in his pocket without even counting it. He turned from her and began to walk towards the stairs.
“Where are you going?” She stepped over the body in the hall and hurried towards him.
“Anywhere but here.” He reached the steps and started down. “I saw a car through the blinds parked in the drive.” He swung the keys he extracted from the pockets of the dead body laying in the hall. “What do you think the chances are that these start it?”
“Shouldn’t we burn the building or spray ammonia on the blood?” The last thing Kira wanted was to leave a trail of evidence behind.
Buffalo Soldiers (An Upstate New York Mafia Tale Book 2) Page 14
