Killian: The Hitman’s Virgin

by Alice May Ball

  KILLIAN

  Alice May Ball

  A dangerous encounter

  in the dark,

  A look, a spark,

  The need of a touch, a kiss,

  and so her fate was sealed

  KiLLLIAN

  THE HITMAN’S

  VIRGIN

  Alice May Ball

  © Alice May Ball, TzR Publishing, 2017

  Cover Design by Signs of Desire for TzR Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

  Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, or to any actual events is purely coincidental.

  All the people and places are portrayed in this story are fictional. All characters are over the age of eighteen, and entirely imaginary.

  I LOVE TO HEAR from readers

  Sign up here

  for news, offers, and new releases

  in my readers’ group

  IT ONLY TAKES SEVEN inches of water to drown a man. Did you know that? Actually, you can do it with just a glass of water, long as you don’t mind using your fingers and thumb, and the palm of your hand. You have to hold him still, obviously. Keeping him still is the hard part.

  That’s what I was doing when I saw her.

  Killing a man is not the same in the civilian world. In the Marines, you know that you’re doing the right thing. Legally, you are. A commanding officer says you are. It’s part of a mission. Out in the cold, fuzzy world of suits and excuses, it’s all different.

  The whole family of the Marines will tell you it’s the Right Thing To Do. They’ll back you up. And the law will, too. There are rules but on the field of combat there’s almost always a way around them. However you want to do it, whatever gets the result. Blades, rope, blunt instruments, water.

  As long as you get the job done, accomplish the mission target and you’re golden. The family, the Corps, the Marines, and the whole military establishment are there for you. They’ve got your back.

  More than that, they’ll give you a medal, which is what you get instead of a raise or a bonus. A medal, a commendation, and they’ll line up to buy you a drink in the officer’s mess. Never a hint, not even a thought that you did anything but the Right Thing.

  Doesn’t matter who the target is or even how many. Doesn’t matter how you do it, either. Fast or slow. Sudden, humane and silent, or like a cat when it plays with a ladybug. First a wing. Then a leg. Then a claw through the middle, just to watch it wriggle.

  Outside, back in Suit and Tie Land, back where the world is in bright colors. Flowers, children, pretty secretaries or whatever it is that all of those beautiful birds and butterflies do these days. Back in the breezy Technicolor of Normalton, it’s all different. You kill one greasy, corrupt politician, doesn’t matter who, or how, or why. There’s no medal waiting. They’ll come after you like you’re the most dangerous dog in the world.

  I couldn’t let this fucker go, though. Not only because of the money. I don’t know if I would have done it for the money alone or not. Maybe. Probably. But I found out about him. What I knew about that little girl, that was enough.

  Short, hunching, greedy little fucker with his always-red, doughy face and his beaky stare. His dancing days were done. As of now.

  It was not elegant. Not a work of art by any stretch of the imagination. One hard shove from behind and he went down. Face first into his thick, red rug. In one move I rolled him up in that rug. Groggy, he looked up into my face.

  He knew why I was there. And he knew I wasn’t fucking with him. I wasn’t out to hurt him or threaten him. I wasn’t there to bargain. I’d set a glass of water on the table, ready.

  As soon as I rolled him, face up, looking straight in my eyes, I sat hard on his chest so he was fully exhaled. Grabbed his nose with my finger and thumb. You need good gloves for that. Preparation is everything in this line of work. His mouth opened as he gasped for breath and in went the water. All I needed to do then was to hold his nose and cover his mouth. Hold him and not leave a mark.

  Wrapped inside the rug, he jerked and strained. His eyes bulged bloodshot wide. His heels banged on the wood floor. He struggled for a long time. Maybe twenty-five, thirty seconds. He was wrapped tight and I stayed sat on his chest. He shook violently.

  His eyes rolled. Fast at first. Reaching all around the room for something, anything that could save him. Bless. Then his face reddened and his eye movements slowed.

  After a while he stopped. I still had to wait. That was always the hard part. Knowing that it’s done, but also that someone could come. But you have to give it a couple of minutes. You’ve got to be certain.

  I held the empty glass over his nose and mouth. It didn’t steam up. Then I rolled him back out of the rug. He made an awful choking gurgle. Had I moved too soon?

  The glassful of water gushed out of his mouth. A grating rasp came out with it and the water made a pool on the rug. Next to his still, dull eyes.

  With the gloves still on I squeezed his hand around the glass to get prints on it. It wouldn’t matter they were smudged. I got one solid thumbprint on for security. That was all that I needed. A story for investigators to find and follow.

  The glass rolled across the floor and there it was. The stage was set. A one man play. No action, no dialogue. His position, the water, and the glass told the tale perfectly.

  He took a glass of water and it went down the wrong way. Probably choking, he fell and smacked his forehead. Maybe lost consciousness for a moment. Choked on the water.

  Peculiar? Hard to believe? Certainly. Nothing I could do about that. No suspicious circumstance, though. No evidence. There was nothing more for the autopsy to discover. No cause for an investigation.

  Beary was not a man who would be mourned or too much missed. Satisfied, I got up to leave the mahogany paneled office.

  There was darkness through the doorway. The door was open. It shouldn’t have been. I had not left the door open. When I got up and turned, there she was. Her steady eyes gleamed.

  HE GLOW IN his eyes shocked me. I backed away from the door. My hands flattened against the wall. I leaned back. My feet were wide apart and my knees shook. He was big. Huge.

  His eyes had a fire that I ached to feel. He was strong. Sure. He could do it to me. What he did to Alderman Beary. My breath halted.

  He could have rolled me on the floor. I breathed hard. But I couldn’t get a breath deep enough. I had to stretch and lengthen my neck. Tip my chin up. Heat rose in my chest. Between my thighs. I waved my skirt. For the cool air. Or something.

  He looked hard in my eyes. Something.

  My lips pressed together. I wouldn’t tell. I wanted to let him know that I wouldn’t tell. That I wasn’t sorry about Alderman Beary. That it didn’t matter and no-one would be sorry anyway and I didn’t care who his killer was. I didn’t say any of that. The last part wasn’t true.

  I did care who he was. I cared a lot. All of me cared. My eyes pleaded with him. But he had to go. I thought of trying to get him to take me with him. But I could see that wouldn’t work. Not at all. It would look all wrong. Then people would come looking.

  I looked behind him at Beary, face down like a round bug. A bug on a rug. I had to hold back a giggle. The man understood. Well, he understood that I wasn’t going to give him away. He didn’t have to kill me.

  I wouldn’t have minded. Not as long as he dragged up my skirt, flattened me on the floor, spread me out like a butterfly, and rammed his long, hard cock all the way into me first.

  I looked down and saw that his cock had the same idea. The heat of his body was close enough
that I caught his scent.

  But he had to go. Isn’t it always the way? You meet the killer of every dark dream you’d have never had. Dreams you would have had, if only you’d have had the outrageous imagination. If you had dreamed up a tall, lean, broad-shouldered man. A man with a look like thunder and electric eyes and hands like a surgeon. And a tree trunk in the front of his pants.

  So of course there’s no time. And of course he has to go.

  However much I wanted it, there was no way that I could have him wait. No even for just a while. It wouldn’t do any good to tell the police, Look, he killed an alderman who everybody hated. He won’t do it again, alright? You don’t have to worry. Let me imprison him. I’ll lock him up for you, okay? Keep him somewhere. He won’t kill anyone else, not ever again. Not unless it’s after he’s killed me at any rate. And, from the look in his eyes, I’d say, that could be a long, long time.

  No way to keep him. Oh. My. Fucking. God.

  As he turned to go, I reached out. Just to take his hand. Touch him. I wanted to hold his hand and keep it. He knew that I did. But I knew that just to brush his fingers would have to be enough. I wanted to know his name. Even in my confused swirl of thoughts and sensations, I knew that asking someone their name after you watched them commit a murder is simply not the done thing.

  The tips of his fingers brushed my palm. When his hand slid up my arm and his fingertips grazed along my inner forearm, a bolt of lightning shot off inside me. All of my nerves caught fire at once. For an instant. A sudden, soft tsunami rolled though me. Then it vanished. Evaporated like it had never been there at all. But it left me shaking inside.

  He pulled me nearer. His eyes searched me. Every part of me strained to be in his eyes. His thick lips curled. Then every part of me wanted to be in his lips. On his tongue. In his mouth. I tasted the dark tang of his breath and my head tilted back.

  I wanted to say something. But the only words I knew then were Yes and Please. I watched his tongue slip and press along the bottom of his grin.

  Then he was gone. And I was alone. In a dark, dingy hallway of stale painted office doors. Nobody there was alive. Nobody but me. Me and the echo. I carried that echo inside me for days.

  I could never tell anyone. But I wouldn’t want to. All I wanted, all I wanted ever was that he would come looking for me. He would hunt me. He would find me. Somewhere. Somewhere in the dark.

  Open. Wide. Spread. Vulnerable. Wet and waiting.

  And he could do whatever he wanted.

  Oh. My. Fucking. God. I was shocked at myself. I never even thought in words like those. Even though I spent too much of my free time reading about people who did, it wasn’t like me at all.

  I thought I knew myself. What else lurked under the surface?

  HE FIRST TIME, it’s hard. Like with anything I suppose. And it’s a thing that you’ll never forget. Mine, I was in a little Afghan village. High in the hot hills. Sandy. Kind of place you’d want to go. Get away from it all. Maybe take some of their gorgeous embroidery for yourself. One of those dark red vests.

  Learn to take the local kinds of coffee at one of the little round tables outside a small cafe in the village square. Out in the open. Get pally with the elders who like to sit around of an afternoon with a view of the mountains. Smile and nod. Enjoy the heady, scented air. And the sparkle in the black eyes of the lovely young girls who served the tea.

  Underneath all of those wraps and scarves, with their faces and all of their bodies practically covered up, the spark of a woman’s amusement in a dark pair of eyes is still one hell of a stimulant.

  I remembered seeing a group like that on the edge of the town square. They sipped coffee and bowed their heads together in hushed conversation. An American sat with them, looking out of place. Sitting back in black shades. Thighs apart. Twirling his over-styled black mustache. Like he was there for some darker purpose.

  He had an Afghan scarf on his head and a combat jacket. I didn’t see any insignia. He could have been press, an aid worker, NGO. Anything.

  The way that he looked at the serving girl, I knew I wasn’t mistaken. Her eyes alone were enough to tell the story. There wasn’t a lot I could make out about her under all the robes and the head covering. Her eyes and her frame, though, she looked about twelve, thirteen maybe.

  If we hadn’t been on a patrol, I would have gone over. Asked what he was doing. We were trained that it was important the locals didn’t see us as an occupying force.

  What he was doing, though, it looked like an abuse of power. Exploiting the situation like that. I hated that there were men like him hanging around the fringes of our services. Riding in on the military’s coattails.

  I’d seen enough of the Afghans to know that they were proud, courageous, honorable people, even though they’d been infiltrated time and again by very, very dark forces. I thought that there were ways we could work together with them, that getting to know them, letting them get to know us, would be a way to build a future.

  Those ideas didn’t find much support in camp. Fair enough. Whatever the reasons or the right and wrong, there were plenty of the fuckers out there trying to kill us. And on this day, those were the ones we were out looking for.

  We scurried, scuttled. Low. Weighed down with our packs, dusty, shoulders down, up a back street and through a narrow alley. Looking left and right. Looking twice and once again before you made any move. Near to the target. I knew because it got quiet all of a sudden.

  Nobody warns you about that but when it happened I knew. The sound level just dropped. Made the noise of my boots seem loud on the shale and scrub. That subtle quietening set my nerves on fire. Nearly there.

  It took me by surprise. He came at me out of nowhere. Nearer than he should have been. Bigger than I was ready for. He was about my age. Just a boy, then. But if you’re out to do a man’s job then you’re a man. Ready or not, like it or not. You waste time on a foolish thought, it’ll be your last.

  He wasn’t the target. Just a boy. One of the boys the warlord would have surrounding him. The boy’s eyes were hard and happy. I could see that I wasn’t going to be his first.

  He was ready. Looking forward to it as he rushed me. I had guns, of course. Grenades, stick bombs. A thing called a tactical shovel. You want to make a big mess with speed and neat efficiency, a tactical shovel is the thing you want.

  But I knew, if I made a sound, if he made a noise, we were fucked. Not him. Me and the whole platoon. He knew it, too. That’s part of why he grinned like he did. In that sense, he could only win. He kills me, he wins. I make a noise killing him, he wins.

  And he was pumped, on his way to slay another white invader. So I waited. That’s always hard.

  Same age as me. If our situations were reversed, if he were part of an armed invasion, ‘liberating’ my home town, I’d have waited in a shadow for him. I would have taken everything I’d got and I’d have killed him and all of his evil crew. Killed them all any way that I could and all the ones that came after.

  Got to respect that.

  When he was near enough, I hit him. Hard. Real hard. At the base of his throat. Right above the collarbone. With a short, wide, flat blade. No sound. Only the quiet thump. And the gurgle of his blood.

  He knew what I was about. His grin turned to a smile. Sinking to his knees, he opened his mouth to shout. He would have made all the noise he could. Of course he would. He wanted to save his cell of boys and men from us. Just like I saved us from him and them. All that came out was the gurgle.

  He reached. Probably for a grenade. So I turned the blade. Hard. Robbed him of his attention and hurried him along.

  We got all of his comrades. Took most of them alive. Eight out of the eleven. Afterward, they all had a lot of reasons to wish that we hadn’t. The boy’s father was one of them. I didn’t talk about his son, obviously. But I gave him respect. As the man had given it to me. And he understood.