by Carina Cook
The water came on, lukewarm at best. But it felt great after working himself to shaky-muscled exhaustion. Salty sweat ran down his face as he rinsed off hurriedly, reaching down for the bottle of Head and Shoulders. Dandruff probably wouldn’t show in his light-colored hair, but it was his one vanity. Long and smooth and straight. He went the extra mile to take care of it.
He was just straightening up with a pool of shampoo held cupped in one hand when the vision hit.
They always started the same way. After a disorienting rush of movement, his eyesight would clear, and he’d hear a voice. It said, “They must be stopped.” Over the years, he’d concentrated on that voice, trying to figure out something—anything—about the speaker. Were they male or female? Was it coming from a particular direction? Could he perhaps spot the person who directed him? He’d tried, but to no avail. The voice felt almost mechanical, like someone had made their best attempt at programming a human voice into a computer. It was neither the high pitched voice of a woman, or a man’s deeper tones. It had no accents, except for those vaguely halting mechanical speech patterns. It sounded like it was projected from invisible speakers in the world’s greatest surround sound, only no one else in the visions could hear it but him.
No one could see him either. He’d experimented a few times, trying to call out or tap people on the shoulder, but nothing happened. Oh, he could move about at will, and he heard his own voice, but he couldn’t even see his hands. They passed through anything he tried to touch. He was nothing but an invisible ghost here, only able to watch and listen as the voice picked out his next target.
He took a moment to look around, knowing that the voice always gave him a minute or two to orient himself before the target appeared. He was floating in an airport terminal, right next to a newsstand full of magazines announcing the latest celebrity breakups, advances in space technology, and the newest diet trends which would almost certain contradict all of the old diet trends. Hurriedly, he looked around for some kind of identifying characteristic. Which airport was this? What terminal? The first few times he’d had the visions, he’d spent so much time shouting questions at the voice, trying to figure out who it was and what it wanted from him, that he’d been unable to find the target despite his best efforts. He shuddered as he thought of what had happened afterwards. Finding the targets was his only option.
After he’d floated a ways down the terminal, he saw the signs. Las Vegas International. Terminal B, between gates 5 and 7. He’d have to buy a ticket to get down here, and that would stretch his already tight budget to the limit, but he would make do. What time? A few more moments of searching finally brought him to the departures sign and the time in the corner: 5:47. He winced. Right in the middle of the dinner rush. Jin would let him go—she always did—but he hated to think of what his absence would do to the evening rush. Perhaps he could get someone to cover for him. Or maybe he would luck out and get a delivery somewhere near the airport. He could swing by, do the job, and be back before anyone realized anything was wrong. If worst came to worst, he could claim car trouble. Not the best of plans, but it would have to do.
Hurriedly, he returned to his original spot beside the magazine rack. The voice always picked the right vantage point, and if he wasn’t in the right place at the right time, he wouldn’t spot the target. They weren’t surrounded by amorphous halos or pointed out by floating neon arrows, although he’d told the voice once or twice that it sure would be handy if that could be arranged. Sometimes, there was only one person in his vision, and then selecting the right person was easy. Others, he had to use his wits to pick the right person out of the crowd. That would certainly be the case this time.
No sooner had he returned to his spot next to the stacks of People and Cosmopolitan than a man rushed by. The rushing wasn’t notable—this was an airport after all—but this man kept looking behind him as if expecting pursuit. He wore a nervous, harried expression, and his hands kept clenching and unclenching in what seemed to Vincent like a nervous tic.
“That one?” he asked aloud, knowing that the voice would confirm when he got the right person.
“They must be stopped,” said the voice.
He looked a bit closer, trying to memorize the man’s features. He was in his early thirties at the most, with dark curly hair and the kind of sleepy good looks that women seemed to really like. His dark coloring suggested Greek origin, maybe, or Italian. Vincent thought his clothing suggested success—that watch looked real, and his shoes were the kind of fancy leather that Vincent had never been able to afford. At least not as far as he could remember. Then again, he wouldn’t have wanted those shoes anyway. You couldn’t move in them, and he needed to move swiftly and silently.
The vision began to fade, and he relaxed a bit, knowing that his work was at an end. But wait a minute. Hovering just on the other side of the target was a shadowy figure the likes of which he’d never seen before. He couldn’t make out any details, no matter how hard he tried. The vision blurred at the edges, and he tried desperately to hold onto it.
The voice said, “They must be stopped.”
It had never repeated itself a third time in all the years he’d been doing this. How many times had he had these visions? He hadn’t kept an accurate count, but he figured one or two a month for the past seven years. The voice hadn’t deviated in all that time, no matter what Vincent had done. What did it mean?
“Wait, which one?” he shouted desperately. “The man, or the shadowy figure? I couldn’t even see their face!”
But the vision continued to fade, and the voice said nothing.
“Please! I want to do the job, but I don’t know what it is! Which one?”
But it was gone, and he was back in his body again. Water sluiced over him as he slumped on the floor of the shower, a blue streak on the tile where the shampoo had trickled out from between his fingers. His knee ached, probably from the fall. Usually, his visions came when he was meditating. It felt like the voice had decided to throw him at least one bone. He might be an amnesiac loner with uncontrollable visions, but at least they didn’t come when he was driving. Or showering, usually. But this vision had been notable for a lot of reasons, and the timing was only one of them.
He climbed painfully to his feet and washed his hair with slow deliberation, trying to unpack what had just happened in his head. The voice always spoke right at the beginning of the vision, and then when he looked at the target. Perhaps it meant that he was supposed to target them both? But that would be difficult, since he hadn’t been able to see anything at all about the shadowy figure. It was humanoid, but he couldn’t even tell if it was male or female. And something told him that a wavery shadow figure wasn’t going to be standing in the middle of Terminal B at the airport.
There would be no way to know for sure. He would just have to go to the airport and watch for the target he knew. Then he’d see if anyone was watching the Greek man. If worst came to worst, he’d just start barging into people rudely, waiting to see if his touch would take hold. He’d never had two targets before, but surely no one would blame him even if he was running into people. He could just go up and down the terminal, pretending to be late. No one would realize anything was off about that, even after two of the people he ran into fell over and died.
He stepped out of the shower amidst a billow of steam and wrapped a towel around his slim hipped waist. He couldn’t remember where he came from. Any family he’d once had had disappeared into the recesses of his mind, and no amount of meditation or hypnosis had managed to bring them to light. Searches of missing person’s reports on the internet had turned up empty. He was no one. He was the angel of death, and he would hunt down the people the voice pointed out to them, and his touch would end their lives. If he didn’t do it, bad things happened. His targets would kill or maim or hurt other people. He shuddered again, thinking of the havoc those targets could wreck in an airport. If he didn’t get there in time, if he failed to find the shadowy figure, t
hey could take down an entire plane. All of those lives lost, and he would be—at least in some part—responsible.
His eyes fell on the clock as he stepped out of the bathroom, and he swore loudly. He’d forgotten all about work, and now he was really late. Angel of death or not, he had to make money to live, and Jin was counting on him. She didn’t know what he was, and he would never tell her. But she’d taken him under her wing like he was her own son, and he couldn’t let her down. Even if he didn’t need the money, which he did.
He pulled on a pair of jeans, his legs still damp from the water. They clung to him stubbornly, refusing to be pulled on. Like they knew he was already later than late, and they were determined to make things worse. Jumping up and down did nothing to fix the problem, and it made his knee hurt. He’d probably grow a nice colorful bruise after that fall, but there was nothing to be done about it now. At least the voice didn’t expect him to fight his targets. All he had to do was touch them, and if he happened to try the wrong person, nothing happened except that they often looked at him funny.
All in all, it was a pretty foolproof system except for the fact that he had no idea why he’d been chosen for the job, who the voice was, or who he was. He had no idea how his touch killed. His victims all had heart attacks, but how? He never felt anything when he touched them. No electric shock to stop their heart, or a zap of energy or…anything. He just touched them, and they died. The first couple of times it had happened, he’d been terrified of touching anyone ever again, but it only ever worked on the intended targets.
At least there was that safety net to keep him from messing up. And in this situation, where one of his potential targets was entirely unknown to him, he was going to need it. He finally managed to button his pants and pull on a shirt. Within minutes, he was out the door.
He had things to do and people to kill.
CHAPTER 3
Lara knew her life was unusual. She traveled from city to city, never putting down roots. She hunted down criminals so deeply hidden that sometimes the mortal authorities didn’t even know they existed. She faced down former mobsters like Vinnie Delvecchio, who outweighed her by about 130 pounds and could probably kill her with his pinky finger, and she wasn’t afraid.
She also shot invisible arrows out of thin air and made people fall in love with her, which she had to admit was pretty odd. It made her a pretty darned good bounty hunter, though. She’d only ever met one other cupid in her life, and he’d worked for an escort service, which she found disappointingly predictable. Presumably, her father had been one too, but he hadn’t stuck around to tell her about it. He’d left a letter, and she supposed she was lucky she’d gotten that.
Still, after years of hunting down criminals, shooting them with love arrows, and listening to them scramble to express their undying love while she hauled them off to what she hoped was justice, she felt more than a little jaded. Annamarie would have been flipping out to be talking to the real Tanith Q on the phone, but the most Lara could drum up with a vague sense of amusement. She’d had to go through three different underlings before she could actually speak to Tanith, and her call had been expected and her business urgent. The pomp and circumstance was a little ridiculous, if you asked Lara. But she waited, because that was her job.
Finally, Tanith answered in her strange low voice that had captivated audiences ever since her first single “Love Addict” had hit the charts, with its strange languid beat and rapid fire lyrics.
“You are the bounty hunter?” Tanith asked without any preamble or introduction.
“Yes, I am. My name is Lara Tanaka, and—”
“I dislike the telephone,” Tanith said.
She spoke with the flat tones of someone who was used to being catered and kowtowed to. Like she fully expected Lara to hang up the phone and run across town just because she didn’t feel like holding up a receiver. Lara wasn’t about to put up with it, especially when she was going out of her way to take the job. Her job was dangerous, and she was good at it. Not only were cupids few and far between, but she trained hard to do her work, and she wasn’t about to let anyone order her about just to prove their power, no matter how famous they were.
“You’re welcome to hang up the phone and terminate the contract.” She kept her voice matter of fact, but tried to make it clear that she was more than serious. “I understand that your case is urgent, and I’ve come back from leave early in order to take it. But it can’t be that urgent if you’re not willing to talk to me about it on the phone.”
Tanith sighed, long and drawn out.
“Fine,” she said. “But I do not like to do business with people whose faces I cannot see. I would like to see you.”
Ah. Maybe this was a trust issue more than a power one. That made Lara thaw just a bit. Although she didn’t share the opinion—after all, she regularly put her life in Annamarie’s hands, and they’d never met face to face—she could understand the logic behind it. Some people read faces and body language better than voices. Perhaps Tanith was one of them.
“As I understand it, your assistant left hours ago,” Lara said briskly, “so you don’t have time to waste. I’m your only option currently in Vegas, unless you want to try one of the smaller local firms. I could give you references if you’d like to compare options, but every moment wasted is a moment during which your money and your recordings could get away. I leave it up to you.”
“I suppose you’re right, but I do not have to like it.”
“No, you do not. Would you like to discuss the job, or would you prefer to seek out another vendor?” asked Lara.
“I do not wish another vendor.”
Now Tanith sounded amused, her voice warming. Lara could feel it, deep in her bones, a strange and languid feeling. Was Tanith a supernatural creature of some sort, or did she just have one of those voices that reached right into the listener and grabbed hold? Lara didn’t know, and the files Annamarie had forwarded to her hadn’t confirmed it either way. She didn’t suppose it mattered.
“Very well. I’d like to ask you a few questions, then,” said Lara.
“I answered all of Annamarie’s questions. She should have sent my answers to you.”
“She did, but I wanted to touch base with a few follow up questions. You’re sure Ignazio had no friends or family who he might contact if he was on the run? That seems…strange.”
It seemed more than strange. Lara thought the claim showed deliberate self-centeredness on Tanith’s part, like her employees couldn’t possibly have any lives outside of her employ. It could be true. Maybe she’d taken so much time that Ignazio had lost all contact with the outside world, in which case she couldn’t exactly blame him for wanting to make a break for it. Perhaps if she could persuade him to return all of the stolen goods, she might even let him go in that case. But she wasn’t sure if she believed it anyway. It seemed like he must have someone out there in the world, even if they were estranged.
“I meant what I said,” Tanith claimed with grandeur.
“He had to come from somewhere. He grew up somewhere. You’re telling me he has no Facebook friends and never got a birthday card and never went out after work for drinks?”
“I like you,” said Tanith. “You have spunk and verve.”
“Thank you, but answer the question.”
“Our schedule was such that Ignazio did not have time for many of these things. But you are right. Perhaps he had friends he kept in touch with, but he did not tell me about them.” Now Tanith paused, as if this fact was really sinking in for the first time. “Yes, he likely had connections that he kept from me.”
“Why?” asked Lara.
She didn’t expect an answer, and she didn’t get one. Tanith blew her off with a vague “How should I know?” The remainder of her questions led nowhere either. Tanith knew nothing about his hobbies except that he liked women, but had no steady relationship. Not even after they’d stopped touring and settled in Vegas. Tanith liked to tour, and this month
-long show was the first time she’d stayed anywhere for more than a couple of weeks all year.
In short, Tanith Q was useless when it came to finding her missing assistant, knowing much about him, or anything about his motivations for stealing from her. Lara tried not to leap to conclusions, but she was starting to empathize with Ignazio Balma more and more. She might have lasted about a day as Tanith’s employee before she couldn’t take it anymore. Of course, she wouldn’t have stolen a bunch of stuff on the way out, but she could at least understand the urge to be as far from this self-centered egomaniac as possible.
She was lucky that her years of training kept any hint of her true feelings from her voice. Finally, she excused herself and hung up the phone. As far as useful information went, that call had been a waste. But it did give her some empathy for Ignazio. Perhaps she would talk to him after she found him, and see what she could do for him.
Shaking her head in exasperation, she opened up her computer and began her search for the missing man. He didn’t own a car, so he had to hire some kind of transportation if he planned to leave Vegas. She would start there.
A little more than an hour later, Lara pulled her rental car into a spot in the airport parking garage. Ignazio hadn’t even bothered to try and hide his steps; he’d booked a first class ticket to Maui. It was the move of an egotist or an amateur, and Lara was hoping he was the latter. It would make him easy to locate and less annoying to tolerate after she’d shot him. Raging egotists in love were not pleasant to be around.
A quick call to Annamarie had secured her a ticket on the same flight under a false name. Her plan was simple. Locate him before boarding the plane if possible. Shoot him with an arrow and talk him into leaving the airport together. Suggest a shotgun wedding if necessary. Play up the love at first sight angle, and then take him to a rendezvous with Tanith, arranged by Annamarie. If she didn’t manage to get to him before boarding, she’d strike up a conversation on the plane. Get to him there. That option was much less preferable, because it meant spending some time with him before they could get back to Vegas. She’d have to play adoring girlfriend who wants to save herself for the wedding night, and while it was doable, she didn’t like going there if she didn’t want to.
