Mine's to Kill

by Capri Montgomery

  Autumn pulled on her fitted running pants with the boot cut bottom, her black and pink running shoes, a yellow polka dot sports bra and an ivory tank top. She rummaged through her bag for her sports jacket and found the one she wanted, a pale yellow zip up the front with gathers in all the right places to show off her curves. She brushed her hair back into a ponytail and stepped out from her changing location. He had to still be back in the back room because she would have heard him had he tried to leave without her.

  She quietly walked down the slender hallway, looking at the art on the wall as she went. She got lost in one of the paintings of a man embracing a woman, her face was hidden and so was most of her body, all that showed was leg and arms—naked leg and arms, wrapped around a man that from the back looked very much like the artist himself. The hair, and the angles of his side-turned face told Autumn that Colt had painted himself and he had probably done so with the woman he loved. He was taken, so there, she told herself. There was no chance she would go after a taken man anyway so whatever thoughts she was having about wishing she were the woman in that painting had to go out the window. “My goodness,” she mumbled. “It hasn’t been that long since you had a relationship.” But it had been that long. It wasn’t about sex, or wanting sex, it was about wanting the companionship and love. When she worked with the Homeland team she had friends she could relate to, but that’s all they were—friends. She wanted walks in the park, intimate dinners and conversations that went into the early morning hours when it was still so dark outside that visibility was limited to the reach of the streetlight. She wanted those things, but her job had always taken priority. Her job had always been front runner ahead of her social life. How could she bring anybody into the long hours, crazy schedules and the danger her job brought with it? She couldn’t. No man would want that. What she wouldn’t give for a night at the symphony where she could get dressed up in one of those formal dresses she never got a chance to wear unless she were undercover at some gala event stalking another traitor to the country. She just wanted a night where she could be completely relaxed and feminine without worrying about who she might have to shoot to save somebody else. Given her current position she would say that night was still a long way off. “Maybe when you retire,” she mumbled and then snorted. “Like that will ever happen.” She looked at the painting again and sighed.

  “You are ready.”

  She jumped, startled by the masculine voice. Her eyes widened. He could talk. But he was deaf, she was sure of that. She had studied and learned that deaf people, some who went deaf later in life, still could use their voice, but his was almost as if he wasn’t deaf at all.

  “Too loud?” He signed.

  She shook her head no. “You surprised me,” she signed back to him. He laughed and she would admit she liked the deep tone of his voice, like the G-string on a top of the line cello the man could make her purr with just a few words.

  He continued to sign to her and she wished he would use his voice again, but asking him to do that seemed rude to her so she would stick to his method of choice for communication, besides, he was keeping her on her toes with her own knowledge of signing. She was licensed to interpret so she kept on top of that anyway, but she was a firm believer in the “use it or lose it” mantra and she didn’t want to lose it.

  “I went deaf at twenty-one,” he told her. “I still have my voice, obviously. I had to learn to not speak as if I’m trying to let my voice reach China. It was hard. When I first went deaf I thought if I spoke loudly enough I would hear it, but,” he shrugged. “Such is life.”

  She smiled. “You have a beautiful voice.”

  “I’ve forgotten what it sounds like,” he said. “No matter how long I live without hearing I’ll always miss what I used to hear. I think it would have been better if I were born this way. You can’t miss what you never knew.”

  She wanted to hug him because he seemed so vulnerable, but that was not part of her job and she had to keep things professional. She had to remind herself of that. “Did you like music?”

  “I’m an artist, of course I liked music,” he shook his head at her.

  “You sound like a cello—the G-string to be exact. Can you remember that?”

  He shook his head no. “But I remember what it feels like. My ex-girlfriend, many years ago, she used to play. I spent some time with the cello between my legs even though I never got the playing part down.” He laughed before his face seemed to turn to stone. The ex-girlfriend must have been a bad memory for him because his easy going nature he had just shown her had vanished for a stone wall of indifference.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Of course.” She had her guns secured in different places on her body in case something happened she would be prepared to keep him safe.

  “We should go.”

  She nodded. He wanted to get moving so he could take himself out of the direction their conversation had turned. She would afford him that reprieve because getting to know more about the man would be detrimental to her “business only,” stance. She liked this man. Had she met him at the grocery store she would have asked him out, but the situation was not as such and she had to keep that in mind. Protect him, not bed him, date him or fall in love with him—that was the note she was going to keep fixed in her mind until this assignment was over and then she was going back to her world while he lived in his.

  Chapter Six

  Billy watched the news. There was a witness to the latest crime—he knew that but he hadn’t been able to catch up with the guy before he ran into the police. The identification was accurate, highly accurate—an exact representation of what he looked like which was going to make going around town real difficult. Fortunately he didn’t live in the area and most people in these parts didn’t even have a television set. There was a good thing to living in the boonies, which is why he lived there, but the downside was there were less kills to be had. He had to drive into the city; he laughed at that thought because even the “city,” was smaller than the major cities of New York or California. He could have gone to D.C. and killed until his heart was content, but he had decided on Middlebrooke instead. because the killing would be easier. It was far enough from his home town while still being far enough from D.C. not to draw too much attention before he was ready for it. Timing was everything. He went far enough away to make his kills perfectly untraceable.

  Middlebrooke was perfect and until that night his kills had been perfect. Nobody had seen him. Nobody had been the wiser on why he was raping and killing these men, but they would be soon enough. First he had to get rid of the guy who saw him. He had to kill him because he intruded on his private moment. He had no right to ruin things. Billy always enjoyed the climax of the kill, but that man, that witness the papers were still not talking much about, had ruined everything. He had to die for that. He had to die and once he did Billy knew he could get back to his mission. He could make every man pay. He would make them all pay before he killed them—the bastards were all going to die. He had a list. He had their names. He knew their schedules. He wouldn’t be stopped. He wouldn’t stop. And when he finished here he would move on. He would go somewhere else and kill again.

  “Might have to change your face, Billy boy,” he said. He could find a doctor who would do it. He was sure of that because criminals always had a way of finding somebody who would break the law for a price. He didn’t consider himself a criminal, but he knew the police did.

  He was the avenging angel. He was going to right all the wrongs that they overlooked and let fall through the cracks. Maybe he needed to tell them that. Maybe they would understand.

  He looked at his list. They should have already figured it out. They should have already known why he was taking lives. Their mission was to save lives, but that wasn’t his mission. His mission was always to kill. In a way he was saving lives. He was saving the life of every little boy out there that these bastards couldn’t touch. He knew the way they looked at them, some of
them looked at their own sons that way. He knew that look. He knew where that look would lead. He knew the misery those little boys would go through. Even if those men hadn’t touched them yet they would soon enough and those boys would spend the rest of their life crawling through the hell that was left behind. They would break. They would die every day. He knew it because he had lived it. He was still living it.

  His parents hadn’t even cared. “Father Michael wouldn’t do that,” his father had said. “You lied on him and I’m going to have to punish you now.” That was his justification for taking his leather strap and beating him until his behind bled. He wasn’t lying. Father Michael had touched him in ways he shouldn’t have. He had made him touch him and do things no seven year old should ever have to do. And because his father hadn’t believed him he kept sending him to that church to pay his penance for lying and his penance was always the same—that prick Father Michael deserved a lot worse than what Billy gave him. Leaving L.A. had been a necessity after that. He had castrated Father Michael and nearly lost his breakfast in the process, but he kept it down. He had too because he couldn’t leave a trace behind. He had researched how to get away with murder. He found out soon enough that he could find anything he needed on-line. He used his father’s computer—the private one where he kept all his porn—because it was locked with a password that Billy wasn’t supposed to have.

  Billy laughed. “Worked out for me.” He chuckled as he thought about the look on his father’s face when the cops arrested him for murdering Father Michael. It had been so easy to frame him. A few things from his father’s closet and his favorite knife was all it took. He planted pictures on his father’s computer of Father Michael’s dick. It was real simple seeing as though Billy had spent the greater part of eight years looking at that shriveled up piece of crap the man called a penis. The good Father was so busy getting ready to get sucked off that he didn’t realize what Billy had brought with him. And with those pictures of the good Father’s rosary beads on display with his dick the police put the evidence together and deemed it a crime of passion. His father and Father Michael got exactly what they deserved. His father, thanks to some well saved cash, took a knife in the stomach while he awaited trial from behind bars. “Money,” he said; “it will buy you anything and everything—except innocence.” He would never be able to get his innocence back. He wouldn’t let the same happen to another little boy. He would kill them all. He wouldn’t stop until every child in this country was safe. He wouldn’t stop, and he wouldn’t let them stop him either.

  First, he had to get rid of the witness. He was going to have to find out who it was. The police hadn’t released a name and the press wasn’t at all helpful in his search. They didn’t know either and that angered him. He couldn’t kill the guy if he didn’t know who he was. No; he was going to have to do some hacking—but not from home. He couldn’t risk it. He couldn’t risk having an on-line search trip him up now. He wasn’t done here yet.

  Chapter Seven

  Colt took the first shower while Autumn took the second. He had told her she could go first but she had told him to go on. When she got out she was in another pair of workout pants and a tank top as if she had to be ready to stand up and fight at any moment. He couldn’t imagine what her life must have felt like, to live like death was just a breath away.

  “I’m going to do the rounds again.” She had done them when they got back, walking around the upstairs and then the downstairs and checking everything out.

  “Come with me,” he said as he took hold of her hand and pulled her toward his painting studio and then through to the other side behind the closed doors.

  “What?” She looked at him as he switched on a light that softly illuminated the small room from overhead with several rows of recessed lighting. Then he flipped another switch, pushed a button and the screen lifted displaying a forty-two inch screen that showed the state of his home from point to point.

  “I don’t record this, he signed. “But I do watch when I need to.”

  “You wired your place for video?”

  “I’m deaf. I have to be careful and I won’t know if an alarm has been tripped unless the lights go crazy. The first time that happened it was just an electrical storm that took out the system, but it scared the life out of me. After that I opted for video instead. I can watch from up here; see who’s coming and going. Safety first,” he laughed. “And I’m a bit nosey.” He pointed to direct her attention to the screen before pressing another button that showed the lake area.

  She laughed hard. He could see her laughing. He wished he could hear her too. He wondered what she sounded like. Did she sound as beautiful as she looked?

  She wiped tears from her cheek before turning her attention back to him. She signed, “you should be so glad you own part of that property back there or people might be upset you’re monitoring the lake.”

  “I own it all,” he corrected her. He hadn’t told her that before, but that was all his. He bought it when he bought this place.

  “Wow,” she looked back to the monitor and then to him. “Heaven in a not so heavenly place. It’s beautiful, Colt.”

  “Thank you. So you see, you don’t have to go down all the time—not unless you want to.”

  He saw the look on her face, a mix of shock and heat. She got his double entendre. She was there to work, but that didn’t stop his mind from envisioning all the things they could do together while she was there. And for the first time since Ashley he wanted more than just a night. He wanted to know this woman. He wanted to have her. He would have her.

  Since the moment he saw her his imagination seemed to spring to life. He had gone into his studio and immediately he had a face, a body, and a soul for the woman in his painting. She had become Autumn. Thankfully he was good at hiding his work until he was ready to show it or she would have seen his work in progress when he took her through the studio section of his home and she would have freaked out. He would show it to her eventually. He didn’t have any plans to sell it. He was going to keep this one for himself—something to remember her by in case she didn’t feel the same way about him by the time her time as his protector was up.

  Of course he was setting himself on a mission to show her just why he was worth her time. He knew he had some disadvantages—okay, a major one let some women tell it, but just because he couldn’t hear didn’t mean he was worthless. Ashley hadn’t felt that way about him. She was having fun riding his coattails on the roller coaster of fame. He had done so well for himself thanks to his work during his high school years, but the moment he went deaf and the doctors finally bucked up and told him it was permanent he found out who his true friends were, and who they weren’t. His fiancé had left swiftly after the news he wouldn’t be getting his hearing back—ever, but not before cleaning out his safe. He didn’t even know she had the combination, but she had. Inside she left a note, for all that I won’t have because of you; that’s what she had written to him.

  Did he press charges—absolutely, but she had already blown his hard earned cash in Vegas by the time the cops caught up with her. Fortunately it wasn’t more than fifteen thousand, but that was his emergency stash. He never felt so betrayed in his life. She was supposed to be his wife one day. Eventually he brushed it off. Better now than ten years after marriage, he had said and his family agreed with him. After that he took every relationship as if it was going to be the same way as it was with Ashley. He never got close to anybody. He never wanted to—until now.

  “This will come in handy,” she told him. “Thank you for trusting me with this. You didn’t have to, so I appreciate that you did.”

  “You’re welcome,” he liked her honesty. She wasn’t after anything other than to successfully do her job. He felt a little guilty for the plan he was developing inside his studio—the plan to make sure she would stay after the threat passed. She wasn’t like other women. He could tell that right off. She was smart, and pretty—pretty was an understatement beca
use to him the woman was a goddess. She was also honest. Not once had she tried to stroke his ego. Every word that came out her mouth from the moment she met him, through their run together, and now, had been honest truth.

  She wasn’t going to treat him with kid gloves because he couldn’t hear. She wasn’t going to look at him with pity and she wasn’t looking for his money either. Had she been looking for money she would have treated him differently—that’s what they always did—but not her. No, she seemed to be trying to run away from any feelings of passion they might share. Well, he wasn’t going to let her run. He was going after what he wanted—he wanted her. He needed her. He couldn’t explain it in any other way; he needed her. She made him feel alive. Like the world around him wasn’t just silence and colors; it was real. Good people were real. For the first time, in a long time, his heart wanted to connect with a woman on more than a friendship basis—not just any woman—her. He wouldn’t analyze it. He would paint it—the passions within him, the feelings he was experiencing now with her—he would paint them. He would paint what he felt and he hoped to God that she might come to feel it too.

  She placed her hand on his arm. He knew it was an action done just to get his attention, but her soft, delicate fingers felt so good against his bare skin. He had pulled on a t-shirt with every intention to spend the night painting and he was thankful he had because in a full on shirt he wouldn’t have felt the warm softness of her skin on his.