by Linda Barlow
Unexpectedly, the Target turned toward him. “I want to know who hired you. Was it Christian? Did you also murder his wife by forcing her car off the road?”
He ignored her questions. There were too many details to consider. “Turn back toward the shower and put your hands on top of your head.” He was obsessing over the logistics. Getting the hands out of the way was a problem. Hands were all too useful at breaking a fall. He’d have tied them behind her back if there hadn’t been too much of a risk of leaving marks.
“Dammit, I want to know! Is it Isobelle? She’s the only one I can imagine who stands to gain by my death. Is this how badly she wants Power Perspectives?”
“Shut up.”
“Go to hell—I’ve got nothing to lose!”
“Yeah, you do. You can die easy or you can die hard. Doesn’t matter to me. We got all the time in the world, you and me. You think I’d do this work if I didn’t enjoy it? I kill women and I like it.”
She had a really nice ass, he was thinking. She was brave, too. Breathing fast, trembling, but no more tears. Funny how often women were actually braver than men. Lotsa guys would have been whimpering and babbling before this.
“What do you want from me?” she said.
He smiled. “Just the satisfaction of a job well done.”
“You get that by killing people?” Her tone was scathing.
“It’s not personal,” he said. But he was lying. It was personal. And he really would have loved to take his time with her, forget all about this accident crap.
In the front of the apartment, a door slammed.
Morrow went rigid.
“April?” a voice called out. “Hey, April, are you home?”
Shit!
As April screamed, “Kate, no!” Morrow understood. It was that damn kid! She must have a key.
He was on her before she could scream again, his arm around her neck, his hand jammed over her mouth. He lifted her out of the bathtub—she wasn’t light, but his muscles were highly trained—and dragged her to the bathroom door while he engaged the lock. She was struggling so he doubled up his fist and hit her just under her left cheekbone. She went limp but he didn’t think she was totally out.
So much for not leaving marks.
He laid her down on the floor, where she moaned and drew her legs up into a fetal position. Only two choices now—abort the job or kill them both.
“If there’s any problem, cut your losses and get out,” the client had said. “This has got to be convincing as an accident. One murder investigation is bad enough.”
Damnation. This would have been a beautiful murder, too. He’d been about to take her. He wanted to take her. Even now the temptation to take her was almost impossible to resist.
Her eyes flicked and came open. She was dazed, but conscious. And she was lovely. Slender and naked, with that thick mane of hair, those clear blue eyes. He wanted to watch the life ebb from those eyes. He wanted to look into them, and understand the mystery lurking there on the edge of eternity.
The rope was still around her ankle. One economical move and it could be around her neck.
Chapter Twenty-nine
It was the sound of Kate’s voice that brought April back. Absolutely sure she was going to die and hoping only that it would be over fast and wouldn’t hurt too much, she had felt trapped. It was like being trapped under a thin layer of ice on a frozen pond. She could still dimly see the world she loved, but she was too paralyzed with cold and with fear to break through.
But letting go of her own life was one thing. Allowing a twelve-year-old to join her in death was something else entirely.
And so she’d screamed. He, the killer, had hit her, hard. She was amazed that she was still alive.
Where was Kate? Had she heard? Had she run from the apartment? Was she even now notifying security, calling the police?
“April?” the girl’s voice called out tentatively, from the hall.
The rough hand clamped over her mouth again and April felt tears come into her eyes. Her head was hurting, especially the left side of her face. Her body was weak; she wasn’t sure she could move or make a sound.
She looked up into the killer’s face—really saw it this time so she’d never forget it—and saw him looking at her naked, vulnerable body, and she read something in his expression that she couldn’t put a name to—something unspeakable.
And she knew she couldn’t allow Kate to be exposed to the evil that was lurking here.
She managed to get a hand free, and somehow she curled her fingers around his arm. She tried to indicate with her eyes that she wanted to speak. That she understood the need for quiet. That she would not scream.
He understood. It was odd—it was as if there was a bond between them. She could face that evil. She could address it. Maybe she could bargain with it.
He lifted his hand a fraction of an inch from her mouth. “I’ll get rid of her,” she whispered. “She hasn’t seen you. She doesn’t know you’re here. She’s just a child. Don’t hurt her, please.”
Utter silence between them. Then, slowly, the killer nodded.
April rolled over clumsily and got to her knees. He stayed with her, holding onto her shoulders, her hair. Like a lover, she thought. Like Blackthorn…
“I’ll make an excuse,” she said, low. “I’ll tell her to leave.”
“Do it,” he said, sounding indifferent. “But be careful. Screw up and the kid’s gone.”
She believed him. She had looked into his eyes. If he had ever had a conscience, it was gone.
April reached for the knob of the bathroom door.
*
Kate thought she’d heard April yell something at her, but she hadn’t been able to make out what she’d said. She hesitated on the threshold of the doorway that led back down the hall to the bedrooms. What if she had a boyfriend in there?
The idea that April might have a lover stopped her cold. She was pretty enough, but having a lover would mean she wasn’t interested in Daddy. And since April was Daddy’s last hope to become a decent human being, Kate didn’t like this idea.
She wondered if her breakup tactics would work better on April and her boyfriend than they seemed to be working on Daddy and Daisy Tulane.
What could she do? She really wanted to talk to April. She wanted to tell her that she’d searched at least part of Granddad’s place last night before being caught, and that she hadn’t seen any sign of the missing diskette.
She heard low sounds coming from the bathroom. She shook her head. What were they doing in there? Taking a shower together or something? It was kinda odd. April’s voice had sounded funny, too.
What if something was wrong? Kate’s imagination started working overtime. What if it was the killer? What if he was here, in the apartment? What if he had April?
Don’t be silly, she told herself. The last time she’d thought such a thing, it hadn’t been the killer at all.
Still, hadn’t it been “No!” that April had shouted?
And how come she hadn’t said anything else?
Kate looked at the entryway and then at the archway leading into the kitchen. She hesitated for a moment, then dived into the kitchen. Something was wrong. She could feel it.
The phone was there and she could call 911. She grabbed the receiver, looking around the small kitchen for a place to hide. There was none. She punched in the numbers and heard the call go through and the ringing sounds but no one answered. She’d read articles about it—there were so many 911 calls in the city that nobody could answer them all. Sometimes it took twenty minutes to get through…
“Kate, is that you?” April called out from somewhere down the hall.
Kate’s heart stopped pounding quite so hard. “April, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Kate. Just busy at the moment, that’s all. I’ve got a friend here. You’ll have to come back later, okay?”
She did have a lover, Kate thought. God, adults were all the same. It was really disg
usting.
“Police emergency,” came a voice on the telephone.
“Oh, sorry,” Kate mumbled. “Never mind.”
“You see, she’s leaving,” the Target said. She and Morrow were listening at the door to the bathroom. His gun was at her throat.
He heard the kid call out, “Sorry to have disturbed you. I’ll come back tomorrow.” She sounded both sarcastic and disgruntled. Christ, teenagers were rude these days. Oughta be taught a lesson, all of them.
They heard the front door to the apartment slam.
“She’s gone,” his victim said.
“Maybe, maybe not.”
She was looking at him in some alarm. “Didn’t you hear her leave?”
“Shut up.” He stood and jerked her roughly to her feet. “She better be gone. We’re gonna go check.”
He pulled her out, still naked and dripping wet, into the hallway. Staying behind her, one arm around her throat, he forced her to walk down the corridor toward the living room. Physical evidence all over the damn place now. He couldn’t believe this had turned into such a fucking mess.
Stay flexible, he ordered himself. There still might be a way to pull it off.
“How’d the kid get in, anyhow? Did you give her a key?”
The Target shook her head. “She must have gotten it from Rina.”
“She just pops over anytime she feels like it?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“Almost got herself killed.”
The Target shivered. No way she could hide it, pressed against his body the way she was. Naked, vulnerable, and about to die.
Morrow felt the power, savored it, held it close. He could see, feel, taste, breathe her fear, and it thrilled him. Better than sex. Killing had always been better than sex.
This was fucked up, but he was enjoying it anyway.
He knew a guy who’d once told him that his days as a professional assassin were numbered because he loved the killing too much. He was probably right. You had to be crazy to enjoy this. Morrow worried, sometimes, about being crazy. And about going to hell.
On the other hand, at moments like these, both madness and hell seemed a small price to pay for his pleasure.
He forced her into the living room. They could see that the door to the apartment was securely closed. At least the kid hadn’t left it standing open, for any fool to wander in…
Now what? The kitchen was a good place. Lots of lethal objects in a kitchen. He was thinking fast, being creative—
Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he detected a slight motion. It was coming from the kitchen. As he swung around, bringing the muzzle of his gun with him, reacting faster than thought, he saw—Jesus—he saw a head—
April screamed as his finger squeezed the trigger. The recoil jerked them both. The silencer deadened the sound to a pop, but it felt wrong—he’d aimed too high—he’d aimed for an adult. Goddamn it, this must be the kid—the brat hadn’t left, after all…
Then Harrington had pulled herself free somehow and now she was digging her fucking teeth into his arm, his shooting arm, and she was screaming and the kid was screaming and he got off another shot. The kid’s voice was cut off in mid-shriek and the Target started shouting “No-No-No!” and everything was chaos. He was swinging the gun toward her when she suddenly jabbed her fingers into his eyes. Then he was screaming in pain and rage and the bitch cracked his kneecap with her foot and he felt his fingers losing their grip on the gun. He heard it fall and the fire in his eyes was unspeakable and he slapped out viciously at her and knocked her off her feet. But he couldn’t see the gun and she was probably going for it and he thought, the bitch’ll kill me for sure if she finds it. She was yelling, “Kate-Kate-Kate!” but there was no answer from the kid. Shit, it had all gone wrong.
Morrow remembered where the door was and backed towards it. The pain in his head was so bad he wanted to vomit but even more he wanted to get out of there before she shot him, before she did hotly what he so coldly had done for years…
He found the door with his hands and pulled it open. The Target was on the phone, sobbing into the receiver. “She’s been shot, she’s unconscious, please come quickly!”
He stumbled out into the corridor. He couldn’t believe it. The kid hadn’t left after all, and the bitch had blinded him.
Chapter Thirty
“She’s going to be okay,” Blackthorn said. He hung up the phone and gave April the latest news from the hospital. “The charge nurse says she’s got normal EEG activity, no significant brain swelling, and that her vital signs are good. She’ll have a headache, she’ll have to take it easy for a while, but she’ll be fine.”
“Thank God,” April whispered.
They were downtown in the precinct police station, taking a brief break from the whirl of official questioning that had begun the moment the cops had shown up at April’s apartment. One of the two officers who had responded to the initial call, Janice Flack, was the same cop who’d come with a different partner to April’s apartment when it had been broken into two weeks before. On Rob’s insistence, she’d called in a couple of detectives from the city homicide department. Marty Clemente, meanwhile, was on his way down.
Blackthorn hugged April, but he could feel the numbness in her body. He dragged his hands through her hair, smoothing it back from her stricken face. She shook her head slightly, and he knew she didn’t want him to touch her too much. He sighed and backed away.
O’Brian, one of the homicide dicks, called them back into the interview room.
“Look, the kid’s gonna live, and that’s great,” he said. “But we’re from homicide. She ain’t dead, she ain’t my concern.” O’Brian, a big paunchy man, was snapping his gum. His partner, Murphy, was a thin quiet man who seemed content to remain in the background while O’Brian did his “bad cop” routine. “You give us a body, someone actually offed here in the great city of New York, and we’ll look for a killer.”
“You don’t believe this asshole is a killer then you’ve got a problem,” Blackthorn said.
“Yeah, well, we’ll let your fed friends help you out on that one. The Feebs are good at that. The Fuckin Feebs—that’s what we call ‘em, Blackthorn. Aren’t you glad to be outta the Fuckin Feebs? ‘Course we don’t like to work with you private assholes, either. Everybody thinks they’ve got a better way to do our job.”
“Let’s just take down all the information,” Lieutenant Flack interrupted. She was trying to make peace. “We can all insult each other later, okay?” She looked at April. “You say you got a good look at his face? You’ll be able to identify him from a mug shot, you think?”
“I think so, yes.”
“We’ll get out the books. I know you’re tired, but I’d prefer you do it now, while the image is fresh in your mind.”
“All right,” April said wearily.
“You’re probably not going to have this guy in your rogue’s gallery.” Blackthorn said. “God knows how many people he’s killed, but he’s probably never been arrested.”
“You never know,” Janice Flack said evenly. “This was not your typical professional hit. This guy was in close enough to get his hands dirty.”
“Why didn’t he shoot me?” April asked. “He had the gun.”
“It was supposed to look like an accident,” Blackthorn said. “Once Kate showed up, that became impossible. If he shot you, there was no way. He was probably under orders not to proceed in the event that something went wrong.”
“But everyone would have known it wasn’t an accident!”
Blackthorn glanced sourly at O’Brian and his partner, Murphy. “If it’s not provable as homicide, these folks don’t get too interested.”
“Hey, look, buddy, we got more cases than we can handle already, so don’t give me that crap,” O’Brian said. “You got one little problem to solve and you devote your whole day to it. Me, I gotta load of stiffs, with more coming in every couple hours, and the boys upstairs with the bean counte
rs are keeping track of how many of those cases I clear, and how fast. I don’t have time for this shit.”
“If the guy was smart he’d have killed you anyhow, in spite of his orders from whoever hired him,” Flack said. The homicide guy’s ranting seemed to have no effect on her whatsoever—she remained focused on the matter at hand. “If he’d thought it through more carefully he would have realized this. We can presume that whatever reason existed for wanting you dead still exists. It’s going to be a lot harder for them now, though. You’ll be on your guard. The perp should have acted while he had the chance, accident or no accident.”
“You’re right,” said Blackthorn. “I’ll be protecting her now.”
“Hope you do a better job than you did with the lady in Anaheim,” O’Brian said.
Christian de Sevigny paced the small hospital room where Kate lay unconscious. A fractured skull, the doctor had said. A concussion, of course. But she should come out of it okay, they’d assured him. It didn’t look too bad; she should wake up.
What if she didn’t? Oh, God, what if…?
Her head was swathed in bandages and her face looked so pinched, so small. It seemed as if the blow had caused her to lose several years of her age and she was eight again, or nine. So small, so delicate. Lying there so still.
Over her bed, the monitors beeped away. The video screen showed the waves of the electrical activity in her heart. Jumping numbers registered her pulse rate—the vital sound of her child’s heart.
The bullet had cut a shallow furrow through hair, skin, and the surface of her skull. It had not penetrated her brain. If it had been an inch lower she’d be dead.
As he watched the monitor the years were swept away and he remembered standing beside Miranda in her gynecologist’s office all those years ago, listening in astonishment as the doctor used an ultrasound monitor with a microphone to transmit the static racing that was the unborn baby’s tiny heart. He remembered thinking that that beating would be going on uninterrupted for another eighty years or so—that’s how strong it had sounded, how indestructible.
