16

Queens Inn, London

The hotel room smelled of pear ginger shampoo and carpet cleaner. It could have been any of a hundred suites Jason had stolen into, silent as a revenant, watching his target sleep. His routine had always been the same once he entered the room.

Slip inside. Stand with his back to the door. Scan the perimeter.

Once sounds have separated—cars outside, the breath of sleep inside—pad toward the bed. Study target. Choose a location to plunge the blade. He usually preferred the soft hollow of the neck, the indent where the heart beat like velvet butterfly wings.

Stabbing it choked blood and speech.

Other times, the Order requested the knife go directly into the heart.

Jason didn’t ask questions.

In any scenario, his final act before selecting the insertion point was to unsheathe his knife. He carried the set in the inside left pocket of his suit coat, cradled in galuchat leather, an ensemble of metal and glass blades, all of them mounted on a bone handle and sharp enough to slice between cells.

His daggers were his only extravagance.

This night called for a different plan, however, and it was throwing him off. He wasn’t here to kill. He was here to kidnap.

He observed the child sleep, her hair a mess of snarls suggesting she had gone to bed with it wet. It wasn’t the first time he’d watched her slumber. She’d been a different child then, wild and more bone than muscle, curved in Salem’s arms. Bel had slept in the bed next to them, all three crammed into a cheap roadside motel, on the run. Thinking of Bel inflamed the familiar heat of sexual arousal. He’d sliced a lock off her strawberry hair that night.

He no longer possessed the hair. Anger at the memory snuffed his growing erection. The past would stay where it belonged.

This moment was all there ever was.

Vida Wiley snored in the bed opposite Mercy. Both were gripped in the muscular arms of jet lag, sleeping deeply. His gaze lingered on Vida, something like fondness easing his chest. The woman was a survivor. A fighter, like him. He’d sliced her, broken her bones, whispered terrible words in her ear, and she’d never bent. Her seeping, swollen wounds had been allowed to fester, and still, she’d kept her head. The echoes of his work were visible in the twitches and moans that bothered her sleep, but he’d watched her walk into the hotel earlier in the evening, her head high, her eyes fierce.

He allowed himself a moment to consider what his life would be like if he’d been reared by this woman. His own mother had been beautiful and wicked, dedicating her life to ascending from her swamp roots to the gilded arms of the New Orleans aristocracy. He had been an unwelcome hitch in her plans. Subsequently, she alternated between using him as a best friend or a whipping post, depending on her mood, and she looked the other way when her boyfriends used him, as well.

He’d never met his father. The sentient Sharpey’s fibers had likely been inherited from the man, though, as Jason’s mother had never evidenced the gift. Maybe his father had possessed even more talents?

Jason would never know. His mother was his only family, at least until Carl Barnaby had recruited him for the Order, training him in psychology, physical combat, spycraft, marketing.

And now Barnaby was gone.

He guessed his mother was too. For the last several years, he’d kept her tied to a chair and hooked up to an IV, a box of kitty litter poised below the chair’s special opening. He’d had to leave her when he was recently assigned overseas. He’d propped a photo of him as a child, before he knew how to change his face, next to a glass of water, both just out of reach of her bound hands. She might make it until his return. She might not.

Relationships with mothers were complicated.

For this moment, he would imagine Vida Wiley as his own mother. No one would know. He stared at her, tasting the shape of the word on his lips: mother. It felt right. Foundational. He would neither wake her nor hurt her. It would be easy to remove the child without a struggle.

He glided toward Mercy, leaned over her.

She radiated the drowsy warmth of sleep.

His right hand covered her mouth at the exact moment the edge of his left hand snapped her Stomach 9 pressure point, near where most people were taught to check their pulse. The pressure to her carotid sinus’ baroreceptor would render her unconscious for two to three minutes, a generous amount of time.

He laid the note on her pillow: Solve the Stonehenge Train for the girl. You have until midnight 24 September.

He hoisted her up so her head rested on his shoulder, much like he imagined a loving parent held their child. She was light. He moved backward toward the door, eyes on Vida. His tonight-mother moaned but did not wake. He stepped into the brightly lit hallway and strode toward the elevator at the north end.

He pushed the “L” button.

The “Up” arrow lit up, the elevator humming toward him.

Its doors opened. A loud man and women were hanging off each other inside. They stumbled out.

Jason glared at them. My little girl is sleeping.

The female widened her eyes and nodded while the male giggled and hurried her along.

He continued the ruse as he walked out the lobby.

The kidnapping would have gone just as well without the Grimalkin, he thought sourly, opening the passenger-side door and strapping Mercy in. Their meeting had turned out to be a tremendous annoyance. Jason had come to talk business, to relay the Order’s plan, but the Grimalkin had been unfocused, almost childlike, intent on planning ways to play with Salem like a goddamned cat rather than follow her according to protocol. There was no talk of knifework or anything of interest to Jason.

After the unsatisfactory meeting, Jason had done his own recon on Salem, following her to the Mayflower Pub, watching her through the window. So uncomfortable, so out of her element. He verified—not that he needed to—that assigning the Grimalkin to work alongside him was overkill, no pun intended. Jason could do all of this on his own. He could stay close to Salem, record her results the moment she solved a section of the train, and kill her when she cracked the mystery of Stonehenge.

The Grimalkin on board only mucked it up. Jason didn’t even know what role he was to play after he kidnapped the girl. He had to wait for instructions from his partner, who wasn’t a rule-follower, who cared nothing for structure.

The only pleasure he had experienced during the meeting was the surprise at learning who the Grimalkin was. A smile twitched at the memory. It was clear why both the Order and the Grimalkin kept the assassin’s identity hidden.

Such a delicious secret.