Jesus.
Cyn clamped her teeth. She was pissed.
She’d already gotten the gun off him once. He seemed to realize that as he dropped his arm to the side, the black thing now aimed at the ground. So far only an innocent tree had suffered.
She’d come to Chicago for this one. And now it was gone right out from under her. It wasn’t like she could just go get someone else. These things took planning. And here they stood on a dark back street at a standoff.
Still, Cyn felt kind of good. It was enjoyable to face down a man who was much larger than her, and fully armed, and not feel afraid. It had been a long time since she’d been afraid.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.” She didn’t know why she answered. But there was clearly something kindred here. He would fit well in an exhibit of panthers. He was sleek. Dressed in inky colors, his nondescript dark hair seemed to suck light out of the night. Tanned to the look of meanness, his skin slid over muscles when he moved, telling you what was coiled there waiting. She didn’t think panthers would mess with him, and she didn’t intend to either.
In fact she had things to do. None of which involved standing around and waiting for the cops. Or worse. There was no telling which silent alarms this doofus had tripped with his shoot-now-ask-questions-never attitude.
She pulled off the backpack and stood on one foot, trading her re-tread work boots for red striped sneakers. Her gloves had never come out. And she was still fully loaded. She would have to empty her well-packed jacket and pants and store everything for the return trip, something she hadn’t planned on.
“What?” He taunted. “You’ve got places you need to be?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.” She needed to be upset, to hang on to her mad for a little while longer. She’d wanted‒waited‒to take this last victim out. He’d been responsible. “Did he suffer?”
“Yes.” The gunman’s eyes truly looked at hers for maybe the first time. And Cyn saw a human in there.
“Good.” This time when she walked away, he let her.
She jogged the distance to her parked car. As she approached, her loose stride altered, taking on the tighter lope and look of a kid. Which was easy enough, because physically she was pretty close to the age. The dull silver sedan was non-descript enough that no one would think twice about it. She headed back to the motel, changed, and went to work packing.
Several teddy bears and a slew of female-looking paraphernalia were spread across the dresser. The offhand look did the task of making the room seem a little more lived-in than it had been. It made her look a little more like the life she lived was normal.
Cyn changed into the more casual clothes she’d brought, emptying the leathers and sliding them into different places in different bags. It wouldn’t do for someone to see them all together and get any ideas.
She popped the bottom off her hairspray bottle with a magnet and a twist. Inside she stacked four inches of wickedly sharp stars then plugged the bottom with fiberfill stuffing. Taking a Phillips head to the end of her curling irons, Cyn opened the barrels and fitted her knives cleanly down the large cylinders.
The teddy bears bore the brunt of the remaining weapons. Ripping tiny stitches at the necks of the big bears, she opened them, pushing the now leather tipped sais into one, the kamas deep into the belly of the next, the sheathed dagger went into a third smaller and over-loved bear. She had covered all the metal parts. Moved them so the bears could be hugged and cuddled and the weapons not felt. If she didn’t do it right, the weight would shift and, even though all the tips were wrapped, they would prick the handler or push through the soft skins of the bears. Neither of which could she afford to have happen.
With a single needle and a tiny card of thread, she carefully re-stitched the necks, closing the bears for the trip home. She hid the stitches with skill a seamstress would envy, working cleanly and efficiently. Then she threw the hair supplies into her small suitcase and zipped up the hanging bag bearing her leather pants along with two dresses, a skirt, and a blazer she had never intended to wear.
The bears she piled into the front passenger seat of her car and, leaving the room keys behind on the dresser for checkout the next morning, she slipped behind the wheel and headed for the freeway.
The night road was long and dark, which was mostly the way she liked it. She’d planned to drive home tomorrow, after returning to the motel and sleeping off the high. She’d planned to have a high. Instead there was only this deep disappointment and the vague, far-away satisfaction that the man was dead. She was glad the gunman had gotten to him if she hadn’t.
Only then did she realize that the gunman had her name but she didn’t have his. His crazy laughter had stilted the natural flow of the conversation, and she still wasn’t sure what that was about. Her full lips and dark brows frowned into the depths of the car. Not that it mattered.
Trucks passed by, deadly in their speed and careening curves. But Cyn held steady. Lights from the other side of the freeway dulled her senses until someone would come by with brights blazing and clean out her skull. She pulled into a lit-up station for gas and then, a few miles later, got a burger from an all night fast-food joint. The food tasted like the smell in the air: diesel and weeds and loneliness.
Later as the sky was deepest, and even a lot of the trucks had left the roads to her, Cyn pulled off at a spot she knew well. There was cover here enough for her work, and she was both far enough from and close enough to her house. With the dimmest blue light she could find fitted into the caving helmet, she unscrewed the California license plates from the front and back of the car and swapped them with her own Texas plate that had been under the mat with the spare tire. A Tennessee plate was also stored there, just in case. With the quick movements of someone who’d done this before, Cyn put the plate on, stuffed the helmet into a duffel in the trunk, and climbed back in.
In two minutes she was back on the road.
Keeping one hand on the wheel, she untucked the braids and unwound them, making a pile of bobby pins and ponytail holders on the passenger seat in the small bear’s lap. She rubbed her head, thinking it all looked so normal. She was headed back to a good piece of normal. She had a shift to work the next night.
Finally, before the sun started its climb, but when the hint of it existed in the not quite absolute night, she pulled up the long driveway just outside Dallas. The house was specifically chosen for a good handful of reasons, the location being a big one. She would have a good drive into the city for work. But that was okay. What was important was that she was far enough out that no one would get the idea to come visit, or think she should ever host anything. It suited.
She opened the door connecting the garage to the laundry room, and stilled. With deep breaths, she listened. On soft sneakered feet, she traced the outline of the house, room by room. Only when she was satisfied that no one was inside, and nothing had been touched, did she take a comfortable breath. Now casual, she returned to the car and though she was dog tired, she carefully unpacked, putting everything in its rightful place.
The leathers were boxed and fitted into a trap door in the back of a cabinet in the kitchen. The shoes went sideways under her bed and into a hollowed out part of the box springs on the almost too frilly white canopied double. The clothes were hung into the closet, looking as pristine as everything else there. The teddy bears were tossed across the pillows, and appeared as innocuous as the rest of the room.
Changing into a set of soft pajamas, Cyn pulled the blackout drapes and climbed in. Her arms, as they did most nights, wound tightly around one of the bears.
There had been another man in Louisville. Lee had taken him out with vicious sniper shots. First kneecapping the man, then working his way to the hands, and the gut. He punctured both lungs again, but it wasn’t as satisfying from a distance and Lee didn’t let it go on too long. He ended it with a shot through the neck.
He had missed the jugular, not because he had missed his shot‒his aim had been true, it was his knowledge of anatomy that wasn’t up to snuff yet. But he’d been close enough to something important that blood had come out of the man in changing volumes. Gush then fade, gush then fade, until the eyes had closed, and he had sat back. The man died reclined in his poolside Adirondack chair. Aside from the carnage, mostly just visible blood and the broken drink glass shattered on the imported tile beside him, he looked fairly peaceful.
Lee didn’t begrudge the man what he considered an easy death. There had been nothing personal about it. But he knew what strings this man had pulled. How shipments had come into the country under his wing. That those who reported to him were dispersing the stuff to those who would do so again, and then again until it was in the hands of people on the streets.
Looking down the barrel of the rifle with a cleaning scope, Lee checked carefully for cracks and wear. For any part his rag might have missed. He scrubbed meticulously. Damaged equipment was unacceptable. He cleaned like he shot, single-mindedly.
Setting the rifle against a tree next to the others, he stretched his back. The flat-topped rounds of long ago trees served as table tops, and they were littered with implements. Single piece rifle bore cleaning rods, chamois and brushes‒most now in need of cleaning themselves. His hands were covered in gun oil, as were his pants and t-shirt. None of them were new to the experience. The bill on his ball cap was pulled low as always. He might have wondered if he would get a permanent edge to his skull where the caps fit, but that would require time. And it had been too long since he had thought of time in any sort of recordable form.
He set to washing out the chamois and brushes. At no time did he kid himself that he was stopping the drug trade. Another head would grow on the monster when the first was cut off. That was inevitable. But there were certain people in certain key places that had to pay for what they’d done, to Sam and Bethy certainly. And there were others who’d been wronged like them, others he’d found out about only later, as interesting bylines in his research, that needed their own retribution. None had been left alive to give it. If he had time, Lee helped.
In Louisville, he’d had time.
But he had his own business to attend now.
It had taken a while to track Leopold down. But he’d done it. The man had disappeared for a while about a year after Lee had gone to ground. Six months ago he’d shown up again. And in that missing time, Lee had learned a lot about one of the mafia’s best gunmen.
Leopold didn’t seem to have a last name, a family, or a soul. The world would be a better place without him in it. The man would simply end‒he couldn’t rot in hell, he wouldn’t feel it. Leopold had pulled the trigger more times than just on Sam and Bethy. And he’d pulled it plenty on them.
Apparently he wasn’t just one for liberating the souls of the mafia’s naysayers. He also took their families with ease, as Lee could attest. He also broke bones, threatened, tormented and got cooperation in any way necessary.
Worse, the man seemed to enjoy his work.
Twice Lee had visited the man while he was traveling. Lee had sat with binoculars outside the hotel, he had seen through a crack left in the curtains that the man slept like a baby. Lee was going to make it worse. He would take Leopold out in his own home. Just like the man had done to countless others.
The hotel visits had helped with habits. Lee had carried baggage for the man on one occasion, dressed in an easily stolen bellhop uniform. But mostly Lee had cased the house. Rifled through the closets. And sat outside with a listening dish when the man came home. He hadn’t heard any conversations where the hitman told someone his house had been gone through. Didn’t mean it didn’t happen though.
Lee would either deliver Leopold out of this world, or die trying.
He had no intention of dying. While Leopold might be among the coldest and deadliest, there were others who needed liberating from their earthly bodies as well, and Lee had no intention of failing. Leopold had simply presented himself as a target now. Given his tendencies to disappear, and disappear well, Lee would take him now.
The guns had all been cleaned with Leopold in mind. They shined like new pennies. Tomorrow Lee would fix that problem. More than one shooter had been picked off in the night by the shine off his gun. It was as stupid as striking a match. And Lee wasn’t stupid, blacking his guns was the least of what he did.
A convenience store nearby had yielded a box of slightly darker hair color. He hadn’t been blonde since Sam. He spent the rest of the afternoon lying in the clearing, soaking up sun, making sure his skin was as dark as possible. His Heckler rested under his loose hand. He only looked like he dozed.
Upstate New York was cold this time of year. Luckily the weather had cooperated and not dropped the slightest precipitation, which worked in her favor. Nothing would stop her from getting in, but if she left tracks, she would have to work doubly hard in the future. She had more work to do beyond this, not ruining it was imperative. However, tonight was big. Leopold was less than one hundred yards away. And he was about an hour from ending his time on earth. Cyn smiled into the cold.
Her breath hung gray and smoky in the air, and she stood and enjoyed it for just a moment. She was only a minute or two early. The sun was just sinking beyond the distant snow-capped mountains. Truly it was breathtaking.
For a moment Cyn regretted not having more time to spend enjoying the beautiful things in the world; she hadn’t had much beauty of her own. She got her focus back on the task at hand. The wall loomed tall before her, but trees graciously blessed this side, offering a climb and a view to anyone who wanted.
She’d been here before, more than once. Patting herself down, she did a final check. Everything was in place. Her re-tread boots were on, the stuffed and reinforced steel toes comfortable on her feet. Her leathers were all packed full. A sai handle stuck out of a long pocket just below each hip, and she could loose them faster than an old west gunslinger. Kamas graced each leg just behind the sai, again one for each hand, within easy reach.
Knives she ordered in bulk to a fictional karate school lined the inside of her jacket, under her arms. And throwing stars packed small square pockets along the sleeves. Lastly, her dagger was sheathed at her waist. She’d never had to use it before. She didn’t intend to tonight.
Turning her head, she heard the bare branches above her tapping in the slight wind. Her red backpack was tucked under a pile of leaves blown up against a big trunk about ten yards away. She knew what waited inside the house, and she was ready.
Cyn even knew which tree to climb, she’d scoped the whole thing out earlier. Her eyes fell closed for the briefest of seconds while she pushed out all else, and turned for the tree.
Only she didn’t even start the turn. An arm clamped around her waist, a leather glove closed over her mouth, and a hot moist voice whispered in her ear. “You don’t want to go in there.”
Shit.
She knew exactly who it was the instant the arm had come around her.
That she was alive meant that it wasn’t Leopold. He would have shot her dead just for being on his property. He wouldn’t remember her or hers, probably even when she finished with him. She expected no pleasure from that.
That someone had touched her meant that the person was either retarded or very arrogant. Either option only spelled the gunman.
Cyn stood still waiting for him to release her. The strict tension in his arms telling her how ready he was for a fight. But she wasn’t going to give it to him.
At last the hand slowly eased away, and she got to speak. “Go home.”
“Nope. He’s mine.” The gunman’s hair was a little deeper hued than last time, as was his skin. She wouldn’t have thought either was possible.
She started small. “We’re clearly both after the same people. You got the last one. That makes it my turn.”
He smiled. That was okay. Cyn hadn’t figured he’d take her first offer and just go home. But it had been worth a try.
“You don’t want to go up against this guy unarmed. He’s mine, Princess.”
If she’d thought she was taut from what lay ahead, she’d been wrong. Her muscles cranked to the freezing point. Ice fell from her mouth. “You don’t get to call me that.”
“Excellent.” He didn’t care or didn’t see. “Now that we’ve determined you’re out of your league, you can back off and let me handle this.”
She laughed. Her body shook and her eyes caught fire, but she kept quiet. It was all she could do not to spill it to the brightening stars and give away their point. “I think I’ve made it clear before that I am not out of my league, nor am I unarmed.”
He nodded. His turn to concede one. But he didn’t give very far. “How about this? You tell me who you want next and he’s all yours.”
“Excellent. Leopold.” She motioned to the house and smiled‒albeit not a happy one.
“I can’t.” He didn’t return the grin. His eyes hardened, and an eerie stillness settled over him. There was a tension she hadn’t expected from a man who fought with firepower instead of fists. “It’s personal.”
She shrugged, feeling his pain, but not giving in to it. “Me, too.”
“Did he kill your wife and child?”
He’d asked it as though he was inquiring if she’d remembered to pick up milk on her way home. So she responded in kind. “My parents. I was eleven.”
He gave too much away. His expression showed how much he hadn’t expected that. His frozen posture thawed a bit and his gloved hand came up to scratch at the back of his loose hair. Loose hair was a mistake, and she focused on that for a second, that and the fact that her carefully timed entry was getting ruined.
His voice was sure, his words were not. “I guess we’re at a standoff then.”
With a sharp pain in her heart, when she had been so certain she wasn’t capable of feeling anymore, she played her trump card. “Did he rape you and your sister in front of your parents? Then execute them in front of you?”
Lee felt the fist in his gut, but thankfully didn’t react. She hadn’t really thrown the punch, it had just felt like it. He wanted Leopold. He needed to take out Leopold. But for all the bullets that had torn through Samantha and Bethany, it had been only lead and avarice that violated them. And no matter how much he might like to think he could have saved them if he had been there, he hadn’t had to watch.
He couldn’t have saved them, he hadn’t known how then. Neither would an eleven year old child have known. Looking at her eyes, he was suddenly grateful that he hadn’t been there when Sam and Bethy died. His own nightmares were enough.
He’d seen Sin’s calling cards. Leopold would suffer. That was what Lee wanted most. That and to see the man’s face when he died.
Sin’s chocolate eyes watched him while he decided. Surely she saw the concession before he made it. “Fine, he’s yours on one condition: I’m going in, too.”
“I work alone.”
“Not tonight, Princess.” His jaw hardened just in time to catch the right hook he hadn’t seen coming. “Ahhhhh!” He managed to keep it quiet, and only barely withheld the return punch. That wasn’t because she was a lady‒ she was so far from it he couldn’t imagine her as a woman, but he didn’t hit her back.
“You don’t call me that.”
“Fine!” If she was going to be the instrument of his justice, he’d have to hit her later. She needed to be in top form. Lee decided the matter for her. “Time’s a wasting. How were you planning to get in?”
She gave a sigh that was worthy of any teenager facing an unreasonable parent. It made him question her age again. But as he was good at doing with most things in his life these days, Lee ignored it. “The roof.”
“There’s a big yard between here and the roof and five very large dogs. How are you going to handle those?”
“How would you?” Her eyebrows went up, and it made him wonder if there was some Bruce Lee dog trick that had never made it into the movies. Pulling the 9mm from his side holster, he held it up and smiled.
She snorted, again taking years off her age. “You’d kill an innocent dog?”
“Yes, to get to Leopold.” He didn’t know where Little Miss Lethal got off being concerned about a dog that he would hardly call innocent. Those were trained killers. “You have to admit that they will have given their lives for a worthy cause.”
“True.” She smiled a smile that let him know he didn’t know much of anything when it came to her. “But why should they have to?”
She started up the nearest tree and he didn’t stop her.
“How you gonna do it, Pri-” He stopped himself at the last minute, “Babe?” Although she hardly looked like a babe either, trussed up in those leathers. She looked young and shapeless. But he didn’t want to get into a fistfight when he had better things to do.
If she heard the slip, Sin ignored it. “You may not be alpha dog, but I am.”
She sat at the top of the wall, looking like a school girl slipping out of the convent. Lee followed. When he reached the top, she clapped her gloved hands and spoke softly “Puppies!”
He snorted, but held the rest back.
All five dogs bounded up and sat beneath her quietly while Lee let a surprised son of a bitch roll through his brain but not off his tongue. Sin bounced down on silent, well-trained feet and motioned him to follow. He wondered what the hell twilight zone he’d wandered into, and how that was even possible when he was pretty sure he’d been living in the twilight zone for the past three years.
They simply walked up to the house, staying low and to the shadows, keeping a steady eye on the windows. The dogs trailed behind as though they were hers.
Nothing had happened as they approached. No shots fired from the windows. No lights off or on. That could be just as easily be a bad sign as a good one.
When they slid into the dark of a large old tree growing at the corner of the house, one of the dogs took a disliking to them being so close to the building and started a mean growl low in his throat. Sin turned and growled back, staring the dog directly in the eyes and leaning forward until she was in the rottweilier’s face. The dog could have simply opened up and snapped the skin off her head. But it didn’t.
Lee reconsidered. He didn’t think anyone took skin off Sin without her approval. The dog backed down, and Sin went up the tree.
She was like the night itself. A wraith, she disappeared in between the shadows, and he only ever had the feeling that he caught glimpses of her. Reaching up, he hefted his own muscle along the trunk, disappearing into the branches as soon as he was able.
The leather clad cat above him seemed to have forgotten he was there. He wanted to roll his eyes. But he pushed himself back into control, he wanted to see Leopold dead. And not just any dead: a slow painful dead. So he followed, and did his best to keep his feelings to himself.
She paused at the roofline and stealthily reached out a black clad foot. Certain she was never going to make it without a jump, he watched as she simply stretched a little further and put her foot softly on the roofline, surprising him yet again. Lee vowed it would be the last time.
A finger to her lips told him to be quiet, and just how little she thought of him. God, he’d like to clean her clock. Instead, he gripped the branches in one hand and stepped out as she had. His groin muscles pulled back on him, making him grit his teeth. She must be damn flexible. It didn’t even look like she’d been reaching for it, and he had a good six inches on her.
Of course, this wasn’t the way he’d have gone in. There was a long silencer on each of the Hecklers; he’d have taken the dogs out one by one, and had a window alarm short-circuited before anyone realized the dogs were too quiet. Then he’d have climbed in and tried out his punctured lungs technique. He wouldn’t be skulking up the edge of a roof three stories off the ground, that was for sure.
When she reached the top, she disappeared again into the pitch of night beyond her, somehow it had settled deep and heavy around them while they climbed. The dogs had scampered off to play in the yard, and Lee had to admit that it was better that way. No one would check on missing dogs. And anyone who thought they heard something would look outside and see five very unalarmed dogs and get a very mistaken sense of security.
Sin lay along the top edge of the shingles and scooted until most of her upper body was beyond the ledge. Lee couldn’t stop himself, his hand snaked out to grab a firm hold of her ankle. Again she looked at him like she’d forgotten he was there, but she had the good grace not to begrudge his hand.
Reaching under, she yanked at something he couldn’t see and slowly came upright with a large piece of wood in her hands. “No one puts alarms on these.”
She’d pulled out the roofline vent. He helped her lay it down where it wouldn’t slip. Then insisted on going in first.
Her dark eyes flashed in the light of tiny stars and her jaw clenched when he started moving and made it clear he wasn’t asking for permission. But then her eyes narrowed as though it was okay to let him go because she was sure she could take him. He wasn’t so sure, and he slipped, feet first, as softly as possible into the attic. Sin was less than a full second behind him. She made no noise at all.
Slowly and quietly, they took steps and waited. Took steps and listened. And made their way to the attic door. She knew exactly where it was, and Lee knew she’d been here before, just as he had. He wondered how many times he had barely missed her. If she had stumbled across any of his other kills on her way in. But then he pushed the thoughts from his mind.
One goal. Leopold.
She put her ear to the floor for five or more minutes. This time Lee trusted her implicitly and didn’t join her, just listened in the still dusty air of the too grand house. When she felt it was safe, she opened the attic door just a hint. It made no noise, and he imagined that she had oiled the hinges herself.
Sin sat with eyes wide, looking through the crack she had created for about forever. Then she moved it further. For half an hour they did this, finally swinging it open when they could strain to hear the man in the kitchen below.
Lee went down first, hanging by his fingertips and able to just touch one toe onto the polished floor, and let himself to standing. Sin came down next, hanging by a full grasp. Not waiting for him to grab her, she let herself drop, surprised when hands closed around her waist and kept her toes from the ground. Her head snapped over her shoulder as he set her feet down and motioned with a finger to his lips for her to stay quiet.
Clearly neither of them was used to working with anyone else. This was not the best way to pull off the most important kill yet. He almost scrapped it then and there, but immediately talked himself out of it.
Sin wouldn’t scrap it. That much was sure. That meant that there were two options. She would succeed, and Lee wouldn’t get any part of Leopold’s death. That was not acceptable. Or, on the off chance that Sin didn’t succeed, she would die. She would also alert Leopold that someone was after him. That, also, was not acceptable. So Lee sucked it up. They might bungle it, but he was all in.
The voice carried up from the kitchen. He’d heard it before. When he’d tracked the man, he listened to his conversations from outside through a dish and headphones. But there was something in the way Sin tensed that reminded him she hadn’t heard the voice through gathered air, or over the phone, but that she remembered it from long ago. Though the thought tried to turn his stomach, Lee focused and stopped the churn.
They slunk downstairs, each staying to the sides of the staircase. Not just to remain out of sight, but to avoid the squeaks that grew first in the center of the wood. They hit the second floor, and the single voice became distinguishable as one side of a phone call. It sounded like he was moving around the living room.
Lee would have waited until the call was finished. The worst thing you could do was let the victim alert someone else what was going on. Dead men told mostly the tales you wanted them to. But Sin pushed ahead without his consent, and he didn’t dare reach out and grab her. If someone did that to him, they’d likely lose the hand. He had no doubt Sin’s response would be similar.
The phone conversation seemed to cover the few sounds they made, and Lee could see why Sin wanted to move while Leopold talked. Aside from them, the hitman was the only one inside. Lee had made certain of it.
They positioned themselves in the back of the house, waiting while the man finished his conversation. But it seemed to last an eternity. By his watch, it was another thirty minutes. Lee had a brief thought that, if he’d known someone else would be here, he would have brought a deck of cards; they could have played War or Go Fish. The absurdity didn’t break through his controlled shell to make him laugh. Unfortunately, Leopold was safe as long as he stayed on the phone.
At last the conversation ended, and Sin moved as soon as the phone was back in its cradle. Leopold checked out the window, his tall frame bulked with muscle. The dogs must have been playing, or else he was a brilliant actor. Because he gave no indication if he was aware of the leather-clad death coming up behind him.
Again her metal stars materialized out of nowhere, and she threw two. Jesus, the girl must be off, she hit him in the backs of his arms. With puny little stars. And, as the big man turned, looking like any man at home on an unbooked evening would, Lee thought she had simply baited the bear.
Leopold’s face went from looking like he could be someone’s dad to the venom Lee would have imagined from the man who had continued to pump lead into Sam and Bethy long after they were dead.
Beautiful blue eyes swung up beyond Sin as Leopold spotted first her, then Lee. Lee offered the man a smile. He had intended to stand in the doorway with his arms nonchalantly crossed and watch the show. But now that Sin had already fucked up, he left his hands by his sides so he could get to his Hecklers as fast as possible. He was prepared to beat her within an inch of her life if she made him shoot Leopold fast just to save her scrawny ass.
But Sin pulled his attention back to her with just a whisper, “Leopold.”
Her voice was as smooth as her skin and just as young and gentle seeming. But Leopold wasn’t fooled. She was in leather, with sharp instruments hanging from her hips. She stood casually in front of a man she knew to be one of the deadliest in America. And her eyes, which should have been a warm shade, were pure ice. Lee could see that much from where he stood.
Her hands were empty, and Leopold advanced. Lee watched, waiting for her to tense but she didn’t. Without his gun or other weapons on him, the hitman was forced into hand combat, and Sin proved herself a worthy opponent. A good hundred pounds lighter than him, she ducked and swerved, and handled the blows he landed with grace. She landed a better set herself. She made his mouth fly open with a gut punch dead center. With the muscles on the man, Lee was certain her hand would hurt. But Sin didn’t acknowledge any pain.
She clipped him under the jaw with one fist when the other had looked to be coming, then clipped him again turning the fake-out into a real hit. Her hands quickly grasped his shoulders keeping him from leaning too far back, and she took every advantage of his surprise. With one foot she kicked a leg out from under him, using his own falling weight in her favor as she brought the same knee up and slammed it into his groin. It had all happened too fast for the man to recover before the next hit came.
Leopold let loose of the air in his lungs. But to his credit, didn’t go down. Didn’t cup his nuts as Lee was fighting not to do just from having watched. He came back with a punch that Sin took only lightly on the shoulder and spun with. She turned, ducked under his arm and let his weight switch their places.
She was behind him and on her feet while he was stumbling forward, following his iron fist that hadn’t made the contact he’d wanted. She robbed him of even that.
She hadn’t missed with those first stars. She had meant to bait the bear.
Lee no longer doubted her. She had meant to fight Leopold only as much as she needed to get behind him. Her hands quickly and easily found the well between his shoulders and his collarbone and, with the application of well-placed fingertips, apparently touched a prime nerve. As he watched, Lee made a mental note never to let Sin get behind him. The man’s arms went slack and his knees lost strength in accordance with the pressure Sin applied. And the Russian mafia’s best hitman for the last decade or so, who had managed to come, intact, through any number of onslaughts, had been caught without his gun and brought to his knees in his own living room by a girl. She was nowhere near finished.
As Lee looked, she leaned over and whispered something in the man’s ear. He didn’t look scared, just mad. But Sin was ahead of him. Her hands moved from his shoulders to her hips, and just as he regained feeling, all of a split second later, he rolled.
She had seen it coming. The sickles she carried had practically flown from their loops and arced at the end of the foot long wooden handles. Leopold was on his ass, facing her now and starting for his feet, but her sickles came down from either side, effectively hooking his ankles. From the sudden jerk, she’d sliced him. As Lee watched, two things happened simultaneously: small red stains formed on the pant cuff at the back of Leopold’s ankles and his feet went slack. She’d cut his Achilles’ tendons with a very controlled movement, not much more. He wouldn’t bleed to death from these wounds.
Before he could think on it, Lee watched the sickles swing again. This time the back of the sickle, the end of the wood handle, found kneecaps and they didn’t crush or shatter or break bone. They pushed. Even through the pants you could see where Sin had applied pressure, moving each kneecap from under its ligaments and shoving it to the side. Beyond his hips, his legs were limp and useless.
Leopold was now her toy.
The man sat on the floor in profile to Lee, his jaw clenching tight against the pain. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of giving it voice. But that didn’t seem to matter much to her and Sin stood planted at his feet.
As Lee watched, he thought he saw a flash of something in her eyes, but it passed. It was a fucking good show, that was sure. For a brief moment he wished he’d brought some damn popcorn, but this time he did lean in the doorway and cross his arms.
Slow enough to demonstrate that she knew she was in control, Sin slipped the sickles back along her legs and pulled out the sais. From where he stood, Lee could see the metal warm in her hands. Even with her gloves on, the instruments floated. She didn’t hold them‒they swirled, seemingly without her. They walked across the backs of her hands and looped around her thumbs. He would have likened it to a baton twirler but it was too smooth, almost ethereal, and too deadly looking.
Leopold didn’t sit there and take it, though.
Sin could spin her little sticks all she wanted, the man grabbed the coffee table and sent the small handful of magazines flying as he swung the large furniture at her. Her foot came out and innocuously deflected it. The crash it made was a startling sound, given how each of the combatants had handled it as though it were paper. None of this stopped the movement of the sais in Sin’s hands. Leopold grabbed for the next thing, and the next. Sin repeatedly kicked them out of the way, often with her foot high in the air or moving too fast to really be seen. And she never lost her balance.
When he had thrown everything within reach and was starting to scoot backwards, dragging his useless legs along, Sin began playing with him. Using the sais to slash and poke, she took shots to his legs first. And by the little clenches in his muscles it was clear he could feel what she was doing.
She sliced his pants, leaving them in shreds, and showing Lee how sharp the tips of the awl-like blades were, even though they had turned over in her hands a number of times having had no effect. Leopold suffered puncture after puncture as the weapons moved but Sin’s eyes didn’t. She looked only into the azure that was far too pretty for the man who had pulled the trigger on her mother and father.
Sam and Bethy were getting avenged as well, and countless others Lee would never know of. A slow satisfaction warmed him, an agreeable swell that he didn’t get to feel when he did the job himself, at least not until afterward.
Sin punctured Leopold’s gut in several places. Then she hit his chest cavity, quickly placing a series of holes in between his ribs. With the wheezing this brought on Lee knew she had hit lung.
Leopold glared. Still pushed up on his hands, he sucked useless air as he looked for something, anything, to use against her. He reached for her sais, although Lee figured that would only get the man a good slice and some severed tendons. It got him no such thing. Sin didn’t let those hands anywhere near her laser sharp weapons. Instead as each hand came out, she deftly avoided his touch and poked him in the shoulder.
Then she stood back.
It only took a moment for Leopold’s arms to go slack.
He was on his back wracking for air, with no usable limbs. His hair was slick with sweat and tiny beads were breaking out on his skin as his face slowly changed toward gray. Small spots of blood appeared through every tiny hole in his clothing and in places where Sin had bared skin. And still there was anger and fire in his eyes. Still he didn’t consider himself down. Lee was glad this bastard was leaving the world.
Sin walked the periphery of the living body in front of her. She should have carried an apple and shined it and taken a bite, as worry-free as she looked. She no longer poked or prodded, just looked down and watched him suffer. She didn’t even seem to enjoy it, she was so cold.
What she was watching for or waiting for, Lee didn’t know, but the show was fascinating. It was just as interesting as the conversation going on in Lee’s head. Why, after three years of practicing and working and waiting for the opportunity, had Lee handed Leopold’s kill away in a half second? He smiled a cold smile at the scene in front of him, still at his perch in the doorway.
Because Sin was delivering what he would have. Leopold didn’t die slowly, and he didn’t die easily. Sin offered pain, just as Lee would have. And she had offered hope, baiting him into a fistfight, then letting him grab and throw whatever he could get his hands on. Then she had taken that hope away, piece by piece. And she had delivered something Lee simply couldn’t: humiliation. Leopold would be killed by a small girl.
Still she waited. Staring into blue eyes she had seen close over her own once before a long time ago. There was no rage, no fury, no nothing. Just calculation. Having no idea what she was waiting on, Lee waited on her. The dogs played happily and quietly in the yard. The phone didn’t ring. No cars went by on the street. They could stay until Sin decided it was time.
Blood formed quarter sized patches and rusted on the big man on the floor. He didn’t move, clearly couldn’t control his muscles. His chest heaved with greater and greater effort, small sucking noises attesting to the holes Sin had put in his lungs. As he watched, Lee saw the eyes accept that it was the end. Leopold stopped tracking Sin and looked heavenward, as though heaven would let him near. Lee half expected the body to sink into the earth as soon as it gave up its soul.
Lee didn’t see it coming, in fact didn’t see it happen, she was so fast. The nonchalance was gone like a memory and her sai stopped spinning, aimed straight down, and the tip was buried into the floor. Leopold’s dick was skewered on the blade. Sin let go of the handle.
While his own gut clenched, Lee expected the handle to quiver, given the force of impact. But it didn’t. Aside from the red flooding Leopold’s face, and the new wracking of his torso, the sai looked like it had always been there.
Sin wore a small smile.
The lone sai in her hand spun as though it had no cares. Sin might have been planting flowers in her garden for the serene look on her face, while Leopold finally began losing a sufficient quantity of blood, from his dick no less.
She started poking at him again, the weapon dancing in her hand as she walked. It just periodically touched the man, leaving tracers and holes. Now he flinched every time. He acknowledged hit after hit. She placed the weapon over his heart. To his credit, Leopold saw what was coming, and he offered prayers in his eyes, but no fear.
Sin still had the upper hand and she held the sai with the tip just touching his chest. Holding it steady, she forced Leopold to puncture himself in order to move his chest and get air. Repeatedly she did this, making hole after hole. Until Leopold finally quit.
Two minutes later he was dead.
Lee smiled.
Sin reclaimed the sai that had been through Leopold’s cock. With a calmness too smooth for the victory she had scored, she pulled a yellow car buffing cloth from under her jacket and wiped down the sharp points, before too casually sheathing them in the long leather pockets that traced her thighs.
Then she gulped for air. Thinking she would faint, Lee rushed to get her, but stopped short.
He should have known that Sin wouldn’t faint on him.
She turned with fury blazing in her eyes and the wicked, already bloody sickles swinging in her grip at the end of well polished wood handles. This time she cracked the man’s knees with the blunt back of the sickle. She sliced his thighs and his belly open spilling blood that didn’t pump, but merely oozed out of the skin, already coagulating in his death. But Sin wasn’t through. She crossed the handles and leaned over him. When she pulled her arms apart the blades sliced his throat from both sides, meeting in the middle in a single clean cut that shouldn’t be possible with two blades and the anger that fueled them. She hacked at his arms.
Lee decided that he’d seen enough.
“Sin.” He didn’t want to grab her and startle her. He didn’t want to have to kill her. She didn’t deserve to die with Leopold. On Leopold. Still he risked it. Positioning himself behind her and her deadly blades, his arms came around her waist while her own arms still swung at the body.
As soon as he started to pull her off he was startled by any number of things. She was lighter weight than he gave her credit for. She stopped, her body stilled, the weapons mid-arc and she slumped against him. Somehow Sin trusted him. Probably not any further than she could throw him, although that might be quite a distance. But here, even in that fury, she knew that Lee wasn’t her enemy.
He tried to get her back in the game, his voice below threshold. “Got your bow?”
She slipped from his grasp, and he let her, still not anxious for a fight. When she turned, she looked at him blankly, again shedding years from her age.
He tried again. “Gift tag?”
“Oh.” She shook her head, a few wisps of hair moving where they’d come loose from the tight French braid. “No. That’s for the cops.”
“So?”
She shrugged and took out the yellow cloth and began wiping down and shining the sickles. “No cops. Leopold’s too high up. The family will take care of him. I don’t want them to know about me.”
“Well, I hate to say this.” He pointed to the corpse bleeding onto the floor, the whispered conversation almost comical. “But I think there’s a body here saying that you came calling.”
She arched her eyebrow and went on polishing as though the sickle were the Sunday silver and not the blade she’d just sliced a killer with. “Someone with a grudge against Leopold was here. That could be any of a million people. Clearly two of us even chose the same night.”
She walked away, around to the back of the house, slipping the sickles into the hammer loops in her pants as she went. Without looking, she put them through the first loop as well as the second, securing them for the trip back out along the roof.
Lee followed, taking one last look at the man who had shot Sam and Bethy as coldly as Sin had laid him out. If Sin had told no lies about what he’d done to her, then Leopold got off easy, and hell would be too good for him.
They slipped back into the attic, Lee lifting Sin up through the hole, although she showed no surprise this time. They walked the attic quietly even though they weren’t worried about it now. They boosted out the open roof vent, holding firm to each other’s hands for purchase as the climb up and around was more difficult than swinging down in had been, then popped the wood piece back into place.
The dogs greeted them at the bottom of the tree and walked them out. Sin jumped and caught the top of the tall wall. Wondering how she would do it, he watched as she used sheer muscle to go from a fingertip purchase to pushing her hands down along her waist at the top of the wall and throwing a leg over.
He did the same, although she had already slipped to the ground on the other side before he followed, his feet crunching leaves and making noises he hadn’t heard her make before. She was walking out a ways and shaking the silly backpack out from under a pile of leaves. She brushed at it, batting off clinging twigs and maybe a few bugs. But there were no girly shudders or faces, just cold calm.
Lee joined her while she opened the pack and traded out her jacket, folding the leather neatly and putting it into the open space in the pack. She unlaced and removed her boots, slipping easily into the sneakers he’d seen last time. The weapons she slid smoothly from her legs and into the pack. She grabbed something and made her way back to the wall. She tossed it, and only mid-air did Lee see that it was dog biscuits. He smiled. And she was done. Sin started walking away.
She looked like a kid hiking through the woods. Maybe a little too old to be going out for a play date, but the appearance was there nonetheless. She knew he had followed her and she turned, holding out her hand.
When Lee shook it, wondering what the hell for, she spoke.
“Well, I’ll stay out of the next one you want. Who is it?”
He sighed, having no idea what to tell her. “I don’t know. I plan one at a time. You got someone in mind?”
“Nope. Not yet.” She dropped his hand, and stood just for a moment.
“Give me your number, I’ll call when I make up my mind.”
She laughed, the precious sound of a young woman humored by a man, and a pang went through him that Bethy would not grow to that. The pain the notes in her voice had brought only struck him at random times and since now was not the time to wallow in it, he pushed it aside. Besides, Sin was speaking.
“I don’t give my number to strange men. You never know who’s a murderer!” She replied cheekily, then she turned serious. “You can tell me now, or not at all.”
“I don’t know.” It was, unfortunately, the best he could do.
Sin nodded, and turned and disappeared into the shadows of the night woods.