She’d slept with a chair propped under the knob of her locked bedroom door. Before she could even think of lying down, Cyn had pulled the seam ripper from her purse and plucked the stitches at the necks of her bears. The weapons were now mostly tucked under her pillow with a few casually hidden around the room. She’d carefully sewn the seams back together on the bears, just as always, just in case.
The windows were locked and barred and she’d stuck screamers on each pane. The small white plastic boxes would register the frequency if the glass broke and set up an ear shattering synthetic wail when it did. She didn’t like the screamers usually, in case it was her trying to break in. But before she climbed under the covers last night she’d made sure there was one on each pane in the bedroom.
She’d had trouble falling asleep, her hand slipped under the pillow in seeming relaxation but fisted around the handle of her dagger. After an hour lying there, hyper-alert and waiting, she’d grown bored. And she’d passed out cold.
As she blinked now, she realized it was nine a.m. She never slept this late. She never slept that soundly. The strength and will that had been required to crawl from the depths of her subconscious had been greater than she could remember since she’d been a child in her own bed with her sister in the room and her parents down the hall.
Noises came from beyond the door. They disturbed her more because they existed than because she found them frightening. The noises were responsible for all of it‒the screamers, the chair brace, and probably the deep sleep. That disturbed her most of all. The driving need she felt to be honest with herself. He was out there, tooling around in her house, looking it up and down, and finding God knew what. But she was here, sitting on the bed, slowly coming out of her sleep induced grogginess, and she wasn’t even suddenly strung tight, ready to bolt. Cyn was willing to sit on the side of her own bed and contemplate the noises.
Lee.
His name rolled around in there, unfamiliar, suiting him. It was a little like finding the gift tag long after you’d received the present and spent time guessing who it was from.
He’d held two guns flush to her skin last night. He’d royally pissed her off with that move. But none of it had compared to when they’d finally called a truce and he’d sighed, slipping the guns back out of their holsters. Her own hands had just reacted, years of training springing up in that instant. Guns came out, therefore Cyn defended.
But he too had trained, and he defended himself against her, his hands and body slipping lithely out of her reach and his mouth forming the words to tell her to back off and not be so damn jumpy, he’d said truce, hadn’t he?
Then he’d held the guns up, used his thumbs to push the buttons and she’d watched as the clips had fallen to the floor. His eyebrows lifted at her, his eyes asking her what the hell she thought of that.
Cyn had thought, great, he just gave away his best defense. Not that she hadn’t seen him get a fresh clip into a gun faster than she could begin to guess what he was doing, but he’d popped them out and that put him at a decided disadvantage.
She’d been dense enough, or ungracious enough, that he’d had to nod his newly blonded head at the clips there on her kitchen floor. So she’d looked a little more closely and seen that they were empty. Had been empty all the time.
Doing what any self-respecting girl would have done, she stuffed her rage down and marched into her room, furious that she could have taken him, would have, if she’d known that the guns pressed to her skin held no bullets and had been no threat unless he’d decided to pistol whip her. So she’d turned her room into a fortress against him, and gritted her teeth when he announced through the door he hadn’t found a guest bedroom so he’d just take the couch. She didn’t even bother telling him to leave. Cyn recognized useless when it bit her on the ass.
A part of her brain suggested that she should have snuck out in the night and put him down. Although, there would have been another fight. He wouldn’t ever just let her creep up and sever his neck with a kitchen cleaver. There was also the problem that she’d been so deep asleep that if she’d tried it she would likely stumble around in a stupor and wind up dead or tied up herself. Besides, he did good work. She’d stolen his idea about puncturing the lungs and letting the victim suffocate in clear air. He was right. They needed to divide and conquer. This part where they got in each other’s way‒spent time planning, and then found they had missed the kill by a day or a few hours‒was getting ridiculous.
Changing into decent clothes and braiding her hair tightly first, Cyn went around the room and pulled the screamers off the windows before hiding them at the bottom of her tee shirts. She tucked the weapons beneath the edge of the mattress and into the drawers of the bedside tables. When she surveyed it and found the room normal-looking enough she pulled the straight backed chair out from under the knob and returned it to the corner where it lived. When she’d first furnished the place she’d given herself a moment of grief over her paranoia for keeping it in the room. She’d wanted to not have it there, to not need it there. She was stronger now and could defend herself, but the chair was necessary to her sleep. She slept fine most nights with it waiting quietly in the corner. But she couldn’t sleep without it at least in the room, because she would lie awake thinking of the times the chair under her knob had saved her when she’d been small and weak. That she had told Wendy what a chair braced there could do and had maybe saved her sister a little grief. And she always wondered what a chair might have meant that first night. If they’d had one.
He didn’t appear when she turned the knob, but Cyn had no doubt that the man knew she was up and about. His hearing was keen and he’d certainly know that she was dressed and would possibly even tease her about the shuffling and scuffs he’d heard behind her door last night.
She stalked the corners, waiting for him to jump out at her. But he didn’t. Cyn didn’t holler out and neither did Lee. Still he managed to shock her half to death when she did find him.
His back to her, he was scrubbing out her heavy-duty blender at the sink. In what looked like fresh jeans‒she couldn’t be sure because they might have been identical to the ones he wore last night‒he wore a bright sky blue tee-shirt and his blonde hair gleamed where he bent over the pitcher. He was more un-stealthy looking than she had ever seen him before. The shirt and his hair were beacons in the daylight. He might as well have painted a target on the back with an arrow and the words ‘strike here’.
His voice rose calm over the running water. “I know, the shirts come in three packs and I often throw away the bright ones. But hey, this is the place to wear it, right? You aren’t going to miss just because of a darker shirt. I hope you don’t mind that I raided your fridge.”
Cyn ignored that. She did mind, but not as much as she minded some other stuff. “So, did you bring a suitcase when you broke in?”
He turned and smiled at her, and it occurred to her for the first time that he could‒actually smile and have it reach his eyes. That he might have been attractive if she’d known or understood him only made her uncomfortable. Then he opened his mouth and made it worse. “No, I went out to my car this morning and got my bags.”
His mouth widened as though he, too, realized she’d slept through someone coming and going from her own front door. But he didn’t say it. Which just pissed her off more.
“Well. I have to work today. So you’ll have to go, but we can set up a time to map things out and make a phone tree and trade ringtones. All right?”
Leaning back against the counter, he picked up a large plastic tumbler in the pink feminine color she had chosen and swallowed whatever he had blended. It smelled like he’d used a good portion of her fresh fruit and her eyes cut over to the basket to see that indeed the pile there was noticeably lower than it had been yesterday.
He held the cup out to her, mind-reading yet again, “Do you want some?”
Cyn shook her head, although if she was denying that she wanted a taste of her own food, or that he was somehow reading everything on her face, she didn’t know.
With a shrug, he began gulping the whole thick drink down.
She waited, arms folded against her chest as though she knew he wouldn’t come after her. And she wanted to take a moment to wonder why she knew that. She hadn’t known that about anyone except Wendy, and Wendy had been dead for a long time. But Lee didn’t give her the luxury of sorting out her thoughts. “Call in sick to work.”
“I can’t.” She threw it back at him as though he had lobbed the keys unexpectedly and just said ‘catch!’ “I am nothing if not dependable. I never call in sick.”
He lowered the cup, the pink color having lost its feminine power in his grasp. Of course this was a man who shot dogs in cold blood. She didn’t really need to worry about his sensitive side. Being who she was, she likely wouldn’t see it if it slapped her across the face. Lee stared at her. “You are nothing.”
Her jaw hit the floor. Of all the insults in all the world-
Her chest closed around the feeling, locking it tight away from her brain, not letting it through.
Lee didn’t notice or didn’t care. “You don’t exist. This house is owned by Cynthia Cooper Macey. You’re Cynthia May Beller. Who works at the job?”
Her jaw clenched, but she answered. “Cyndy.”
He laughed at that one, only making her arms press tighter against her ribs and her brain wonder where he got off. “Were you ever ‘Cyndy’?”
She lobbed that one back to his side of the court. “You were an accountant.”
The frown wasn’t fierce, but it slammed onto his face. He seemed only mildly disturbed, but something played under the surface, something deeper. Maybe the memory of her deep, deep laughter the night before. “Yes, what’s wrong with that?”
“Did you wear a tie every day? Button down shirts? Add your little columns of debits and credits?” She smirked.
“It’s no more than ‘Cyndy’ selling women the right shoes to go with the dress.” The frown pulled tighter.
She kept poking at him. “Sure it is. I play at Cyndy. You were him. You took your briefcase to work every day and paid your mortgage and wondered if your wife was having an affair with the mailman.”
As the words tumbled out of her mouth she saw that she’d pushed something she hadn’t meant to. His eyes changed from irritated to irate. She’d hit too close to home, even though she’d only found it humorous that he had been a pencil pusher and she had meant to goad him.
His hand shot out and clamped at her throat. In less than a blink she was slammed against the wall behind her, only barely registering that he held her there tight. That her hands and arms were taut, but she wasn’t striking out, wasn’t defending herself even though she could. And he wasn’t cutting off her air. Merely making what would have been a terrifying point to anyone but her.
No, none of that frightened her.
It was the boiling storm in his eyes that frightened her.
“Yes, I was. All that. And it was my error about the mailman. And I thought I was fine and strong. And I was proud and stupid. And overconfident. What were you before they came?!?”
Her chest expanded.
“A child.”
The profilers’ papers burned holes in his brain. They’d been waiting when he arrived this morning. The profilers Owen was using worked out of a lab two time zones earlier. So his sleeping late‒until eight‒had hardly been a loss when they hadn’t gotten him anything until noon their time.
He’d read every inch of pure scientific speculation. These guys were good. It was why he used them even when he couldn’t see them or shake their hands. The husband and wife team was on FBI retainer. Owen could call them if he went through the proper channels, but he wouldn’t ever know ‘Bob’ and ‘Dana’s real names. The other problem was that they were occasionally wrong. But there was never any way to predict where. Even they had run full analyses on their misses to see if they were consistently screwing up a particular category of information or something they could correct.
So far nothing.
So Owen had to trust what he held in his hands. And later, when he caught his ninja, as he was sure he eventually would, he would be able to look at the profile and say ‘they told me so’.
Unfortunately, there was nothing here that gave him new direction. Just confirmation of his own suspicions. Bob and Dana were certain that the ninja was out for revenge.
Duh. Owen figured anyone with Intro Psych 101 and a look at those holes in the victims could tell you that.
They said tags were written because the ninja wanted to be the good guy. So the finder would know that the person had deserved to die. The ninja believed she was doing good work. Probably wasn’t religious, as evidenced by lack of ritual of any Judeo-Christian variety. Most of those who murdered in the name of God left something, or performed some cleansing for the soul of the dead. The ninja wanted these men in hell.
Owen read more.
The ninja was likely under forty-five, due to the physical strength and limitations of older female bone structure. Probably a very close family member was murdered by a mafia member as the mafia was the major source of victims. Although the ninja had turned vigilante, the focus remained on the Russian Mafia, specifically the Kurev family. Other killings were of criminals with clear-cut records and evidence of abuse of women and children. When the victims couldn’t be ID’d as the definitive bad guys, the ninja often lured them into the crime or caught them in the act. She was careful to never get the wrong guy.
She had possibly lost a child to the mafia. Definitely a husband.
This put her over twenty-eight.
And she had likely been raped or someone very close to her had been. Rape had been listed among the crimes of every man who’d been maimed or injured in his gonads. Each had suffered for that crime specifically.
Owen pulled his brows up for that one.
That made sense. The huge hole in Leopold’s cock was different from the other careful, precise, puncture-only wounds he had received. And there had been several bodies where the coroners had made comments about beatings to the gonads. Owen remembered one med examiner saying ‘it looked like someone took a baseball bat and knocked his balls into his throat’. He also remembered gulping air and letting out his own gurgled ‘Ow’ after hearing that one.
But still, besides the age range, which Owen had already had a ballpark guess on, and the rape theory, which he’d been rolling around, too, there was nothing new here. Just a pat on the back to his own deductive reasoning. Maybe he deserved some kudos for paying attention in his ‘Psychopathic Killers’ course.
He lowered the pages to the desk and his head into his hands. Taking deep breaths, he consoled himself over the lack of usable material here. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Picked up his coffee cup, which was disappointingly weightless, and set it back down. He rolled his head on his neck several times, and contemplated quitting his job.
The ninja believed she was doing good work.
At no point had they found a body and done anything less than prove that the bastard probably deserved a worse death than he had gotten. Agent Bean consistently reminded him that the FBI had to apprehend the ninja‒that the ninja had no right to play God. Owen had to bite his tongue to not ask, ‘then who gave the FBI the right to do it?’
Until she started fucking up and taking out good citizens, Owen’s personal goal was just to solve the puzzle. But he didn’t kid himself that being happy about solving the case would mean he’d be happy about finding the ninja behind bars.
Just then, Blankenship opened the door and handed over some papers.
“The brunette’s the real color.”
Owen took the words from the other agent, even as he turned over Nguyen’s report in his hands. Blankenship wasn’t telling him anything that Nguyen hadn’t told him last night just from looking at the hair strands. But he thanked his useless partner anyway.
Nguyen was long gone. Off home, to hopefully sleep off his twenty-four hour lab binge. Maybe get laid. Owen sure hoped so. The man could use some loosening up.
Blankenship said something of little to no import and closed the door behind him as he went, leaving Owen with the silence of the room and the roaring of the printouts in his hands. If Annika was right‒and she was rarely wrong‒he was holding a full DNA report on his grudge ninja. His ninja was female‒no male posing as a hapless victim to entice the rapist. The XX genetics had been visible in the hair after two minutes in Nguyen’s skilled hands with the microscope.
Now the paperwork spoke to him in weird numbers and told tales that Owen couldn’t yet hope to understand. Nguyen had pointed out digits, circling and numbering them in red ink. On a separate page he had typed what amounted to footnotes for his layman friend. Of course they were typed. Nguyen wasn’t Owen’s age, the man probably didn’t know how to operate a manual pencil. The crank sharpener that Owen had mounted on his wall to calm his nerves and give his hands something to do had baffled the younger agent. Nguyen had pointed out that mechanical pencils had been invented long ago, and sharpening was something his own grandfather had done. It, too, should have gone the way of the horse and carriage. The scientist didn’t even appreciate the smell of the churned wood shavings. And here were typed notes. It was surprising that the man was even capable of hand-writing the few scribbled jottings on the pages.
But Owen shook off his thoughts and turned toward the knowledge Nguyen had given him. Regardless of the format, the man was full of deductions.
She was blood type O-positive.
That didn’t match any they had found, except for some at the scene of the Korean child thief. And he’d been O-positive as well. So Owen’s money said that their ninja didn’t shed blood at the scene. Ever. She was that good.
She was a carrier for Cystic Fibrosis.
Even Nguyen had pointed out that was only useful in finding her if they had some other leads. Mostly her DNA was helpful in that it could be matched the next time they found it. If they should get so lucky it wouldn’t just be evidence at a scene but on a live person.
The telomere quantity on the DNA told them she was young, probably early twenties.
And that made Owen’s head snap up. Twenties?? That was way too young. This woman was skilled. Years of practice were required to do what she did. This, coupled with that O-positive info, meant that she hadn’t ever taken a serious hit that they knew of – as there had never been O-positive blood found at a scene. No twenty-year-old could have done that. Could a twenty-year-old have the kind of strength that was required to pull off the feats he’d seen the evidence of?
Owen still wanted to believe that the ninja hadn’t pinned Leopold with a bow and tag because the mafia would recognize her. Wanting to hang onto the hope that he hadn’t been wrong, Owen had altered the theory just a little to fit a female perp. Now, the ninja was a wife. Her husband had been involved. And a wife who’d had time to train like this would have to be, at the very least, in her thirties. Just as Bob and Dana had proposed.
How strong was that ‘probably’? How early were those ‘early’ twenties?
Owen had to call Nguyen.
But the man was likely asleep. And it wouldn’t be right to wake him. Not after all the times he’d come in on short notice. Not after all the crimes he’d provided the conclusive evidence for. Not after all the things he’d been able to tell Owen over the years that had sent him searching in the right direction.
So Owen did something he knew he was horrible at.
He set the file aside to wait.
Purposefully he stood and left to fetch a fresh cup of coffee. The hallway brimmed with other agents. As it was just ten a.m. it was no wonder. But they looked at him, and smiled tightly before looking away. He smiled tightly back.
Before, when he was new to the agency, he’d wondered if he was about to get axed and everyone knew it but him. If that was why they smiled those tight-lipped looks at him. But it had been Blankenship, years later, that had hauled him into the bathroom, shoved him at the mirror, and pointed out the look on his face. Owen had been scowling even as he tried to smile at the other agents as he passed. No wonder they looked at him this way. By now he was used to it.
On his rounds, he stopped in the men’s room. Then checked in the door at Bean’s office, but his superior was on the phone and waved him away. He went into the break room and pulled a clean Styrofoam cup from the dispenser and poured fragrant coffee. For the briefest moment he wondered who had made it, but then he decided to scald his tongue just a touch and took a deep sip. He headed back to his desk.
No one spoke to him the entire time.
He would pick up Charlotte this afternoon. He’d just called Annika to tell her so when Blankenship stuck his head in the door. “We got another one.”
Sin just pissed him off. Lee really wanted to hate her. He wanted to shoot her and remove her from the equation. But he couldn’t.
Some humanity remained in him, even if it didn’t seem to in her. Not until those moments when she threw her own suffering in his face. And for some reason hers always bested his own. She’d been raped, as a child. Then to add greater trauma, making the rape seem like nothing, her parents had both been executed before her eyes. She was right. She’d been a child.
From the looks of her, she hadn’t been anything of the sort from that moment on.
He let her go and flexed his fingers while Sin stood still against the wall where he had pinned her. She didn’t change her expression. The flash of fury when she had uttered those two words had vanished as fast as it had come‒her face now a mask of calm and irritation all in one look. He wouldn’t have believed she’d actually said it, felt something, if he hadn’t been able to hear the words reverberating around in his head.
He wanted to concede. To throw, ‘you’re right’ out to her and see if she caught it, if she volleyed it back. Instead, figuring Sin wouldn’t give at all, he went halfway. “We need to work something out.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “I need to get to work.” Her head tilted at him, and he knew that, though he may try, he wouldn’t get her to budge an inch. Apparently Cyndy was never absent, never late. And Sin wouldn’t let her be.
So he didn’t try arguing. “Fine. I’ll be here when you get back.”
“Hmmm.”
Yeah, that didn’t sound good. Lee waited.
He didn’t have to wait long. Sin shrugged. “Why don’t you give me your number and I’ll call you and we’ll work it out?”
“Because I’m not stupid.” He blinked, wondering what the hell she was up to. She was alive after all the kills she’d perpetrated. He’d seen her work. She was smarter than that.
But he was met with a great woe-is-me sigh and Sin’s crossed arms.
She didn’t speak, and so Lee went for another tack. “I don’t even have a phone.”
“Really?”
Interesting. Sin was engaged.
“Of course. I live in a shack. I don’t exist. So I don’t have a phone. Whatever we work out, we need to do it before I go.” He shrugged. “Or I could just kill you, and then I don’t have to work anything out.”
Sin’s answer to that was to throw her head back and laugh, a full hearty laugh. The likes of which he hadn’t heard since last night when he said he’d been an accountant. “I don’t think you can kill me. I think you would have done it already if you could.”
As would you. Lee thought to himself. But again he had to admit that she was right. He couldn’t kill her. However, if he was smart, he’d use her to his advantage. “So go to work, and I’ll be here when you get back, and we’ll work something out.”
She growled at him. Actually growled.
Lee blinked. He remembered Bethy doing that to him. Usually when she was mad, she would growl and stomp off. But Bethy had been four.
Sin, too, stomped off. Presumably to get ready for work.
There was no way in hell he was going to get a phone, and he sure as shit wouldn’t call her. The last thing he needed was a phone conversation between himself and another killer where they discussed who they were going to target next. He might as well dial 9-1-1 on himself before he went in to get his victim. He didn’t want any phone calls‒any record at all‒between him and Sin. If he was never connected to her in any way, it would be too soon.
He bided his time, checking out the house and finding a few other weapons as he went. The sink ran, she made noises in her room, something whirred. He didn’t look.
Sin didn’t emerge. Cyndy did.
Her hair curled softly around a face that any man would look twice at. She looked young, but old enough for any wayward thoughts to be perfectly legal. Her face and mouth were painted, and she even wore a soft, friendly smile that Lee was certain had never graced Sin’s lips. A thin skirt swished lightly around long, bare legs, and he was struck wondering what the hell had happened to the Sin he knew.
Or maybe didn’t know.
The eyes that were sweet and dark suddenly went to bitter chocolate on him and the full mouth pressed to a lethal line.
There she was.
“You should leave my house while I’m gone.”
“Why?” That made no sense.
“Because it’s mine.” Her voice was Sin’s, hard and cold. It came from the depths of her chest, and her feet were rooted solid to the floor. A Mac truck could wrap its thousand pound engine around Sin. Sin would likely walk away.
Lee wasn’t a Mac truck. “I know where you live. I could leave, but I’ll just come back. I’d like to use the punching bag, and take a shower.”
Although he would have thought it wasn’t possible, her lips pressed tighter together.
With a sigh, Lee imagined she was ten, and tried reasoning with her that way. “Please? Where else am I going to go? The Days Inn?”
She simply stared at him.
He tried again. “I promise not to play with your toys.”
Finally she looked him square in the eyes. “I have to go, and I don’t have time to fight with you about it. Be here when I get back, and we’ll work things out and then you’ll leave.”
“Fair enough.” He nodded, knowing agreement was the absolute best thing he could do with this lethal, petulant, woman-child.
She slung her purse over her shoulder and headed for the door, looking for all the world like a wife leaving for her job. But at this point he could count seven weapons she passed within touching distance as she made her way to the door. Should she choose, her hand could have snaked out and grabbed any of them. Four could have been flung at him from where she stood. And Sin was fatally accurate. He could be dead before she turned the front knob.
Lee liked to imagine that he would be able to get at least one Heckler out of its holster in time to return the favor. He’d loaded the clips this morning, thinking that he might have led someone here. He’d followed Sin. What if someone had followed him? He’d swept for bugs, but really, he could so easily miss one, it could be anywhere. So he’d put bullets in the bad, black guns this morning, not for protection from Sin, but for her.
Still, even knowing her temper, and knowing what she could do, he couldn’t resist. As her hand touched the knob after unbolting all the locks she’d installed, he sang out, “Dear, will you be home in time for dinner?”
Her eyes didn’t even narrow as she graced him with a bored look. “I’ll be home by seven, and, no, I’m not making you dinner.”
Lee smiled then turned away. Let her throw one of her knives in his back. Heckling her was worth it, and he hadn’t cared about his own pain or death for three long years. He heard the click and slide of tumblers as she bolted him into the house. Not that that would keep him in. Windows adorned every room, and he’d lift one and go out the way he’d come in. But he didn’t want out. He wanted to play.
For an hour he searched the house top to bottom, finding fifteen other weapons. Every closet had a sword and sheath velcro’d to the wall just out of sight. All you had to do was reach in the doorway and tap the wall just inside the frame. Your fingers would close safely around the sheathed blade and a small jerk would let it fall into your hands. Sweet.
Lee had only the slightest pang about going into her bedroom. But he pushed it aside in a heartbeat. It was too interesting, and he didn’t believe Sin had any tender feelings for him to worry about. After Samantha had died he’d learned not to waste his concern. It was simply too much energy, and so often misplaced.
He found the sickles under the bed. They were kamas, he now knew. You didn’t run into something like Sin and not research it. A few internet videos later and he’d realized that the martial arts tournament winners had nothing on her. They flipped and yelled and flung the blades like a majorette, but in Sin’s fingers the weapons floated.
Her sais were tucked under her pillow, crossed in a way that would be uncomfortable to sleep on. But he had to try it. So he laid down on her bed, putting his head where he suspected hers would be and felt the straight blades crossed behind his neck, which turned out to not be all that uncomfortable. When he reached up, one hand to either shoulder, his fingers curled easily around the handles and pulled them out. Even muffled under the weight of the pillow there was a deadly ring as the blades slid across each other.
His Dad had set him up with his first rifle as a wedding present for him. For Sam, a crock pot. But he’d pulled his son aside and given the rifle, told him where to keep it, where to stash the ammo, and that if anyone broke into the house he was to first use the pump action cock, then speak. Anyone who was stupid enough to keep coming was a fool. Everyone recognized the deadly ch-chnk of a rifle being cocked. But Lee thought this sound, this zing that reverberated even as you readied your blades, was far more deadly. It got even scarier when you were stared down with those soulless brown eyes.
He considered trying to just slip the blades back under the pillow, then considered how embarrassed his soul would be, looking down and seeing Sin discover his body as he’d likely sever his own neck trying to put them back. And Sin would be pissed that he’d bled to death all over her comfy, girly sheets.
So he carefully rolled to his feet and tried to arrange the weapons the way he’d found them. Tilting his head and seeing what he’d done, Lee was certain that he hadn’t done it right, he just wasn’t sure which part was wrong or how to fix it. Only that Sin would know. And he knew full well he’d not just broken but smashed the promise not to play with her toys. Oh well.
He considered playing with the kamas, but saw that they were dark wood and had the sheen of an often handled tool. He recognized them as the ones he’d seen her kill Leopold with. She’d be pissed if he played with those, especially when he’d seen a practice set on the wall in the playroom. Looking around one more time, Lee spotted the ladder-back chair in the corner. That explained the dragging noise from last night. Smart girl. But then, he’d never thought her anything less.
Not able to resist, he rifled through her drawers a little, pulling up t-shirts and jeans that had obviously come from her store. Like any ordinary woman’s bureau. But there were alarms, little high-pitched ones that made noise when glass broke, tucked under the shirts. Sin was not ordinary. His eyes flew wide when he opened the bottom drawer and found leather bras and underwear.
Startled, he just slapped it shut and figured it served him right for looking. He half expected a live rattlesnake to strike him before he got the drawer closed. He hadn’t needed to see that.
Lee shook it off the only way he knew how‒physically. He went directly into the play room and laid into the punching bag, striking it until he worked up a sweat and felt the resultant zing in his knuckles and wrists. He wanted to hit the practice dummy, but even as he set it up and adjusted the height he spotted the cracks in the casing. Damn girl had really kicked the shit out of the thing. And those dummies were meant to take abuse. Just not the kind Sin dished out.
When he couldn’t resist anymore he pulled the sais off the wall. Getting a firm grip on the handles, he mocked a few of the stances he’d seen on the internet videos. Long mirrors Sin had mounted to the wall told him what an idiot he looked like. So he tried it Sin’s way‒he twirled them. Or he tried to. Lee found quickly that he couldn’t hold onto the damn things. They didn’t spin in his hands. He couldn’t even flip them and catch the handle with any accuracy. Only his quick reflexes had saved his feet from being pounded or speared.
Putting the sais back on the wall, he pulled down the kamas. These felt better, sturdier. They had more weight, smooth wooden handles he could compare to a hammer‒something he’d held before. He didn’t even attempt spinning them, just swung them out, checking out his attack radius. He could now slice the neck of a man more than two feet beyond his fingertips. He swung a few more times liking the feel of the movement. Then he tried swinging the sickle in a circle from his wrist, gaining speed and momentum before he reached his arm out and struck.
The slash of air from the metal gave him a sense of certainty he’d only felt before when his fingers closed around the butt of his 9mm guns. He felt a measure of safety holding this weapon. He swung again. Again. Again.
He didn’t know how many times he did it. It felt empowering, and he arced the weapon, not even registering feeling as his breath was knocked violently out of him and his stomach clenched with the sudden urge to puke. Only as he hit the floor on his knees did he gain enough sensation to realize he’d done it to himself. Pain radiated all along his left arm, and he curled into a fetal position even as he grabbed his elbow where he’d whacked himself in the funny bone.
Still his stomach tried to purge itself of the protein shake he’d fed it just a few hours ago. His mouth worked like a fish, his eyes wide and glassy, and his one coherent thought from face-down on the mat was to wonder whether or not Sin was standing there behind him. He gulped again and waited for the pain to pass.
What a fucking moron he was. And he’d have a bruise to show for it, too. Sin would laugh eventually. Finally his lungs allowed air into his system and the nausea reduced to a sickening pain radiating from his elbow. The kamas lay gracelessly on the floor where he’d dropped them, only a few inches from where he’d dropped himself.
With the strength of will he acted on but did not feel, he pushed himself to his feet and hung the weapons back on the wall. They mocked him from their point in front of his face. He was tempted to pull a Heckler and shoot them to splinters just for spite, but knew it wouldn’t solve anything. He also knew his left arm, luckily not his preferred arm, wouldn’t likely straighten all the way for days.
Shaking his head at his own foolishness, he went into the hall bathroom and found there was no soap or shampoo of any kind in the shower stall. There was none at the sink, no toilet paper or anything indicating the bathroom was ever used as such. When he tested it, the showerhead creaked and gave up a trickle of brownish water, confirming his suspicions before it spurted to life and shot clear water out.
No one used this bathroom.
Under the sink various things were stored. But no one ever visited Sin. Ever.
With a raised eyebrow to the wall, he cranked off the water and headed to her bathroom only to frown at the collection of girly, fruity bath products there. This was Cyndy’s bathroom. With a shudder, he headed out and searched his bag, pulling out the one bottle of squeeze soap he used for everything. He’d rather brave the unused shower stall than spend a moment in that tub that would leave him feeling like he might as well be wearing a bra and garters. Only at the last minute did he remember to steal a towel.
A half hour later he came out, clean and steamy. A thick fog rolled out into the hallway as he opened the bathroom door, and for a brief moment he wished there was some way to do this when he got face to face with those bastards. It would be nice to appear as if he emerged from hell to kill them. But it would only be that he appeared to emerge from hell. In three years he hadn’t emerged once.
Looking down, Lee also realized that he was unarmed, and aside from a thin towel, he was entirely naked. Nope, not worth the smoke effect. He grabbed the Heckler from the cabinet under the sink, the only place he could think of to keep it from taking a bath with him. It folded neatly into position in his palm as he held it, even though he was unaware of the action.
Two minutes later he was dressed, this time in a long sleeved t-shirt that was a bit too warm for the temperature in the house, but the right length to hide his elbow, which was already turning an embarrassing shade of purple.
He sat on the couch for just a moment and saw the shadows in the room were longer than he’d expected. The clock said it was six, and Lee felt his eyes widen. Sin would be home in an hour.
For fifteen minutes he sat there, enjoying the couch. He hadn’t had one in a long time. The motel rooms he rented had beds and maybe a straight backed chair or two. He’d pushed the cabin couch out as far away from the small building as he could, and he never sat on it even out in the woods. While he’d enjoy the comfort and the air, the thought of the things scuttering by underneath the cushions, or maybe just biting him in the ass, was enough to keep him off it.
He watched the clock move and sank himself deeper into the cushions. He rested his head against the heavily padded back. For a moment Lee closed his eyes and imagined he was in Chicago. This was the position Samantha would find him in at about this time in the evening. He could imagine her feet were planted not ten inches from his own, and she’d likely have a spatula in her hand as she prepared dinner. “Long day?”
He could hear her voice, crystal clear inside his head. But not outside. And he could see her face full of sympathy and warmth, but when he opened his eyes she disappeared, and he was in the home of a killer, and he was a killer himself. And he was hungry, and Sam wasn’t fixing him dinner.
So Lee pushed himself off the couch and decided to raid Sin’s kitchen.
She had two four pound chickens still in the bag and a bundle of carrots that sported thin, hair-like roots. A big bag of broccoli tops was pushed to the back of the fridge behind a huge box of blocks of butter. A pound of grated parmesan cheese blocked a jar of applesauce and a tub of spaghetti sauce. The cabinets told the same story. Jesus, Cyndy had to have a freaking Costco card. At least it all looked relatively healthy. He couldn’t find a single Oreo or Cheeto anywhere.
Standing in the open door, he let the cold out of the fridge for a few minutes before deciding. Then he pulled a chicken free of its bag. He hacked it to pieces thinking Sin was better suited for this job than he was. She’d fillet the damn thing in seconds. Laying the chunks he’d made onto a cookie sheet, Lee coated them in spray olive oil and cranked up the heat on the oven. He cooked the way he always did, throwing things together and heating them until they looked done. He cut pears and simmered them in the applesauce, he steamed broccoli and boiled white long-cut rice he’d found in the pantry. He needed an apron with ruffles, he hadn’t cooked like this in so long, but he didn’t expect Sin to serve him a three course meal. If he wanted to eat, he figured he had to prepare it himself.
He was again enveloped in steam when the locks started clicking and turning on the front door. As it swung open he couldn’t resist calling out. “Hi Honey, you’re home!”
Water gurgled and hissed in front of him and he couldn’t hear her, but by her facial expression she growled at him again. Cyndy’s hair was just as neatly in place as when she left, her back as straight, her makeup just as fresh. For all he knew she’d stepped out the door hours ago, freeze dried herself, and thawed just now before she came in.
She marched by making no comment that he’d fixed her dinner.
Lee just kept stirring and checking the oven. He figured he’d feel the knife between his shoulder blades any second. But it didn’t come. Instead footsteps stomped into the room and Sin appeared, in cotton leggings with thick socks and a trim long t-shirt that covered her ass only in the sense that it came that low. With her hair slicked up in a high, folded-over ponytail and her face scrubbed free of makeup, she’d taken ten years off her age. She looked trendy enough, not that he knew what was in style right now, but he guessed she was dressed more for kicking ass than looking cool. A looser t-shirt could have been grabbed in fistfuls, no decent hold could be gotten on this one. Loose pants would get in the way. Even the ponytail offered no grip as it didn’t swing free.
When she didn’t speak, Lee pointed with the spatula, “I made you dinner.” He offered a false grin as well.
“Gosh, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He scooped the broccoli onto plates he pulled from the cupboard. Sin pulled a water bottle from the fridge and began downing it. She offered nothing except her constant watch until Lee carried the plates to the small table in the corner of the eat-in kitchen. Her only concession was to sit with him and begin to eat.
Wishing she’d say something, and knowing full well she wasn’t likely to, Lee chewed for a few moments, enjoying the food and the simple pleasures of a home. Even if it was a lonely one. Even if his present company was everything less than pleasant.
When he was about halfway finished with the meal, he began talking. “I made up a list.” He kept the paper on his side of the table, and kept talking. “It’s everyone I could think of on short notice that I’d like to take out.”
She offered a small nod. “Me, too.”
Well, great minds thought alike. She pushed her list at him, and he saw it was on the store letterhead. “You didn’t write this on a pad of paper did you?” His alarm skyrocketed and he imagined having to break into the store at night and steal the pad. God, breaking into a mall would be awful.
She gave him a withering look. “What, so the cops can read the impression on the page underneath? Give me some credit. Any seven year old who’s read an elementary school whodunit knows better than that, Lee.”
He nodded and ate another forkful of chicken smothered in baked pears and sauce. It was good enough to make him want a full stove. He shoveled in rice and passed his list to her, skimming hers as he went. “So we each get the people who turn up only on our list, and we divvy up the duplicates.”
“Sounds like a plan, Stan.” She pulled a pencil from a stack of note supplies at the end of the table where a phone was perched and began marking up his list.
While he was a little irked at her forwardness, Lee didn’t comment. About two thirds of the names were identical. No surprise there. They’d both been hit by Leopold. Both their families had been targeted by the same branch of the same Russian Mafia organization. No wonder they’d been running into each other so much. Sin’s father had been an accountant, too. For the first time Lee wondered if maybe he hadn’t held the same position her old man had.
She looked up, swallowed the bite she was chewing, and started bartering. “I’d like Winston. I have his tag already composed.”
“Fine, give me Dimitri Kurev.” The second cousin of the kingpin was wreaking havoc all around the Great Lakes, where it appeared he’d been given free rein.
With a tilt of her head and shake of reluctance, Sin conceded. The meal continued this way with the two of them bartering for who got to kill whom in between bites of broccoli and chicken. It was sick, but Lee found himself enjoying the banter. Sin gave him two hits for one she really wanted to do, although she wouldn’t say why.
When the list was done, Lee polished off the last of the chicken on his plate and stood up to get a second helping, offering to fetch more for her. Sin refused. For a brief moment he marveled that his manners hadn’t deserted him, and wondered why they had reappeared for this bad-tempered creature.
Sin’s voice caught him from behind while he plated up another whole meal. “What if I stumble across someone who needs to go? I took out a Korean selling children into prostitution because I found out about him. It wasn’t pre-planned.”
Re-seating himself and fighting the urge to put a napkin in his lap, something Sam had always insisted on after Bethany had arrived, Lee sighed. “I don’t know. Take them out.”
“But what if you’re there? Do you ever do that? Just hear about something and go after the person responsible?”
“Of course.” He pushed chicken into his mouth, not liking where the conversation was going, but not knowing what to do about it. “Fine, you take the ones west of the Mississippi and I’ll take the ones east.”
Sin blinked. “You’re serious?”
“I don’t have a phone. And I sure as hell don’t want you writing to me at general delivery and leaving a paper trail about what I’m doing. So no communication. If you want to get yourself caught, be my guest, but leave me out of it.”
At that moment, it occurred to him with cold clarity that had just become a complete impossibility. They’d been going after the same people. Certainly not in the same way. But when Sin was caught and they asked if she knew about other mafia deaths what would she say? What would he, if he were the one questioned? Jesus. This was getting twisted, and that was saying a lot from a situation that already had more knots than a macramé convention.
“I’m not going to get caught.” She could have been telling a friend that she was perfectly capable of sneaking off to a party after her parents thought she was in bed. Her expression matched exactly that sentiment. But in a moment where the clouds in his head parted and things were revealed, Lee realized that Sin had been denied all those moments. And she’d never reclaim them.
“Look, if you see someone who needs to be taken out of the equation, do it. We’ll argue about it when we run into each other.”
Setting her fork down she threw another volley at him, even as he shoveled food in as fast as he could. “How will we know when it’s time for a new list?”
He liked that about her‒the perfect certainty that they wouldn’t fail. He pulled at her paper. “I can reach you. I’d tell you where you can find me, but really you turn left at the two big oaks, and go until you see a big boulder . . .” He stopped as he saw her eyebrows rise. “It’s a shack in the Appalachians. You’d never find it, and that’s the idea. So, why don’t you pick someone to do last, and I’ll keep an ear to the ground. When I hear that he’s gone, I’ll be here within three days.”
She obviously didn’t like that. Gears turned in her head. Lee wanted to hold out an olive branch, but didn’t find one to offer. Then he realized he didn’t want to hold one out after all. Sin was immature, grumpy, and she could take him down with just a word or two to the wrong people.
By the time she conceded, Lee had the feeling of ants under his skin. He popped up from the table, rinsed his dishes and loaded them into the washer. Grabbing his already packed bag, he slung it over his shoulder and bolted from the door before she could tell him to leave. A quick ‘good-bye’ was all the concession he gave, as he left Sin at the table with her list.
Breathing a little easier, he sank into the woods, deftly avoiding the strung barbed wire, and crunching undergrowth like an elephant until he reached his car. He cranked the engine and felt his insides begin the same soft growl as the car. With his hand across the backseat, he guided the kitty out of the woods and pointed her to the freeway.
What the hell had he gotten himself into?
He was tied to Sin now, whether he liked it or not. He’d only avoided it in the past because they hadn’t seen each other, but from the moment they first made contact they’d been linked. And Lee didn’t want to be linked to anyone. Certainly not someone he didn’t trust. Someone hard enough to sleep with blades under her pillows. Someone who might be thinking the same thing as him, and be even harder of heart than he was. Who might just have the balls to take out the competition so she wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore.
Shit.
He didn’t breathe again until he hit the Arkansas/Tennessee border.