Cyn walked into the restaurant with her computer bag slung over her shoulder. The ball cap hid her face, the ponytail and jeans made her blend in, and the gum and University of Tennessee logo on her sweatshirt meant no one was paying her any attention.
Choosing a corner table, where she could sit on the padded booth seat attached to the wall, she pulled out her silver, generic-looking laptop and began to swiftly set up the cords. She was booted up and online in a matter of minutes. Logging in under a numerical sign-in‒one of many that she rotated in an attempt to not be traced‒she began to look for acquisitions by the Shields and Krestev law firm in New York. The company was a front for the Kurev family, owning many of the houses they occupied, as well as several of the businesses that laundered the money they made.
The house they’d killed Svelichko in had been a Shields and Krestev owned property. It was one of the easiest ways to find the guys they were after. Lee was in a Kinko’s using their internet access to find the same thing. The two of them were hunting their next mark. Maybe a little inefficiently, being in two separate places, but necessarily so. They couldn’t afford to be seen much- and could afford to be seen together even less.
When the line at the counter thinned out, she popped up and ordered a panini and fresh squeezed lemonade, liking that the food was fairly wholesome and beat the hell out of the peanut butter sandwiches and protein shakes Lee made. Cyn sighed and missed her kitchen in Texas, and promised herself that she’d go back one day.
“I know,” The voice came over her as she took the first cold sip of her lemonade there at the counter. “They make the best lemonade.”
The voice had ruined it. She’d been enjoying the flavor, the act of drinking something refreshing that hadn’t had a chugging generator behind it, keeping it cool but not quite icy.
Cyn didn’t look up. Not all the way. There were Doc Martens planted about eighteen inches apart, and they were an intriguing shade of blue. The jeans were ripped, and not too baggy, almost but not quite clinging to a firm set of male legs. The waistband disappeared under a burgundy t-shirt that had surely started its life as a bolder color. The neck was muscled like the arms that had hooked thumbs into belt loops, and the jaw above it was impossibly square and hadn’t been shaved for a while. Cyn didn’t make eye contact. Her lips tightened and she offered that smile that said, ‘sure, whatever you say’.
His head tipped, going after a glimpse of her eyes, and Cyn let him, only because to avoid him would draw more attention. Nonetheless, it was violating.
“I haven’t seen you here before.”
She shook her head. Not able to form words. But wanting to say, ‘and you’ll never see me here again.’ She couldn’t come back. Not now. Not if he might be here, not if someone might recognize her. Or worse, look for her. Heading back to her table, she gave him the same tight smile, then the back of her shoulder, upset at how the day had changed with that one brief encounter.
She couldn’t bring herself to continue her search, couldn’t in fact bring herself to move from the Ask Jeeves web page she’d left on the laptop in case anyone looked. She typed nothing of value, spending her time now looking up Italian or Hawaiian translations of various words. Just because.
His eyes had been green. The hair on his head curled slightly and had been dark, a rich shade foretold by the shadow along his chin. When she calculated, Cyn was certain he was a year or two older than she. Maybe a grad student.
She took deep breaths, wondering why that bothered her heart so much. Why she wanted to fight to breathe, why she had to.
The trouble was that she’d had to calculate his age‒the guess wasn’t instinctive. She figured he was a university student because of his attire. Grad student by the confidence in his shoulders and the way they had filled the t-shirt. It was an estimation that he was around her own age. Because she didn’t know what her own age was.
Cyn remembered her birth date just fine. She hadn’t celebrated it once since she had turned eleven, and that memory, of the slumber party and her mother walking into the darkened dining room at ten at night with a glowing white cake, was burned deep, never having been replaced. Turning eighteen had been the only time she had marked the day at all since that night, and that only because the state had forced her to, by holding her inheritance until then.
Until the other day, when Lee walked her out to her new/old set of ninja posts, and told her ‘happy birthday’ no one had given her a real present since her eleventh birthday. Even Wendy hadn’t been up to it those last few years.
And this strange guy, who was making the initial moves at a pass in a small eatery where just about everyone was wired in, was just another chip in the wall. Because Cyn existed in a world where she moved freely among people, through them, around them, but she never made real contact. She wasn’t allowed. She didn’t know how. So there would be no birthday presents. No friends. No dates.
So she shut down every pass before it even got past the opening line. No you can’t sit with me. No you can’t talk to me. Don’t even attempt it. She could kill the grad student in a heartbeat. As solid as he had looked, she could take him. She’d killed enough before, she could hide the body, make him just disappear. Not that she ever would. But surely he didn’t see what she really was when he tried to crack open a conversation. He moved in a world through hers. Where families weren’t shot, weren’t sucked in to owing their very souls. She bet he’d never wondered if a contract had been put out on him.
He moved in the world she would have occupied if Leopold and Janson hadn’t shown up that night. She would have been close to graduating college. Her smile could have been genuine. She might have dated him. Slept with him. Brought him home to mom and dad.
With the breath she sucked in at that thought, she gained a little insight into Wendy. Telling the story to Lee, she’d left out important parts. Like the rage she’d experienced when killing Listle, brought on by how angry she’d been at Wendy. Wendy hadn’t loved her enough to stick around for her, with her. But now Cyn saw that Wendy had been older. Even at thirteen, she’d had a boyfriend of sorts. She’d always been the romantic type, but had gotten worse since getting into junior high.
Cyndy had never grown to that point, had never truly dreamed of the life in front of her, of a home of her own making, of creating a family, of building something like she had. But Wendy had. Wendy hadn’t lost a nameless, faceless future, or the chance. Wendy had lost specifics. The dream of a wedding, of children, of dating a grad student she would meet in a restaurant over paninis one day and fall madly in love with.
Cyn closed her eyes and forced her breathing to even out, then she opened them and looked up the variations on the name Gwendolyn just for something to type, to look like she was working. She almost missed the name ‘Wendy’ over the loudspeaker, calling that her order was ready.
It was no shock that she’d chosen that name today. After what she’d told Lee last night, Wendy was on her mind. At the counter the Doc Martens were planted beside her own white sneakered feet. And the voice came again. “Maybe I’ll see you next time, Wendy.”
Her mouth was neither smile nor frown, just a sad pull to one side. Her shoulders simply shrugged and gave an I-don’t-know of sorts as she lifted her plate off the counter and returned to her small table for one, all without meeting his eyes. That was because it was all a lie. He thought her name was Wendy, and he wouldn’t see her here next time, and she couldn’t afford to come to the surface anyway.
With the thoughts carried through to a reason for the clenching in her chest, she was able to put it away. Grabbing the sandwich, she attacked the work with renewed vigor, finding four houses purchased by Shields and Krestev since she’d last looked. She jotted down addresses, noting that they were all in different cities. One was exactly what she was looking for: a very expensive house in a very small town. That was where they would head next.
She went into the next assignment she’d set for herself, searching for any media references to her own and Lee’s kills. She only found reference to the fact that Norikov had died, and that Svelichko, who was a suspected right hand man in the mafia, had died before he could stand trial for tax evasion.
Good.
No one was talking red ribbons and puncture wounds. No one was mentioning gunshot wounds that made the victims look like Swiss cheese.
Good.
She found a short list of mafia men on trial, and noted the where and when, thinking that they might be easy to follow when they got acquitted and released. She’d never done that before. Lee might have tracking skills that would make that possible. And he’d want a bead on Dmitri Kurev, due up to be tried for racketeering and fraud.
Cyn popped back up and placed an order for a cold coffee, an indulgence that she deserved after cracking her heart open just a little last night. Her body didn’t need the chemicals, but her mouth could use the flavor. She shut down the laptop, and packed up her cords, shoving all of it into the right compartments in the bag as the name ‘Wendy’ came over the microphone again, calling her to get her drink.
This time she picked it up and went straight out the door. She freed the pale green Toyota from its curbside spot, throwing it into first gear and enjoying the give of the clutch under her foot. Her silver sedan had been automatic, but this time she’d gotten a stick, maybe just to rub Lee’s face in it. Although she’d wound up doing no such rubbing. He’d put too many hours into getting this car running as smoothly as his kitty to have his face rubbed in the fact that he’d doubted she could handle a stick.
She sucked down the coffee, winding through the traffic in Knoxville, since this was the side of the Appalachians they had chosen to come out on today. Lee had probably duplicated a lot of her internet work. He’d probably climb in the passenger side and show her the trial information, or the house in the small town just outside Boise and say that he figured, given the price and the location, that it was a safe house for the mafia guys to go get out from under scrutiny.
They’d meshed well in the tiny house. But then again, they had more to go on than most marriages did. They each had the same singular vision, and no room for pettiness, jealousy, or infighting.
She pulled up to the curb at Kinko’s, not seeing Lee anywhere, but sure enough he materialized on the sidewalk as soon as she stopped. He popped open the passenger door and slid in, and just as smoothly pulled the coffee from her hand and sipped down a good third of what was left. Cyn didn’t get mad. She’d just remind him of it when he held something she wanted. And she’d remember to get him his own next time.
When he handed the drink back to her his eyes made contact. Not once had he made any reference to yesterday. “So, are we going on a road trip to see what’s in Idaho?”
Owen stopped for a moment, and just sat at his desk, staring. He’d been doing that a little too much lately. But, then again, he’d slept in Annika’s arms for several weeks straight now. That was enough to cause some daydreaming.
He’d also closed the last of his peripheral cases. Actually, it had been handed off to Agent Brandow once they’d seen the link. It was almost too fast. The first time he’d seen it happen‒one case getting absorbed into another‒he’d wondered why the agent who’d had it first had been upset about handing it over, but after these years he understood. There was a certain satisfaction to closing a case. To solving it and putting it away. Handing it to another agent meant you put in a buttload of time and got none of the final satisfaction. Just as a little added kick in the pants, it took some of the contentment away from the agent who absorbed the case as well, because suddenly it wasn’t all his own work. But it made logical and necessary sense.
Still, it had been the last one. Now the ninja was all that was left. Owen hadn’t yet told Bean that he intended to leave the Bureau, but if his Agent in Charge attempted to assign him another case, he would have to. The problem was he wasn’t even certain he was capable of closing the ninja case. It might just hang open forever. The lack of evidence was seriously complex.
And this new crap was overwhelming him. The bullet lodged in the carpet at Svelichko’s had turned into pillow talk for him and Annika.
It was Nguyen who’d said he was certain the ninja had fired the gun. Owen had been forced to bite his tongue to refrain from saying ‘yeah, my wife said the same thing last night, once her brain started functioning again.’
With a shake of his head getting him back into reality, Owen lifted his perpetually empty coffee cup and went out to refill it.
With the coffee topped off, and knowing it wouldn’t last long, he headed down to the lab. Nguyen was in his normal state, hunched over something, peering at it through magnifying glasses of some sort, and paying little attention to anything else. He looked up as Owen came through the door, the black rimmed Coke bottle glasses magnifying his eyes and adding that final little touch, just in case you weren’t quite certain he was all nerd.
He didn’t take the glasses off. “What do you need?”
“Wanna talk ballistics?” Owen settled in before giving Nguyen a chance to answer. Nguyen always wanted to talk ballistics. Dead bodies. Ninja. What was on the table in front of him wasn’t going to crawl away, so he looked up, those magnified eyes appearing hyper alert.
“Sure. What do you want to know?”
Almost halfway through the coffee already, Owen set the Styrofoam cup on the counter, out of the way of anything precious to his friend. “The bullet in the carpet was fired from the doorway?”
Nguyen nodded.
“Then why isn’t it embedded deeper?”
“Ah,” The eyebrows rose, and he finally took off the stupid glasses. “Because it went through Svelichko first.”
“Ouch. Where?”
“Ankle, from the looks of it.” Nguyen started pulling up a chart. About fifteen by twenty inches, it contained an outline of Svelichko’s body as it had been when they found it, with Nguyen’s chicken scratch all over it in red. He pointed with the end of his pencil. “Most of the other bullets we found correspond perfectly to wounds. Here,” He indicated a lung shot. “The bullet’s embedded in the flooring, right behind the matching hole. That’s a no-brainer. Same with these.”
Nguyen indicated a kidney and the other lung.
Owen took it all in. “Shot point blank.”
Nguyen nodded. “Likely standing right over him. He’s already staked out when he’s shot, or they wouldn’t line up so damn beautifully. Given her estimated height and his girth, the gun was about two, two-and-a-half feet away. That matches the depth and drive of the bullets we dug out.”
“All right.” Owen tossed back another mouthful of the not bad/not good coffee. “What else? You said ‘most of the bullets’.”
“Well, we’ve got one here.” He pointed to a spot just outside the line. “This seems to match with the kneecap shot here.” Nguyen tapped the right knee. “Looks like it shattered the bone and glanced a little. The data’s all consistent with that. There’s another kneecap shot, that may match to this hole.” He tapped a spot that would be a good foot outside the outline when scale was accounted for.
Owen frowned. “What are you thinking?”
Shrugging, Nguyen looked up at him. “I think she shot him when he was partially staked. Maybe hands tied down, then he disagrees about being killed and so she kneecaps him to make him more compliant.”
It was interesting how easily they had switched over to ‘she’. They had no real proof. But the female ninja theory just worked so well. Owen was about to stop calling her the ‘grudge ninja’ and switch over to ‘black widow’. But they hadn’t told many people‒even other Agents‒that the ninja was female, and that would completely give it away.
He soaked it all in. He wanted to take it home to Annika. “Can I get a copy of this?”
Nguyen nodded without looking up.
“So, what about the stray bullets?” Owen pointed to the one they had first found. Marked with a little red circle on the diagram it was a good four, maybe five feet beyond the body.
“Well, there are four wounds and five more bullet holes. There’s one through the end of the mattress. Crime Scene Team found that one. It corresponds to some blood under the bed, and a drag mark‒most likely made pulling that wound out from under the bed. That means limb, extremity‒the man didn’t get his torso wedged under there.”
“Are you sure?”
Nguyen smiled. He was usually sure. “Of course. Aside from the size of him and the difficulty of doing that, there are no hairs under the bed, which he should have shed if he’d crammed himself in there. On top of that all the torso holes are pretty much accounted for with bullets in the flooring underneath.”
“Could the bed have been moved? The holes lined up?”
Nguyen looked at him like he was nuts. No matter how used to Owen’s every-angle questioning he was, he still looked at his friend in a way that told him first and foremost that idea was dumber than trying to pet piranhas. Then he proceeded to explain the stupidity. “The shot went through the mattress, so no, the bed wasn’t moved later. Plus there are no dragging marks in the middle of the carpet. It would be virtually impossible to line the wounds up that nicely, and she would have had to shoot him somewhere else, then line him up. That would have left blood marks.”
Satisfied, Owen nodded. “So we match up the remaining holes.”
“Yup. Here goes,” Nguyen pointed to the end of the bed. “My money says this shot was the one we found in his hand. There was a Glock stashed under the box springs, so it makes sense he was reaching for it. Two, the angle of entry on the ankle would mean that‒if that were the ankle wound‒he was lying face down when it occurred with his foot under the bed. And why would you shoot at that? You got a guy reaching under the bed, shooting at his hand makes sense.”
Again Owen nodded, already getting ahead. “That means the one we saw first, in the middle of the room, was the ankle wound. And then the entry is from the back. He was running away?”
“Looks like.”
That didn’t sound like Svelichko. If she was at the doorway, then it was likely right after they saw each other. “What would make Svelichko flee? She’s five feet six-ish! Not even heavy. What’s so scary that Svelichko turns away?”
“Well,” Nguyen started again, and Owen liked the sound of that. “There’s a hole in the ceiling that doesn’t match a wound.”
“Ceiling?” That was news to him.
“Another Crime Scene Team find. They were thorough.”
Nodding, Owen thought that was good, not all of the teams were.
Nguyen kept going, “So, the bullet in the ceiling doesn’t make sense. There aren’t any wasted shots here. Nothing else seems to have missed. And the ceiling is way out of range. Also the depth tells us it wasn’t at full speed, so it went through something. Or it glanced off something. Like, say, a gun in Svelichko’s hand.”
Owen tipped up his cup only to find that all of the coffee had disappeared. He would bet that he had drunk the whole thing, but he sure didn’t remember doing it. “So we’re saying Svelichko’s upright at that point. He’s either up when she gets to the door or she waits there, toying with him.”
“That’s my guess.” Nguyen’s eyes were a little too bright. Owen was pretty sure it was glee in there.
He continued, “So she shoots the gun out of his hand, lodging the bullet into the ceiling, and explaining the lower number of wounds than shots, and the placement of and mark on the gun we found.”
Nguyen agreed. “It also explains why he didn’t get a shot off. Although, that would make me think he was up when she opened the door. Svelichko was a shoot-first, ask-questions-later kind of guy. Also, the last two bullet holes line up. One in the palm of his hand, then there’s the slug in the wall by the bed, which would then go with the shoulder shot. Svelichko’s on his knees, consistent with the blood smears we saw. Then she gets him down and staked out.”
Owen laughed. “It’s all great. We have the whole thing perfectly figured out and explained. We’re just operating on this miracle theory. How the hell does a five foot six, hundred and twenty pound woman get Svelichko staked out? He didn’t manage to draw any blood on our ninja. No one has. How the hell is that?”
“She’s just that good, man.” Nguyen sighed, and Owen began to get scared. Things were getting worse if Nguyen was starting to romanticize her.
“Maybe she’s so disfigured it frightens them.”
“Nah.” Nguyen brushed the thought away faster than a fly, “No one’s pissed his pants yet. Well, not until he actually died.”
Owen just sat there on the edge of Nguyen’s table absorbing all of it.
It was Nguyen who spoke again. “If we could just get another hair. Then we’d know it’s a girl.”
“We’re not going to get another hair sample.” He went on and explained, using Annika’s reasoning and unhappily withholding her credit. He wanted to shout it to the rafters. None of these guys here had wives like her. Half were divorced, half of those because they couldn’t stand their own wives and the other half because their wives couldn’t stand them. And he spent half his own days wondering when Annika was going to wise up and realize she could do a hell of a lot better than him. Jesus, he was getting out of here. It was time to start thinking about what he was going to do for money after he left.
But not quite yet. Because he wouldn’t be leaving if he didn’t get this case solved and hopefully soon. “There are four other bullet holes that are plaguing me. The ones in the dogs.”
Nguyen shrugged. “What’s the problem? There are no stray bullets there either. Point blank, great aim. Each dog was down with one shot. And dogs don’t sit still for that kind of thing.” He shook his finger at Owen, as though the whole thing was wrapped up with one of the ninja’s big red bows.
“It’s bugging me. She’s never shot the dogs before.”
Nguyen shrugged and pulled a small piece of chocolate out of one of the drawers. A bag of them was under a photo of a naked Leopold, taken at the morgue when he was dead and holey. Owen figured that would keep everyone out of Nguyen’s stash, himself included. That was a disgusting picture. Nguyen spoke around the candy, “She never had a gun before. Not that she used.”
“Yeah, that’s just it. She’s clearly an ace marksman. Neither you nor I shoot with that kind of accuracy and she must be fast to knock the gun from Svelichko’s hand. Why start using that skill now?”
Nguyen shrugged, but Owen kept at it. “It didn’t look like Svelichko gave her any problems. He didn’t draw blood or anything. It doesn’t look like he even landed a punch on her, he’s got no bruising, not his knuckles, knees, elbows, nothing! So why shoot him full of holes if she didn’t have to?”
Nguyen shrugged. He started for another piece of candy then suggested lunch.
Owen hadn’t eaten yet, but after seeing the drawer slide open and reveal that picture of Leopold, he didn’t think he could. He begged off, suggesting that his friend ask again tomorrow when he hadn’t flashed dead dick at him first. Then he went back to his desk, where he accomplished exactly nothing for a whole hour before giving up and deciding to ride carpool and get Charlotte.
After he dropped off her friends, he took her for ice cream, helped with her math homework, and hid his chagrin behind the black and white print of the newspaper while Annika helped her do English homework. They went out for dinner, played a game of gin rummy and tucked Charlotte into bed with a small light and a book. He enjoyed every minute of it. And knew he would enjoy it more when the ninja was gone from his brain. It seemed she was in there puncturing little holes in all his theories with her laser sharp sais. Bitch.
Anni turned to him from her spot on the couch where they curled up side by side like they always did when they were both home and Charlotte had gone to sleep. “What’s bugging you?”
He smiled and opened his briefcase, pulling out the drawing that Nguyen had duplicated for him. Pointing out all the bullet holes, he let Annika draw her own conclusions. She asked all the right questions and came up with the same theory the two of them had. Owen waited until she got to the end and stated that the whole thing worked except for one major flaw: the size and weight of the ninja. But other than that it was all perfect.
“So,” he sighed, “Why start shooting now?”
“Obviously she didn’t. Start shooting now, that is. I can’t imagine it’s easy to shoot what you can’t see with any accuracy.”
“What do you mean?” His brows drew together.
She turned closer to him, tucking her legs beneath her as she did. “Well, the hand was under the bed. You said there was a dust ruffle.”
He nodded, loving how she remembered, and grasped, all of it.
“So, she couldn’t see the hand she shot. Just the arm going under the bed, and she shot through the mattress. Can you do that?”
“No.”
“Exactly, and you have marksman plaques from Quantico hanging on our wall. This woman is good. So maybe she’s shot before.”
“Well, yeah.” That much was obvious. You didn’t just pick up a gun and pick off Svelichko.
“No, I mean maybe she’s shot victims before.” Anni’s head tilted while she thought, and her eyes looked far away. “This is so much better than third grade English homework. Maybe she’s been shooting at some scenes and fighting at others. Maybe she didn’t start using the gun at this one, maybe she just started combining the techniques this time.”
All the air left him. It rang true.
And it created mounds of research to do.
But he wouldn’t do it tonight.
Lee sat arm to arm with Sin in the motel room they were sharing in a small town in the back waters of Idaho. They sure didn’t need to spend money on separate rooms, lord knew they’d spent enough of it lately. A good chunk of that spent money was in each of their palms, broadcasting local news stations from all over. The tiny TVs could pick up satellite feeds from most anywhere. He was watching Atlanta, while Sin was tuned into New York nightly news at the same time. Nothing overly interesting was occurring in either city at that moment, except that he and Sin could watch them both at the same time.
At the half hour they each switched cities, then switched again with the six p.m. time zone change. Sin even watched TV with that same intense focus she used in practice. After three hours of staring at the two inch by three inch screen, Lee, however, was ready to fall asleep. The luster of his new toy had already faded, even though he knew he would use the thing religiously and bless the technology that made it possible every day. But his eyeballs were about to fall out.
The bed sagged where the two of them sat on the side. There just wasn’t anywhere else to go. These days even the tiny log cabin seemed nicer than the dives he’d always stayed in. Sin hadn’t batted an eyelash about the dingy motel, nor protested sharing a room. Two people not sharing would raise suspicions here. Still they would leave before checkout and move to a different dive tomorrow night, again afraid that they might get remembered.
Sin had started to suggest that she pose as his daughter, but he’d growled at her, having heard the last of that one, he hoped. Just what he needed, he finally gets someone to talk to and she needles him about his age. She’d suggested ‘trophy wife’ until he’d pointed out that any man who could afford a trophy wife didn’t bring her here. ‘Mistress’ or ‘cheap whore’ was more likely given the atmosphere. Sin, naturally, balked at both of those. They’d settled on doing nothing, and letting the desk clerk draw whatever conclusions he wanted. Now they were just waiting for dark, until they could go stake out the house and see if anyone of importance was in it.
Sin was still glued to her little set, even as Lee paced the room, imagining scenarios that might occur. What would he say if they saw the cops? What if someone in the house saw them? What if there were dogs? A flat tire? Broken bone? Bleeding?
He pushed at her shoulder startling her out of her intense TV viewing. “Sin, it’s dark. Let’s get ready.”
She nodded and shut the little TV off, stashing it deep in a battered old duffel bag before gathering a few things and slipping into the bathroom. The tiny door didn’t quite close, but she managed. It gave him the advantage of being able to see when she was going to come out, so he slipped into dark, heavy denim while she was still inside. She came out in a white t-shirt that had a faded Corona logo and beach scene on it, just as he was pulling his shirt on.
Frowning at him, she shook her head. “You look like you’re going to go stake out a house.”
He rolled his eyes. Of course he did, he was in a black, long-sleeved shirt over the dark jeans. “That’s why I’m putting this on.”
He slipped a bright red t-shirt on top with a matching ball cap.
She nodded, until he said “wait” and took the cap off. With a grin he took it down two notches and settled it over her head, pulling her long hair out through the back in a sad mock ponytail. “Baby, you do cheap really well.”
“Thanks.” It was as droll as the look on her face, but she didn’t remove it, just went about packing her red backpack. She threw on a denim jacket. It was acid washed and old looking and he didn’t know where the hell Sin had come up with it. It didn’t look like anything he’d seen her in before, and he’d gotten the solid impression that Cyndy wouldn’t be caught dead in something like that, but it went miles toward obscuring the leather pants with all the loops and odd pockets.
They were down the hall and headed for the kitty in no time.
Forty minutes later they were parked a mile behind the big house. Being the price that it was, it had come with a chunk of land, not all of which was fenced. Surely they were trespassing, but Lee figured if they were ever brought up on charges even the judge would be laughing about ‘trespassing’.
There were no dogs. No visitors. Lee peeled the red t-shirt, leaving only his darks, and pulled the tight knit watch cap down over his still blonde head. Sin traded out everything in the backpack, slipping sais and kamas into her pants loops while Lee added silencers to each gun and pulled more clips than could possibly be necessary from the bottom of the backpack where Sin had carried them for him. She shed the ugly jacket and braided her hair with quick efficient movements, then the Corona shirt came off, revealing a black leather top, cut like a sports bra, underneath. She immediately covered that with the leather jacket, and traded her shoes for boots. Then they sat.
After an hour looking through the binoculars and making slow creeping movements toward the house, they decided no one was home. Sin smiled. “Wanna go in?”
He nodded.
They were over the fence in no time, walking rather brazenly across the yard. It was pitch black with no moon out. Which was, of course, why they had chosen tonight to visit. Their eyes had adjusted rapidly enough, so Sin had no trouble tossing the rope over a branch of the tall tree they’d seen on the satellite photo. It was close to the house, but as they’d guessed, the lowest branch was too high to reach.
Sin tied the already knotted rope and scaled the trunk first, at last dangling her feet off the edge of the roof and giving him a thumbs up. Lee threw his weight against the makeshift device, giving it a good jerk and testing it with all he was worth. Simply because Sin had used it didn’t mean it would hold him. But it did, and in just a few minutes he was beside her and they were pulling the rope up.
Clad head to toe in the dark leathers, she virtually disappeared against the sky as she went for the roof vent. Lee had realized a few break-ins ago that part of what made her so good was repetition. And now she dangled over the edge and popped the vent like she’d done it a thousand times. In truth, he wondered if maybe she had.
The house was cold and empty, they were certain even from the attic, which was cold and full of dust. They dropped into the top floor hallway, and Sin produced her yellow, car-wash chamois and dusted the two of them down, paying particular attention to their hands and feet.
For four hours they stalked the interior, memorizing it. They found the fuse box in the basement. The wiring around the windows led to the master command for the alarm system on a basic keypad in the front hall coat closet. The kitchen boasted full windows, as did much of the ground floor. Knowing their quarry, Lee figured these would be well covered when, and if, they needed to return. The top floor was a mesh of bedrooms and closets and a few baths. Nothing particularly unusual, but they committed the floor plan to memory, and paced each room a few times. Imagined where the master bed would go, where they would likely find their victim.
From the bottom up, they made a last sweep, doing the burglars rendition of the idiot check. They’d both worn gloves the entire time. They checked for footprints using small blue lights that wouldn’t be seen from any distance, but found the floor clean as they’d been careful from the start. They blew in a few strategic places, sending up dust clouds from what had settled. In about half an hour, the cloud would settle again, leaving no trace of their passing. They went back out through the roof vent, not triggering any alarms and slung the rope over the tree branch for the descent.
Back in the car, they stayed silent while reversing all the clothing changes they’d done before. Sin peeled her leather jacket off and folded it inside out before pulling on the Corona shirt again, and undoing her hair. By the time she was done, Lee had stuffed all the unused clips down into the red backpack and was unscrewing the silencers. He loaded the guns and all his equipment into the backpack, letting Sin carry everything that might get them arrested.
She didn’t protest that.
He would carry it next time, meaning only one of them could get detained, and the other would have a chance to free them. He felt better driving with that safety measure in place. In fact, he felt better, safer, with Sin around. She was a nuisance half the time, always wanting to shoot things or showing him up with her weapons. But he was a better hand fighter now, and he had someone to talk to. The amount to which he enjoyed that was simply embarrassing.
They stayed silent all the way back to the motel, where she threw the backpack over one shoulder and clung to his arm on the short walk to their room. Lee almost asked what she was doing, but then he noticed the other couple unlocking a door a few rooms down. Maybe he shouldn’t feel so safe with Sin around. He’d grown a little lax, believing that she would watch out for them.
When they were inside Sin finally began to talk. “Well, with no one in it, I have to wonder who they’re planning it for.”
“Maybe no one in particular yet. Maybe it’s a just-in-case house.”
She nodded. “It’s huge, and it’s in the middle of almost literally nowhere. It will likely go to someone big who needs things to cool off for a while. We should keep an eye on it.”
Lee agreed. But there wasn’t much more to say. With the house standing unoccupied, they couldn’t do anything more than just sketch out how the hit would go if they ever got the chance.
Sin stood up, rifling through her duffel bag, probably just as much reassuring herself that it hadn’t been touched while they were out as she was gathering what she needed. Lee saw the purple cosmetic bag in her hand that she always carried, and while he couldn’t see the cut of the clothing she had picked up, he could tell it was pj’s by the pattern: psychedelic teacups danced across a lavender background.
After she disappeared behind the door, he heard the shower start and began changing himself. He stripped down to his boxers and gathered what he needed, waiting for his turn. Lying back across the bed he grew bored, wondering how the hell long she was going to be even as he saw the steam start to seep around the edge where the door didn’t fit closed within the casing. Of course she was taking her sweet time, she’d been used to hot showers when she lived in Texas and had been using the hand pumped travesty they had at the cabin. And without a complaint. Lee decided he could well afford to wait.
It was a good fifteen minutes before the water shut off. But another five after that, when she still hadn’t emerged, he called out.
“Hey!” Her head came around the edge of the already partially opened door, “Just wait a damn second.”
But the words went right by him, all thoughts that she had kept him out of his own shower for too long slipped right out of his brain. She was wearing the leather underwear.
On his feet in a heartbeat, he stalked closer even as she pulled back at his expression. “Jesus, Sin, what the hell is that?”
“What?” She stiffened, holding her ground and preparing for a fight, even though he wasn’t going to give her one.
“Leather underwear?” There was a zipper up the side that he could see and it had a two inch square of duct tape covering it, only the pull tab peeked out. The matching leather top she wore was closed the same way. He sputtered, unsure what was going on. The words that came out of his mouth weren’t quite what was intended. “What’s with the tape?”
She looked at him like they were talking about his sixteen-round clips for the Hecklers, like it was something illegal and cool that gave her an edge. “You can’t undo the zippers. Duct tape is the best zipper lock you can find.”
She was locked into her clothing? “Why?”
“No one gets in unless I choose it.” She shrugged at him as though it made perfect sense. Apparently in Sin’s world it did.
“You could just slice it.” Why he was even discussing this was a mystery to him, but he felt compelled to point out the flaws in her plan.
“No you can’t.” She almost smiled as she patted at the edges where leather met muscle. “You can’t get a knife under it, they’re too tight. Someone would have to slice from the outside, and it’s tougher than my own skin.”
This time he took a mental step back. This was Sin. She made certain that no one she didn’t pre-approve could get his hands on her. For a moment Lee wondered who would want to, but as he looked her from top to bottom he saw that, in the basics of it, she was really quite attractive. Remembering back, he figured she’d been stunning that night he’d found her picking up men in the bar. But no one would touch her since she looked like she’d just as soon geld you if you came near. Although apparently when Sin chose, she could just pull the tape and zippers and let some lucky guy in.
He shook his head. “Do you even own any regular underwear?”
“Of course!” She had balls to seem pissed at that.
“Because that is fucked up.”
Her mouth opened to a perfect ‘o’ and her brows slammed down, “Oh, but you are the picture of mental health!”
She slammed the door in his face, somehow getting it to actually shut for the first time.
There went his shower. Even if he was right. Problem was, she was right, too. Who was he to call anyone ‘fucked up’? He didn’t speak to anyone in his family. He knew they loved him and he loved them, and they probably all believed he was dead, and he was content to let it stay that way. He shot people and had no remorse. He pounded on the door, “I’m sorry.”
Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t really, but he did want a shower.
“I’ll be out in a minute.” There was no responding ‘that’s okay’. Not verbally nor in her tone. Well, what had he expected? People didn’t like being called ‘fucked up’, especially when they were. More surprising was the fact that that made Sin ‘people’.
She stalked past him a few minutes later. Her leather pants and t-shirt were draped over her arm and her bag was clutched in her hand. Aside from the rigidity of her muscles and the steam that seemed to follow her like a lost puppy, she looked the same as she had every night.
Lee felt that same wet heat surround him as he stepped onto the now slick tile. Only a thin, lacking towel in a sad shade of over-used gray covered the floor to keep him from slipping and cracking his head. It was a wonder Sin had left it there for him. The shower, most likely running off a heater down the hall, stayed hot for longer than he was willing to stay in. His feet were wrinkled as were his fingertips when he stepped out, accompanied by a quick flash of memory. For a brief moment he could see Bethany’s smile, clear as day, as she showed him her fingers and toes after lingering too long in the tub. Samantha stood behind her, holding the towel with the hood and kitty-cat ears tight around their daughter.
Then it was gone.
Once again Sam and Bethy’s faces faded into the deep recesses of his memory, slipping through the cracks with the steam from his shower. He stepped into clean boxers and a t-shirt as the small room grew chillier around him.
Only after he put all his things away, and made a last check on the one club they’d locked into the window, the screamers they’d stuck on the glass, the bolts on the door, did he look back at the bed. Sin was curled up on her side, facing the wall, and apparently deep asleep.