Lee crouched in the attic amidst the dust and boxes he was now familiar with. Sin, next to him, was as silent as he, and they communicated that they were ready to move with nothing more than their eyes.
Not surprisingly, Ling Mai Na had been acquitted of the crimes she was tried for. It was almost more disappointing than if she’d never been brought up on charges. This meant that those atrocities were wiped from her slate, never to be heard again, due to the American Legal system’s insistence that no one be tried for the same crime twice. However, once the hoopla had died down, and she’d gotten her pat on the back from Kolya Kurev himself, she had settled down in the house to operate some border business from her living room. Tonight, she’d already gone to sleep, probably believing she’d destroyed enough lives for one day.
The trap door into the house was well oiled and it opened into a dark hallway without a sound. They dropped in as quietly as they had done everything else up to that point, and stilled for a moment as one of the dogs let out one good bark. It was silent after that so they moved. Down stairs, around walls, through arches, they swept every room, looking for traps that might have been set, making sure that their information from outside the house‒that Na was alone and in bed‒was correct. They ended in position as planned.
Sin was in the living room, crouched behind the end of the large, expensively upholstered couch, when she motioned to Lee to get into place. He took up point in the dining room, just beyond the grand open doorway. No one coming into the living room from upstairs would see him, but he would see them.
A crash sounded in the space by Sin, but Lee didn’t move. He heard her swear a blue streak, then something else knock over and clang on the highly polished hard wood floor.
So far so good.
Not a full minute later he saw her.
Ling Mai Na, in jeans and a red sweater, stalking past the open archway where he waited. Gun outstretched, she held the black Glock in two hands, and kept it in front of her, sweeping the living room with it, forefinger ready to jerk the trigger at a moment’s notice.
Good, she wasn’t a proficient marksman.
However, the jeans, sweater, sneakers and gun told that she’d been waiting up‒so while she wasn’t a crack shot, she wasn’t a fool either.
While he slowly came out behind her, two hands aimed, fingers pointed down the barrels, both at her, Ling Mai Na spotted the fallen lamp and tipped end table. With cautious steps she went over to check it out, placing herself exactly where they’d wanted her, directly between him and Sin.
Slowly, Sin stood up as Ling turned, facing Sin. For some reason the woman raised her gun and pointed it at Sin, and Sin didn’t react. Lee didn’t like the tightness in his chest that kept him from breathing during that half second. Sin had a knife in each hand and a look on her face that told Na she might get a bullet out of the chamber, but she wouldn’t live to tell about it.
Lee was less than three feet away, the end of the silencer only five inches away from brushing the tips of Na’s neatly bobbed hair, and he spoke in a whisper that was more guttural than he had intended. “Right behind you.”
He expected her to swear. From the deadly look in Sin’s eyes Lee could tell she was staring down Ling Mai Na, and the other woman was also vying for alpha dog. She didn’t capitulate as he had hoped she would. At least he hadn’t been stupid enough to expect it.
From the name, and silky black hair, even the neat, clean lines of her clothing, he’d expected someone more Asian sounding, but no‒it was all cultured American, with a little bit of killer cool. “Well, I guess we have a problem here. You shoot me, and even if I die I jerk the trigger here and kill your little girlfriend.”
It was Sin’s voice that answered. “Yes, but you’re in the middle. Sucks to be you.” She even smiled.
Lee was sweating bullets. Sin had a gun trained on her at very close range, by someone who obviously wasn’t that familiar with the weapon. That was more dangerous than . . . well, just about anything, and she didn’t seem to have the sense to be frightened by it or to even tense up just a little.
Na must have smiled, he could almost see it reflected in Sin’s eyes, and he could certainly read it in the subtle quirk of her brow. Ling’s voice was still modulated and cold. “But see, I’m not alone.”
Lee saw it as she said it. A shadow appeared to his left, large, with arm outstretched. He guessed that would be a gun aimed on him. The guess was an easy one to make, because another bulky man stepped through the open space behind Sin, his .357 Magnum aimed on her. Her eyes didn’t move from Na’s, but Lee could tell she knew what was going down.
Ling went so far as to lower her own weapon, taking one deadly possibility off Sin, but there was another pointed at her now. To Lee’s practiced eye, the mafia man’s one-hand hold, steady grip, and casual air all spoke of skill, and that worried him as much as Ling’s ineptness had.
For long minutes no one breathed except Ling Mai Na, who almost seemed to be enjoying herself. Lee quietly seethed, the one thing he hadn’t expected was to find himself in a fucking Mexican standoff. Slowly, and with infinite patience, he rotated his left wrist to point the gun at the man behind Sin while keeping his right aimed at the back of Na’s head.
Ling spoke again. “You two should set your weapons down. I promise not to do anything with you but take you to Kolya. He’s anxious to meet you. Both.”
The last word told Lee that she had two goons brought in for the one killer she had been expecting. The extent of their reputation would make him smile later. If he survived this.
Sin’s eyes met his, from beyond Ling Mai Na, and he hoped the drug queen and her goons couldn’t read in them what he did. Although there was nothing he could point to that had changed in his partner’s expression, to Lee it was plain as print: Sin was going to make a move. In three, two . . .
Lee moved too, but he saw Sin through the perfect clarity of his fear. With no motion to wind up, to gain speed, knives flew from her fingers as if large magnets had been turned on and she’d simply let the blades go. Somehow the knives rioted into action from normal standing height, when Sin wasn’t even there anymore. One had gone short range into Ling Mai Na, and another flew past him to the goon with the gun aimed at his back. He prayed it was enough. Lee hadn’t blinked, but his partner was on the ground, fresh blades in her hands.
Bullets had fired from each of his guns, one into the back of the righteously smug Na’s skull. His neurons registered her hair parting and shattering for the close range shot, her body accepted the lead and Sin’s blade at almost the same moment, and if he’d been watching it in real time, he’d have called what she did a ‘jerk’. As it was, he saw it as more of an awkward dance.
His left hand put three bullets into the man behind Sin, two into his face, which Lee aimed exactly where the man’s forehead and nose were, and the third into his chest, which Lee put a little low, knowing that the body was already beginning a slow fall.
His ears heard other shots, more than the four he’d fired, and he was thinking through putting another bullet into Ling who seemed to still live for the less-than-a-second that it took him to think all this. Lee didn’t fire at Na again, as she was falling to the ground, Sin directly behind her, and the trafficker was too far gone to be a threat.
Sin’s feet swept Na’s out from under her, helping the woman in her rapid descent to earth and aiming her fall to crack her head against the edge of a nearby table. Lee watched as the black hair spurted blood and fell in a now direct line toward the sharp furniture corner.
The other bullet sounds he had registered in his ears became feeling as one ripped into the right side of his chest, another hit him square center, and he staggered backward from the force.
Sin looked up at him, wide-eyed, even as more bullets hit him and the guns dropped from his grip. Lee managed to plant one foot behind him and he went down, seeing only the ceiling, and not able to direct his gaze much of anywhere else.
A beefy hand appeared at the left of his vision, the gun aimed down at Sin even as a knife flew toward it. Red sparks flew from the tip as another bullet left the chamber. He prayed Sin was out of the way, as he couldn’t even turn his head to look.
The floor smacked him in the back, knocking the wind from him, although he didn’t think that was his major concern right now. He heard more bullets hitting flesh and a grunt from Sin, who never grunted.
Lee closed his eyes.
Voice escaped Cyn as she grabbed the gun Ling had dropped when she fell. With a firm grip, Cyn used two hands and rapid, wild fire to make certain the man off to Lee’s side was dead. She slipped one sai loose from her pants and pushed it into the heart of the fallen mafia man beside her, yanked it free, and drove it through Ling Mai Na’s heart as well, although it was impossible that the woman still lived.
She watched as Lee furtively grabbed the guns he always kept stashed along his calves. Before she could blink he’d sat up, hands full, weapons aimed at the person who was moving‒her.
With a breath in and a relieved sigh, he melted back, guns slipping away from their aim dead center of her chest. His voice was slow and hollow. “Did you take any hits?”
She nodded. “Two in the back.”
With swift movements he found his feet and spun her to look, his fingers quickly finding the holes in her clothing and locating both bullets. One was in the center of the shoulder blade, the other had nearly missed her entirely, hitting at the top of her right shoulder nearer to her neck.
As anxious as he was, Cyn turned back and traced her fingers along his chest, finding a series of burned holes, one on his pec, several at his abdomen, and one at the exact middle of his heart that made her breath suck in. “We have to go.”
Without worrying about the noise they made, they fled, this time through the back door. There was always the possibility that the FBI was listening in. Fast was more important than furtive. Aside from someone guessing their size, no identifiable traits would be distinguishable given the dark and the distance.
They skittered through leaves and debris that littered the ground through the man-made copse of imported trees and along the equally man-made lake. They burned a trail right to where the kitty sat, waiting patiently for their return. The FBI and the Kurevs would know which direction they had gone, where they had parked, and what road they had connected onto. With research they would know what tires were on the kitty. Cyn didn’t care about any of it.
They spent only a moment changing out of bloodied clothing. Jackets were shed with ease. Lee groaned to make his arms work, and Cyn barely bit her own grunt back, although she wasn’t sure quite why, as they both worked the thick Velcro at the sides of the Kevlar vests Lee had insisted on.
The Tampa job had not gone to his satisfaction, too many bullets had flown in their direction, and he had insisted on being prepared. Cyn had whined. They’d be fine. They didn’t need Kevlar. All the way up until they had gotten out of the kitty. The damned vest was uncomfortable, she had been afraid it would hinder her movement.
Lee had pointed out that bullets in her chest would hinder her movement more. And he wouldn’t go in if she wasn’t wearing it. End of story. She was too shaken now to even tell him she was sorry she’d whined.
Lee had peeled everything, including the cotton t-shirt he’d worn underneath, as it was sweated into and plastered to his skin in the shape of a Kevlar vest. Bruises were seeping under his skin in places where the bullets had slammed into him, but she didn’t get a good look, as the fresh shirt he had stashed under the seat was already out and over his head.
With a quick perusal of her, Lee’s hand followed his eyes. A baby wipe in his fingers, he rubbed at her cheek and along her neck. When he pulled the white cloth away, Cyn saw that it had red patches, most likely of Ling’s blood. Thanks to the Kevlar, none of it was her own.
Focusing back on himself, Lee shucked his jeans at the same time she did, and they changed quickly. Not touching his dark socks, Lee shoved his feet down into loafers and started the car. He grabbed a comb and pushed his sweat-slicked hair back even as he pulled forward out of the spot.
With only a minute or two of bumpy dirt road before they hit open space, Cyn took a quick stock and peeled her own t-shirt, and even the sports bra, off. Still bending over to shove them under the seat, she pulled out a sweet, long-sleeved pink shirt that read ‘Angel’ and yanked it over her head. She sat up and untucked her braids, letting them fall down her back, and pulled out the bright pink lip-gloss she’d stashed in the pocket of the jeans she was now wearing.
Content that she was as different looking as she could be, she reached across Lee and plugged in his seatbelt for him, before doing her own. She was not going to risk damage to either of them in a car accident after they’d walked away from that. Nor was she willing to get pulled over for violating seatbelt laws, when they had a car full of incriminating evidence, and she wasn’t able to draw a real breath to speak.
This was unlike her to be keyed up.
After Robert Listle, and the attack of nerves that had come with killing him, she’d found serenity. She’d calmly walked away from each kill. Knowing the world was better, and not caring if she was caught. She’d have happily spent years in jail. She’d have confessed all on the stand, or pled the fifth and bided her time. But she didn’t do this. She didn’t need to fight to control her breathing. And she didn’t understand it.
Cyn looked down to find her hands were shaking, and quickly she clasped them together. Her jaw, too, tightened to stop the sound she only now recognized as her own teeth chattering.
Her eyes straight ahead, she saw only the road slipping under the front of the kitty as Lee wound them through surface streets and up the ramp onto the freeway. Only when he’d shifted into high gear did his hand slip into his hair, destroying the tiny rows made by the comb. He slid back into a more relaxed looking posture, even as his eyes moved too quickly from one mirror to another, making sure they weren’t followed.
Not participating, Cyn sat still while he parked the car in the woods behind her house, and only when he shook her shoulder did she come around and find herself. With her usual steel attitude finally in place, she pulled her clothing from under the seat and carried it inside. She climbed into the tub fully clothed and washed the blood from her leathers before asking for Lee’s clothing.
He brought her bleach and she practically swam in it. The shade of the leathers and his dark jeans practically faded before her eyes and the room reeked of the chemical smell. But Cyn kept working. As she finished scrubbing, she wrung out articles and handed them up to Lee who produced scissors and promptly shredded them into small pieces, distributing them among seven different trash bags of varying brands that he’d lined up along the floor.
He left her there in her tub, and headed to the hallway bathroom for a quick shower. Then gathered the bags she had tied still wearing the two layers of latex gloves she’d donned upon getting in the tub. He looked clean and fresh, and darker haired when he came back into the room to gather the bags. “I’m going.”
She heard the voice from beyond the dark shower curtain and over the noise of the sprayer as she showered away everything she could. Smiling to herself she called out, “Don’t get caught.”
He left then, and she wished she hadn’t said it.
She smelled like freesia when she emerged, and she slathered on the matching lotion as a way to eat time. She blow dried every inch of her hair. Changed into her nightgown and watched TV. Doing deep breathing exercises, and keeping her heart rate lower than it felt like it ought to be, she found the three a.m. re-run of Oprah and left the channel there. She tried to enjoy the feeling of the cushy couch and the clear picture on the large TV she had always kept more for show than anything. Not that anyone had ever appeared to show it to.
Cyn repeated to herself that Lee had seven places to go. Four large apartment buildings, two junkyards, and a metal works with car-crushing facilities. He had all the bags to drop or hide and wouldn’t be back for a while.
Oprah was long over before Cyn heard the back door open. She didn’t move from the couch, just watched as he came into the room. Even from her vantage point she could see that he finally let all the tension seep away. The Na job was finally over. If any of the trash was found, it couldn’t be traced to either of them, and likely it would never be found, or identified as what it was, the way they had washed and distributed it.
Standing, finally, she let fly. “What the hell was that?”
His eyes blinked, and he stepped back, startled.
Cyn didn’t stop. “What did you do in there? I saw you! I watched your face! They pulled guns and you got scared!”
He looked at her like she wasn’t right. “Of course I did-”
“No! You-” She sucked in air, preparing to yell maybe loud enough for someone outside to hear them. So she cranked it down to a heavy hiss. “You were afraid when it was only Na with a gun! What the fuck were you thinking? Since when do you get afraid in the middle of a damn job!?”
It wasn’t a question. She was pacing so harshly she was surprised the carpet didn’t combust where she stepped. “You do this all the time! Her gun wasn’t even pointed at you!”
It hit her full force, ripping through her outer shell, slamming into her like bullets. She felt her mouth and eyes go wide, and lost all control of her heartbeat as it bolted away from her. Three breaths later she was finally able to form words, to answer the question in Lee’s eyes, as he seemed to need to know if she would be okay. Cyn wasn’t sure. “You were scared for me.”
No one had been afraid for her, not since the night her parents had died, not even herself since she had made it through her first kill. Cyn hadn’t given a second to fear for her own mortality in years. She made plans to live, but didn’t care if she didn’t.
She launched herself at him before she knew what she was doing. Her mouth found his, her arms locked around him, her body pressed full length down his. Fear for him, for herself, that she had never admitted she felt, joined the relief to still be standing, the deep gratefulness that he had forced her to wear the Kevlar, and all of it rolled off her in waves.
Her hands ripped at the t-shirt he wore, abiding the drive within her that needed skin contact, and she pulled it over his head. Cyn was pressed into the wall, her feet not touching the ground, the pressure of Lee’s body holding her there, while his hands sought to rid her of her clothing as well.
Something animalistic within her took over, and her nightgown was gathered in a bunch around her waist when he drove into her.
Owen had been lifting his bags out of the back seat of his sedan, and looking forward to seeing Annika and Charlotte again after a long and painful absence, when his pager had buzzed. He’d wanted to stamp his feet and have a temper tantrum and cry, ‘No, no, no!’ He railed against the thought that he wouldn’t see his daughter at all unless he woke her for a few minutes.
Instead he’d gone inside quietly, and thought to wake his wife, but she had been waiting and first plucked the pager from his belt, not knowing that it had already gone off before he’d gotten in the door. Anni tossed it into the laundry and threw the belt after it, then his shoes, and his shirt, and Owen didn’t care for a good long time that he’d been summoned.
The summons meant there was a dead body. And dead bodies would keep. He had a naked, writhing Anni that wouldn’t. He made love to her with the cold seeping into his heart that he had to tell her he was leaving again, and he didn’t yet know where he’d be going or when he’d be back.
For long minutes afterward he lay next to her, content with her contentment. When he found his breath again he asked, “Anni, if I wasn’t a government man, what would I be?”
She laughed, filling him with that deep richness that made everything okay. “You’d be a college professor. You always loved to teach.”
They both heard his pager, buzzing at the bottom of the hamper. Her eyes found his. “Can it wait?”
“It already did. It went off once before I even got in the door.”
“Oh, baby.” She sighed with sadness. But it was regret for him, and not against him, that filled the sound. “Then you’d better answer it.”
Owen dressed hurriedly into a different suit, which was ridiculous since he’d just stepped out of one, and it was three a.m. Then he called, while he and Annika both waited to see just how wrong he’d been when he’d predicted Ling Mai Na would be the next hit. Anni had looked over his maps and analyzed his thoughts, and agreed they might be onto something. So she sat beside him, naked, but as curious as he where he’d be going next and who the victim had been.
It was again Randolph on the other end of the line telling him his destination, and again Owen wanted to howl with impotence. He told Anni and she cringed. But she helped him repack his bag.
An hour later he was back on the plane, Blankenship nodding at him and giving a bleak, sarcastic “Long time, no see.”
Nguyen joined them this time, looking more awake than either of the other two agents. Of course, he wasn’t going back to the place he’d left less than fifteen hours earlier.
Blankenship looked worn and a little defeated.
Owen was certain he just looked mad. He couldn’t believe he was going back to Dallas and wondered if the hotel had even changed his sheets yet.
They’d had surveillance on Ling Mai Na until the previous morning. Agent Bean had cut the funding at that point. While Owen had been warned twenty-four hours in advance that they would pack up if they didn’t have anything, he’d still been convinced he was in the right place. He’d fought tooth and nail to stay. He’d been denied in no uncertain terms.
So sure that he was right, he knew he’d finally seen something predictive. Even though there were no previous cases like the killers he was hunting, and the profilers couldn’t work with it because they had nothing to go on, Owen felt he was finally getting in the Christmas Killers’ heads. At last he was getting his brain wrapped around their pattern, maybe even the way they thought, the way they planned. He’d been sure they were driving to their kills, and he had no idea why he hadn’t caught them coming up I-75 out of Florida, but he was still certain he’d been close there.
And now, he’d been so certain they’d hit Na.
His only satisfaction was that he was right. And ‘well, I was right’ wouldn’t mean a lot to the bosses upstairs when he didn’t produce any killers. Even when it was the bosses and the funding that thwarted him. Owen understood the Bureau couldn’t very well go to the media and say, ‘Well, we knew where they were going to be, but . . .”
At that moment he decided that as soon as he got home he would tell Annika he was leaving the Bureau. They would also sit down and map out an end date. He would resign by that date whether or not the Christmas Killers case was closed. He would at last put his family before his country and his agency and the idea that it was all right to play God, simply because you believed you were in the moral and legal right. Maybe he would even leave by fall, some time corresponding with the start of university classes. Even as he sat there on the too familiar plane, the idea was growing on him.
He didn’t read any briefs during the flight, just caught whatever sleep he could there in the uncomfortable airplane seat and only truly woke up as he left his bags in the company car and donned a sterile paper suit outside of Ling Mai Na’s home.
Because he hadn’t allowed himself to be updated or read any of the paperwork, he stepped into Na’s living room expecting a dead body. Instead he saw what looked like the shootout at the OK corral.
“Fuck.” It was the only word that Nguyen spoke. And he’d read the briefs.
They walked the perimeter of the scene, sending Blankenship on his usual inspect-the-outside mission. Half of Na’s beautiful face had been blown away by what appeared to be a nasty exit wound. Her one remaining eye was dark and glassy and looked heavenward. Her face revealed she’d been shot in the back of the head, but they’d likely never find the entry wound as she seemed to have split the base of her skull on the sharp corner of a once pretty end table. Definitely not child-proof. Or ninja-proof for that matter. The killers seemed to use whatever was at hand and use it well. As familiar as he was with their other scenes, Owen seriously doubted they’d simply gotten lucky and Ling had happened to crack her head on the way down.
Blood pooled in several places, sliding carelessly across the slick hard wood flooring. Na’s head wound was a source for a lot of it, but there were other bodies and they had spent some time bleeding profusely, too.
The two dead men were clearly mafia. Their dress‒formal and pressed‒and their guns‒.357 Magnum‒still gripped firmly in their right hands identified them as nothing else could have. Yet despite their skill, their background, and the fact that they had been prepared to face their killers, they were all cooling in pools of their own blood, and the ninja and gunner were nowhere to be seen.
Evidence of the killers was everywhere. Again there were no bows or tags. Again the work was fast, if not sloppy, and evidenced the make-do situation the ninja and gunner had found themselves in. This was not what his Christmas Killers had planned to do. It did not go down as they had intended. From the looks of it, not as any of them had intended.
A Glock lay on the floor under the archway to the kitchen. Bloody footprints in the size ten Skechers tracks Owen was so familiar with, along with other, larger prints led straight out the back door.
The prints were flat. The steps regular if far spaced. Once they’d crossed the threshold to the kitchen, they had run. A few overlapped prints showed they paused, just the smallest amount, to get the door open, but they didn’t even take each of the steps. Deep impressions in the dirt beyond showed the speed at which they’d pounded out of here. Hale and healthy. Upright, and not bleeding. At least not dripping.
All the blood that led out this way was tracked blood. Owen went back to check, and sure enough, nothing indicated that either the ninja or the gunner had gotten themselves wounded again.
That, of course, matched with everything he knew. They did not make the same mistake twice.
“They went out the back!” Blankenship’s voice carried in to where they stood.
“Thanks.” He and Nguyen hollered it at the same time, and Owen, at last, found something to smile about.
Lee stepped back, snapped his pants, and gritted his teeth.
“It’ll be better next time.”
He blinked, and couldn’t believe he had heard that. He couldn’t believe that moment of insanity had happened and that was her response. He couldn’t believe . . . hell, any of it. He pushed his voice out through clenched teeth. “There is nothing about this day, nothing that has happened since we first left the house, that should be repeated.”
He didn’t look at her, although he could see Sin adjusting her nightgown to cover herself. Normally under tight control, his emotions were wreaking havoc when finally let loose. Not knowing where the words came from, or why they fell out of his mouth, Lee let the rant take him over. “I have only had sex a handful of times since Sam died. It’s been nothing but an empty need. I picked up women in bars and didn’t give them my real name. Once I even got slapped with a bill afterward. I was surprised, but I paid it.” He watched as Sin’s back got straighter with every word. Still the words tumbled out. “I have never desecrated my wife’s memory like I just did. If I ever hate myself that much again, I’ll-”
He turned to glare at her as he spoke and only too late saw the fist. It made contact somewhere behind his nose by the time he even registered it was coming.
“Aaaagh!” Whether it was in pain or a battle cry, he didn’t know. Maybe both. Staggering backward, Lee caught his momentum even as his hand came up to hook the arm that had thrown the punch. Ducking to lower his center of gravity, he missed a second swing from Sin, and came up, palms front, the heels of his hands connecting with her shoulders and shoving her backward.
The heavy thud of two bodies slamming into the wall reverberated through the house. She looked shocked, as though she hadn’t expected a fight, but Sin kept her head from hitting the wall behind her and found the strength to snap it forward and crack her skull against his own.
He took the blow, not feeling the pain he knew radiated outward from his forehead, and planted his feet solidly before bringing one elbow up against the side of her face. A duck and a well placed arm took her out of contact’s range. Stepping to the side, she threw a punch to his midsection that he sidestepped. Probably as she had planned, the sidestep brought him directly into contact with her other fist. Right in the kidney. But he was moving away from her even at impact, and it greatly lessened the blow.
Pulling his fist back, he watched her find her stance as her eyes tracked his knuckles with a meanness he’d only previously associated with mother bears. Lee swept his right foot out, knocking her left out from under her. Sin toppled, but redirected it so she fell into him. Taking her weight, he adjusted and took her down under him.
She fought for dominance, a furious flurry of fists and knees, a hellcat scorned, and she aimed for his face and gut. He never knew where she was going to strike next and he spent his time deflecting her blows, until he finally got lucky and managed to capture her wrists.
Pinning her to the ground, Lee took a deep breath that hurt each of his ribs and found a moment to be grateful that she hadn’t gone for any of the nerve clusters she knew how to find. Then again, neither had he. It seemed they’d both been content to strike at the bruises that already covered each other from this hellish day. Although Sin had seemed to want to go for his face, too.
His relief didn’t last for long. She bucked against him, almost throwing him off, then screamed loud enough to bring in the cops. Startled, he let go of one hand to cover her mouth, and she instantly stopped screaming.
He figured out why when the side of her freed hand made fast, hard contact with the side of his face, right in front of his ear.
“Aaaagh!” He toppled off of her, and lay panting on the floor, waiting for her to go for his neck, or take her sick pleasure in finding his vagal nerve blacking him out, or just stopping his heart completely.
His eyes focused on hers hovering above where he lay, “Do your worst.”
Instantly deflating, Sin sat back on her heels. Her voice was small. “I’m sorry I desecrated your wife’s memory. You may have only had sex a few times in the last several years. I haven’t had any in nine. I’m sorry.”
She stood up and walked off with a dignity she shouldn’t have been able to find in the dimness that was lit only by the muted and flickering TV. The sun had risen a while ago, but the blackout curtains had obscured all of it.
Lee lay on the floor where she’d left him.
He shouldn’t have worn the Kevlar.
He should have died killing Na. He shouldn’t have fought with Sin. Or done any of the rest of it with Sin. He should be man enough to get one of his Hecklers out and eat the bullet that surely already bore his name.
But he didn’t have the energy.
Battered and bruised beyond recognition, he gave in and fell asleep there on the floor.