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Someone was behind him.
And it was not Evan.
Trying to stay cool, he snuck his hand to the gun holstered just inside the hem of his parka. “You’re not supposed to be here right now.”
As he turned around, he brought the… weapon… out…
Tattoos. All over a bare torso that had more muscle in its pecs and arms than Mickey did in his entire body. With a freshly shaved head, a face that made women double-take and drop digits, and a six-inch wound that had been stitched closed by an amateur on his shoulder, Nathaniel was like a lifer in a prison yard. Or someone who should have been kept behind barbed wire for public safety.
“Where are your clothes,” Mickey mumbled as his head started to hurt.
Another round of lightning burst free of the storm, and if he’d lived, he never would have forgotten what those eyes looked like as they met his own: Dead. Nothing behind them. The blue so dark it was like staring into black glass, and in the reflection? Mickey’s own horrified face.
In that moment, he knew he should have listened. Not to idiot Evan, but to his own instincts, back when he’d gotten out of the car, up on Rte. 149—
“Uncle sent me,” he mumbled, trying to course correct. “He tried to reach you. When he couldn’t get through, he sent me. You want we go into your place while I tell you what’s goin’ on?”
Nathaniel lowered his head, those dangerous, gleaming eyes staring out from under the kind of brows real men grew, the kind that were a warning well-heeded on their own, no ski mask required.
“You’re lying to me, Mickey,” came the low voice.
“No, I ain’t.” Wincing, he tried to get his thoughts to pull together. “Sorry, I’ll lower my weapon. We family, right.”
“I hate liars.”
“Me, too.”
More lightning flashed—no, wait. It was a car, coming down the lane, the headlights making noon out of midnight, the log cabin worse for wear in the glare. When Mickey looked back to his uncle’s favorite assassin, something swept by, close to his face. Jerking away, he went to slap off that which had already moved past him—
The gurgling was like someone draining an oil pan in an old-fashioned, gas-powered car, and he had no idea where the hell the sound was coming from. Until he tried to breathe.
Dropping his gun into the snow, he clapped his hands across his throat and felt a flow of warmth, smooth and thick as hot chocolate. “Wha…”
Nathaniel held a blade up and regarded the bright red blood on thestainless steel. Then he extended his tongue, stared across the cold glow into Mickey’s eyes… and licked up the blade.
No, no, nonononono—
“Tastes like a liar. What’s in your pocket, Mickey.”
Mickey stumbled backwards—but he didn’t fall back into the snowpack like Evan, dumb, dipshit Evan, who had been so much smarter than him. Instead, he was caught by a grip on his shoulder, and then he and his killer were face to face—
The pain in his gut came quick and he looked down, wondering numbly how the lightning had found his stomach. But it wasn’t the storm. A fist was pressed right against his abdomen, his parka puffing up around where he’d been stabbed so deep, the blade that had been stroked by his killer’s tongue inside of him to the hilt.
The gurgling got worse, as there was a sudden pressure on his shoulder, a pushing down, after which the sawing started: in and out, in and out, the knife working upward through his internal organs, heading for his sternum. Mickey tried to scream, but with his windpipe sliced open, he couldn’t call for whoever had just parked at the cabin and gotten out from behind the wheel.
Help… me…Mickey reached toward the person in the darkness, the blood on his glove dripping into the virgin snow.Help…
“Nate!” The man with the car strode up to the rickety front door and banged on it. “Where you at?”
Mickey’s vision dimmed, like a veil had been pulled over his face.Help me…
He mouthed the words because there was no talking for him. No air in his lungs, no vocal cords. No… anything.
“Nate, we’re late,” the guy at the door hollered. “Come on, it’s time to go.”
Mickey Trix’s last thought was that he wished he had turned around when he’d had the chance.
His stupid cousin, for once, had been too right.
