Page 97 of The Dearly Departed

I hadn’t needed him to elaborate on that. I knew exactly what he meant. Gerald wanted to keep me close. He wanted to control me; he always had. But Marco wasn't different. He was just a guy. A guy who did some work for my father and decided he wanted to betray the hand that had kept him and his family fed.

And now, he was supposed to die for that betrayal, and I was conflicted.

He has kids, I thought, walking the opposite end of the dark hallway, heading for the open basement door.

Their mother was already gone. If their father was killed, too, what would happen to his children? Who would take care of them?

The first step groaned beneath my foot. The stairwell was canopied in deep darkness. A dim bulb from the hallway behind me did little to light my way. The mask was a hindrance, providing zero peripheral vision, and what little it did for me straight ahead wasn’t doing any favors on this rickety staircase.

I’m going to break my neck, I thought, holding the gun ahead of me as I searched for a light switch, but found none. Fuck.

I held tight to the handrail as I delved deeper into the shadowy, damp basement abyss and listened to the sounds of the world below.

The monotonous hum of a dehumidifier.

The creaking of floorboards from the house above—Dean moving from room to room in search of Marco.

And then it reached me from somewhere not too far away. Rustling. Whispered breath. Shifting against a concrete floor.

I stilled my lungs and steadied the gun, wishing I could see as I moved slowly, walking farther into the musty space. My boot crunched over glass, my head bumped into something dangling from the ceiling, and with the help of a sliver of light streaming from a dirty cellar window, I looked ahead and saw the broken light fixture, its chain dangling before me.

He's down here.

I turned my head carefully from one side to another, the gun moving with me, hoping to catch a glimpse of Marco, cowering somewhere in the shadows.

A sound came from behind me. A forceful grunt. I tried to turn around, but he was on me quickly, his arms around my neck. I gasped for breath and wrestled his hold from off my throat, throwing him easily to the concrete floor with an oof as his lungs emptied into the dank air.

"That was silly, Marco," I said, looming over his frame as he groaned and rolled on the glass-scattered floor.

He moved swiftly in the darkness, and that sliver of light glinted off the blade of a knife as his arm reached overhead, slashing at my leg. He successfully sliced into my calf, cutting deep through skin and tendons. I hissed and cursed beneath my breath before aiming the gun at his face and firing two rounds in quick succession, the sound muffled by the attached silencer.

"And that … was stupid," I said with a groan, tucking the gun into my waistband. “Asshole.”

Warmth seeped from the wound, and I sighed, sufficiently annoyed.

It wasn't my first time getting injured while on one of these missions, but I knew without even looking that it was the first time I'd need stitches.

"Fuck," I muttered, turning from Marco's lifeless body to head back up to Dean to let him know about the mess in the basement.

But I froze at the sound of something coming from beneath the stairs.

Trembling breaths. Tears. The whimpers of someone small and young—or someones.

Marco's kids, I remembered, squeezing my eyes shut.

Shit. If they had been down here the whole time, then they would’ve likely seen me murder their father, and no matter how terrible he might’ve been, no child should bear witness to something like that.

With a sigh, I pulled my burner phone from my back pocket to turn on its camera flash, utilizing it as a flashlight, and pointed it to the space beneath the stairs.

And within a pile of dirty laundry were the small, tear-streaked faces of two little girls.

A filthy bedsheet caught my eye, and acting quickly, I grabbed it and laid it over the body of their dead father.

Then I crouched in front of them, and instantly, panic ensued. They scrambled within their nest of clothes, their desperation clear as they gasped and squealed and sobbed, trying to get away from me, but there was a wall behind them, blocking their escape.

I didn’t need them to say it to know damn well how terrifying I must look to them in this stupid mask. But I couldn't risk them knowing my face, knowing what I looked like, and being able to pick me out of a lineup.

But that didn't mean I had to scare them with a phony voice.