AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She raises an eyebrow and purses her lips. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Her flirting makes me want to laugh out loud. I step inside, forcing her to take a step back, then I close and lock the door.
“I’m not really here because of Vincent.”
Her smile still lingers, but a hint of insecurity ghosts across her features. Finally, a tad of self-preservation.
Too late, though.
“I’m here for you.”
I strike out, grab her hair and shove her back, slamming her into the wall. She screams, a shrill noise that could wake the dead.
“Shut up,” I snarl in her ear, pulling her hair so hard her eyes water. “This doesn’t have to be very complicated. You will hurt a lot more if you make my ears bleed. Are we clear?”
Tears stream across her cheeks as she snaps her mouth shut and all that escapes her lips are small whimpers as I pull her up the stairs.
She’s stopped crying.
Only random sobs wrack her battered body. Her face is bruised, her lower lip and right eyebrow are split, and a few of her ribs are most likely broken. There are reddish-brown streaks of drying blood in her almost ethereally pale hair, along with glistening fresh red. A new look of terror crosses her face as I pull out the knife. I’ve done what was asked of me, well, parts of it, and a clean cut across her throat will put her out of her misery. Then I’ll arrange for it to look like a break-in, and a random murder.
“Please, no,please. You don’t have to do this!” she whimpers.
I close my ears to her whining. They all beg. They all use the same words. Nothing new. It’s only natural. People cling to life, even though their lives are worthless; a mere waste of air. Straddling her chest, I sadistically flick the blade before her face before I lower it to her neck.
“Don’t!” she squeals, too weak to struggle more than a tiny wriggling that’s easily subdued.
“Mommy?”
A faint voice right in front of me makes me flinch hard. Only a few feet away, in the doorway between the library and the bedroom stands a little pale girl in a pink nightgown with purple bears on it. She’s carrying a giant stuffed panda and stares at me with huge questioning brown eyes.
“Mommy?”
I can’t fucking breathe. She has a kid? Akid? Here? Neither in the preps nor during my surveillance have I seen anything that indicates a child. Inside me something screamssloppy!But I’m too stunned to take much notice.
Erica Davenport’s eyes, or the one eye she can still open, fills with tears. “Casey,” she rasps with a shattered voice as she keeps her gaze trained on me as if daring me to move. “Casey, go back to your room.Now!”
I struggle to regain control, swallowing hard to get rid of the choking feeling that’s overcome me. “No, Casey. Stay.” I pin her with my gaze, demanding her to obey me. If she doesn’t, if she runs, and possibly warns someone, this might turn very messy.
The kid, the girl, takes a hesitant step toward us, drops her panda and picks it up again while her eyes flicker between me and the beaten woman on the floor.
Between my knees, the woman bends her head back and strains to try to see the girl. “Casey,go! Get out of here! Listen to Mommy!” There’s panic in her voice and it breaks several times. Then she fixates on me, her single eye frightened and yet suddenly fiery. “Do what you need to do, but you leave my daughter alone, do you hear me? Leave her alone!”
I still can’t believe there’s suddenly a kid. It wouldn’t have changed a thing. I’ve done lots of people who are mothers or fathers, hell, everybody can breed, there’s no great gift in that, but I’ve never, ever been in this situation. And I’ve never killed a child. And I will never…
Fuck!
There are tears on her cheeks now—the kid’s, and under me I feel the other female in the room heave her chest erratically, sobbing silently. Around my neck it feels as if something is wiring a snare tighter and tighter.I regard the girl. Tear rimmed brown eyes meet mine. With a growl I sheath the knife and stand. Pulling the woman with me by her hair, I slam her against a wall. “You didn’t tell me you had a kid!” I snarl.
“Don’t hurt her, please, she’s too young to remember anything, she can’t be a witness, she’s only three years old,pleasedon’thurther!” she wails.
I shake her to shut her up. “You didn’t tell me you had a fuckingkid!” I roar in her face as I keep one eye on the little one who stands as if frozen in the same position.
“You haven’tasked!” she hollers back.
She’s right about that.
“I’ll do anything, just don’t hurt my baby.”
