Page 40 of Deathtoll
Asael observed precautions anyway. He sat with friends and family instead of in the back, where he would have been a lone spectator, possibly suspicious. He was masked as an octogenarian. When people asked, he said he’d served with Betty’s husband, lived in West Chester, and saw the obituary in the paper.
As the choir sang—not one good voice among the lot—he wanted to be anywhere but there. Yet he was at the funeral because, to start with, there was little else to do in the damned town other than going to theirfungus festival. Small-town people were a waste of space, not fit to live—born in some godforsaken backwater of a place without enough brains and ambition to leave. The kind of people who’d die in the same town where they were born and go nowhere in between, doing the same damn thing every day, usually the same damn thing their parents had done before them. And they were convinced they had it best, that they had it great. All smiling and chatty and stupid and annoyingly syrupy sweet, and so damn proud of themselves.
Nauseating.
Asael couldn’t walk down the street without wanting to strangle at least half a dozen of them.
Broslin was his idea of hell. The thought of a lifetime in a place like this made him want to peel off his own skin.
He couldn’t imagine Mordocai enjoying this sort of environment either. Hehadto have come here for a job. And since he’d kidnapped Kate Concord, she had to have been the job. And while Mordocai had been setting up her disappearance, he’d found a gift for Asael.
What damn gift? The only thing the unsufferable town was famous for was its mushroom production. If they grew some rare poisonous mushrooms, that could have explained it, but no. Whitecap and portobello. Asael had checked.
So, what gift?And why couldn’t he let all these damn questions go? Why did he care? Except that his instincts were prickling, leaving him no rest.
He watched mourners walk up to the coffin one by one. Kate and Murph were there, although not together—the bitch infuriatingly familiar, yet, for once, Asael’s memory failed him.
He kept an eye on her as the infernal organ music drove him crazy. Then the choir burst into song again. He wished they’d burst into flames.
It could be arranged.
The happiest thought he’d had all day.
He sat there for another minute, then pushed to his feet and edged out of the pew. “Excuse me.” He was done. He’d suffered all he could take. “Excuse me.” He hadn’t been to a funeral since…
It’d been a small chapel, almost like this one, on the outskirts of Los Angeles, the funeral of a woman who’d seen him taking out a mark, the only person ever to have seen him and gotten away. The only one to be able to identify him. He’d tracked her down and taken her out, had gone to her funeral to make sure she was dead.Cathleen Bridges.His brain readily supplied the name.
Clever little bitch, working with the FBI to fake her own funeral, as it turned out.
He’d blown her to pieces along with an FBI van, then put her behind him.
But now…
The sounds of the service faded into the background, the buzz of the funeral disappeared. Old memories sharpened.
Asael’s gaze snapped to Kate Concord by the coffin.
The hair was wrong—the color, the cut, the length—and so was the style of her clothing. And yet…
As Asael watched her, he came alive, the thrill of the hunt spreading through his veins.
Well, well, well, a fellow resurrectionist.
Hello there, Miss Bridges.
Chapter Fifteen
Kate
“Coffee?” Emma asked as she and Kate walked into the house after the funeral.
“I’m trying to cut down. I’ve been feeling weirdly jumpy and edgy lately.” Grief sat heavily on her shoulders. Betty had been gone for several days, but the service and saying goodbye at the coffin made her death more real.
Kate’s phone rang. She glanced at the screen.
“Captain Bing. I was about to call you.” She hung up her coat with her free hand. “I wanted to check on how Ian McCall’s psych eval went yesterday.”
“Our usual guy who does psych evals has retired.” The captain cleared his throat. “New guy couldn’t come out right away, so I had to keep Mr. McCall overnight.”
