Page 7 of Deathtoll
“I want to hear all the details tomorrow!” Kate called after her.
Her own love life was a disaster, but she could still be happy for her friends. She would just focus on other people and not think of Murph.
Easier said than done.
She wasn’t behind her desk five minutes when he popped into her office.
Chapter Two
Asael
Figure out what you like doing, then find someone willing to pay for it,was the best advice Bobbie Brenton had ever received.
At age seventeen, he hadn’t fully grasped the concept, paying scant attention to his guidance counselor, but as he’d gone on with his life, he thought of the words now and then. Eventually, he accepted the truth in them. Action followed epiphany, and by the time he was twenty-seven, he was a fully self-supporting assassin.
He’d found what he liked: killing. And he’d become apro, meaning he earned his full income from assignments. They weren’t a side gig or a hobby.
Bobbie Brenton died, for the first time, in a Pittsburgh house fire. Rauch Asael was born from the ashes, and, in a few more years, became one of the highest-rated killers for hire on the dark web.
Rauchmeant smoke in German.
Asaelwas one of the names used for the devil.
He’d perished a few more times, as needed. He discarded any compromised aliases with the same ease as he discarded his targets. He enjoyed the freedom of starting a new life.
He dodged morning traffic in his Nissan Altima—one of the most common cars in America—and drove to the outskirts of Broslin. The ancient silo that stood at the edge of the cemetery was the quietest place he’d found so far in town. He parked on the wilting fall grass and cut across the graves. Drew in a deep breath. He liked the scent of decay.
He was halfway to his destination when a chubby black cat jumped from a gravestone to follow him. “Hello there.”
He stalked straight to the silo that was covered in ivy, then ducked under the rusty chain that held a rusty sign announcing private property, while claiming danger and telling him to go away, for his own safety.
“Morons.” He climbed.
Even as a kid, he’d liked high places. He used to climb out his bedroom window and lie on the roof at night for a smoke and some drink—both stolen from his father. Later, he’d spent time on the stage, enjoyed being up there and looking down at the audience. He’d always had a flair for the dramatic. Theater had taught him makeup and costuming, how to turn himself into someone else. And for a while, prop knives and fake blood had been enough. Until they weren’t.
Asael owned no property, could afford no permanent ties, but when he was in between assignments, he always stayed in the tallest high-rise of whatever city he was in, in the penthouse apartment. He liked feeling on top of the world.
As he stood on the rust-dotted silo and looked out over the stupid little town before him, he wished he was in Dubai instead, at the Gevora, the tallest hotel in the world.
Autumn frost had kissed the trees overnight, the leaves brown or already fallen. He turned up his collar. This time of year, he preferred taking jobs in the tropics.
“I could be standing on a private beach right now,” he told the cat that’d managed to climb up after him, “with an icy drink.”
Instead, he’d been in small-town purgatory for the past three days, and he still couldn’t puzzle out why he had allowed a vague sense of unease to draw him to Broslin. A premonition prickled at the back of his neck, a sense of something unfinished, a miniscule piece of thread hanging. And he listened to it, because an assassin lived or died by his instincts.
He imagined ordinary people felt something similar when they left the house and suddenly thoughtDid I shut off the stove?And then, even if they were a mile or two down the road, they had to turn around. Because…
“You have to check,” he told the cat.
He knew one thing: He hadnotcome to avenge Mordocai.
A Broslin cop had shot the fellow assassin and ex-lover five years before, but revenge for revenge’s sake had never been Asael’s modus operandi. Hotheaded retaliation was a good way to get caught. He’d survived this long because he limited his exposure. He would not hazard everything he’d gained over the years ona sentimental gesture. When he acted, he expected compensation in proportion to the risk he was taking.
“And yet here I am.” He said that to the town, as a warning.
Here he was, for certain. But why?
He wasn’t following a trail. He was following a vague pull that stubbornly curled around him, like a gossamer wisp of smoke, like the black cat weaving between his legs.
