Page 62 of Deathtoll
All those years in hiding.
Then the news of Asael’s death. Finally feeling safe again these past couple of years. But, of course, it was too much to hope for.
Death kept coming for her, again and again and again.
Kate stared across her office, seeing dark memories instead of her furniture and anatomy posters. A cold, bitter knowledge filled her, like poison spreading through her veins, making her limbs go numb and her stomach burn with pain.
Asael was back.
* * *
Asael
Asael followed the white Honda going west on Route 76. Traffic was light, and he liked a drive. He didn’t have the radio on. He preferred silence and his own thoughts. Like what he would do with the young woman in the car in front of him, how soon, with what tools. His favorite part of the job was the planning.
Scratch that. He loved all the phases. The planning, the hit, the reminisce-and-relive phase at the end. A good job well done brought him endless joy, made life worth living.
Kate was too closely guarded. Oh well. There were many, many ways to skin a cat. If he couldn’t get to Kate, he’d make Kate come to him. Traps were easy enough to set. He just needed the right bait.
When, two hours out of Broslin, Emma Bridges signaled and turned off the highway onto a quiet country road, Asael stuck behind her. And when she pulled over at a roadside farmer’s market next to a seedy motel, he pulled in right next to her.
He stayed behind the wheel, pretending to scroll through messages on his phone while she went inside. Then he climbed into the back of his rented white delivery van.
He opened the sliding door on the side that faced the Honda, then crouched among a small pile of anonymous cardboard boxes of various sizes, and waited, enjoying every second of the anticipation.
If he wasn’t an assassin, he could have become a serial killer. He liked what he did for a living that much. But, as things stood, as long as people were willing to pay, and pay exceedingly well for his skills, only a fool would have worked for free.
Ten minutes passed before his target returned, humming a tune under her breath. She must only have used the bathroom—not enough time to have waited in line to buy anything.Perfect. Plan A, then.He had a Plan B too, in case she came back with an armload of snacks.
As she walked up between his van and her car, Asael pretended to be looking for something, turning inside, kicking a cardboard box onto the ground with his heel.
“Sorry!” He grabbed for it, missed, pretended to land on his ass and laughed.
The woman laughed with him, a pretty young thing, a bonus on an otherwise already great day. “No problem. Here.”
Because her hands were empty and she’d been raised to be nice, she picked up the package and handed it to him.
Except instead of the package, Asael grabbed her slim wrists, then gave her a good yank. A second later she was sprawled across his lap. Another second and the already cut-to-size duct tape he had ready was across her mouth, before she could get out a stupidNo!orWhy?orStop!
He yanked the door shut so fast, anybody watching would have missed the whole incident if they’d blinked, but there hadn’t been a soul out there. A nice piece of luck, not that he didn’t have a Plan C prepared.
He rolled his full weight onto her madly struggling body to keep her down while he yanked her hands behind her back, grabbed for the waiting roll of duct tape, and wrapped a double layer around her wrists. Women always dieting, wanting to be small, was the first mistake they made. He had at least sixty or seventy pounds on her, which mattered.
She fought anyway, not one of those who froze or fainted. And he didn’t mind, not at all. She got his blood moving.
“Shhhh. I’ve got you,” he whispered into her ear.
He had to kneel on her calves to make her stop from kicking, but he managed to have her ankles bound up too, without her making too much noise. It helped that he’d padded the van with soundproofing mats. He’d picked those up at a music store at the same strip mall where he’d picked up the rental van.
“Now I want you to be quiet.” He pushed off her. “I’d rather have you alive, but dead also works.”
The duct tape muffled her outraged screams into pitiful whimpers.
Tamed.
They were all that at the end, one way or the other, the womenandthe men.
Or maybe not so tame, Asael thought, as she kicked the side of the van. He could have hog-tied her, he had the rope, but he wanted to get out of there.
