Page 7 of The Serpent's Bride
The first step was to find a man posted on the edge of the security checkpoint where the train was going to be stopped to be searched. Someone of lower rank on the edge of the outpost, who had his back turned. Taking the man’s shape was easy enough.
Even if suddenly having a dick and balls wasreally distracting.How men walked around with those things dangling around all day, Nadi would never know.
One quick hit upside the back of the head with her pistol and she dumped his unconscious body behind the checkpoint building. By the time anyone found him or he woke up, she’d be long gone and wearing another face.
Taking his place, she waited until his superior officer walked by. “Sir? Sir, a moment in private?”
“Keep it brief, the next train is almost here.” The older man rolled his eyes. He jerked his head toward the small station building and she followed him inside.
A few minutes later and he was unconscious underneath his desk. And she walked out wearinghisface. And trying not to scratchhiscrotch.
She seriously hated having to glamor as men.
Putting on her best scowl, she waited for the train to arrive and barked the appropriate orders for “his” troops to search the train.
Gods forbid anyfaeget inside the city, or any smuggled goods—well, any that the bastard Nostroms hadn’t bribed them to ignore, at any rate.
Climbing aboard, she was pleased when the train staff stepped aside to let “him” on board with no questions.
The train was packed.
From the informant at the telegraph office she’d paid off, Nadi learned that Monica would be up near the front with only a couple of guards. How much Raziel had paid for a private cabin foreight, Nadi had no idea. But it must have been absurd.
It would make her easy enough to find.
Especially with how heavily guarded the train car with the one said passenger would be.
Getting the contact information of the informant had required burning a lot of leads. The one that hurt the most was cutting off her contact with Betty, the woman she got her assassination contracts from.
The older woman had sighed when Nadi had briefly explained what she was after, but she hadn’t tried to stop her. Mostly because she didn’t carethatmuch if Nadi wanted to throw her life away. And part of the older woman understood that revenge was what drove them all to do what they did, at the end of the day.
“A shame to lose one of my best,” Betty had said through her cigarette. Nadi hated the smell of them, but she put up with it without complaint.
Betty was as close as Nadi had to a friend, sad as that was.
And it was pretty moons-damned sad.
But now was time to focus on the present, on the train, and on finding Monica. The only thing that might have given her away was the small bag she had slung over her shoulder. But as “captain,” no one would question her as she peered in each window going along the front of the train.
This was the right train. Monica was in heresomewhere.Nadi didn’t know what the young woman looked like, but there couldn’t be two trains with a young woman with guards posted outside and?—
There.
Two hired goons standing outside of a door, doing their best to look both serious and incredibly bored at the same time. They weren’t any of the Nostroms’ usual hires. Probably from wherever this Monica Valan came from.
With a sigh, Nadi reached into her pocket, produced out a wad of cash, and peeling off a few thick bills, stuffed a handful each into the hands of both men. “Get lost for the next half an hour.”
The two guards glanced at each other. At the apparent captain of the guard. At the large sums of money they’d just been paid…and then they both obediently shrugged and walked off.Funny thing about hired goons. They could always be rehired by other people.
Let them think the captain of the guard was about to do something lascivious and horrid with the single, unescorted woman on the train. The truth was somehow both worse and better than that.
As Nadi glanced through the door of the room, sure enough, there she was. Shehadto be Monica Valan. A single woman, sitting in the train car by herself, was peering out the window of the train, up at the tall buildings like she’d never seen skyscrapers before.
Opening up the door without warning, Nadi stepped in and shut it behind herself with a click. “Papers.” Her voice matched that of the captain of the guard perfectly.
“Here you go, sir.” The woman handed her up a folded stack of papers with a bright and beaming smile. Yep. Monica Valan. The young woman was very pretty with a round, friendly face and giant puppy-dog eyes.Painfullyinnocent. She was looking up at Nadi with such wide-open curiosity it almost made her heart bleed.
Raziel would absolutely destroy her. Snap her into tiny pieces, drain her of blood, and leave her an empty, soulless husk. The Serpent delighted in breaking his partners—men or women, anybody stupid enough to sleep with him.
