Slicky Boys

24

Thekiller squatted next to the body, keeping his feet out of the blood, trying to fight back the rage that pumped into his brain-blinding him.

It was still dark out and bitterly cold. Snowflakes swirled in the gusting wind, like spirits endlessly tormented by the night.

With the back of his hand the killer cleared his vision, forcing himself to concentrate.

She’d been dumped here, an arm and a leg cruelly twisted beneath her limp body. She wore a nightgown and a robe. No slippers. Red welts stood out angrily on the soft flesh of her neck. Her fingernails had been shredded and, before her death, oozed crimson, which was now clotted and dark.

Tortured.

How much information had she given them? Probably everything. But it wouldn’t do them any good. They still wouldn’t find him. No one would.

Not, at least, until he took his revenge.

Cuts had been sliced along her arms. Not fatal. At the top of her flat belly gaped a long gash. Probably the final death-dealing wound.

The killer almost laughed.

So that was their game. Put the blame on someone else. An old trick.

She’d written a note and left it, as he’d instructed, at the message drop: Contact. Two Americans.

He was miles away when he received the transmission. Still, he’d dropped everything and returned immediately. As fast as he could, but not fast enough. He gazed down at the corpse.

She’d done her best. In her note she said that she would try to delay one of them. Apparently, she succeeded. Her only reward had been death.

He touched the dead woman’s cold flesh. Just meat. Like so many he’d seen before.

When he first brought her into the operation, he’d used terror to train her. He showed her the photographs he’d taken of her younger brother and sister on their way to school, of her mother beating laundry with a stick at a stream near the family home. He’d demonstrated to her how he would kill them-running the edge of his blade lightly across her neck-if she didn’t do exactly as he instructed. Or if she tried to run away.

At first she’d trembled with fright, but she was stronger than most. She accepted the situation. She even seemed to enjoy the work, especially after he paid her for the first completed missions.

He remembered the long nights they’d spent together. And her lust for pain. Ever more pain.

And now she was gone. Stolen from him.

A pot clanged against stone.

He swiveled in a crouch, ready to fight, and surveyed the darkness.

No movement.

Inside the big building, people were starting to stir. The sun would rise soon. He glanced back down at the body.

His fists clenched. They’d pay for taking this from him. This that was his.

Like a shadow blown by the wind, he floated into the gloom.