Sins of the Soul

“Let’s have a chat, shall we?” He caught the man’s jaw with his bloody fingers, and forced him to meet his gaze. “What’s your name, mate?”


“Mick.” It came out as little more than a rasp.

“Well, tell me something useful, Mick, and you might get to live.”





CHAPTER THREE



Saru mo ki kara ochiru. Even monkeys fall from trees.



—Japanese proverb

Ashton Memorial Park, Whitby, Ontario

IT WAS A SIMPLE RULE. A basic rule. The first one Butcher had ever taught her. Always watch your back. Don’t trust anyone else to do it for you. Naphré figured she had no one to blame but herself for her present unpleasant predicament, because she hadn’t followed rule number one.

Butcher had a .40 cal Glock rammed tight against the back of her neck. And she hadn’t seen it coming. “Guess it’s my lucky night,” she muttered.

“How so?”

“You don’t pack a .22.”

Butcher grunted. “Good point.”

Light bullet, high velocity, a .22 would ricochet around inside her skull like a pinball and percolate her brain into gray and pink goopy soup. She could quite possibly live through it, minus a few higher brain functions.

Not a welcome thought.

She preferred the Glock. Positioned as it was between her first vertebra and the base of her skull, the barrel was directed at her brain stem. The bullet would go in through the back. Out through the front. Instant death. Nice and clean, if you didn’t count the spray of blood.

Much more efficient than brain soup.

Only problem was, dying wouldn’t be the end for her, thanks to a bargain she’d made six years ago on a cold, rainy night, with the sound of rending metal bright and loud around her, and the blood dripping off her hands.

She’d been such a stupid, naive girl back then, running from the frying pan into the fire.

“Hands behind your head,” Butcher rasped.

She did as he instructed. Every minute she managed to stay alive was a minute to figure out a plan. “Butcher—”

“Job’s a job, Naph. No hard feelings, huh?”

Right.

“No hard feelings,” she agreed, doing a quick sweep of the parking lot and the road beyond, moving only her eyes as she searched for options. Her gun was still in its holster, her knife sheathed at the small of her back. Fat lot of good they’d do her there. Butcher would kill her before she could get either one clear.

She hadn’t expected to need her weapons. Not quite yet. They’d driven here together, chatting about the earthquake in New Zealand that was all over the news. She’d thought they had time before they went after the mark. Guess she should have read between the lines last night when Mick said Butcher already had all the information about the mark that he needed. It was only when Butcher had pressed cold metal to warm skin that she’d realized she was the mark.

Saru mo ki kara ochiru. Even monkeys fall from trees. She could almost hear her grandfather’s voice, low and even when he spoke Japanese, halting and accented when he spoke English, though he’d lived in the States for decades.

Unfolding events were proving her to be one dumb-ass monkey.

“Really am sorry for this, Naph.”

“I know.” She was sorry, too. Because one of them was going to die here tonight, and that just plain sucked.

Butcher slid her gun from the holster under her armpit and her knife from the sheath. She heard a dull thud, then a second, heavier sound as he tossed her weapons to the ground, and finally a soft shush as he toed them out of sight under the car.

He was doing exactly what she would do…what he’d taught her to do. Disarm the mark. Safety first.

“Bend nice and slow and get the knife from your boot,” he ordered. “Then toss it down.”

She followed his instructions, no sudden moves. Her second knife followed the first. That was it. All her weapons gone. And he knew that because in the car on the way over, he’d asked her exactly what she’d brought along.

“Look at the bright side,” Butcher said as she straightened and put her hands back behind her head. “At least you didn’t spend the last six years on your back.”

“True.” Instead, she’d spent the first three of those six bruised black-and-blue while she learned the ropes, and the next three snuffing lives. But, yeah, she supposed you could call that a bright side.

From the shadows, even a thin stream of light looked bright.

Butcher nudged her forward. She planted one foot in front of the other, taking it slow, buying precious seconds as she scanned the vicinity searching for any opportunity.

Maybe twenty yards away, the gates of the cemetery loomed before her, cold iron bent and twisted into intricate swirls. Beyond them was a narrow road flanked by grass, and by graves and stones and statues. The place was perfect, a cemetery forty minutes east of Toronto, run by management that tended to cut corners. There were no neighbors, no guards or dogs, and few working overhead lights.