It didn’t take the assassin long to learn the identity of Taverton’s lover. Taverton went to her house Monday during lunch, stayed just under an hour, then left. He did the same thing on Tuesday. While he was inside fucking the whore, the assassin carefully broke into Taverton’s snazzy BMW and read his schedule for the week. Taverton had “Lunch w/ L” written every day that week. Scanning back, he’d been having the affair for a long, long time. They even had a weekend trip planned in two weeks. The assassin called his blackmailers and suggested they wait until the trip to kill him.
Negative. Taverton had to die as soon as possible. He was working a case that would get the judge and other important people in deep shit.
So the assassin promised he’d be dead Wednesday by one in the afternoon.
Lydia O’Brien was a nurse and she worked the night shift, twelve hours, from six p.m. until six a.m. four days a week. Her husband was a cop and left at seven thirty. The assassin didn’t know about a daughter until he broke into the house while the adulteress slept. That was the curse of rushing the job. He’d have known about the daughter if he’d had more time. He swallowed his nerves. It was as if he’d never killed before. But he’d never killed for reasons that weren’t. . more personal.
He had his own gun, but he also knew cops. They always kept a gun in their bedroom. He wished he had more time-one day to steal the gun, the next to kill the prosecutor and his whore. But the blackmailers wanted no delays, which meant no more planning time.
If he had to use his own gun, he’d have to leave it, otherwise the frame wouldn’t work. They’d try to trace the gun, but it was old, long ago stolen, and had no murders attached to it. He hoped to get his hands on the cop’s gun.
There was nothing that connected the assassin to the two people he planned to kill. The blackmailers wouldn’t talk, because they had as much-or more-to lose. And he knew enough about why they wanted Taverton dead to keep them uncomfortable. He’d recorded his conversation with Harper and Drake just to be on the safe side. He didn’t want them to think he was expendable.
He was too smart for that.
He didn’t even live in Sacramento, he had no reason to be here, and he was staying under an assumed name in a hotel down in a seedy Stockton neighborhood forty minutes south of the capital city. He could disappear and the police would look for people who wanted Taverton dead. That’s why killing him with the whore made so much sense. The police would look at the obvious: her idiot husband. When the assassin told Harper about his plan to take out both Taverton and his lover, within twelve hours Harper learned that O’Brien worked solo. He was normally a training officer, but had no rookie currently assigned to him.
A lot of things could go wrong. O’Brien could be on a call. Taverton could cancel his rendevous. But the assassin took comfort in the fact that he wasn’t connected to anyone and could slip away. If it all went south and the blackmailers exposed him, he’d have to disappear and assume another identity. Self-preservation was key.
He refused to think about his own death.
He waited until the working neighborhood was quiet. The old woman next door might be a problem, but the assassin came in through the garage door on the opposite side of the house, which was also the easiest lock to pick.
Slowly, he walked through the house. Silence. The whore was sleeping. But if today was the same as the last two days, she’d be in the shower by noon. It gave him only a few minutes to find the gun and hide before Taverton arrived at 12:30.
The house was homey and quaint. Nothing like the huge mansion where he’d grown up. Pictures on the walls of the family that lived there. Pictures. .
His heart pounded as he stared at a photograph of the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. Her long black hair, her big, round blue eyes, her smile. . it was as if a huge spotlight was illuminating her framed picture. It was the sign he’d been searching for.
He’d made three major moves in his life. The first was when he dropped out of college after killing-accidentally killing-Jessica. Each time he made a move, he had heeded a sign. But nothing had been nearly as powerful as this. There was nothing like this girl.
She was his fate.
Now he felt good about killing Taverton and the whore. What was that slut doing sleeping around? She had a daughter, someone who looked to her for moral guidance, someone who needed her. And what about her husband? He was either a stupid fool or he didn’t care. Either way, he deserved to go to prison for his ignorance.
That would leave the daughter. She would need his guidance. A strong shoulder to cry on.
He would stay in Sacramento for the black-haired beauty.
He waited in the girl’s room while her mother slept. Carefully, with gloves, he went through her things. Discovered her name was Claire from the colorful animal letters on her door. Her room was cluttered but not messy. She’d made her bed before leaving for school. She was a good girl. There was no real theme or color scheme-her down comforter was red with several throw pillows in all colors. One of her walls was painted bright pink, the others sky blue. She had movie and teen heartthrob posters on the walls. In the corner was a basket with stuffed animals.
In his search, he learned she was a freshman at St. Francis, an all-girl Catholic high school. There were dozens of snapshots of her with her friends on a large corkboard on one wall.
A worn floppy bear on the bed with one eye missing.
A white bathrobe hanging on the back of the door.
A shelf lined with well-read books, thin romances as well as thick fantasies, like Tolkien’s trilogy.
On her nightstand was a photo of Claire dressed up for Halloween as Princess Leia, with her father as Darth Vader. It was a few years old, judging by the newer pictures with her friends. Princess Claire didn’t have breasts yet.
He knew he shouldn’t, but he took one of the pictures from her wall of friends. There were at least a hundred pinned up. After her mother was shot dead, would Claire notice that one was missing?
He also took a pair of her panties. Bright pink, like her wall. Lacy. The underwear a teenage girl would wear to feel like a grown woman, but still in her favorite little-girl color.
A loud, metal grinding sound vibrated the house, and he tensed. Then came the sound of running water through pipes in the wall that separated Claire’s bedroom from her parents’.
Realizing the noise was simply an old plumbing system, he left Claire’s room and stood outside the master bedroom, looking through the open door. The adulteress was in the shower, evidenced by the sound of water hitting flesh. He quickly strode across the room, looked under pillows, under the bed, then in the nightstand drawers.
He grinned. He was right: There was a gun.
He returned to Claire’s room before her mother finished with her shower. He sat on her bed and waited. Waited for the perfect time to kill.
He imagined a life with Claire.
The assassin turned off the icy water. Fifteen years had passed and now he was an important part of Claire’s life. But if Tom O’Brien knew what Oliver Maddox knew, he, too, could put together the truth of that long-ago day. And if that happened, the assassin’s well-planned life would crumble around him.