The Black Wolf (In the Company of Killers, #5)(5)

“What about this stuff with avoiding your brother?” she asks. “Wanna talk about it?”

Absently, and with bitterness, I chew on the inside of my cheek.

“No,” I answer after a moment, staring at the lime green door out ahead. “I’d rather not.”

“Oh come on,” Jackie says lightheartedly, patting my chest with the palm of her hand, “it can’t be that bad—mine was pretty messed up; can’t be much worse than mine. What did he do?”

After a pause, I say without looking at her, “My brother murdered my fiancé,” and in half a second Jackie’s almost-fully-naked body becomes a rock next to mine.

“Oh…”

“Why don’t you take those panties back off?” I suggest.

It takes her moment to hear my question, and then, still with quite a shock on her face, her eyebrows drawn inward, she slips her panties off and tosses them on the floor.

Tearing open a condom wrapper, I put the condom on and then gesture with one hand toward my lap.

“Get on,” I say, and she does.

And in under thirty seconds, neither one of us are thinking anymore about our f*cked up families.





Izabel





New York City




I’ve begun to master it, the art of moving without making a sound, how to blend in with the shadows, to control what I hear and see and taste and feel and smell.

As my flat-heeled boots move silently over the asphalt rooftop in the dead of night, I see everything. My vision is sharp, taking in the way the moonlight lays across the building in a cloak of gray. I see a tiny glint of silver illuminated by that light on the doorknob just up ahead. I feel the mild air on my face, the calm thrumming of my heartbeat. Cool and collected yet eager to get this done. I should hear the movement of light traffic on the streets of the city below, the lapping of the waves against the shore, the wind moving through the tops of the trees, but I’ve blocked it all out so I can stay focused, so that I can hear what matters: the enemy’s footsteps, the cocking of a gun, a whisper intended to be unknown to me. Nora taught me these things. “Stay focused,” she had said a hundred times before she caught me off-guard and hit me in the face. “See and hear and know your enemy’s movements before they act on them.” And then she’d hit me again, and again, until the last time when I caught her off-guard and nearly broke her nose. Fucking bitch.

She smiled proudly and wiped the blood away with the back of her hand. Nothing fazes that woman. Nothing.

Nora turns her blond head done up in a tight bun, to look back at me on the rooftop. Her brown eyes appear black in the dark. Piercing. Beautiful. Malicious—strange how the night can reveal a person’s inner-workings. She smiles so slimly that it barely touches her lips, but I see it there, in those dark pools looking back at me with excitement and a sort of sweet murderous rage—she couldn’t have joined up with a more fitting group of people.

We slip our face masks on and she gestures at me with her gloved index and middle fingers.

I nod and prepare to follow.

We’ve been hiding on this rooftop since seven p.m. when Randolf Pinceri’s men locked the building up for the day. It was the easiest way inside: walk in among the employees and guests by day and then slip back in through a rooftop door by night, rather than trying to break in from any of the bottom floor entrances, which are heavily guarded in the overnight hours.

Like two stealthy black cats stalking prey, Nora and I move alongside the building, remaining hidden in the cover of its shadow. Our black bodysuits conceal every inch of our skin. Our heads are covered by masks, pulled down tight over our faces, leaving only our eyes untouched. Black boots cover our feet. Black gloves fit tight over our hands and wrists.

A camera moves in a slow horizontal motion, drinking in the quiet undisturbed scene of the rooftop. We stop at just the right moment, pressing our backs against the wall and remaining perfectly still until the camera passes. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. We move quickly toward the rooftop door, having only fifteen more seconds to get that door open and slip inside undetected before the camera makes another round.

With my lock-pick already wedged between my leather-clad fingers, I get to work on the door while Nora stands off to the side with her gun in-hand.

“Ten seconds,” I hear her whisper.

I say nothing and continue to work vigorously, crouched in front of the door. My heart begins to pound more erratically, pushing adrenaline hotly through my veins.

“Five seconds.”

Sweat begins to bead in my hairline underneath the tight fabric. I bite down hard on the inside of my mouth, trying not to fumble the lock-pick.

“Three.”

I can feel the camera making its way back, slowly and methodically, like a pair of eyes on me in the darkness that I can’t see but I know are there, and it sends a shiver up the back of my neck.

“Two.”

There’s a click and the door comes open when I grip the knob and turn.

We slip inside and shut the door with not a second to spare.

I stop to catch my breath.

The timing had to be perfect. Not necessarily the dodging of the camera, but everything from here on out. At precisely ten-thirty p.m. the alarm system on the building will automatically activate. But between the hours of seven p.m. and ten p.m. we had to wait for all three of our targets to arrive before we could act. Getting in was the easy part. Getting out will be a different story—we have to fulfill this mission without drawing attention, without setting off alarms, without one of Pinceri’s men alerting the dozens of others of our intrusion. We have to move through this building undetected, make it to the eighth floor, get information from one target, kill him and two others quietly, and then make it out of the building before the alarm is set. I’m getting a headache just thinking about it.