Cry Assassin Read online

  Cry Assassin

  By

  Loki Renard

  ©2012 by Blushing Books® and Loki Renard

  Copyright © 2012 by Blushing Books® and Loki Renard

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Blushing Books®,

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  Renard, Loki

  Cry Assassin

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-60968-500-3

  Cover Design by Korey Mae Johnson

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.

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  Chapter One

  'In blood and battles was my youth,

  And full of blood and battles is my age,

  And I shall never end this life of blood'

  -Sohrab and Rustum

  Kirk strode down the sidewalk, a predator amongst the people who streamed by him lost in their own existences. To most he was a man unseen, perhaps noticed for a moment, appraised favorably for his broad shoulders and long legs, and then forgotten just as promptly. His footsteps fell with a thousand other footsteps on the busy city streets as he strode towards his destination. A slight breeze caught the tip of his silk tie, but left the close-cropped, thick, black hair on his head untouched. His face was pleasant, but not model handsome. It was the sort of face that always seemed familiar. If shown a picture of him, most people would say that they'd seen him recently, perhaps in a hardware store shopping for nails, perhaps assisting customers at the self-checkout in a supermarket. If one questioned the general public, he was everywhere. He was a taxi driver, a bank manager, that guy who'd taken their parking space the other day. He was their kid's swim coach, their ex-wife's new boyfriend. In truth, he was none of these things. He was no-one to anyone and that was just the way he liked it.

  As he walked amongst the bustling crowds, the black rimmed pupils of his granite gray eyes, the parts of his body that most often drew undivided attention and remained truly memorable to even casual observers, were hidden behind dark, wire framed sunglasses. In his thirty-five years on the planet, Kirk had seen more than most men would see in their entire lifetimes. He'd certainly seen more than any sane man would wish to see. When he looked at someone, truly looked at them with the weight of his past behind him, he was not so easily forgotten. People reacted to him the way a mouse reacts to a hawk. They cowered, sometimes they shook visibly. If they were men, they would occasionally grow violent simply because of the hard threat that lived in his gaze. He'd learned to keep his eyes hidden; with sunglasses on he was almost invisible.

  His destination was an office building like any other. Concrete slab pillars guarded the lobby, the silent guardians of a new age. Bored workers buzzed around the entrance like bees at a hive. They had no idea that the handsome man in the expensive, well-tailored business suit was anyone other than another client. With assured authority, Kirk ignored the receptionist's saccharine greeting and stepped into the shiny, steel elevator that smelled of cleaning chemicals and sweat. He pressed the door close button without waiting to see if anyone else wanted the elevator, and pressed the button for the basement. The interface buzzed harshly, requesting the code needed to access that level. He punched it in with a callused thumb then stood to the side as the elevator began to descend.

  The basement level was filled with rows of shelves stacked with moldering boxes. He frowned, immediately disliking the layout. It was impossible to see what, or who, was lurking in the narrow rows and he was forced to proceed cautiously towards the back of the basement, where a small flickering of fluorescent light between blinds called to him. Behind every row of shelves there could be a surprise waiting for him, and in Kirk's line of business, surprises were never a good thing. Never.

  The basement turned out to be empty, as he'd been promised it would be, and he made it to the far door without incident. Turning the metal handle, he stepped into the shabby subterranean office. It was a mess. Old, damp carpet curled up at the edges and the musty stench that pervaded the entire basement was much stronger here.

  Four figures occupied the room. At the back were two skin-headed men in oversized jackets, with vicious expressions on their faces. They nodded to him wordlessly. No exchange of meaningless pleasantries was necessary. This was business and everyone knew why they were there. The goons were responsible for the state of the room's other occupants, a paunchy middle aged man and a young woman. Both were taped to chairs, their mouths slathered with the same industrial tape that held their bodies prisoner. Trussed up completely, the only way they had of communicating was with their eyes, and both sets of eyes were wide with terror. The strained, puffed breaths they took through their noses sent trails of moisture down the metallic surface of the tape. Kirk stood in front of them and pushed his glasses down momentarily, taking them in over the frames. Years ago he might have felt some pang of empathy, but he'd seen too many scenes like this to be concerned by soft impulses like that anymore.

  This was often the face of business in the underworld, a world he'd grown comfortable in. Where once he would have balked at the idea of detaining a man and threatening him over money, he'd quickly learned that there are layers of law in the world. There is the written law, which the majority of society obeys. There is the law as it applies to the very rich and powerful, a fact that is resented by the common people who are free to observe the imbalance. Then there is the law as understood by the ruthless outcasts who carve out empires on the fringes of the mainstream: those who run guns, drugs and flesh, those whose dealings never see the light of day. This was the world Kirk inhabited. It was a filthy, cruel world, but no less ordered than common society in its own perverse way.

  He stepped forward and ripped the tape from the older man's mouth. After a gurgle of pain, the blabbering began almost immediately, the pleas for clemency, for life. If he'd known what Kirk knew, he'd have saved his breath. Th
ere was no point pleading. Anybody willing to kill a man trussed up in a chair was likely to enjoy the sight of their victim groveling before them. Defiance would have been a better option, but fear and a primal desire to appease the aggressor made the old man blubber like a baby. His name was Phil, Phil Day and he was a limp wristed importer / exporter who'd gotten in way over his head with the Russians who lurked in the background, waiting to finish the job they'd started. Kirk didn't know who the woman was; he didn't pay her much mind. She was as good as dead now that she was in this room, privy to a dirty business that should never be made known to feminine ears and eyes.

  “Silence,” Kirk ordered, cutting the man off with an abrupt, unsentimental bark. “You know why I'm here. Twenty million. I'm taking it before I leave here today, one way or another.”

  Phil's plasticine jowls wobbled in distress as his eyes became watery and started leaking tears. “Please. You have to believe me. I'm doing what I can. It's hard to ship material at the moment. They're watching the ports like hawks. I got two shipments busted this month. You have to tell Vlad I need more time.”

  “You don't have any more time,” Kirk said with deceptive calm. He used both hands to take his sunglasses off, folded them carefully and slipped them into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. “Twenty million. Transferred to the unmarked account. Now.”

  “I don't have it,” Phil protested. “I can get it, but I don't have it.”

  “Then we have a problem,” Kirk purred. “I have no choice but to let your gentleman callers continue their business before I begin mine.” The threat, though unspoken, was clear. He would allow the Russians to have their brutal fun before he carried out the sentence for nonpayment – death.

  The two men who had been lurking silently in the back of the room stood up and began cracking their necks and knuckles. Vicious gleams of anticipation lit their eyes. They were like dogs given permission to tear at a wounded animal before the hunter finished it off. “No!” Phil almost shrieked the plea. He jerked his head towards the woman. “Take her.”

  Without sparing the woman a glance, Kirk rejected the deal with a swift shake of his head. “She's not worth twenty million.”

  “You asshole,” Phil swore in a sudden, unexpected display of temper. “That's Evelyn, my youngest daughter. Take her as security. I'll get you your money.”

  An expression of pure disgust passed over Kirk's features before he could hide it. Phil was scum, but it took a special kind of scum to offer up their own family as security. Phil saw the look and shrewdly interpreted it for what it was, the sign of a chivalrous trait entirely out of place in Kirk's line of work. “You think I'm shit for making that deal, huh? If you don't take her as security, you don't buy me some time, the Russians will kill me and take her. Vlad wants her, special order.”

  The filthy chuckles from the men in the back of the room confirmed Phil's statement, and explained the woman's presence. At first Kirk had assumed she was just a secretary who'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now he was inclined to believe Phil's story. He allowed his gaze to settle on the woman properly for the first time. He'd ignored her as an irrelevance at first, but now that she was in play, she was worth noticing.

  It was hard to tell what she looked like with half her face covered in duct tape, but judging by the tight body straining against its bonds it was certain she must have taken after her mother, not the flabby lump of flesh that was her father. She was wearing a fairly conservative dress that covered her from shoulder to knee, but there were visible curves under the stiff burgundy fabric, hips that strongly suggested a classical hourglass figure. Her hair was a glossy deep brown cut in a long bob and a few silky strands had been caught in the tape when she'd been bound roughly. Above the tape her wide, caramel brown eyes held more than a note of intelligence. She was scared alright, the fast rise and fall of her full bosom was testament to that, but she didn't lower her eyes subserviently, she held his gaze in a way that almost made him think that she was appraising him the same way he was appraising her. That clear, innocent look hit him like a punch in the gut. She didn't belong here, she was not of this world.

  He swore softly under his breath. There was little to no choice. If he walked, Vlad didn't get his money, Phil got whacked and god only knows what happened to the girl. If he took the deal, maybe Vlad got his money, maybe Phil stayed alive, and the girl kept her virtue a while longer. Kirk nodded, his gaze hard. “I'll take her. You've got one week to get me that money, Phil. One week. You don't get me that money, you don't see your daughter again.” He made his voice menacing, it wasn't hard to do. He was angry at having been pressed into a devil's deal that could potentially see him on the hook for twenty million dollars, or have the blood of an innocent woman on his hands.

  He turned to the woman and reached into his pocket. A moment later there was a flash of silver as the long, sharp blade of his flick knife sprang out from its casing. He crouched down in front of her, making eye contact and holding it as he laid down his expectations. “I'm going to cut you free,” he said in a devastatingly soft voice. “Then we're going to walk out of here like a normal couple. You put one foot wrong, you try to call out for help, you do a single thing that draws attention to us and daddy dearest will be at the bottom of the river by midnight, understand?”

  She nodded slowly. “Clever girl,” Kirk purred, working at her bonds immediately. He kept an eye on her, waiting for her to make some frantic attempt at escape, but she sat quite still with a quiet watchfulness, that was somehow feline, as he first freed her legs, then her upper body. Finally he reached for the tape. “This is going to hurt,” he warned. He placed his thumb against her pale cheek and ripped the tape off quickly. Immediately a red rash-like mark sprang across the tender skin of her cheeks, chin and lips, but unlike her cowardly father she didn't make a sound.

  Looking down at her with his hands on his hips, Kirk grunted with dissatisfaction. He couldn't walk out with her looking like that; she looked like she'd been slapped across the face. That would draw attention of the worst kind. “You have makeup?” She nodded once more, still silent, her lips pressed together firmly. “Good. Cover up that mark.”

  He waited in silence as she reached into the purse that had been placed under her chair and fished around in it for some foundation. Her composure was admirable as she dabbed small dots of liquid foundation onto her face and massaged it across the skin with a light touch. He knew she was afraid, he saw her fear in the fluttering of her pulse in her neck, the way she breathed quick and fast through her mouth, not her nose. She was trying to hide her anxiety, and she was doing a fairly good job. To an untrained observer, she looked perfectly calm as she reapplied the lipstick that had been smeared off on the inside of the tape. She didn't look at her father once, and no words of sorrow or comfort passed between father and daughter. Phil looked smug and satisfied as he sat there like a pale toad.

  “Be in touch, Phil.” Kirk put his sunglasses back on, placed his hand under Evelyn's elbow in a gentlemanly fashion and escorted her out of the room, through the dank basement and into the elevator without her saying a word. She seemed to understand well enough that her opinion of events mattered little, and if she was bitter about being traded like a pawn by her father, she certainly didn't express it. She didn't express anything at all, and Kirk found himself shooting curious glances at her more often than he would like.

  In the elevator he observed her out of the corner of his eye, quickly coming to the conclusion that she was quite a beauty in her own right. Underneath the tape she'd been hiding a heart shaped face and a pretty bow mouth. Her nose wasn't perfectly tiny and pert, but rather long and aquiline; it gave her a refined appearance that worked rather well with her arched brows and pretty eyes. There wasn't much of Phil in her appearance, though she did have his height. She stood at a mere 5'5, even in her heels her head only just came up to Kirk's shoulder. A pocket Venus, that's what she was, Kirk mused to himself during the short elevator ride.
<
br />   “Right this way, m'lady,” he said charmingly as they stepped out of the elevator. There was no reason to be cruel to her; she certainly hadn't done anything to get herself into the situation. She did as she was told, walking with him out of the building and onto the street without any of the hysterics he feared.

  His car was parked a block away. He saw a slight hesitation when he unlocked the silver beast and motioned for her to get in. This was the point of no return. This was her last chance to try to run, to cry out for help. People were passing them by on all sides, consumed with the problems of their own lives, far too preoccupied to notice or really care about the woman and the man lingering a little too long by the car.

  “Evelyn,” Kirk's voice was gravelly and low. He did not threaten her, but the native menace in his tone was designed to remind her of why she was with him and what would happen if she decided to start trouble for him now.

  At his word, she crumpled lady-like into the car, swiveling her hips as her knees folded so that her derriere touched the seat and her legs simultaneously swung around, knees so tightly clamped she could have been holding a dime between them as she swept her skirt out of the way of the door and sat entirely composed, her hands in her lap.

  She was a real lady, Kirk thought to himself, one of the old school ladies you didn't meet anymore. Nowadays women were hard and brash and mouthy. Not Evelyn, she'd obviously been taught when to keep her mouth shut. He made sure her door was shut securely and walked around the car, keeping one wary eye on her but also keeping an eye out for other dangers. In his world there were always dangers, even on crowded streets in broad daylight.