Cry Assassin Read online

  Every part of Eve's skin prickled with anxiety. She could almost feel harsh fingers descending on her arm, detaining her, but the old woman was shuffling towards a seat now and the teenage boy had a bus pass. Eve made her way into the bus quickly and handed the driver a ten dollar note. She might as well have punched him in the face with the look he gave her. “Correct change only,” he snapped, jabbing a finger towards the sign.

  “Keep the change,” Eve snapped in response, diving into the depths of the bus like a woman pursued by a tiger. She glanced out the smudged windows as she sat, and to her relief saw no sign that Kirk was after her just yet. The bus began to move and the beautiful sense of relief almost brought laughter bubbling to her lips. She'd escaped!

  * * *

  Hot and wet, Kirk emerged from the shower. He dried himself off briskly, wrapped one pristine white towel around his waist and draped another over his shoulders. The moment he stepped out of the bathroom, he felt something was wrong. The house felt quiet. Empty.

  With a muttered curse, he went into the lounge where he'd left Evelyn. She was gone, and more disturbingly, so was her purse. With quick efficiency he checked the rest of the house. She really was gone. Damningly, the bolts on the front door had been pulled open. She'd waltzed out the door whilst he'd been showering and congratulating himself on having intimidated his dim captive into obedience.

  “Idiot,” he insulted himself, curling his fingers into fists.

  Dressing quickly, he went out onto the street, but there was no sign of her. She'd had a full ten minutes to get away now. What if she'd flagged down a car or gone to the police? She could bring a world of trouble down on all their heads if she had. No. He couldn't think like that. He had to believe he'd find her before she went blabbing to anyone.

  He went inside, straight to his computer. He needed as much information as he could get on Miss Evelyn Day and he needed it quickly. The usual sources did not reveal much, she had no criminal record, so there was no information there. Aside from her father, she had no criminal contacts at all. All he could get was a registered address. That was better than nothing. Kirk knew from experience that most people on the run usually went somewhere familiar and comforting. For Evelyn that would probably be home.

  She lived on the other side of the city, near the university. She might not be going to college, but she was certainly living amongst peers that did. That worked for him. He'd pulled on a pair of blue jeans and a crisp blue shirt when he was getting dressed and he put on a tweed jacket so that he'd probably do a decent impression of someone's father. He was only just enough to have fathered a college aged child, but he was close enough and college kids weren't exactly known for their stellar observational skills anyway.

  The drive to the other side of town was a frustratingly long one that took almost an hour. Every minute she was out of his sight was another minute in which everything could go horribly wrong. When he finally arrived in her neighborhood he parked a block away from her address out of habit and began walking. It was a pleasant enough neighborhood, with trees lining the streets. It was noisy though, he could hear no fewer than five stereos blaring different music at one another. The cacophony would have done his head in if he'd lived there.

  Evelyn's apartment building had security in the form of a lower door that required a key code, but a thoughtful soul had propped the door open with a chair and Kirk was able to wander right on in. Her apartment was on the third floor, so he took the stairs quickly two at a time. The door to her apartment was closed and locked. He rapped on the door, but there was no reply. That meant she either wasn't there or she wasn't answering the door. It didn't really matter one way or the other, he was getting in. The lock that secured her door was almost as dismal as the level of security in the lobby of the building. He had a lock picking set in his pocket, but he didn't need it, the cheap lock gave way to a quick hard swipe of a credit card and he was in.

  Her apartment was small and run down, but neatly kept. There were only two rooms, the main room which served as kitchen, lounge and bedroom and another room which functioned as a bathroom, though by the stench that was rising from the pipes, only barely. How could Phil let his daughter live like this? He had money, it made no sense that his daughter should live in a run down apartment with mushrooms growing out of the plumbing. Evelyn wasn't there, but he'd bet money that she'd show up at some point. He locked the door up again and retired to a bucket seat that looked as if it had been salvaged from a dumpster to wait.

  Keys in the door caught his attention not twenty minutes later. With soft steps, he took refuge next to the door so that he would be behind it when it was opened. Entirely unaware of the fact there was someone inside, Evelyn unlocked the door and scurried into the room, slamming the door behind her. He watched her from behind for several long seconds as she placed her purse on the crate that passed for a coffee table and took her high heels off, groaning as she rubbed her feet.

  “Running in heels takes a toll, huh,” Kirk observed dryly.

  Evelyn shrieked in surprise and whirled around, holding one high heel in her hand, brandishing it like a weapon. “Get away from me,” she demanded with entirely useless fierceness.

  He raised his hands in the air. “Calm down little girl, I'm not going to hurt you.”

  She shot him a furious look. “Yes you are. You damned liar!”

  Kirk stopped in his tracks. If he wasn't seeing her with his own eyes, if she hadn't been reacting to him with such vehement vitriol, he wouldn't have been certain that this was the woman he had escorted out of the basement of an inner city basement just a few hours earlier. She was transformed by her freedom in a way that was quite beautiful. Her cheeks were pink from excitement, her lips were parted with passion and her eyes burned with vigor. She would fight him tooth and nail, he could see it in every line of her body and it excited him.

  “I assure you I have no intention of harming you,” he said correcting himself subtly. He had come to the conclusion that he might very well hurt her, but only in the most noble of ways. Evelyn was proving herself to be spirited beyond what he had imagined, and a spirited woman could only be dealt with in a few ways. She could be appeased, which was out of the question, she could be tricked, but that would only breed mistrust, or she could be tamed, which was his preferred method.

  “You've been very naughty, Miss Evelyn,” he purred in low, domineering tones as he took another step towards her, closing the gap between them. Her pretty mouth fell open in a sort of surprise. Clearly she had not been expecting this reaction. She had probably expected violence and anger.

  “Don't come any closer,” she reiterated the request. “I'll scream!”

  “Will you? What will become of your father if you scream?”

  A dark look passed over her sweet features. “I don't care what becomes of him,” she declared boldly.

  “Really?” He smirked, not altogether surprised. A daughter used as a pawn was unlikely to harbor many warm feelings towards her progenitor. “Well what will become of you if you scream?”

  “Someone will call the police, they'll arrest you,” she said, drawing herself up to her full height, which was still very short indeed.

  “Say they do that. Say they lock me away in the darkest cell they can find. Then what happens to you, Miss Evelyn?” Kirk remained patient, speaking with an almost paternal air.

  “Then I am free of this crazy shit.” The profanity sounded almost alien falling from those sweet ruby lips.

  “I know you can behave better than this, you demonstrated that today,” he tutted in disapproval.

  She frowned, her neatly plucked brows creasing beneath the folds of her forehead. “You can't tell me how to behave,” she said, befuddled by his presumption.

  “Let me finish the chain of events for you,” Kirk ignored her last statement. “You can perhaps have me arrested and that leaves you here, in this flimsy apartment that anyone with the slightest motivation can break into. When the Russians come f
or you - not if, but when, they will take you.”

  “My father will get them their money.” She tried to put some certainty into the statement, but she failed.

  “Phil had no means of pulling twenty grand together, let alone two million. It wouldn't surprise me if he's already skipped the country,” Kirk said in flat, matter of fact tones. “It's only a matter of time before Vlad decides to settle his debts with you. Just how hard do you think you'll have to work to pay off twenty million?”

  “Then it doesn't matter, does it? Whether you stay or whether you go, it all ends the same way, so please leave me be.” She spoke stiffly, with the same closed demeanor she had used earlier in the day. Whether she believed him or not, she was no longer listening, no longer paying any real attention.

  “They will not take you from me,” Kirk said. “So we must go now and wait and see what happens next. Come along, don't be churlish.” He held out his hand to her as he spoke in clipped, authoritative tones. She hesitated, so he reached out and took the stiletto out of her hand. “Tell you what, as we're here, why don't you pack a few things. I'll wait.”

  Her resistance faded in the face of his certainty. She knew that she was in danger, being taped to a chair and watching her father blubber with fear earlier today told her that. All he had to do was keep playing on that and she'd do as she was told. Hopefully. He didn't want to have to delve into graphic detail about what awaited her if the Russians decided to use her to settle her father's debt. It didn't bear thinking about.

  Kirk stood by the front door and kept an eye on the hallway as she moved about the apartment, picking up little bits and pieces. She moved like a woman in a daze. “Hurry it up Evelyn,” he called softly. He didn't want to tarry here. It was a completely unsecured location and the pricking of his intuition told him that he wouldn't be the only one paying the apartment a visit. Not a minute later the sound of heavy boots falling on the stairs told him that he'd been correct. “Here we go,” he murmured to himself.

  Before the knuckles of the ham-fisted Russians could land on the door, he opened it in their faces. It was the same pair of gentlemen who had been working Phil over earlier that day. They weren't the sharpest tools in the shed, but they clearly knew their trade of intimidation well enough.

  “Hello,” Kirk ground out. “To what do I owe the honor?” He was always polite when dealing with these people. Always. It didn't matter whether they were meeting on friendly terms or whether it was an awkward moment like this, a moment that had the potential to turn suddenly violent.

  “Who's that?” Evelyn's voice came from behind him.

  “Just a couple of visitors, finish getting ready darling.” He allowed himself the overly familiar term because it gave him an air of possession. They weren't just coming for Phil's girl, they were coming for his girl and if they wanted her, they had to go through him first. All of this information was conveyed in that short sentence and the hard look that accompanied it.

  “Mr Vlad wants the girl,” the taller of the henchmen announced in flat tones. Nature had blessed him with striking blue eyes, but that was where her endowments had ended, or that was all that was left of them anyway. The man's nose was crooked from having been broken on several occasions, his ears were both swollen and cauliflowered from blows to the head and his skin was pockmarked and lined with scars. This was not a man to cross lightly. This was a man who knew what it was to fight for his life and win.

  “We agreed on a week. It has barely been three hours,” Kirk reminded him. “She is mine for the present.”

  Hard blue eyes bored into his own and for a second that seemed to hang for eternity, life and death was weighed in those eyes. If Kirk had shown even the slightest weakness, if his gaze had wavered for a second, if he had tried to appease them with a supplicating smile, they would have pushed him aside and taken her. Had he tried to stop them, a lethal combat would have ensued.

  “Very well,” the Russian said, his accent thick. “We will contact you within the week. But eh,” his cold eyes flickered over Kirk's shoulder to where Evelyn stood in the center of her apartment, clutching a jacket to her breast. She had very quickly worked out what was going on and had taken refuge in silence. “Do not touch her, eh comrade. Vlad wants her pure.”

  The assumption that she was pure was something of a stretch, Kirk thought. He did not reply, not deigning to acknowledge the warning and the threat behind it. Vlad considered Evelyn his already. He would abide by the terms of the agreement, as far as they could be enforced, but he wanted her.

  The Russians turned and walked away, leaving Kirk with bile rising in his throat. The casual way they talked about human flesh was indicative of their many crimes against decency, against humanity. To them a woman was a commodity to be traded, her mind and wishes secondary to the desires of the male.

  He shut the door and turned to Evelyn, who had gone pale with fear. Good. She needed to be afraid. “We're leaving.” This time, there was no resistance, she gathered her few belongings mutely and when he indicated that she should, she took his hand and allowed him to lead her down to his car as mildly as a lamb.

  Chapter Three

  “You will never set foot outside that door without my permission, you understand?” Kirk's expression was severe and Eve shied away from him, taking refuge by the arm of the couch she was sitting on as he paced back and forth in front of her. The curtains had been drawn closed tightly all around the house and all the windows and doors were bolted. He was concerned, that much was obvious. She didn't need him to tell her that, she could see it in the tense planes of his face, in the rigid way he held his shoulders. He was in a heightened state of alertness and had been since the Russians had paid their little visit to her apartment.

  The entire long and complicated drive back to his home had been conducted in a heavy silence she'd found almost intolerable. Her composure was on the edge of deserting her completely. She'd finally come to understand that this wasn't a matter of her father's that could be avoided by returning to her life. This was a matter of hers. They wanted her.

  “Why?” She whispered the question to herself.

  “Why?” Kirk rounded on her, looming over her. “Because I tell you so.”

  She uttered a cry of surprise and fear at his sudden and angry reaction. “No, I was wondering why they want me so badly,” she explained, her voice a soft whimper.

  “Oh,” his posture relaxed slightly. “Vlad is a rich man. He is accustomed to getting what he wants. The fact that you're difficult to get is probably whetting his appetite all the more,” Kirk speculated.

  “I don't want him to have me,” Eve said softly.

  “Well you're not helping your situation by running out of the house the moment my back is turned,” he lectured her. “You will suffer the consequences for that, young lady.”

  “What are they?” Her lip curled. “What could you possibly do to me that's worse than what the Russians will do?”

  He shook his head at her, his hands clenching and unclenching by his side. His frustration was a palpable force. “I don't want to hurt you. I want you to do as you're told.”

  “I will,” she promised.

  His response to her facile promise was a low growl. “No, you won't. I've seen how you behave Evelyn, you pretend to go along with what I say and the moment my back is turned you do whatever you were planning to do in the first place.”

  Her smirk was hard to hide. She'd gotten him good on their first go round. He'd taken her for some dim bimbo and she'd proved otherwise. But it was his turn to surprise her and prove a point. “I'm going to spank you,” he said suddenly, as if he'd just snapped to a decision.

  All she could do was stare at him, her mouth open in surprise. “No you're not,” she shook her head emphatically. “I might not be as old as you, but I'm not a child for you to discipline.”

  “Incorrect,” he snapped. “You're in my care and you're under my roof. I want you to have something to remember next time you decide you kn
ow what's best.”

  “I do have something to remember. The Russians!”

  “They didn't dissuade you in the morning, why should they dissuade you now?” He sat down next to her and began unbuttoning the cuffs of his sleeves. She watched with stunned horror as he rolled his shirt sleeves up, exposing powerful forearms covered with thick, dark hair. “Over you go,” he said, patting his knee.

  “No, you can't be serious,” Eve shook her head and shrank away.

  “I saw the look in your eye when I found you in that apartment, Evelyn. I saw how proud of yourself you were at the idea you'd gotten away with disobeying me. You need to learn that there are consequences for crossing me.” He spoke in even, measured tones, holding her attention with his slate gray eyes.

  “But this... this is ridiculous,” she spluttered. “This is what you do to children when they misbehave.”

  “And to grown women when they behave like willful brats,” Kirk nodded, taking her by the wrist. “Come along, time to go over my lap.”

  “No!” She tried to resist, but she did not have the strength to do so. He was so much larger than her. So much more powerful. He managed to wrangle her over his lap in one smooth movement, settling her over his hard thighs.

  “Don't worry, little Evelyn,” he purred. “If it is such a childish punishment then a big girl like you should be able to take it without any trouble at all.”

  She was not afforded an opportunity to argue the validity of the point he'd made, for he immediately began slapping his open palm across her bottom. The skirt she wore offered far less protection than she'd imagined, and the slapping hurt much more than she thought it would. Each slap stung her cheeks, making her buck her hips in a way that made her blush with its lewd overtones. He had her firmly in his power and he was making sure that she knew it.

  “I don't like being played with, Evelyn,” he lectured her as his hand fell in a rhythmic tattoo against her bottom. “You will always be honest with me, and that means telling me what you really think and feel, not hiding your intentions behind a pretty facade of cooperation.”