14. Brian

FOURTEEN

brian

We are well into June when all the gods of death and ruin smile down upon me and give me a golden unbelievably lucky opportunity. I’ve managed to get close enough to my primary target, not to kill him, but to pass as a delivery driver and leave a bug in his inner office... and a tracking device on his car.

I’ve been listening for weeks while training Mina with the weapons. I’ve managed to get everything I need, even down to the building security codes, which both Mina and I will memorize, though we probably won’t need them.

Even before I came up with this relatively safe plan, I’ve known I was going to cave. I like the idea of us as partners in crime too much. I’m so selfish to risk her, but I know the itch beneath her skin that nothing but the kill can ever scratch. So isn’t it just as selfish to leave her behind to protect her ? Like she’s some fragile flower in need of misting.

And she would resent me in time if I didn’t let her feed her shadow.

She’s tasted it, and she’s never going to be able to go back to who she was. Not letting her come with me is like keeping a tiger in the zoo. And even I know that’s wrong.

She hasn’t pushed me again about going on the job even though I know she suspects my resolve weakens by the day. She just lets me train her. Knives, throwing stars, all manner of guns, a crossbow—not that we’ll need that but it does help with focus and aim, plus they’re fun as hell.

I’ve gotten her comfortable finally with the recoil of the 9mm, though she likes the .380 the best for a personal carry weapon. I hope to break her of that instinct in time.

I’ve also got her shooting the ARs in multiple calibers. I’ve taught her more about the drugs I sometimes use and exactly how to prep the syringe and keep herself safe from the pointy end of the needle. Even though she used the drug to extract me from Matsumoto Junior’s dungeon, she still can’t take anything for granted where such potent chemicals are concerned. The last thing she needs is to make herself more vulnerable than she already is as a woman—and a petite one at that.

When I originally bought Mina and thought about training her, this was not what I was thinking about. She’s still quite green. You can’t train anyone to be an elite killing machine in six weeks, after all. But her progress is much faster than I anticipated. She retains training from session to session, and she’s got good instincts, and extremely good aim. At least in a controlled setting.

I’ve also been training her on how to use her environment and not be entirely reliant on her weapons. Even with backups, someone can disarm you, and if you can’t see your environment as a place full of free weapons, then all the shiny tools in the world won’t keep you alive.

When we aren’t doing grueling assassin training, we’re in the gym and the pool doing other types of training. We’ve barely had time for anything but eating, sleeping, and training these past few weeks.

Though I fantasize about it in the shower, there has been little time for our games. I need to be laser focused on the job, on the hunt. And I need all her energy similarly focused. From this point onward—at least until this job is complete—we get all our pleasure from the kill.

I take the stairs two at a time from the dungeon up to the main floor. I find Mina exactly where I knew I’d find her, swimming laps—long furious elegant strokes down the center of the pool. Today she’s wearing a red bikini. I wait for her at the end she’s swimming toward.

“Mina,” I say when she reaches the edge. “Get out, we need to talk.”

She makes her way over to edge and uses the ladder to climb out. I wrap her with a towel and help her into her shoes. Then I take her hand and lead her wordlessly away from the others into the wooded area and several yards past the perimeter—the line no one but the trainers and Mina can cross. It’s more private out here, and I know where all the trainers in the house are at the moment. I made sure they were all occupied and not wandering the grounds.

“Brian? What’s wrong?”

She shrinks back when I turn to her, and at first I’m confused, but then I realize it’s because I’m smiling at her like a maniacal clown, which isn’t something she’s used to from me—this much glee. At least not without body parts on the ground around me.

“I found the way in. And I’m letting you come with me.”

She squeals and jumps up and down, throwing her arms around my neck and peppering me with kisses.

“How are we getting all of them?”

I had almost given up and decided to hunt them individually. I take a deep breath. “There’s a Fourth of July parade in the city. Stryker owns the fourteen story building two streets over. While the parade is going on, our targets plan to meet in the top floor C suites. We’re going to blow the building up.”

At fourteen floors, it’s one of the shorter high rises in the city, but the tallest one within three blocks, so it seems much taller than it actually is.

She just stares at me for a full minute. “Brian, I don’t know. What about all those innocent people?”

I don’t give a fuck about innocent people—especially now when it’s been so hard to find a time and place where they’ll all be together. And taking them all out at once requires explosives. There’s no other way. I can’t run in with guns blazing and take out twenty people all assembled together, not even with a partner. And Mina is still too new in her training for such high stakes.

I’ve killed multiple people at once, but not multiple criminals and their body guards all in one tight space. Usually it was untrained and unarmed people. Cooks, servants.

What? I’m the bad guy.

But everyone who will be at this meeting will be armed, partly because although they are allies, none of them trusts each other.

“There won’t be innocent people around. Several streets near the parade have been blocked off. It’ll be well after business hours so no one else but our targets and their entourage of fellow criminals and body guards will be in the building, and we aren’t blowing the entire building. That would require way too much explosive material. There are limits to even what I can source. We’re setting the bomb on the floor just under them.”