Chapter Nine: Holly

I’m in the dark, hiding. I’m trying to hold my breath, keep it in, but it’s impossible. My nerves are shot and I can’t keep calm. I’m in the corner, huddled against the wall with my legs pulled up tight against my chest—and speaking of my chest, the pounding of my heart makes me think it’s going to burst right out any moment now.

I’m terrified. I’m scared. And, worst of all, I feel helpless.

The closet door, the only barrier between me and the rest of the world, flings open, and a shiny gun is my first greeting, along with an ugly yellow light that illuminates the silhouette of the man who just opened the door.

The only thing I can stare at is the gun for a good long while, and then my eyes travel along the arm of the man holding it. The moment I stare into his cold, icy blue eyes, I’m lost. I know I am.

He’s going to kill me and there’s nothing I can do to stop him.

“Please,” I whisper, and as I do so the man’s face changes. It morphs, and suddenly within a blink, he’s older. He’s got a few wrinkles around his eyes and a certain tightness to his mouth, and his brown hair is laced with a few strands of silvery gray.

What’s more—the most startling difference—is the fact that his eyes aren’t icy anymore. No, they just seem tired, and it’s a tiredness I can feel within my own bones. In my soul.

The man is slow to lower the aimed gun to his side and then offer me a single hand. That outstretched hand makes me feel a certain type of way, and my stomach twists as I stare at it. He doesn’t say a single word, but that hand says more than words ever could.

If I take his hand, he’ll help me out of the closet, yes, but at the same time I’ll have to turn my back on what he’s done. How could I ever trust that he won’t change his mind and kill me just as he killed my parents?

I hesitate too much. Before I can do anything, everything around me fades and—

I wake up.

What would normally be a cause for concern—a dream like that is, to say the least, totally unwelcome—is immediately pushed to the side when I realize there is, in fact, a gun pointed directly at my face.

“What—” It’s the only word I can get out before something big and black tackles the gun-holder, and I sit up and pull my blankets closer to my chest, as if that’ll protect me from whatever the fuck is happening.

The fire is dim, nothing more than heated embers, but it’s enough light for me to grasp the fact that there are two large men caught in a struggle just a few feet away. The one who was holding the gun to my face tries to point it at me, but the second man grabs his wrist to stop him while simultaneously punching him in the throat. The gun-wielder gasps and drops the weapon to the floor, which my savior then kicks away.

Spoiler alert: my savior is Kane.

The two men are caught in hand-to-hand combat for a while, and I’m too dumbstruck to do anything but sit there and stare at them with an open mouth. Am I still dreaming? This is… what the hell is happening?

The stranger, wearing all black and a ski mask to boot, makes a dive for the gun. He manages to grab it, but instead of pointing it at me he takes aim at Kane. But Kane is too fast. Laying on the floor, pointing the gun at him, the man is a sitting duck for Kane’s wrath.

Before Kane kneels over him, the man pulls the trigger. I flinch instinctively; ever since that night three years ago, the sound of gunshots takes me straight back to that place. With that single shot, I’m thrown back in time, forced to relive that night. It’s a worse feeling than the dream I just had.

The shot must not have hit anything, because soon Kane holds the wrist attached to the gun and slams it on the floor to stop him from shooting again. In the next second he pulls out my knife and drives it straight into the guy’s chest, slamming it down so hard the steel cuts through skin and bone like it’s nothing.

And just like that, the guy’s dead.

Kane groans as he gets off the guy, leaving my knife sticking out of his chest. He lumbers toward me, the opposite of grace. He’s breathing hard, and thanks to the dim embers of the fire I can see the hard look on his face as he practically crawls onto the sofa bed with me.

“Little killer, are you hurt? Did he get you anywhere?” The questions sound urgent as he speaks them, but I’m still far away, shattered by that gunshot. When I don’t look at him, when I don’t respond or move a muscle, he grabs both my shoulders and gives me a gentle shake. “Holly, are you all right?”

My chest feels tight. My breathing is hard and fast, like I can’t quite catch it. Where’s a goddamned closet when I need one to hide in? “I can’t…” I manage to say in between sharp gasps. “I can’t breathe.”

His reply is immediate, “Yes, you can.” Kane’s hands move off my shoulders so they can cup my face and force me to look at him. “You’re okay. You’re fine. Focus on your breathing and slowing it down. He didn’t hurt you. I stopped him. It’s okay.”

I just witnessed him killing someone with my knife after nearly being shot in the face. It doesn’t feel all right. I don’t feel okay. But at the same time, I can’t argue with him because I’m still alive.

Kane smooths down my hair and repeats himself, “You’re okay. Nothing’s going to happen to you, I promise. Just breathe.” And then, without warning, one of his hands wrap around to the back of my head and he pulls me into him. Before I know it, both his arms are around me, and he holds me so tightly it doesn’t feel like he’s ever going to let me go.

“You’re okay,” he whispers. “You’re okay.”

I don’t want to admit it, but hearing him, feeling those strong arms around me… it does help calm me down and bring me back into the present. It’s opposite of what sh ould happen—I should freak the fuck out when this man touches me—but I think the circumstances are a bit, uh, skewed right now.

The man is surprisingly calming, and it doesn’t take me long after that to catch my breath. I cling onto him for dear life, like he’s my lifeline to sanity, and I’m so focused on bringing myself out of the panic attack that I can’t think about anything else.

Such as all the reasons why I shouldn’t be holding onto this man and the one big reason why he shouldn’t have his arms around me.

I suppose I should thank the man—both for saving me and calming me down—but before I get the chance, a cold breeze gusts into the cabin, alerting both Kane and I that the assassin had left the door open. The world of snow outside is dying to come in, and it’s the only reason Kane pulls himself away from me. He goes to close the door. His next job is putting two more logs into the fire and re-heating the space.

And me? While he’s doing that, what do I do? Why, I stare at the dead body just a few feet away, at the gun he almost killed me with, and at my knife protruding from the stranger’s chest.

Holy shit. I almost died. The weight of what could’ve happened falls on my shoulders, and I’m sluggish in drawing my gaze off the corpse and landing it on the back of the man who, by all accounts, shouldn’t have lifted a finger to save me.

Kane didn’t have to leap into action to save my life, but he did. What’s worse is I don’t know how I should feel about that. Grateful, I guess.

“You,” I speak quietly, still in shock, “you saved my life. How did you…” The last I knew he was sleeping in the bedroom. Unless the man has amazing hearing, I don’t see how he could’ve heard any of it, let alone heard it early enough to come out and stop the assassin in time.

“Turns out I didn’t drink nearly enough before bed,” Kane remarks with a sigh, still kneeling by the fire. The orange light dances across his face. “I don’t sleep if I’m not self-medicating. Not anymore. I, uh, thought I heard something, so I came out. A part of me thought it was you shuffling around, but it wasn’t.”

If ever there was a night for Kane to not self-medicate, I’m glad it was tonight. I really don’t want to think about what could’ve happened if he hadn’t heard. Hell, it was a miracle I woke up when I did, otherwise that man could’ve killed me while I was asleep. How horrible would that have been?

I swallow hard before I say, “Thank you.” Thanking my parents’ killer for saving my life wasn’t on my bingo card for this trip. Then again, this entire thing hasn’t gone how I thought it would.

Kane stays kneeling by the fireplace, not saying a word.

“What do you think he wanted?” I ask, ever-aware of the corpse not far from us.

“I don’t know. I’ll search him once this fire gets going, see if I can find anything on him that’ll give us some answers. Then I’ll drag his body outside so it doesn’t start to stink.” The way he talks about it, so off-handedly, makes my stomach churn.

Maybe I’m not cut out to be a killer after all.

It takes me a moment to ask this next question. It’s like it doesn’t want to come out. “Do you think he was working alone?”

Again, his answer is, “I don’t know. Guess we’ll find out if another comes knocking.” When I don’t say a word, he glances over his shoulder at me and adds, “That was a joke. If there’s more, they won’t knock.”

“Ha-ha.” So not funny.

Kane stands and wanders away, leaving me with the corpse for a while. I don’t know where he went off to or why, but when he reemerges it’s plain by the bottle in his hand. Half-used, it’s the same one he poured on his chest and drank from earlier, when he was cleaning the stab-wound on his chest.

Something in me snaps. “Really? You’re going to drink now? You think now’s a good time to get a buzz going?” I can’t hide the disdain from my voice. This guy…

He sets the bottle on the sofa bed next to me, and then he wanders into the kitchen and grabs the first aid kit, which he deposits next to me as well. I have no idea what he’s doing, and I’m even more speechless when he groans and takes off his shirt—in that sexy way only guys can: one hand on the back of the neckline, up and over the head in one smooth motion.

The problem with having boobs, or one of them, at least. We can’t be nearly as cool.

The cool, attractive way he took off his shirt is dimmed by what I immediately notice the moment he tosses the shirt onto the recliner nearby: a second wound on his chest, this one in his right pectoral, just below his shoulder. Round in shape, the injury oozes blood down his sculpted muscles, and the light of the fire makes the numerous scars on his torso stick out.

“Holy…” I trail off as Kane lumbers toward me, sitting down next to me in place of the bottle, which he snatches up. “You got shot.” I remember the gun going off, but when it happened, Kane didn’t so much as blink, so I thought… I had no idea the bullet landed anywhere close.

“Yeah,” he mutters as he quickly unscrews the lid. He takes a sip before he leans over the edge of the sofa bed and pours some on the fresh wound. He’s so off-handed about it, like it’s no biggie, that I don’t know how to respond. “He almost did your job for you.”

Making jokes at a time like this. What’s wrong with him?

Kane rolls his right shoulder, then whispers a hard, “Fucking hell. Do me a favor and look on my back. Do you see an exit wound?”

I lean around his body and check out his back. Now that the fire is going again, there’s plenty of light in the cabin, far enough to see that there is, unfortunately, no exit wound for the bullet. “No. What does that mean?”

“Look in the first aid kit,” he tells me as he takes another sip from the bottle. “I want to say I saw tweezers in there.”

My heart skips a beat. “Tweezers? You’re going to dig the bullet out?”

“No, you’re going to dig the bullet out.” I’m seconds from arguing with him, but he shuts me up by saying, “I’m not as good with my left hand. You need to do it. I saved your goddamn life, Holly, so you’re going to look for tweezers. If there aren’t any, then—”

“I’m not sticking my fingers in your… your hole ,” I whisper harshly, though I don’t know why. It’s just the two of us. The two of us and the dead guy.

Kane sends a glare my way. “You’ll stick those fingers anywhere I want them, little killer. Now find the fucking tweezers so we can get this shit over with.” The way he says it, I can tell he’s not going to let up. He’s a righty, and the wound is in his right shoulder. I could root around in his flesh easier than he could.

But… ew. I don’t want to.

I reach for the first aid kit on my other side and dig through it. Everything in it is old, yes, but most everything is also still in its original packaging, which at least means it hasn’t been used before. I find the tweezers and tear into the old, yellowed packaging, and once I have it in my hand, I freeze.

What am I doing here? Seriously, what the fuck did I think I’d do? Pop in the cabin for a quick murder, have a cup o’ tea, and leave? I should’ve known it would turn into the craziest few days of my life.

Kane grabs the tweezers from me and says, “Hands.”

Instinctively, I outstretch my hands away from the couch, and he pours some alcohol on them, and then on the tweezers. Once everything is coated in that strong, stinky stuff, he hands them back to me.

Oh, my God. I don’t want to do this. I really, really don’t want to do this.

“How am I…” I can’t even finish the question. I’m nearly sick at the prospect of what’s ahead, of what I’m about to do.

Kane tries to turn his chest my way, but the movement casts a shadow over the hole. A new plan is in order, one which he thinks of instantly. He leans over and sets the bottle down on the floor, and then he goes for me. I’m too stunned at the sudden turn of events to realize what he’s doing before it’s too late.

His hands find my hips, and I’m picked up, moved like I weigh nothing. He brings me to his lap. Seriously, his freaking lap . In two seconds I’m straddling the guy, with tweezers in my hand, because he wants me to go digging around inside his body for a bullet.

The fireplace is behind me. Its warmth is only dimmed by the warmth of Kane’s hands as he keeps me steady on his lap by placing them on my lower back. The position is an intimate one; I might’ve straddled him before, but that was when he was tied up. Now? Now things are different.

The orange glow from the fire lights up his shoulder and the wound just beneath it. I’m small enough that I don’t block the light.

Never thought I’d be staring into someone’s bullet hole. There really is a first time for everything—and let me tell you, it’s just as nasty as you’d think it’d be.

Swallowing hard, I move the tweezers closer to the hole. The tip of the metal instrument is inches away from the bullet hole when I suddenly pull back. “I can’t do it,” I whisper. In my chest, my heart beats a mile a minute for a whole host of different reasons. The bullet hole, for one, and what Kane wants me to do in there, but I’d be lying if I say those two reasons are the only ones.

I hate him, okay? I do. I dreamed of killing this asshole a thousand different ways for the last thirteen years. I did everything I could to track him down and find him, and when I finally come face-to-face with him, I’m filled with emotions other than hate.

“Yes, you can,” he tells me. “You can do it. Just think: it’ll hurt me like a bitch. You should be happy to do it.”

He’s right. This is going to hurt him. I should take pleasure in that.

I steel myself and bring the tweezers closer to the wound. The moment the steel disappears between his flesh, I gag and look away, and Kane’s hands tense on my back. He growls out, “You have to look at what you’re doing.”

Oh, right.

Even though it’s the last thing I want to do, I look at what I’m doing—and that means I stare into the bullet hole as I root around in there, trying to find the bullet that didn’t leave his body. I have to hold my other hand over my mouth as my gag reflex rises to the surface.

This is gross. This is so fucking gross. I want to vomit. I’m definitely going to be sick.

Kane, to his credit, holds back any groans. His chest does tremble with a sound he stifles when the tweezers go deeper, but all in all, he’s the epitome of badass.

Rooting around inside him isn’t the easiest thing, but the moment I go deeper, and ironically the very same moment I start to wonder if I’m going to have to dig my fingers inside him, I think I hit the bullet with the tweezers. It takes a little rooting around in there to grasp it with the tweezers, but once I have it, I’m able to pull it out of his body while trying not to throw up.

And when I see that blood-stained bullet in the light? I dry-heave like no one’s business.

Kane lets out an explosive sigh. “Good. You did good.” He lifts a hand under the tweezers, and I drop the bullet into his palm. He studies it like it no longer bothers him at all now that it’s not lodged inside his body, but I need to forget about this whole thing, so I drop the tweezers onto the bed and turn away. I’m so lost in that uneasy, sick feeling that I totally forget I’m still straddling his lap and that one of his hands still rests on my back to keep me steady.

“Fucker,” Kane whispers, and though I’m not watching, I’m pretty sure he tosses the bullet onto the corpse.

My stomach isn’t happy with what I just did, and I lean into his other shoulder. “I’m never doing that again,” I tell him. The only bright side here is I’ve been so preoccupied with almost dying and having to dig around in Kane’s body that my adrenaline pushed down the constant aching pain in my feet.

“You did good,” he tells me again. The hand remaining on my back drops to dangerous territory—my ass—and I’m seconds from telling him off when I realize he only dropped his hand there to help me off his lap.

Duh. Come on, Holly. A near-death experience shouldn’t put your mind in the gutter, especially when it comes to this particular man.

Kane slaps a bandage on the bullet wound before cleaning up the first aid kit. Once his shirt is on, he kneels over the corpse and says, “Now let’s see if there’s anything here.” He roots around the body like he’s used to handling corpses.

And I guess he is. He is an assassin, after all, a type of deadly most people would never understand. I, on the other hand, am not used to watching someone search a fresh corpse, so I have to turn away.

This little mission of mine was already complicated, but with more assassins? Things just got worse.

The thing that makes the situation even worse than it already is? The thing that weighs on me the most? It’s something I didn’t realize until I woke up with a gun in my face. I thought I was ready to die, that I’d gladly give my life in this cabin if it meant my parents’ killer would get his.

But I was wrong. I don’t want to die here.