Page 58 of Darkest Kiss

Beast laughs, which I take as friendly. "He says hi back."

Hale considers this with more gravity than it deserves. "Does he like me?"

He has good instincts, Beast says.

"He says you've got good instincts."

"Thank you for noticing. Somebody has to keep us all breathing."

"Both of you, shut up." Ransom walks through the entry points, the kill order, the fallback routes. I listen to none of it that matters, because the only part I want is the man who gave the order. Ransom knows. At the end he looks at me. "You go last."

"Counterpoint. I go first."

He holds my gaze a second. "Fine."

Then he signals two soldiers toward the south entrance. Hale shoulders a bag and heads for the side door without being told.

"Don't leave anything standing," I tell his back.

He lifts a hand to say he heard me and keeps walking. He doesn't need my notes.

We spread out.

The perimeter guards are doubled and jumpy, which works for me. Jumpy men cluster up and watch the building at their backs instead of the dark in front of them. I drop the first two with silenced rounds before they hear me coming. By the time the third one works out what’s happened, I'm already through.

Beast is pleased. Yes, he growls each time I move. There. Now.

No corrections tonight. No hissed instructions. He's been waiting for this since I sat in Noemi's empty apartment and smelled the food rotting in her fridge and knew something had gone wrong.

So have I, come to think of it.

Ransom is at my shoulder as we enter the main house, his gun catching the moonlight. The interior men are better than those on the perimeter. Two on the ground floor, sharp enough to check their corners. Still afraid, though.

Fear costs a man half a second on every decision. Half a second is all I've ever needed.

The first one doesn't hear me until it's too late to matter. The second goes toward the sound of him dropping instead of away from it, which tells me he’s brave, not smart. Brave and not smart has a short shelf life.

Ransom waits behind a door and takes a third, with a shot to the back of the head the man never feels. It's the way I always figured I'd go.

But now I've got someone to get home to, so I move slower than I used to.

I find a back stairwell and take it up. The second floor is offices, mostly stripped. Folding tables, cables along the baseboard, a whiteboard covered in numbers that won't matter to anyone by morning. Ransom and Hale clear them before I have to think about it, which is good, because my head's already gone to the back of the house.

Where's Andreas?

At the back, Beast murmurs. The ones that think they’re worth dying for are always hiding behind their men.

He's right.

The corner office has a heavy door, the kind meant to tell you somebody important sits behind it. I try the handle. Locked, which means Andreas heard us and had time to turn the bolt.

I've never met a locked door worth the trouble of picking. I step back and kick, and this one folds like a pipe cleaner.

"There you are." I step through. "Come on out. Fight me like a man."

Andreas Vitelli is across the room behind a half-wall, a gun already up in a hand that won't hold still. Short, plump, that dark ring of thinning hair. He looks exactly like he did in Noemi's photos, except those didn't capture this part, the part where he's a terrified little man who hasn't worked out yet that he's already dead.

"Who are you?" he shouts.