Chapter 12 Catlike #2
He tried to struggle. She increased pressure on his chest and drove her blade through his hand, pinning it to the pavement. His scream echoed off the warehouse walls and she waited it out with perfect composure, waiting until it subsided to a pained and breathless whimpering before she spoke again.
“Better. Now. Who hired you?”
“Fuck you.”
She twisted the blade and he screamed again. “Wrong answer. Try again.”
“I don't know names. Just orders. Just money.”
“What were the orders?”
“Rough up the investigator. Take his evidence. Make sure he stops asking questions.” He was crying now, the pain and fear making his words slur. “Someone wanted him scared off. Wanted whatever he's digging into to stay buried.”
“Who's the someone?” I asked.
“I told you, I don't bloody know. We get calls through a drop phone. Money appears in an account. We do the job. That's it.”
“A badly executed plan,” Lori observed, glancing at the bodies surrounding us. “Your team's dead and you're about to join them unless you give me something useful.”
“What do you want?”
“Names. Locations. Who pays you. How you get contacted.” She pulled the blade from his hand and positioned it against his throat. “And don't lie. I can always tell when people lie.”
He talked. Gave her everything he had — dead drops, burner phone numbers, bank account details, descriptions of the voice that gave orders, details about an organisation that paid well for muscle and asked no questions about targets.
Lori memorised it all with the same focused attention I would have used, and when he finished she slit his throat as calmly as she'd done the others.
Blood sprayed across pavement already slick with it. She stood, wiped her daggers clean, and sheathed them somewhere I couldn't track despite watching her every movement.
“Remind me not to piss you off,” I said.
She laughed. “Most people don't learn that lesson until it's far too late.” She surveyed the bodies around us with the comfortable detachment of someone consulting a grocery list. “We should go. Police response time in this area runs about eight minutes. We've got three left.”
“You killed four people.”
“Four if you count the one bleeding out from your tackle. He wasn't going to make it to hospital regardless.” She tilted her head. “Is that a problem?”
“Should it be?”
“Depends. Are you going to report this, make a statement, play the concerned citizen?” Her smile sharpened. “Or are you going to accept that some problems can't be solved legally and keep moving?”
I looked at the bodies, at the evidence in my camera bag, at Lori standing there like death dressed in designer boots and utterly unbothered by the carnage she'd just produced.
“We should go,” I said.
We walked. Different streets, moving fast but not fast enough to draw attention, putting distance between ourselves and the crime scene. Sirens started up somewhere in the distance — someone had heard the screaming, which meant the bodies would be found before they could be disappeared.
“You're not what you seemed at Eden,” I said.
“Neither are you.” She glanced at me, amused. “Though I suppose neither of us was exactly being honest that night.”
She paused at a corner and checked our surroundings with professional efficiency before stepping out. “What's your interest in Harrow?”
“Justice. Revenge. The usual motivations.” I studied her. “What's yours?”
“A contract. Someone wants him investigated and I'm investigating. What I find will determine whether he lives or dies.” She started walking again.
“I'm an assassin, among other things. Thief when it pays well.
Information broker when it doesn't. Spy when the work is interesting enough.
Whatever doesn't bore me.” She glanced over.
“Tonight I'm apparently your guardian angel.
Tomorrow I might be your competitor. That's how this works.”
“And Eden? You were gathering information there too.”
“Obviously. Harrow's careless in places like that — he thinks consent makes him safe, doesn't realise that people watch even when they're participating.” She smiled at something I couldn't see.
“Though I'll admit I didn't expect him to add a third person that night. That was improvisation on his part.”
The memory of that night made my stomach pull tight. “About that. I'm sorry. I didn't know he was going to—”
“Involve me?” She laughed. “Darling, I've done worse things for far less useful intelligence. That was nothing. Part of the job.” She stopped walking and turned to face me fully. “Though I do appreciate the guilt. It's sweet. Misplaced, but sweet.”
“I still shouldn't have—”
“You did what was necessary to maintain cover. Same as I did. Same as anyone working undercover does.” Something in her expression shifted slightly, losing its edge. “Harrow is the predator in that room, Cal. Not you, not me. Don't carry guilt that belongs to him.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to explain that it felt different regardless, that using people's bodies as instruments of investigation crossed lines that bothered me even when I crossed them.
But she was already walking again, dismissing the conversation with the efficient finality of someone who'd long since made her peace with far worse things.
“Who are you working for?” I asked.
“Can't tell you that.”
“Can't or won't?”
“Both. Some contracts require discretion and this is one of them.
All you need to know is that we're after the same target for different reasons, and sometimes our methods will align and sometimes they won't. Tonight they did.” She stopped outside a black motorcycle parked against the kerb — sleek, expensive, built for speed and manoeuvrability.
She swung her leg over it and settled into the seat with the ease of someone who'd done it a thousand times.
“Go home, Cal. Clean yourself up. Let the courts destroy Dole's career the way civilised people are supposed to.”
“What about the organisation? The one that sent those men after me?”
“I'll handle it. That's what I'm being paid for.” She pulled on a black helmet. “And Harrow is a longer game — patience, planning, the right moment. But he'll fall. They always do eventually.”
“We could work together. Share intelligence.”
“We already are. Just not officially.” She smiled at me through the visor. “I help you stay alive. You help me by being visible when I need a distraction. Everyone wins.”
“Except the people you kill.”
“They made their choices. I'm just the consequence.” She revved the engine once — a low, dangerous purr that carried across the empty street. “Take care of yourself. Try not to get jumped by hired muscle again. I won't always be in a position to save you.”
“I had it handled.”
She laughed, clear and sharp and entirely unconvinced. “Sure you did.”
Before I could find an answer to that she was already gone, accelerating down the street and disappearing around a corner in a sound like controlled thunder, leaving me standing there with blood drying on my face and considerably more questions than I'd had an hour ago.