Chapter 12
RAIDEN
Crashing through the door of my new apartment, I put all my things down and curse myself for not unpacking properly.
Boxes are piled up everywhere, the couch is covered in kitchen pots and pans—not that I’ve ever used them.
The moment I got here, I’ve been focused on the spitfire next door, and now that decision is coming back to kick me in the ass.
I should have considered the state of my home before leaving for Barcelona. After every trip, the one thing I need to find my peace is to crash on my couch and let everything I’ve done fade into the dark abyss, otherwise known as my soul.
Taking a life has never been easy. Not that I actually got to do it this time. Nonetheless, it always takes a toll, no matter what kind of person I’ve been contracted to eliminate. I’ve been doing this for almost ten years, and I still remember those first few kills like they were yesterday.
They weighed on my heart and left scars that never healed.
I always find myself wondering about the families.
If these targets have husbands or wives.
Sons or daughters. Mothers who were expecting them at Sunday dinner.
Fathers who were waiting for them to come help them with those heavy chores they couldn’t handle any longer.
Like I said, it always takes a toll, no matter the circumstance. Only now, ten years later, that toll has become easier to handle. It doesn’t exactly bounce off me like it does for others, but it also doesn’t destroy me like it once did.
I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Specifically the job I just completed. Well, attempted to complete.
There are too many unanswered questions, and the whole situation has made me uneasy. Is it plausible that another agency swooped in and took the kill? Absolutely. It’s rare, but these things happen from time to time, just not usually to me.
Again with the coincidences. I don’t like them, and Kiara St. James showing up in Barcelona at the same fucking party that I was at, well, that’s the biggest coincidence there ever was.
I don’t buy her story. Sure, she’s clearly a travel blogger. That much is obvious from her social media accounts, but I think there’s something more than that. I just don’t know how to prove it.
I know this is a long shot, but could it be that Kiara was the woman on the motorcycle? That she’s more like me than I ever could have anticipated? That her travel blog is just a cover for her to move freely across the globe without question?
It’s awfully convenient. But that’s insane, right?
It wouldn’t be the first time an assassin moonlighted as something else to be able to move around undetected.
I do the same. I cover as an international sales rep, and nobody has ever questioned it, as long as I have just enough of a backstory that’s boring enough for the general public not to care, then I fly right under the radar.
As for Kiara . . . I don’t know.
Of course, there’s always a chance that she really did follow me there, that the moment I got my assignment, she packed her bags, followed me to the airstrip, and somehow smuggled her ass onto a private jet. And if that’s the case, I have a feisty little stalker.
I ain’t mad about it, but on the other hand, she seemed too irritated to have seen me there. Just the sight of my face manages to get under her skin, and I won’t lie, I like it that way.
Letting out a heavy sigh, I get lost in thought.
This bullshit has done nothing but circle my head since the moment she left me on the beach, rock hard and desperate. Well, to be completely honest, it wasn’t that exact second. I first had to deal with the raging hard-on she left me with, but once that was settled, I had nothing but time.
What are the chances that the woman who lives right next door is a fucking assassin, but not only that, one of the best I’ve ever seen? That kill was so clean. But is it possible?
While Kiara is more than a feisty firecracker, she doesn’t strike me as a killer. But what do I know? I’ve only had a handful of conversations with the woman, and the majority of them are centered around her overwhelming dislike of my existence.
It is plausible, though.
I left her in my hotel bed at eleven. Drove straight into Tossa de Mar.
Was there for all of three seconds before hightailing it back to Barcelona.
I didn’t take my time to appreciate the view either.
So if this really was Kiara, she would have had to haul ass to make it into Tossa de Mar ahead of me, having time to dress in all leather and get her hands on a motorcycle, only to then make a precision kill, and make it back to Barcelona with enough time to ditch the bike and strip down into the kind of bikini men start wars over.
By the time I arrived, she was already covered in suntan oil and looked as though she’d been lying under that hot sun for hours. But maybe she’s got me fooled. Those pretty cheeks of hers could have been flushed from running instead of red from the sun.
Fuck me. This shit is going to keep me up.
If it is true, I have a much bigger problem than just a sexy-as-fuck assassin living next door. The problem: how the fuck did another agency get their hands on that contract? And how the hell did I end up living next door to her?
Is Kiara a handler? Was she put into my life to keep tabs on me?
Or am I somehow hers, placed here for a bigger reason than I realize?
After all, securing my apartment came very easy.
My offer was accepted immediately, and I more than low-balled that shit.
Either way, two highly trained assassins don’t end up living in the same city, in the same apartment complex, directly sharing a bedroom wall.
The chances of that happening are next to none.
Surely I’m overthinking this, and the woman is just a stunning travel blogger who happened to show up in Barcelona, wanting to spend the weekend on a European beach sipping cocktails.
Shit.
Shit. Shit. SHIT.
Somebody is fucking with me. Somebody is using me as a pawn, and I’m going to find out who.
But first, I need to find out exactly who Kiara St. James is.
Considering her Urus wasn’t parked down in the parking garage, and there’s not a sound coming from her apartment, I take it as my sign that she’s not yet returned from her potentially lethal trip to Spain.
Not knowing when she intends to come back, I figure there’s no better time than the present, and I slip out of my apartment before taking two quick strides and positioning myself in front of her door.
I try the handle because you never know when someone might accidentally leave their door unlocked, but Kiara doesn’t play like that. She might storm down corridors and slam on strangers’ doors in her underwear, but she keeps her home safe.
Rattling the lock, I get a feel for how easy it might be to break through, but the deadbolt doesn’t wobble the way the cheap ones do.
It doesn’t even budge an inch. She must have an industrial-strength deadbolt.
But how? Does the landlord have a sweet spot for her? The lock on my door is flimsy as shit.
Realizing I’m not going to get through this door without causing serious damage, I go for option two: the bedroom window.
Letting out a sigh, I head back into my apartment before going straight through to my bedroom and opening the large window that leads out onto a fire escape. And it’s as simple as taking a handful of steps before coming to a stop outside her bedroom window.
Naturally, the window is locked, but she doesn’t have the same precautions on the window as she did on the front door. I waste no time jimmying the lock until it comes loose, and the second it does, I slide the window open before slipping straight inside.
My feet come down on her bedroom floor, and I look around.
So this is Kiara’s bedroom.
It’s cozy. Much cozier than mine. She clearly takes pride in her home.
The bed is made with an abundance of pillows and throw blankets while large artworks decorate every spare wall.
It’s as though she’d hired LA’s more luxurious interior decorator to come and pimp out her home.
On the other hand, my place looks more like a forgotten shell with hospital-white walls.
Not wanting to be in here any longer than necessary, I start looking around, starting with her closet.
There’s nothing out of place, nothing that screams I’m a deadly assassin who’ll steal your hit right out from under you, but there certainly are some things that I’d sell my fucking soul just to see her in.
There’s no hint of anything.
No hollowed-out books that hide small handguns.
No decorative bowls that are weighted for defense.
No heavy paperweights strategically positioned.
No discreet high-tech security systems.
It goes on and on, and I look everywhere. Under the bed, in her dresser, and even in her bedside drawer. But apart from the stack of vibrators stashed in there, I come up blank.
Moving out into her kitchen, I head directly to her cabinets, when the big purple box of sex toys on the counter catches my eye. A chuckle pulls from my chest.
Screwing with her has been way too much fun, and then just for shits and giggles, I peer into the massive box, looking over the selection of toys that some lady put together for me while I was on my flight to Barcelona, and my jaw drops as I take out the biggest dildo I have ever seen.
“What the fuck is this?” I murmur to myself before going to put it back, only I think better of it and suction it to the table beside the box, letting her know exactly where I’ve been.
With the massive dildo slowly swaying side to side, I keep searching the apartment, looking in every nook and cranny, and apart from her kitchen knives, a small bedazzled handgun in the entryway table, and a baseball bat shoved behind the door, I come up blank.
So, maybe I’m overthinking this. Maybe she’s not the woman who stole my hit, and her weekend vacation to Barcelona was just that: a vacation.
There’s nothing here that raises any flags.
Sure, there’s a gun in the hallway table, but that’s nothing to blanch at.
A single woman living alone in a busy city should have a gun to defend herself.
As for the gun itself, there’s nothing special about it.
Apart from the fact that it’s been bedazzled with hot pink and silver rhinestones, there’s not a single bullet in sight.
I don’t know what she plans to do with it if she were attacked.
Maybe we need to have a little chat about that, but she’d likely try to use me for target practice.
Deciding that it’s all my imagination, I turn to head back into her bedroom and slip out the same way I came in, but as I pass the kitchen, my gaze shifts to the digital planner on the fridge, and I pause.
Do I really need to know when she goes to her yogalates class? No, but I’m about to commit it all to memory.
Stepping in front of the planner, I learn what her days look like. I see no evidence of yogalates, but there’s definitely something here. Her trips and, more specifically, the dates she was there.
Obviously, her trip to Barcelona is there, and judging by what this says, she’s planning on returning home tomorrow, giving herself another day on the beach, but what gets me is the timing of her trip to the South of France two weeks ago. But why?
Something is tickling my brain, and I pull my phone out before pulling up her Instagram page and finding the last few posts that detail a two-week vacation to Nice.
But despite already knowing how she likes to exaggerate the length of her vacations to her followers, there’s something about the specific timing of her trip.
Her posts show her down on the stunning sandy beach in Nice, and the flight logs on her planner tell me she was there for no more than three hours, a time frame that directly lines up with the assassination of what must be one of the dirtiest politicians to have ever graced France.
And right in the background of the selfie she has on the beach is the exact location that assassination took place.
Coincidence? I think not.
A million-dollar contract for that job came through two weeks ago, but it was scooped up by another assassin before I got the chance to accept. And that assassin is Kiara St. James.
There’s no doubt in my mind.
Barcelona alone could have been seen as a coincidence. It’s completely plausible that she just happened to be in the city the same time that Javier Rodríguez was killed. And it’s absolutely plausible that the same could have happened in the South of France.
But the likelihood of that happening twice in a row? No chance in hell.
Kiara St. James is an assassin just like me. I have no idea who this woman is or how she ended up so central in my life, but I intend to find out, even if it’s the last thing I do.