Angel and the Assassin (28 page)

I said, “Mum, trust me, I’m gay.”

She asked if it was the school, all those boys sleeping in the same room. Because
if it was I could come home.

I said, “I’m queer. Deal with it.” She gave me a hug and said she loved me, and
that was that.

Aside from the sex that summer I learned which fork to eat with, what a fish
knife was and how to stand up when a lady walked into the room.

Kael sat on the wall at the entrance to Edinburgh Castle trying to look like a tourist. There were people from all over the world, so even a man of his height did not stick out too much. He had practiced an expression that made him look apologetic for taking up so much space. It always worked when he had to be out in 146

family-type locations on a hit. It made him less memorable than if he unapologetically took up all the space he needed.

A middle-aged woman, frumpy looking, in a dark twin set and tweed skirt, walked past. She pulled out a cigarette from a silver case. “Have you got a light, dear?”

“I don‟t smoke; it‟s a filthy habit.”

A couple walked past as the woman said, “I know. I mean to give it up, but life gets in the way.” When the other tourists were gone, she said, “Edinburgh High Street, the Old Duke Pub. There‟s a patio outside. Be seated there just before eleven o‟clock.” She walked on.

Kael was hungry. The last food he had eaten was with Angel at about eight o‟clock last night. But he never ate when he was on a job. Hunger made his mind sharper, his reaction time quicker. If he was hungry, Angel would be starving before long. The kid ate up a storm, just like he had at that age. He hoped the bananas and biscuits would last him. A month ago he would never have believed he‟d be out on a hit wondering how his boy at home was faring without him.

The High Street was very busy. Kael wandered through a few shops to pass the time. He had bought Angel some new jeans and leather pants earlier that week, and some new shirts and T-shirts, but he kept seeing things he wanted to get for him.

Crossing the road, Kael heard a car horn blast. He looked up, realizing he had walked into traffic without noticing. He had to get his mind off Angel; he was on a job, for Christ‟s sake, but he should not have left him locked up. What if there was a fire? What if something happened and he never returned to his flat? He had never once failed to complete a mission, but he had been badly delayed some years ago in Saudi Arabia when he was dragged off the street into a van by a gang and had the living shite kicked out of him before getting dumped in the desert. The stupid thing was, it was nothing to do with his mission; he‟d simply been mugged. But he was five days late getting home.

Stopping on the street, he did something he never did. He pulled out his mobile and dialed Conran.

“What the hell?” Conran burst out. “Are you in position? Why the hell are you phoning me?”

“I left Angel locked in the dungeon. If I don‟t return, you make sure he‟s safe.”

“If you don‟t return, there‟s nothing you can do about it.”

“I‟ll fucking haunt you, that‟s what I‟ll do.” Kael hung up.

At eleven o‟clock sharp, he sat in the fenced-in patio of the Old Duke Pub. The waiter strolled over and smiled at him. “What can I get you, sir?”

Kael‟s look said,
Your arse, but I’m too busy right now
. “Lager.” He would not drink it, but he needed to look like he belonged there. The waiter returned promptly with his drink. “Enjoy your beer, sir.” He leaned in, smiling as if to say something private. Kael kept his eyes on the glass.

14“Directly ahead of you is a man in a black jacket with a blue shirt underneath, wearing a black flat cap. There is another man sitting with him. The man in the cap is your target. Back of the head, two bullets.”

Kael handed him a fiver and sat back, watching the street while keeping the target in his peripheral vision. Coming to a quick decision, he carefully eased his gun from the shoulder holster, keeping it under his jacket. He rose and stepped outside the fence. Exactly five paces brought him to their table. In the split second that he stood there, he caught the harsh-edged consonants of the Bosnian language.

He could speak no more than a few words, but he knew what he was hearing.

In the space of less than five seconds, he feigned a slight stumble, and as he apologized, brought the gun around the back of the man‟s head, fired twice, and walked quickly away. The silencer muffled the shots, and he was around the corner before the man slumped forward onto the table, blood running from his mouth.

148

Angel woke up cramped and angry. No daylight penetrated the dungeon. Sir had left the light on low, but he knew it was morning, it must be. He needed to pee, and he always needed to pee in the morning.

“Sir!” he screamed, knowing the room was soundproofed. Angel sat listening very closely. There was no sound, but even in a soundproofed room, there had to be something. No one could use the toilet without the sound of water running. The pipes that connected the toilet and shower across the room were all plumbed into the same lines as the bathroom. Even he knew that, and he knew nothing about household maintenance.

“Master! Sir!”

Sir wasn‟t there. He had gone out and not returned.

Angel looked at the standing cage beside the dog crate. He should definitely have picked that one; his legs wouldn‟t be so stiff. What if Sir never came back?

What if he had left Angel there to die because Angel saw him kill Sven? There was something very odd about Kael Saunders. People called him by different names. The cleaner had gone missing after she saw Angel. He didn‟t seem to have any family or friends, except Freddie, and Sir admitted he had not seen Freddie in years.

Taking one of the empty water bottles, Angel positioned his penis at the neck and held it firmly with his fist over his dick and the bottle neck to create a tight fit.

The relief he felt as he filled the bottle was very comforting. Afterward he screwed on the lid and placed it outside the cage.

Reaching through the bars, he hefted the combination lock. It was a heavy one.

He glanced around for something to pick it with, but there was nothing in reach and he had no idea how to do such a thing anyway. Randomly, he began trying combinations. After ten minutes he was frustrated and angry, knowing there were a million possible combinations.

The humiliating bottle of urine sat on the floor outside the crate. He wanted to take off the lid and spray the room with it, he was so irritated, but that would definitely make Sir mad. He was such a prissy fuck about everything being clean.

His stomach growled. On top of everything else, he was hungry.

Angel looked down at his cock, realizing how little time he had spent masturbating now that he had a man in his life. It had been his favorite pastime when Sven locked him in his bedroom, which he did frequently when Angel first went to live in Sven‟s house.

14Gripping his cock with both hands, he massaged it up and down. His mind drifted back to the evening before. The incredible flogging, the finger fuck on the leather-topped table. He looked at the table, and the sensation of his prostate being rubbed returned, tingling through his cock, which rose and thickened in his hand.

Angel let his thighs fall wide until he sat like his mom when she was doing her yoga. His head fell back against the bars of the cage, and he rubbed his cock fast.

The friction was hot and sexy. An image of Sir naked and huge made him rub harder. Sir digging through garbage to get his blanket back. Sir kicking those dudes‟ asses in the park because they had called him and Sir names.

During his flogging, he had experienced a great acceptance, a sense of being at peace with his situation. In that moment he could live with not being loved, with being temporary, with being a project. “
I’ll make a man of him and send him out
into the world
.” All the things Sir had said to Freddie while having no clue that he sat out on the stairs listening to every word. But Angel was not at peace with Sir not loving him, not in the cold light of morning. He was angry and resentful.

Tears streamed down his cheeks as cum shot out of his dick. “I love you, you mean fucker!”

Bent at the waist, his forehead pressed into his blankie, he wept hard for several minutes. When he had cried himself out, he sat panting, getting his breath back. A slight soreness in his shoulders reminded him of the flogging he had taken last night. He hadn‟t cried then. He‟d been brave and resourceful, and he would be that now.

Angel took the padlock in his hand. “What would you do if someone locked you up, Sir? You‟d get out and kill them.”

Images had always been easy for Angel to conjure. He turned, positioning his body as if he was outside the cage with the lock in his hand. He pictured Sir turning the combination when he had opened the padlock to give him his blanket and snacks. Quickly he turned back, holding the image in his mind, and found the numbers without consciously knowing what they were. The lock fell away in his hand, and the gate opened.

“Totally, deeply sweet!”

He crawled out of the crate and went straight to the toilet, carrying the bottle, and poured it down. Afterward he took a shower and pulled on a pair of his new underwear. He really liked the plain black ones; they were so sexy and accentuated his basket, making him look bigger. He primped for a while in front of the mirror, flexing his biceps.

“Now, let‟s find out exactly who you are, Sir, because there has to be some information here.” Angel began going through drawers in the living room and the two bedrooms, searching thoroughly, and carefully replacing every item exactly where it had been. He searched the closets and felt under tables and furniture the way Sir did.

There was nothing.

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In the hall he opened the coat closet. A couple of Sir‟s coats and Angel‟s leather jacket hung there together with a nice new jacket Sir had bought him the other day that he had not had the chance to wear yet. He went through all the pockets, not expecting to find anything, and he didn‟t. He looked up at the top shelf, which was well above his eye level and reach, and ran to the kitchen to bring a chair from the table.

Standing on the chair, he examined the shelf, feeling around until his fingers found a crevice at the back and pulled. The shelf lifted on a hinge, and underneath it was a box. Jumping down with the box, he sat on the floor and opened it.

A bundle of passports fastened together with an elastic band was the first thing he pulled out. Angel pulled the elastic over his wrist and began flipping through the passports. “John Carpe, English; Markus Muller, German; Louis-Philip Laurent, French.” He looked through several more, one Russian, one South American. Another UK passport. Kael Saunders. “Every one of them has your picture, Sir.”

More papers lay in the box, birth certificates for the different names, work visas for different countries. At the bottom lay a small handgun. In another smaller box lay syringes and sealed vials of liquid he could not identify. A small leather tool roll lay there also. Angel took it out and unrolled it. A row of identical but different-sized instruments with one missing were neatly lined up in narrow pockets. Angel removed one and flicked the switch. Gingerly he touched the blade; it was very sharp. He flicked it in and out experimentally. “It‟s a scalpel.”

He’s either a serial killer or a professional killer
. Either way, it would not be good for Angel to get caught with this stuff. Quickly he began to pack everything back in the box. He would return everything to its exact place, and Sir would never know he knew.

A footstep outside the door made him freeze. When he heard the key in the lock, he nearly pissed himself. Dropping the box, he leaped up and ran through the living room, into the bedroom, and threw himself under the bed.

I found his stash. He’s going to kill me. The scalpel or the gun, but either way,
this time, I’m dead.

* * *

Angel would be hungry and dying for the toilet.

Opening the door, Kael stepped inside. The first thing he noticed was the cupboard door standing ajar. He closed the front door behind him, scanning the hall.

The box containing his passports and weapons sat on the floor, open. A chair from the kitchen stood beside it.

He drew his gun and leveled it.

Angel! Someone had come after him.

15On silent feet he began to search the flat, keeping his back to the walls, listening intently. All his senses came into play when there was danger. He sniffed the air, but the only scent was Angel‟s. Was he there? Was he hurt? He couldn‟t smell an intruder.

Eyes everywhere, he took in the living room. Nothing was out of place. Moving on to the kitchen, the only thing wrong was the chair that had been placed in the hall. Kael walked silently along the hall. With one finger he pushed open the dungeon door and stepped inside, his back to the wall.

The dog cage was empty, and Angel‟s blanket lay on the floor outside. Someone was in the flat and had taken Angel out of the cage. He knew the boy was there somewhere and someone was with him. Could it be Conran? He had not got out of the cage by himself. He scanned the room and moved on to the bedroom. Just as he pushed open the door, the bathroom door across the room closed.