Assassin (4 page)

“No, it’s not going to work. Lunch is ready.” Troy grips the
sides of the bureau without opening his eyes, and grits his teeth. He has the
perfect comeback, finally, but she’s already gone. Infuriated, he runs a hand
through his quickly drying hair and stomps down the steps. The smell of bacon
reaches his nose, which makes him even angrier.

“Cassidy, darling, would you please stop stocking my fridge
with yogurt?” Troy stops just outside the doorway and listens. This is what he
was adept at back home, eavesdropping. He used it to learn about his victims so
that he could take them down easily when the time came. Hell, he knew almost
all their secrets, and there was never any need for torture at the end.
Besides, torture is messy, and Troy hates messes.

“It’s good for you Dad. You know, it regulates your
digestive system, and I’ve been reading that as you age your digestive tract is
not as healthy as it was before. Besides, a little yogurt and some fruits
aren’t going to kill you.” So she cares enough to worry about her father’s
health. That’s interesting. Perhaps the outburst earlier is not so much about
Troy personally, but about something that may have happened with a previous
program member that screwed up. Feeling a little lighter, Troy walks into the
kitchen as if he just came down and didn’t hear a word.

“Wouldn’t you agree that yogurt is healthy?” Cassidy’s blue
eyes bore into Troy’s dark ones as she puts her hand on her hip and cocks it,
that must be her signature move. He swallows once as he tries to come up with
something smart to say, but this new man is at a loss for words.

“Smart man,” Mr. Grant says as he sits down with a large plate
of what looks like leftover pot roast. Troy piles on a few spoonfuls to his own
plate, and watches Cassidy get  yogurt from the fridge instead. She doesn’t sit
down with the men at the table but eats with her butt planted on the kitchen
counter.

“Why would you say that?” She sounds a little tart over the
compliment, and looks sour over the fact that Troy didn’t come to her rescue.
What did she expect? She insulted him.

“He knows when to remain silent when a woman is in a tiff.”
Troy is about to open his mouth and say that the old man is wrong, when he
realizes he was just given a compliment.

So he focuses on his meal while the young woman goes on
about how yogurt is good for the intestines and makes the stool soft so that
older people don’t have to deal with hemorrhoids. Mr. Grant looks more and more
irritated by the minute, but his voice remains calm and steady as he puts out
excuse after excuse as to why he doesn’t want to eat the yogurt. Something
tells Troy this is not the first thing they’ve argued about over the years.

“Cassidy Grant, if you mention my stool one more time, I’m
going to take all that yogurt and feed it to the horses.” Troy almost chokes on
his piece of roast as he thinks about horses with diarrhea, and Cassidy looks a
little put-out by the idea, as well. She’s probably thinking about shitty
horses while she’s trying to ride them.

“Fine, but I think you should just try it.” It seems she
likes to have the last word, but so does her father.

“Fine.” They finish up lunch, and Cassidy doesn’t mention
another word about yogurt as she gets a glass of water after the dishes are
started. Occasionally, Troy meets her eyes and stares until they’re both forced
to look away when her father catches them. He doesn’t need to worry, all Troy
has to do is think about the fact that she thinks he should be fried like
bacon.

“Are you going to attempt it today, or are you going to kill
that horse with patience?” Troy was lost in his own little world during the
first half of the conversation, and tries to pick up where it’s left off. Grant’s
daughter has a small frown on her face with her arms crossed over her chest.
She’s wearing a pair of socks that are black with little red hearts on them.
What kind of girl wears those?

Troy doesn’t remember most of the women he slept with over
the years wearing socks. They wore high heels, all of them. He’s staring at her
socks when Mr. Grant calls out his name. “Troy, hey Red, Troy Red!” Startled
out of his daydreaming about peeling off the socks, Troy tries to play it cool
while he looks up at Mr. Grant’s face.

Cassidy waltzes from the kitchen with a satisfied look on
her face and the door shuts quietly as she leaves the house. Mr. Grant has a funny
look on his face, like a cross between being constipated and angry. “I said my
daughter is off limits.”

“Don’t worry, she wants to fry me like bacon. She’s rather
insulting.” Unfortunately, the words don’t seem to ease up Mr. Grant’s fears
that Troy is already starting to look at his daughter the wrong way. Yet there
isn’t much he can do about two consenting adults, except kill one.

“Just remember that you’re a guest here, and this is my house.
You will follow my rules while you are under my roof.” Feeling like a scolded
fifteen year old, Troy squares his shoulders and nods. If he were home, he’d smash
someone’s face in. But he reminds himself he’s attempting to start a new life,
one that doesn’t involve killing others for money.

That doesn’t mean he can’t kill them for being pissy.

“I have to finish raking the rest of the hay in the fields.
Why don’t you start cleaning up some of the farm equipment in the barn?” He can
do that. Besides, Cassidy will be out in the pastures with the horses, so Mr.
Grant won’t have to worry about anymore contact between the two.

Troy nods his agreement and bolts for the door to put his
shoes back on. He runs a hand through his mussed hair as he approaches the barn.
He suspects the equipment must be stored on the other side that has double
doors, and heads for the left. Just as he rounds the corner, he almost runs
into the perky blonde with blue eyes. She mumbles an ‘excuse me’ that sounds
more like ‘fuck off’ and ducks into the side of the barn where the horses are
kept.

Distracted as she pushes her hair back from her face by
running her hand through it from her forehead back, Troy barely notices the
fact that she’s noticed him looking. The dour look on her face just makes her
even more exotic to him. How could someone so easy on the eyes to the opposite
sex come from someone like the old man back there?

Struggling to figure out how genetics could be so random,
Troy opens up the sliding door before he can make even more of a fool of
himself and slips inside. Ninety nine percent of the different attachments for
the tractor confuse him and, in his mind, they don’t have names. He begins by
removing the blades off a large tiller and scraping the dirt off them. Then he
finds a spray bottle and just starts spraying, hopefully it’s a cleaner.

Cassidy periodically ducks in to grab tools, but she doesn’t
say anything more to Troy. Apparently she’s lost her fight for the day, and
she’s going to lay low until she’s sure she can rebound the next time. At one
point, she leads a horse around and starts cleaning out the shoes. Then brushes
him down not too far from where Troy is working. He wonders why she can’t do
these things on the inside of the barn, and when she finally attempts
conversation with him, he understands.

“So you’re a drug dealer.” She says it as if it’s a fact,
and Troy furrows his brows as he tightens a bolt.

“No.” He doesn’t offer any further explanation.

“You’re one of the guys who runs the drug dealers, then.”
She’s brushing the chestnut mustang and he’s nibbling at her shirt as if he’s
trying to groom her in return.

“No.” Again, no offer of why he’s here.

“You’re one of the rare good guys who ended up seeing
something he shouldn’t have.” Finally, she looks at him with a twinge of hope,
and he feels the muscles in his back tensing.

“No.” He’s not going to lie to her, but he’s not going to
tell her what it is he did that landed him here.

“Does it have to do with drugs?” She looks and sounds disappointed.

“No.” He grits his teeth as he waits for the next guess.

“Maybe you’re part of the underground sex slave trade, and
you cracked. You told the police everything, so now they need to keep you safe
until you can testify?” Now he’s insulted.

“
No
, I’d never hurt a woman.” She snorts, and he
finally turns to look at her fully with the wrench still in his hand. His arm
is bulging from his grip on the tool, and he sees her swallow.

“A child?” He sighs as she continues barraging him and turns
back to the tiller.

“I’d never hurt a kid either.” He’s reminded of his niece,
and for a moment he stills as he remembers her sweet smile and the way she
would run down the hallway for him whenever he showed. Then he remembers how
she lay still in the hallway of his childhood home with a bullet wound to the
chest. It was a tiny wound in the front, but a gaping hole in the back.

Cassidy is talking, but he can’t hear what she’s saying due
to the ringing in his ears. He feels the lump starting to form in his throat
and remembers that men don’t cry. So he throws the wrench across the length of
the barn and it pings as it comes in contact with something metal. He’s
breathing hard, and it’s the only noise he can hear over the ringing. The
images of their bodies strewn about the house as if they had tried to get away
clouds his mind so that he’s no longer in the present.

When he finally comes to, Cassidy is gone, and he’s alone in
the barn. He retrieves the wrench and begins his project again. Troy ignores
the footsteps as they approach, but he can hear their voices.

“Lost his mind or something, Dad! Jeez, I was just trying to
have a conversation with him, and he
flipped
out. You really should just
get rid of this one. He’s beyond help, alright?” They both round the corner and
Cassidy shuts her mouth when she realizes that her voice probably carried. Troy
ignores the two of them as he tightens a few more bolts, and then he puts down
the wrench. He wipes his hands on a clean rag and tosses it into the dirty rag
pile.

“It’s clean. I’m going in.” Mr. Grant lets him pass without
saying anything, but Troy doesn’t miss the look that he gives his daughter. He
doesn’t have to worry about his being able to stay at the house, but Cassidy
might have to worry about whether or not she’ll be allowed on the farm while
he’s here.

“Dinner’s not for another hour!” Mr. Grant finally calls to
him in his scratchy, old man voice. For a split second, Troy thinks about
giving the old man his signature wave with the finger, but he pockets it
instead.

Cassidy is right. He lost his cool today, and it should
never happen again. Ever since ‘the incident’ he’s been losing his mind, and
he’s not sure how to get it back. Moving across the country is not going to make
images of his dead family go away. The shitty part is he didn’t get to go to
their funerals.

The next morning, old man Grant doesn’t come to wake Troy up
for breakfast. He slides out of bed at exactly quarter of five in the morning
and slips on a fresh pair of jeans and t-shirt. Dropping onto the floor, he
does another set of thirty and heads down the steps to see if it’s more butter,
grease, and potatoes for breakfast.

Sure enough, Grant is setting down plates on the small,
kitchen table, and it’s home fries this morning with scrambled eggs instead of
fries. Troy ventures towards the coffee maker and figures out how to brew a
single cup with the device. He’s seen these before but never used one. In a
way, he has some equal footing with at least one thing with Mr. Grant.

“In a week I’m going to start bailing that hay out there. In
the meantime, I was hoping you would help me clean up some of the barn
equipment and the barn itself. I need a few stalls looked into and repaired.”
Troy sits down at the table with dark wood and sips on his coffee as he watches
Mr. Grant stir the scrambled eggs. Then he pops in a little more butter, and
Troy wonders if he’ll be able to work off the amount of calories the old man is
putting into breakfast.

“I’ll help you out under one condition.” Mr. Grant looks up
from his cooking with his brows furrowed like he had them the morning before.
It seems to be his signature look in the morning.

“What’s that?” He asks suspiciously, only turning his
attention back to the home fries when they begin to burn.

“Keep Cassidy from yapping my ear off, that woman talks too
much.” To his surprise, the old man chuckles under his breath as he scrapes the
eggs and fries onto both plates. Then he pulls ketchup out of the refrigerator
and sits down at the table with it.

“Can’t fault you for that son. She sure does talk a lot.”
They eat in silence after that, but it’s not as tense as it was the other
night. Troy wasn’t asked, but he felt compelled to tell Mr. Grant why he lost
his emotional stability in the barn, at least the short end version.

She wouldn’t be quiet, and I didn’t want to remember what
it was that lead me here.
Mr. Grant had understood then, too.

“I’m going to go to the feed store this afternoon, would you
prefer that I took Cassidy with me?” There’s the implied, ‘I don’t want anyone
in town to see you yet’, within those words. Troy understands the concern, but
wishes it wasn’t reality.

“No, if she wants to stay here and ride a horse or whatever
it is she does, then she can stay. I’ll just find work somewhere else on the
farm.” There’s a silence between them as they load the dishwasher up with their
dirty plates, and then Mr. Grant turns to Troy with a small grin on his lips.

“You could just throw the hammer across the barn this time.
Just try not to hit a horse with it.” Unable to help his reaction, Troy cracks
a small smile at the joke.

“I’ll try,” he says quietly as he heads for the doorway to
the kitchen. He stops with his hand on the frame and turns just his head back
enough so that his ear is facing in Mr. Grant’s direction. “What’s your first
name, Grant?”

“Robert, , but everyone just calls me Grant.” He nods once
before he heads out to grab his shoes and get started on one of the stalls.
That should be an easy enough task, and the hammering will go nicely with his head
that is starting to pound. He’s glad that Robert Grant wants to be called Grant
because it would be odd to call someone by his old first name.

He needn’t use a hammer for this job. Troy roots around the
tool room until he finds a drill to put the screws in. By the time he gets the
right bit in for the proper sized screws, Grant is waiting for him by one of
the horse stalls. He’s leaning against the wood with his arms crossed lightly
over his chest and eyebrows furrowed.

“You plan on doing that while the horses are still in here?”
Glancing at the horses still sleeping or remaining still in their stalls, Troy
shrugs one shoulder and looks back at Grant.

“Why not?”

“Because if you start using something loud and noisy in an
enclosed space around a spooky horse, it might start bucking and kicking. An upset
horse is a dangerous horse. So we’ll let the horses out before you start using
that power tool.” He’s not used to orders, but Troy sets the power drill down
on the bench and opens up one of the stall doors. Before Grant can stop him, he
marches into the stall to get the horse to hurry out the door.

His first warning is the foot stomp, but Troy doesn’t have a
clue about a horse’s behavior. The next clue is when the horse shies away from
him with a worried tone, and then comes the hoof out of nowhere. He has
excellent reflexes, Troy, and he manages to dodge the first hoof, but he gets a
solid hit to the chest that plants him on his ass in the barn aisle.

Grant steps aside as the horse comes barreling out and into
the pasture where it whinnies and paws at the ground with its agitation. Then
he kneels down beside his new house guest with two fingers to his lips as if
he’s attempting to hide a smile. Troy’s unable to draw in enough air to give a response
to the mirth dancing in the man’s eyes because the wind has been knocked out of
him, and he’s starting to become dizzy.

“That’s you’re first lesson, son. Don’t go into a horse’s
stall with a bad attitude. They don’t understand what you’re upset about, and assume
that you’re going to hurt them.” Troy’s trying to draw enough air to tell Grant
that he
is
going to hurt that damned horse, but it’s useless. He leans
forward as he coughs, and he’s surprised when there isn’t blood in the spittle
on the ground.

“Think…I…broke…a…rib!” He chokes out between gasps with his
hand clutching at his chest. He feels something damp on his fingers and looks
down to see that there is blood on his shirt.

“No, you were hit too high for that. If he broke something,
it would be your collarbone. Now get your hands away from it and let me see. I
doubt it’s broken. You’d be passed out by now.” Unfortunately, there is no way
for Troy to fight back against the man’s hands as he pulls Troy’s away from him
shirt and begins to pull it up. He feels heat gathering on his face and ears,
which just makes him more upset.

Grant makes a few grunting noises and mhmm noises as he
pokes around the wound, and then he lets the shirt fall and stands up from his
crouching position.

“You won’t need stitches, but you’re not going to be able to
do the heavy lifting today. Cassidy will have to clean out the stalls, I guess.
C’mon, let’s get you inside to clean that up.” Holding out a hand to the new
city boy, Grant tries to keep the grin off his face. To his shock, Troy gets up
on his own, wipes his hands on his pants, and opens up another stall. The boy
has a death wish.

“I’m…fine.” He huffs out as he squares his shoulders and
steps aside for the horse. The poor mare gives the puffing man a sideways
glance before she retreats into the pasture with her ears laid back. None of
the horses are happy with him because he’s large,smells strange, and he has a
predator vibe about him. Yet not another one of them kicks him because he lets
them come out on their own. Grant wonders if this is progress and goes back to
helping with the release of the herd.

His breathing is somewhat back to normal by the time all the
horses are released, and he forgets about the power drill on the bench as he
heads for the tack room. Grant follows him in and watches him grab the pitchfork
and shovel from the rack they’re hanging on. He crosses his arms over his chest
as he observes Troy go into the first stall and begin to shovel the dirty straw
onto the conveyor belt.

“I told you Cassidy would do that.” Grant finally says when
he sees the sheen of sweat on Troy’s brow from the exertion and pain.

“She’s…too small…for this.” He sounds like an emphysema patient
the way he’s breathing and trying to speak.

“Oh boy, don’t
ever
let her hear you say that she
can’t do something. You’ll end up being proven wrong one way or another, and
she’ll kill herself doing it if she has to. That girl’s stubborn.” Troy leans
on the shovel handle as he looks at Grant with curiosity.

“Like her father?” He gets out in one breath. The pain is
starting to subside enough for him to appear normal, but it’s going to ache for
days. Grant ought to know. He’s had more than one horse kick him somewhere in
his lifetime

“No, like her mother,” With that said, Grant leaves Troy to
his work and wanders off to his own. It’s obvious the man doesn’t want to speak
about Cassidy’s mother, and Troy tries to remind himself that he’s not here to swap
family stories. In fact, he’s not supposed to speak about any of his old life,
to anyone.

It still nags at the back of his mind as he shovels and
grunts along with the spasms of pain. After an hour, he only has three stalls
fully finished, and Cassidy tromps in through the barn with boots on. She
doesn’t say a word to the hulking man as she grabs another shovel and pitchfork
from the tack room, but he grabs her upper arm as she’s passing.

“I don’t need your help. Go ride a horse, or something.” Their
eyes lock, and he wonders why her father didn’t call her something like Hurricane
or Tempest. The way her blue eyes darken and narrow makes his gut clench as he
keeps eye contact with her. If Grant did not choose this moment to walk in
through the barn door, the staring contest would have gone on forever.

If she knew who I am, she wouldn’t stare at me like that.
Troy promises himself. The thought does nothing to ease his heart rate and the feeling
that he may have met his match.

Cassidy smiles at her father warmly as if she’s trying to
appease the worried look on his face, and then she heads into the furthest
stall from the one Troy is working on. Her father exits the facility
begrudgingly after informing them both that he’s heading out to the feed store
early. Troy grunts to let the old man know he heard, and continues to pile on
the soiled hay. He stinks, he’s sweating, and his chest is still throbbing like
a freight train hit him. He’s beginning to wonder if the collarbone is cracked,
but he’s not a pussy.

“Dad said you were kicked by Beethoven this morning.” Her
smug voice washes over him and he turns around with a shovel full of horse dung
and a scowl.

“So?” He realizes it sounds a little petty and childish, but
something about her reminds him of playground brawls with the other children.
He always lost until he started working out when he was in middle school.

“Huh, it just proves my point that you don’t belong here. So
why don’t you just put that shovel down and scat like a good little boy?” He
can’t help it. Troy never said he wasn’t rude to women, just never hurts them.

“Whoever said I was a good little boy?” He asks with a
wicked grin, and then he flings the shovel full of shit in her direction. He
wasn’t aiming for her face, but a few tidbits splatter onto her cheeks while
the rest runs down Cassidy’s front. For a split second, they both stand there
with different expressions on their faces. Hers is a mix of shock and fury, and
Troy’s is a mix of amusement and worry.

“You are going to pay for this!” She stomps her foot on the
ground once, and, to his shock, she scoops some of the sticky crap off her
shirt and flings it at his face. He ducks and it misses, but the second
scoopful she throws hits him square in the jaw. With a dangerous growl, he
drops the shovel and it clatters to the ground.

Cassidy squeals when he starts after her with fury in his
eyes, and she turns to run. It’s too late. He has her by the back of the neck
and begins to smear the shit across her face, but she wriggles loose before he
can do anymore damage. Letting instinct kick in as he used to, Troy ducks
through the barn and barrels after her outside.

Shockingly, by the time she reaches the hose outside of the
house her tinkling laughter is filling the air around him. She thinks this is
funny
!

I’m going to fucking kill her!

The thought passes through his mind, and an instant later
cold water is hitting him in the face. He puts up his dirty hands to block the
flow, but she’s relentless. Troy is as clean as he’s going to get and soaked
from head to toe when the water finally stops. But his rage has only built
during that minute it took to hose him down, and he grabs her slick arm in a
grip strong enough to keep her still but not hard enough to bruise.

He starts with her head and makes sure to get her face exceptionally
good before he hoses off the rest of her. Cassidy grunts as she tries to get
away, but he has her wrist in exactly the right position. “Let go of me!” She
screeches, but he only sneers at her as he keeps going.

“Fuck you!” He growls at her, and finally lets her go. Her
shirt is clinging to her like a second skin, and her hair is in her face. Their
shoes are soaked, but Troy stomps back to the barn to finish his chore. At
least he won. Well, he hopes he won.

The rest of the morning while her father is gone, Cassidy
cleans up stalls, but she doesn’t say another word to the asshole beside her.
They work in tandem, her scooping with the pitch fork while he scrapes with the
shovel. When it comes time to rinse down the stalls, Cassidy disappears as if
she’s afraid of the hose, and Troy feels a little pang of regret. What if he
scared her?

The thought haunts him as he finishes off the stalls and
picks up the drill off the bench. Grant pulls the pickup truck to the barn and
starts unloading the feed bags without a thought as to why his daughter’s
clothes are still damp, and why Troy’s boots squeak when he walks. He does wrinkle
his nose when he smells the remnants of the horse shit scent on their clothes
as they walk up to the house for lunch.

“We slipped.” Cassidy offers as an excuse, and starts to
wash her hands and up her arms outside with a bottle of dish soap and the hose.
Troy waits his turn patiently and keeps his eyes from making contact with Grant’s
as the old man stands there with his arms crossed over his chest. He doesn’t buy
his daughter’s excuse, but he won’t push them for the answers yet. He won’t be
leaving them alone together again anytime soon, either.