His Princess (A Royal Romance) (33 page)

Karen gets up, walks over to the door, and plops down next to me. A minute later Kelly joins us, carrying a bowl of cheese doodles.

How does she eat all that?

The hell with it. I take one, crunch it between my teeth, and sigh.

“Block party tomorrow,” Karen says, a hint of hope in her voice.

Oh, lovely.

I
pace around my basement
, trying not to rip the shelves off the walls and kick toolboxes across the room. I want to tear it all down with my bare hands.

Never in my life have I cared about things like this. To me a woman was a lay; no girl ever held my attention after I came. I’m used to being gone the next morning, anyway. There’s always another job, another contract, someplace to go, something to do.

Now I’m staring down the barrel of a life—if I even have a chance to live it—without purpose. It’s been that way ever since the last contract but now it’s in sharp focus. What am I? What am I doing?

“What did you think you were going to do, Quentin? Play house?”

Pacing around the room, I have to think, yeah, exactly that. I never thought about kids before—if you’d asked me a few weeks ago I’d have considered the entire idea absurd. How could I even think about having children? The longest stretch I’ve ever spent in one place can’t have been more than a month or two.

Yet here I am, thinking about the future.

“You have no future,” I tell myself.

No man hunted by Santiago de la Rosa has a future. The Knight of Tears never misses his mark, never fails his mission. He will make my end torturous and brutal.

The worst part?

I deserve it.

I don’t belong here, in this place. Stranger in a strange land, that’s me. I feel dirty, tainted, for the first time ever. It’s Rose, and her family, and this life I see around me. Worrying about where cars are parked, what’s for dinner, when to mow the grass. It’s like an entirely different planet.

I didn’t know how dirty I was until Rose showed me what it was like to be clean.

When I look at my hands all I can see is the blood. How many people died at my hand? How much suffering have I inflicted? It’s easy to shift the blame. If I didn’t take those contracts, someone else would have.

Santiago taught me that death is an art, killing is a vocation. Poisons, sniping, hand-to-hand, knife play, I learned it all at the hands of an expert sadist. I made it quick whenever I could, but when you owe the wrong people money or snitch or do something that justifies suffering in the eyes of the criminal fraternity, the contract calls for more than death.

How many times did I deliver that? Is that all I am? An instrument of misery? An extension of evil people, to be used for evil ends?

It’s not like it matters. You bathe in blood for years, it soaks down to your bones. You’re not getting out of it. There is no cleaning it off, or cleaning it out. It doesn’t matter what I do with my body, my soul is dirty, soiled to the core.

Up until a few days ago I didn’t care.

You never forget your first. I was sixteen years old. Santiago raised me from when I was twelve. My parents died. I don’t know the details, only that they were murdered. That information was kept from me.

I know there’s a reason and the knowing gnaws at me, like a bird pecking my liver.

I never learned the man’s name, what he did, or why someone would pay enough to end his life that Santiago de la Rosa would take the contract. To me he was a pudgy middle-aged man in a chair with a bag on his head.

Santiago stood behind him, watching me. I couldn’t even see his eyes—his mask covers them with a pair of reflective lenses. He always wore a plain black mask that tucked down under the crisp collar of his dress shirt. I never saw him in less than the finest suits and formalwear, always immaculately clean and pressed so the creases had edges as sharp as the knives he kept in a padded leather case.

Santiago held out a suppressed pistol in his gloved hand, and I took it.

“Shoot him,” he said. He has an accent but no one can place it. It might be a blend of accents from other languages, places he’s been or trained. It might be to throw people off.

My palms sweated against the wooden grips, the checkering digging into my palm as I tightened my fingers around it. I snapped the safety off and slowly slipped my finger inside the trigger guard, as gingerly as if I’d never done it before. The trigger had three grooves on it.

“What did he do?”

“It doesn’t matter. The contract was offered, an advance was paid. If you don’t pull the trigger, I will.”

I aimed, and pulled it.

It wasn’t clean. I flinched. Santiago took the gun from my hand and fired twice more, and did it properly.

“What now?”

“Now we’re going to get rid of the body.”

My eyes snap open and I jerk to my feet, scrubbing at my face. I haven’t slept since I talked to Rose last night. The buzz is gone but I can still feel the bottle of Jack sloshing around in my guts, trying to burn its way out. Fuck it, I need pancakes or something.

There was only one person back then who could give me any comfort. I ran to her right away. Santiago knew it, the son of a bitch, and he used it later.

I lurch into the car and pull out. As I drive by the house I imagine the curtains fluttering, picture her standing there watching me pass. She probably hates me now, and with good reason.

You are such an asshole, Quentin Mulqueen.

I should be obeying all traffic control devices and driving five under the speed limit. The last thing I need is some local cop pulling me over and putting a blip in the system. That’ll bring Santiago down on me like ringing a bell. I should leave everything, even the car—go now, just put as much distance between myself and these people as I can.

Rose and her kids deserve more than they have but they also deserve better than me. I’m not doing them any favors lingering here. If I’m already being watched, they’ll know about her.

Fuck
. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck
fuck
!”

I slam my hand on the steering wheel.

Oh, hey, it’s the pancake place.

I wheel into the parking lot, walk inside past the
Please Wait to be Seated
sign, and flop down in a booth. A scowling waitress comes over and stands over me.

“Can’t you read the sign?”

I slap a twenty on the table. “Can you read that?”

“Yeah,” she says, warily slipping it into her pocket. “Okay, what can I get you?”

“Coffee, and keep it coming. A short stack. No, two short stacks.”

“Don’t you just want—”

“I said two short stacks, and three eggs sunny side up. An order of sausage and a double order of bacon, and tell ’em to hurry up. There’ll be another twenty in it for you.”

She shrugs and walks off with the order slip. I lean back in the seat until the coffee comes. I down a cup of scalding-hot black coffee and wave the cup at her to fill it again from the carafe before she even gets to leave.

The heat cuts into my throat and the caffeine gives me a surge. I sit up and devour the pancakes when they come out, then the eggs and the meat. I take a hundred bucks from my pocket and slap it on the table with the check, and leave.

Fuck it, I’ll probably never see this place again. If I’m going to be an asshole about it I should at least brighten these people’s day a little, right? Maybe if I overtip a few hundred waitresses I won’t wind up in the sixth level of hell after Santiago gets done with me. That’s got to be worth at least a few million years in purgatory, right?

I’m a little swervy on the drive back. I roll right past the front of the neighborhood. I can’t stand looking at Rose’s house right now. I just keep driving, and maybe that’s what I should do, just keep driving until I go right over the edge of the earth.

I resolve to leave, right now. Get a full tank of gas and head west. I don’t have a destination in mind but the more distance I put between myself and Rose, the less chance Santiago will get his hands on her. God, what’s wrong with me?

I drive for maybe an hour then pull over. I can’t see the road anymore. All I can see is Rose’s beautiful face, her soft cheeks wet with tears as I rip the heart out of her chest. Quentin, you fucking piece of shit, look at what you did to her.

Wearily I turn the Impala around and drive back. It’s almost dark by the time I pass the front gate, the sky bruised by sunset as I head down my street. My street, ha. I have no right to be here.

Then I spot somebody skulking around Rose’s house. Of course I have to be driving a huge, absurdly flashy car. I couldn’t be out in a nondescript Toyota, no.

Whoever he is, he’s lurking around the back of the house, moving near the basement windows. The lights are on in the living room and upstairs. Everybody’s home. I drum my fingers on the wheel and think for a minute.

I can’t leave this alone, of course. How do I handle it? My instincts are not something I should be listening to right now. Need to keep my head clear and focused. Who the hell is this guy?

He tries to hide when I pull in my driveway. I use the time it takes my garage door to go up to watch him. He’s on the far side of the porch, crouched where it bolts to the house. He’ll make a run for it when the garage door closes.

I don’t close it. I throw open my door and run full tilt from the garage across the driveway and into Rose’s yard, angling to sweep around the deck. The prowler yelps and makes a run for it.

Not very fast.

I take him down with a tackle around the legs, roll, and get my hand over his mouth. He bites me. Bad idea.

I could make this hurt or I could snap his neck. Instead I slip my arm around him and lock him into a sleeper hold. I can feel his pulse tighten in his skinny throat against my biceps and forearm. I look up, half expecting to see Rose or one of the kids looking over the railing at me.

Nope. The prowler goes limp.

No time to be artsy about it, I throw him over my shoulder and carry him back across the yard, glancing this way and that. People are so blind around here. I think I could run a marching band through the neighbor’s yard and they wouldn’t even look out the windows.

I punch the button on the wall and the garage door rumbles down. Binding his hands with nylon rope, I toss the other end of the line over one of the roof joists and haul him up, stretching his arms over his head. Farther, farther, until his toes barely touch the floor.

For the first time I get a really good look at him. Mid thirties, a little out of shape with a bit of a potbelly and skinny arms. He has a camera with him. I cut the strap from around his neck and set the camera on my desk, walk over, and slap him in the face.

He sputters and his eyes flutter open.

“Fuck, my head, what the…” he trails off.

“Oh. Shit.”

“Oh shit indeed. The fuck are you doing sneaking around that house?”

“You better let me go, man.”

“Oh really? I better. What happens if I don’t?”

He struggles as I go through his pockets. Cell phone. Wallet. He’s carrying his freaking wallet. I check for ID, find it in a little flap, and slip it out. I toss the wallet so it thumps off his chest and slaps on the floor.

“Jared.”

I hold up the driver’s license.

“Is this you, Jared?”

“Y-yeah.”

“You want to go home tonight, Jared?”

He swallows, hard.

“Man, I’ve seen your face…”

I snort a laugh.

“Ha. Right. You have. Good for you. Look, I don’t want to drag this out. This is how it’s going to work.”

I wheel over a cart and roll open a padded leather case full of tools, and slip them out of their slots one at a time.

“Man, if I start screaming—”

“They’ll think it’s my TV. Welcome to suburbia, Jared. The land of
nobody gives a fuck
.”

I slam the potato peeler down on the tray. It makes the other tools rattle.

“What are you going to do with that?”

I look up at him. “Okay, this is how it works. You will answer my questions to my satisfaction, and you will get to keep the skin on your balls. You don’t, welp.”

He swallows. “I can’t…”

I lift the potato peeler. “I can.”

“Jesus Christ,” he whimpers, and I smell a distinctive bitter scent, and a wet stain spreads on his khakis. He’s wearing fucking khakis.

“First question, who are you?”

“Jared—”

“Not your name, chucklefuck.”

“I’m a private detective.”

“Who hired you and why?”

“I can get sued—”

“You can get castrated.”

He whimpers. “I’m supposed to be looking for anything that lady’s ex-husband can use in court to get the kids taken away.”

“How long have you been watching them?”

“A couple of weeks.”

“Have you reported anything so far?”

“Y-yeah,” he says. “She leaves them unattended after school and while she’s in class.”

“So fucking what? Lots of parents do that.”

“The judge won’t see it that way. The oldest is fourteen. They can’t be alone all night by themselves.”

I grit my teeth. “You provided this information to the ex-husband already.”

“Y-yeah,” he says.

“Fuck. I don’t like the answer to my questions. Say goodbye to your scrotum.”

I snatch the potato peeler from the tray and take a step toward him and he screams like a little girl.

I grab his collar and touch the tip of the potato peeler to his nose.

“You can change my mind.”

“H-how?”

I smile a hungry smile.

“Tell me everything you know about this Russel.”

“O-okay. It’s not much, just—”

“It’s a start.”

I take a pad and paper and sit down on my folding metal chair.

“Talk.”

The details he gives me are not especially significant—only the things an employee would know. Full name, address. He rattles off descriptions of his car, tells me how they met. Dutifully I write it all down then slap the tablet on the tray of torture tools and stand up.

No more potato peeler. I pick up a linoleum knife, a hooked implement used to make drawing cuts, and stalk toward him. He shakes and somehow manages to piss himself again.

There’s piss on my floor. That makes me mad.

“You might have hurt that woman and her children really bad,” I tell him. “If she gets her kids taken away, I’m going to be very
put out
.”

“I swear I won’t tell anything else, I swear to God I’ll quit.”