Slow Heat (10 page)

Micah held himself firmly and didn’t flinch as shot after shot went off, exploding loudly in the small room. Other than the flashlight, they were shrouded in darkness. Ben growled, then with his fourth shot yelled, letting out a spew of profanities. Micah remained still, keeping the many ghosts at bay that wanted to surface. There were memories, so many memories, of firing shots, watching his target fall and die. They got to where they weren’t people but simply targets. He provided a service. His targets were the perverse deviants of society. He picked and chose his jobs. Mulligan’s Stew was always in high demand. Once he had believed he provided a service to society, but it had gotten to where he accepted that he was addicted to the kill. Over the years he’d embraced his life and never given a thought to being a killer.

He had refused to keep count of how many died at his hand. His father had told him it was better that way. And with time, the count no longer mattered. It was all about the kill, which had mattered more to him than the lavish lifestyle, fast cars, faster women, and bankroll that never went dry.

“All right!” Greg said, breaking the dangerous trance that was taking over Micah’s brain. “Let’s see what we got.”

“I’d say he got dead,” Marc laughed, coming forward after Greg flipped on the light.

Everyone pulled off their earmuffs and the King men inspected the mannequins. Ben pushed around them and ran his hands over plastic arms and chests and legs. Ben had his moments of being cocky, but he could laugh at himself, a trait that would hopefully keep him sane in this business.

“I’d say I’m a dead man,” Ben admitted, chuckling as he placed the gun on the table along the far wall. “Load her up, Jones. See if you can do better.” He shook his head, walking away from the mannequins that now had holes in their legs, except for two, which Ben had missed altogether.

Micah loaded the gun, running his fingers over the metal and watching the bullets slide into place. He touched the trigger with the tip of his index finger. A gun was such a small tool, yet capable of ending life with the slightest move of the finger. He ran his fingertip over the concave curve then over the grooves until he circled the end of it. For years he’d refused to use any weapon other than his own. It had to be a sign that he was moving farther away from being the man he once was as he picked up the gun, got a feel of its weight, then gripped it, poising his finger on the trigger.

“You ready, Jones?” Marc asked.

“Line them up.” Micah remembered what Marc’s wife had said. He pictured her and the other woman alone in the dark garage, approaching the only door and hearing the many men coming after them.

Most people would be terrified in such a situation. Micah didn’t doubt London and Natasha had probably been just that. London appeared jaded just enough that she might have a fair amount of a self-defense mechanism built in from something in her past. He already knew that Natasha, Marc and Jake’s cousin, had a black belt in karate. That didn’t make her street-smart. She’d been the office manager for KFA for several years, until moving to Northern California. Neither was trained to kill. Put in a deadly situation, London either got lucky as hell, or the woman had experience defending herself. His money was on the latter.

He guessed the women would have plotted somewhat, speaking in hushed whispers in the blackness enveloping them. Their fingers would have been sweaty as they held their weapons. Micah gripped his gun with cool confidence. He couldn’t completely match the scenario he was supposed to play out as he focused on the door frame, but he would try.

The lights went out. The door in the middle of the room suddenly appeared before him as a looming shadow, a tall, rectangular target.

It was easier imagining the mannequins as guards, hired thugs, working for an insane scientist. Possibly they had that slave juice King had told him about in their system and were blindly following orders. Regardless, with London and Natasha’s situation, it had been kill or be killed.

Micah cleared his head. Who they were, or what they’d done, didn’t matter. They became nothing more than targets. Just another target. His father and uncle had assigned his targets up until a couple years ago. Micah had started setting up his own jobs, which had been done through a Gmail address. It had always mattered why someone wanted that target dead. If someone contacted Mulligan’s Stew they meant business and could pay to ensure it was done. Micah and his father and uncle were the top assassins in the nation, possibly the world. Micah always researched his target and had never killed someone who didn’t deserve to die.

Micah’s past life no longer mattered. All of it had been erased. Every bit of it existed only in his memory, and nowhere else. It hadn’t been hard to change his birth certificate, his Social Security card, and all other recorded history so there wouldn’t be a paper trail, or any other kind of trail. Micah and his father and uncle could disappear better than any U.S. marshal could do the job. At the age of twenty-three, Micah was on his third first and last name. To the best of his knowledge, Micah Mulligan was his real name; not that there was any proof of that anywhere. Nothing about his past could be proved.

“Ready?” Greg asked.

“Bring it on,” he said quietly.

Micah shoved his past back in the dark crevices of his brain where it belonged and gripped his gun, caressing the trigger as the whooshing sound of the mannequins coming toward the door grew closer. The door opened.

It was kill or be killed. This reenactment wasn’t a gun for hire. This wasn’t about ending someone else’s life because that person didn’t deserve to live. No one had argued that the world would be a better place if these men were killed.

London and Natasha had fought for their lives in that garage. They’d survived. The men who had been shot would have killed them in cold blood. Micah moved into the position as London had described it and watched the light appear from the other side of the door as it opened.

He waited. The gun was hard and solid in his hand. His fingers were wrapped around it. The cool metal was smooth against his fingertips. He remained relaxed. The secret to a quick assassination was not allowing his body to tense. Keep a clear head and never allow the actions around him to become a blur. Precise movement would be needed. If he remained relaxed, it was always a lot easier to leap in whatever direction was needed. Relaxed and focused. So many didn’t realize how incredibly easy it was to be a killer.

The door opened farther still. Micah caught a glimpse of the cream-colored plastic of the first mannequin’s leg. He leaned forward, aimed, and fired.

It didn’t collapse to the ground as a person would. Instead it swung slightly from the impact of the bullet. There were only seconds. Four against one were horrific odds unless he made his mark each time.

Micah hadn’t missed a target in ten years.

He fired again, leaning forward. Once the light hit him he was an easy target. But with bodies to trip over, the shock of blood, and the element of surprise in his favor, Micah pictured the mannequins as humans, toppling over one another to their deaths, and continued firing. With each shot he moved into his targets, needing the new angles to hit his next mark.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

In less than a minute four mannequins were “dead.”

The gun didn’t have much of a kick but he felt it jerk as he fired. It was enough to send the rush through him that he’d often embraced after eliminating a target. Bloodlust was a terrible distraction. He now saw it as the creeping claws of an addiction, a craving to do it again.
Kill, no catch.

*   *   *

“You impress the hell out of me,” Ben said after all of them had returned to the kitchen. “Did you kill all those men as fast as Micah shot those mannequins?” he asked London.

“I didn’t time it.” London had a relaxed smile and seemed at ease in the small kitchen with all of them standing around. She remained next to her husband, who gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze when she kept talking. “It’s something I hope never to live through again, although you can reenact it all you want. I’m flattered that you think it is worth trying to imitate. All I did was act on instinct. I didn’t feel like dying.”

“It’s a damn good thing you didn’t,” Marc said, pulling her into his arms.

“I know. I had to rescue all of you.”

Greg and Haley laughed along with Marc.

“You didn’t rescue me,” he told her. When his wife looked up at him, appearing as if she might say more, Marc added, “I got to play in a Jacuzzi with a mad scientist.”

London cringed and shivered. “I’m sorry I couldn’t rescue you from that.”

King and his son began reminiscing over the details of that case that sounded as if it went grossly out of control before the family managed to bring it around and put the madwoman and her accomplices behind bars. Haley and London were quick to add their comments, and within minutes everyone in the kitchen was talking over one another, remembering details of a past hunt.

If Micah could have snuck out the back door he wouldn’t have hesitated. He glanced behind him toward the dining room and considered going out the front door. He didn’t want to work his way farther into the Kings’ personal life. He wasn’t working for KFA to make friends.

When the memories surfaced, it was harder to stay on point. How many times had he sat in the living room listening to his father and uncle dissect every previous case they’d had? It had become an after-dinner tradition, and one Micah had anxiously joined in on once he’d been of age and his father and uncle had acknowledged him in the conversation.

They were good memories. When he got older and took over hunting their targets, those after-dinner conversations meant even more to him. He went over every detail, every moment of his hunt with his father and uncle. And they’d listened to everything he had said, which made him feel so important.

Micah remembered when he believed, for the first time, that he truly had his father and uncle’s respect and admiration. It had been right after they’d moved to Minnesota and he’d told both of them he was ready for his first target. His father and uncle had thrown a fit, yelled at him that they didn’t want this life for him. Micah was in his prime. He was ready to be part of Mulligan’s Stew. He’d won the argument. Two weeks later, when he’d returned home, the target eliminated, his father and uncle had sat anxiously, taking in every word as he’d told them how he had hunted and killed his first man.

Once he was done with his story, the three of them broke down every moment of the kill, analyzing the scene until any possible transgressions were identified. Many times during those intimate conversations with his father and uncle, Micah had walked away with new knowledge and insight into the family trade he’d been brought up to take over and master. He was the perfect killer.

Too perfect. Until his last target, which had ended that life for him, and his father and uncle.
You will see them again.

“I don’t know how you do it.” Ben jiggled his keys, inching toward the back door.

Micah should get the hell out of there, too. He didn’t need to hear their stories. The sooner he left the Kings’, the faster he could get his head on straight again. Pulling the trigger and killing, even if it had been plastic, felt too damn good. Goddamn, he missed his life, when the world had known him as Mulligan’s Stew, the most notorious assassin in the profession. But that life was now erased, as if it had never happened.

“You’ll get there,” he said easily and prayed the kid never would.

Ben said his good-byes, and Marc and London followed suit. Micah started toward the door, too.

“Micah, so you agreed to work for Maggie O’Malley?” Haley asked.

He couldn’t get out the back door soon enough. He didn’t want to discuss Maggie right now, not with his finger still itching and the impression of the gun still strong against his hand. The Kings were perceptive and if either of them detected a ghost of any kind, they would want to talk about that, too. Micah could never be part of their close-knit family.

“She hired me.” Micah held on to the door handle. He could smell the salt from the ocean and was inches from being out of there.

“Technically, since she contacted you through KFA, it’s an assignment,” Haley pushed, grinning at him. “Fill me in.”

Greg King was watching Micah a bit too closely for Micah’s satisfaction.

“Let’s go outside,” King suggested. “You can fill us in on all the details. Something is on your mind, and I seriously doubt it bothers you to shoot four mannequins through the heart. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit to find out you’re preoccupied by a pretty young lady who has hired you and you couldn’t care less about old cases being rehashed.” Definitely too perceptive.

“What she looks like has nothing to do with whether she’s innocent or guilty,” Micah stated, getting his brain on topic. He stepped outside to the screened-in back porch with the ocean as a backdrop.

“It’s not healthy to dehumanize your clients. She professed her innocence,” Haley prompted, walking around her husband and taking one of the high-back wicker chairs, then leaning forward and lighting a candle that was in the middle of the table. She smiled easily. “And she is very pretty.”

“Yes,” Micah agreed, watching the flame dance to life.

King sat next to his wife. There were two other chairs but Micah was content to stand, facing both of them.

“She seemed pretty desperate for help,” Haley said.

“I agreed to help her.”

“Don’t make my wife prompt what happened out of you. Sit down and give us the full story,” King barked, his tone stern.

Micah complied, not intimidated but deciding it might be a good idea to go over his meeting with Maggie. He took the chair opposite the two of them as Haley smiled and King’s expression remained gruff. Talking about Maggie helped clear his head of the ghosts from his past. It only took a couple of minutes to relay everything to both of them, especially when he left out the part about almost seducing Maggie when he detected the raw, untrained lust emanating from her.