The Laughing Assassin [Assassin's Diary] (Siren Publishing Classic) (2 page)

If she was right, her information from the hack job she’d done a week ago told her that the door led to the basement dungeon that Peter Jones, aka Pietr Jourdain, used for his deadly hobbies.

Like clockwork, Jones would use his henchmen to steal a girl off the street once every three months and use the child until there were no vestiges of life left. The young women all fit a similar mold, between the ages of seventeen and twenty with dark hair, big eyes, and always small in build. Otherwise they were of different races and socioeconomic backgrounds. Rich girls, poor ones, black ones, even an Indian girl numbered among his victims.

Jaden had long since sworn that she would stop taking these types of jobs. The idea of heart-wrenching tortures being inflicted on innocent children was hard for her to personally deal with. She never felt guilt for her justifiable action of murder, as the bastards had earned death in every single case. But she took this job anyway because if anyone had earned the taste of her blade, Vigilante, it was Pietr.

Vigilante was a custom-made knife. The handle was lighter than the blade, and the grip custom made for her and her alone. The edges were slightly serrated, just enough to mimic shark teeth and cause the maximum damage with the least amount of work for her. She had used her blade at every job she’d ever taken like this one. It was her signature weapon du jour and her personal favorite for stealthy work. It was fitting that Jourdain would be the latest to fall victim to the bite of hand-forged steel.

A few months ago she had gotten a hit from her programming about a missing island girl, and when she cross-referenced the snatch and grab with other cases, she found there were similarities. Too many to be merely coincidence and she knew that if left unchecked, dozens more young girls would be abducted before federal officials would connect a pattern to begin intervention.

The only reason government agencies hadn’t made any moves was the fact that the cases varied in all the ways that mattered for profiling software. Not only that, but local police tended not to talk to each other or the Feds until the situation was out of control. The abductions all varied in location and spanned the globe. It took time to figure out who perpetrated the crime, but property taxes were the bane of a criminal’s existence. She noticed that her quarry-owned houses in each area that the girls were taken and the trail of taxes actually led right to his door.

Better yet, she saw where an excavation company had charges for several digs invoiced to a black AmEx owned by a shell corporation. Then following the invoice, she found another contractor and more unusual charges. The plans were informal with no permits, and Jaden knew immediately that she’d hit pay dirt. Especially when she hacked Ingram Construction and found it was a subsidiary of Jones’s corporate tree of front companies, used to wash his former illegitimate funds clean.

The architect was dumb enough to have a copy of the plans used on his home PC. She crashed the creator’s computer network and fried every drive to cover her tracks. The information she gleaned was more than she needed, and it helped the plans for tonight immensely.

Once she hacked the palm print lock hidden in the metal door with her PDA and a nifty program she created just for security measures of this type, she was in. The device was quickly secreted back into one of the numerous pockets smattered over her gear. The door opened quietly despite its size and heft, a sign that the entry was well used, as the hinges had been regularly oiled and maintained. It was a great way to sneak inside, but that also meant that the entry was utilized frequently enough that she could run into more action than she wanted on this operation.

She had a gun and enough ammo to kill a herd of elephants, of course, but these jobs were more about stealth and smarts than sheer bravado and brawn. If she had to use her sidearm, then her preparations failed, and she didn’t like the idea of failure at all. Not when a mistake could not only cost her life, but more innocent lives as well.

When quarry knew they were being hunted, the natural impulse to flee would make another attempt at assassination difficult and time-consuming to say the least. With that in mind, she had to make this one count. She entered the dim corridor of the cliché basement dungeon, Vigilante ready in her right hand and a silenced Glock in her left. Each step she took was with care and time to ensure she was soundless during her exploration in the labyrinth of underground tunnels.

Attention is the most important aspect to all living creatures. The prey knows when to run if consideration is paid to the whispering of the wind. Just as the hunter knows when to strike the instant quarry is unmindful.

She wanted so badly to rush, to run through the corridors and burn the extra energy away, but her sensei’s voice was a constant reminder of what her impatience would cost her.

Only fools rush in, Jaden. The wise wait for the perfect moment. And the universe will provide whatever aid is needed to the patient and the watchful.

Remembering those words were all she needed to calm her restlessness. Her information showed the heart of the maze would be her prey’s most likely location. The rooms below all had a purpose, but the center was most likely where all of the nastiest activities were held. There was a furnace, kitchen, along with a standard bedroom and bathroom. To make sure that no one was around to ambush or waylay her, she paused a few moments at each door before she continued forward.

She listened for movement, struggles, or speech as she made her way right then left at the next intersection. All the tunnels were angled into a giant circle that spiraled inward, but the route to the center could only be accessed with the correct series of turns. If she lost her way now, she would have to make her way back to start over, and there was no time for that.

Jaden only had a small window to make this work, within a handful of hours she needed to be off of the island and in her home with her mission completed. But when the cobbled stones gave way to a mosaic tile, Jaden knew she had finally gotten close to the heart of the basement and slowed her steps. She was well informed, but on the other hand, any lack in her intelligence or stupidly underestimating her opponents may get her dead, or worse, captured.

But even with all of her preparations and expectations for the worst-case scenario, the next moment shocked and stunned her.

The narrow mosaic path gave way to an open door and an opulent round room filled with antiques and rare artifacts. The room could have been in
Better Homes and Gardens:
The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous edition with the amount of gilt and gold used even in the wallpaper. The only hint of the sadistic activities that went on in the space was a series of inconspicuous drains than ran along the floor.

The room was occupied, as the man she sought and his latest victim were just yards away. Jones was apparently in the throes of his lust, hips cocked back for a brutal thrust, and she prayed for her justice to completely end the man’s depraved acts. She couldn’t tell from her vantage point whether the shell of abused human was still alive. The girl made no sound or movement, and Jaden was left to assume the child was dead already.

The disgust rose so quickly that Jaden didn’t even remember her initial attack, but she must have thrown her knife. The carefully weighted steel was no longer in her hand, and she looked up just as the blade went through his neck cleanly. She had severed Jones’s spine, and now the knife was embedded to the hilt.

No sooner than she realized what she had done, Jaden jumped into action and pulled the steel from Jones’s nape. The man was dead already, and she was angry with herself for allowing justice to be so blind as to gift the bastard with a quick passage across the river Styx. Jones never gave the children he abused that same mercy. As soon as the dead man hit the ground, Jaden could see the carnage from his latest frenzy.

The girl was a shadow of golden skin now blotted with bruises and aged scabs. Her arms were decorated with a series of brands, but even with her injuries, the lithe girl screamed and began to struggle within her bonds on the examination table. Jaden wiped her knife off on the dead man’s Egyptian cotton shirt and used the well-blooded blade to cut the rough woven hemp around the bound child’s wrists and ankles.

As soon as the ties were severed, the girl jumped upward and bolted, but Jaden stopped the flight with a quick forearm clothesline smack dab across the girl’s chest. She hated to hurt her, but if the girl kept on, she risked discovery for both of them, which was definitely not part of the plan.

“Shhhhh.”

The girl looked perturbed at being silenced, but Jaden didn’t have time to cosset her momentary charge.

She hadn’t expected to find the latest abductee alive. Her prior experiences with men like Jourdain always culminated with a tiny plot in tired earth to memorialize the death and hold what was left of the remains. She hated the idea that the victims were left to rot ignobly, but it was the only option she had on most of these trips.

Now she actually had a live person to deal with and no plans to accommodate the extra body.

Her escape plan was to crawl out the same way she came in, but the kayak was only capable of holding one person, and even her hips were a tight fit after last week’s excessive consumption of Chunky Monkey. Not good to be an out-of-shape, half-retired assassin, it left her open to retaliatory attack, Jaden thought.

But there was a room with all-terrain vehicles on the schematic, Jaden reminded herself. There was no way the girl could march back to the kayak with the battering she had taken at the hands of Jourdain. The beginnings of a plan came to mind, and she felt more comfortable with the backup idea.

One stolen ATV later, she made her way back to the bushes outside the property for her hidden charge. She would help the girl with no name, and if Jaden had her way she wouldn’t find it out either. A name lent a sense of friendship, a camaraderie that was best left to normal people. Her life didn’t allow for true friendships, not if she wanted to live to a ripe age. She’d like to see forty-five at least. That was a good age to die if need be.

Jaden ended up using the kayak anyway. But this time she had to get really wet. The girl wasn’t capable of paddling the watercraft, so Jaden sat her inside of the single seat and placed her gun and ammo into a Ziploc bag, both left in the girl’s lap for the ride. The rest of the two-mile trip was made with Jaden swimming behind the boat, and the girl was left to steer the craft with the paddle. The going was slow, but given the care she had taken to conceal herself and her mission, they had the time to spare.

When they made land, Jaden pulled the plug she’d built into the base of the kayak and filled the body of her vessel with several cinder blocks. Watching the craft sink was painful but necessary to make sure that she covered her tracks. She refused to be caught or associated with the carnage in any way come morning. Once their getaway was sure to be a clean one, Jaden carried the naked girl to her car, and the drive homeward bound was made in silence.

Now that she was certain that the girl was going to live, and they were halfway to freedom, Jaden took stock of the child next to her. She wasn’t Jourdain’s usual type, as the girl was more a dirty blonde than the usual darker tones the man had preferred. She was taller than the norm also, at about five seven. The height was deceptive, as the girl was underfed. So she appeared much more frail and shorter for the lack of spare flesh.

But with her vibrant-green eyes and delicate features, save the extremely full mouth, she was gorgeous. The girl was a beauty. That was plain to see, despite the wounds dotting her skin nearly from head to toe. It was easy to see why Jourdain had taken her in the first place.

Jaden had no idea what she was going to do with a fresh young woman who carried the pain of abuse. But this girl had to go. And Jaden didn’t care where, as long as she was out of her face by the morning. She knew the thoughts were uncharitable, but the reminder was enough to make her even madder. This was not her problem, nor was it going to be either.

Jaden had enough blood on her hands that if she had ever let guilt get in the way, she would never sleep.

“What’s your name?” the girl asked, and Jaden was reluctant to answer.

But she would give the child this much. “Jaden.” It wasn’t like it was her real name anyway, just the one she preferred. The first nom de plume, per se, that she had chosen for herself. The only difference was that she wrote allegories of death and not for mere entertainment.

“My name is…” Jaden put her hand in the air and used a zipping motion across her lips.

“Stop right there. Your name doesn’t matter. I am about to take you to the police. You can call your family if you want first.” Jaden picked up her burn phone, a simple flip device, from the center console and offered it to the girl.

“I don’t have any family.” The girl seemed to wilt visibly when she made the admission.

“Everybody has family.”
Even me, if I cared to look up my aunts and uncles.

“Not me. That’s how he got me in the first place. I have been on the street for three months now, and I can take care of myself.”

Damn it! I am not going to feel guilty or responsible for this girl.

“Seems like you did a shitty job of it, seeing how we met and all.” Jaden knew she was being too sharp when she said it, but the cheeky child needed a reminder of how helpless she truly was.