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She continued to move, and once he decided she wasn’t going to enter any of the shops, he pushed from the back of the car, and fell into step behind her, strolling along, keeping it casual as well. But she didn’t glance back. She didn’t even glance side to side. The only time anything caught her attention seemed to be the homeless people. At least seven of them. Two in the alley. One by the fast-food restaurant. Too at the bus stop. He wrinkled his nose as he passed one of them. The smell was unbearable. But she stopped again, and he just stared. This was too much. He actually held back a snort.
She was offering her shoes to the woman on the bench.
He supposed it would make it easier for him to catch her if she gave away her shoes. It’s difficult to run in a city, or down an alley, without protection.
But it was as if she didn’t even consider the need for protection.
He smirked, deciding that he wouldn’t need his silencer after all.
He strolled along behind her, allowing the middle-aged brunette to lead the way. The mayor’s sister. The two of them had been estranged for nearly a decade, but it didn’t matter. Not where his employers were concerned. And they had already confirmed they needed him on the job. Whether they suspected he had something to do with the fat man’s death or not, it didn’t matter. Too much was riding on it, and so they had stuck with him.
More accurately, he had stuck them with him.
He smirked and picked up the pace, already spotting the bend in the road where he had intended to grab her. He would take her to the small side door of the Chinese restaurant. He had Artie pay one of his contacts to leave the thing open. It would be closed today.
His knife pressed against his pocket, and he fiddled with it.
In his mind, he rehearsed what he was about to do.
A message. A very painful message this time. Drowning wasn’t enough.
This suited him just fine. Drowning was fun, but there were other things he enjoyed more.
The little mouse even paused now, glancing down the alley towards the open door to the Chinese restaurant. She then glanced up the street towards the office complex where one of the charities she helped operated.
In a way, he supposed that all of this was a defense. Not quite the same as armed bodyguards or her head on a swivel. But there were some in this world who thought that by doing good, helping others and doing the right thing, they could keep themselves safe.
But this was just as much a fantasy as any of it.
Bodyguard, good works, political connections, money, in the end, none of it stopped him. He was the predator here, after all. And these mice were here for his amusement.
“Excuse me,” he called out in a pleasant voice. “You dropped this.”
She glanced back, frowning hesitantly. He held a small key in his right hand, waving it towards her.
She smiled back. A genuine, authentic, and good-natured grin.
Inside, he couldn’t help but think, stupid. So very stupid.
And he approached hurriedly, hand in his pocket, grazing the knife.
She didn’t suspect a thing. And the only witnesses around them, because most sensible people avoided the section of the street, where the homeless folk. And they wouldn’t notice anything. They never did. People didn’t notice them, and they kept their mouth shut.
It was only as he neared her, five feet, four, that her smile flickered. Her eyes widened.
But as he reached out towards her, it was far too late to run.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cora stepped from the taxi, ignoring the concerned glance of her driver. She double-checked he’d stopped the meter, and then turned to face the nightclub. The Planetarium in the mid-afternoon was only just starting to crawl with patrons.
A small line was beginning to form out front.
She moved forward, glancing one way then the other. She spotted figures in the windows of the buildings on either side of the nightclub. From stories she’d heard, the Russian mob had purchased all the buildings on the block in order to prevent the FBI planting anyone.
It was incredible the sorts of games organized crime got up to. Hide-and-seek with a price tag of a couple of billion dollars.
And yet, she had to give credit where it was due. To this day, they still hadn’t managed to catch Alex Karpov, the seventy-year-old godfather.
