My best explanation was that she was simply too good to be true. She was the perfect Guild mercenary… and no one was perfect. The fact that I had requested a half a dozen missions with her, some of which spanned weeks of tedious surveillance with nothing to do but hang out and chat, yet still hadn’t figured her out? Yeah, it had been turning into something unhealthy. That was why I’d cut myself off and put her out of my mind for the better part of a year.
“So if pretty little Danny DeLuna is so fucking perfect,” I muttered to myself, still staring up at the apartment block, “then why does she think someone is targeting her?”
She must have broken a rule. It was the only explanation. Guild members didn’t get killed for no reason; the assassins in particular were too damn valuable. It took years of training, which cost money. They were far from disposable. She was far from disposable.
With a sigh, I tore my eyes away from the lit-up apartment and turned back to my computer. Maybe it would help if I could at least work out what job she’d been on in Prague.
Giving up on hacking Emmanuel Blanchet—for now—I turned my efforts to one of his outer circle instead. Jacques Lavigne was the most likely candidate for assigning missions in this area, so that’s who I targeted next.
A few moments later, my laptop dinged a happy sound as I gained access to Jacques’s digital database, and I smirked. “Moron. Alright, let’s see…”
I had to scroll back through the job logs for a few weeks, but then I spotted Danny’s ID number—3982—against a job link. I double-clicked the file and scanned the details, but nothing jumped out at me as a red flag. It was a standard run-of-the-mill hit on a mid-level Algerian mobster—not even a boss—who’d been hiding out in Prague with his girlfriend.
“How did that job get messed up?” I pondered aloud. Not to mention the hotel bomb. Someone must have tracked her back from the shoot-out.
For some reason I couldn’t explain, I was reluctant to drive away and leave Danny alone. So I distracted myself by researching who owned the safe house she’d run to. It wasn’t a Guild-owned site, but that made sense if she thought someone was targeting her. Instead, it was owned by a Colombian drug runner named Carlos.
How the fuck was she mixed up with him? Boyfriend?
Another ten minutes of research into Carlos told me that Danny must have met him on a job three years ago, but she was working for his rival at the time. It was an information grab, most likely a honey trap, knowing what I knew about Danny’s specialty.
So had they just continued sleeping together after the mission was over? More to the point, why did that idea bother me?
“Fucking hell,” I muttered, scrubbing a hand over my face. I’d been sitting outside the apartment building for over an hour and hadn’t seen her leave. I had to assume she was in for the night. Hell, she probably wouldn’t leave the building for the next couple of weeks until her bullet wound was healed up.
It was what I’d do.
Drumming my fingertips on the steering wheel, I made the decision to head back to Prague. But not before tapping into several CCTV cameras around the apartment building and setting myself a facial recognition alert. If Danny left the building, one of those cameras would catch her and ping me.
Yeah, I knew how that sounded. I was bordering real close on stalker territory.
Whatever. I’d already flown halfway around the world, why stop now? Which was exactly why I drove back to Prague. I wanted to take a look at the ambush location, see if there were any clues left lying around. Maybe I could even find a mobster to torture for information. That’d be fun.
Buoyed with that excitement, I barely even noticed the drive time. My snoop through the mission logs had given me several addresses within Prague that Danny’s target had owned or frequented, and based on the background noises when she’d called me, I took a guess that it’d all gone down at a warehouse near a private airfield on the outskirts of the city.
Sure enough, flashing lights of the Policie České republiky confirmed my guess as I approached.
I drove right up to the policie cars and parked beside them like I had every right to be there. A quick hunt through my laptop bag found the ID I would need, and I slid my glasses back onto my face.
Clearing my throat, I stepped out of my car and strode toward the taped-off crime scene with purpose. My gaze took in everything in sight. Cars riddled with bullets, broken glass, blood stains… yup, this was the right place. It didn’t look like Danny’s usual seamless style, but that lined up with her being shot.
One of the local police spotted me and stormed over to undoubtedly tell me to get the hell out of their crime scene, but I flashed him my fake ID badge before he could speak.
“ICC?” the policeman grunted. “This just got more interesting.”
I flashed him a smile and shrugged. “Just following a lead. Mind if I take a look around?” My British accent wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough to pass. An American working for the International Criminal Court would have stuck out a lot more in this man’s mind than a Brit.
“Have at it, friend,” the policeman told me, waving his arm behind him. “Not much to find, though. Looks like a mob dispute gone bad, with not a single man left alive for questioning.”
That sounded right. Even shot and bleeding, Danny was a professional. She wouldn’t have left loose ends lying around. Except for whoever followed her to the hotel, that is.
I wondered if that bomb hadn’t been these Algerian mobsters at all. Maybe it was whoever had tipped them off? I made a mental note to look into the travel logs for any of Emmanuel Blanchet’s outer circle. They were the most likely suspects.
Looking around the crime scene gave me exactly nothing to work with, which was frustrating. I had an itch to torture and kill, and no one to take it out on. I barely even nodded to the policie on my way out, sliding into my car and slamming the door a fraction too hard.
I needed to get my shit under control, but every step I took seemed to be creating more questions, more mysteries, all around Danny DeLuna.
My fascination with that white-haired goddess was becoming unhealthy. The best thing I could do for either of our sakes was to fly my ass back to America and pretend she didn’t exist. That’s what I told myself, anyway, as I drove back to Kraków.
5
I t only took about ten days for my wound to heal enough that I could remove the stitches, but I stayed inside the safe house another ten after that. It wasn’t good enough to simply take the stitches out. I needed to be back in peak condition before taking any new assignments.
I’d marked myself as unavailable in the central database. The Guild, for being over a thousand years old, was always keeping up with modern technology. Almost all of our communications were through an encrypted dark web browser, and I wasn’t naïve enough to think my amateur hacking skills could get me anywhere near hunting out a suspect for that Prague ambush.
Leon could probably do it, but I was reluctant to ask him for help again. The fact that he’d turned up right before the hotel exploded had me leery of his intentions. He’s always struck me as the kind of guy who put up a good front of being personable, but deep down hated all humans.
For three weeks, I didn’t leave the apartment even once. I had groceries delivered the day after I arrived, and survived off that for the rest of my stay. The last thing I needed to do was make myself an easy poisoning target by ordering takeout every night.