Death of an Assassin (Saint Roch City Book 1) by Ian Hiatt Page A

the knob in his beefy hand. When he opens it, a chill blows in. He leans out, looking in both directions.
    The silence hangs over the world, draping like so many strands of a spiderweb. As I try to control my breathing and focus on the barest hints of noise so I can know what kind of situation I’ve been caught in, Ivan rushes from the doorway down the hallway, huffing and puffing his way. His movements are that of a freight train as he moves in the dearth of sound that has become the Donahue mansion.
    But what stumbles through the door, covered in everyone’s blood but his own, is not Ivan. It’s him. My mark.
    Thomas Donahue stares at me, taking in everything about me, as though I resemble a dream he’s only just woken from and he’s grasping at the image to transform it into a memory.
    “You…?” Ivan pushes him into the room and slams the door behind them both. Thomas collapses on the nearby chair before he sees Jessie’s crumpled body at his feet and he jumps up.
    “Boy!” Ivan shouts. “Where is father? Where is Mister Donahue?”
    Thomas has begun a staring contest―one he’s sure to lose―with the corpse on the ground. Apart from the husky breathing of the burly-yet-out-of-shape Russian in the room and the stuttering gasps of Thomas as he tries to make sense of his situation, the room is silent. I feel like a fly on the wall until my mark ignores his trained dog.
    “What is she doing here?” he asks through gritted teeth, without tearing his eyes away from Jessie.
    Ivan looks frustrated but seems to know better. “Girl was caught on property. She was here to kill father. Mister Donahue.”
    A scoff, unwanted, escapes me. I don’t slip up often, but when I do, it always seems to be funny in hindsight. I instantly tried to imagine that moment as Thomas glares at me.
    “You were at the country club last night. I know you. You were with me when Andrew―but you don’t look―who are you?” Thomas has progressed from shocked statements to full-on anger.
    A noise comes from the hallway. The two men’s gazes flit to the door a hair of a second after my own have focused on the thin line of light beneath the door. And the shadow that crosses it.
    I kick down, launching myself back, the legs of the chair snapping at my sudden movement as I sprawl on the frigid concrete floor. Thomas tears his intent gaze away from the door and our eyes meet for just the barest of moments as I press against the rear wall and curl up. He gets it, and as annoyed as I am that he’s likely to survive, I’m a little impressed. His legs turn―willingly and deliberately―limp as he drops to the floor and sprawls out.
    Ivan, the poor big teddy bear, doesn’t get it. I feel something akin to pity as the walls on either side of the door begin to pop like so many air pockets on a roll of bubble wrap, bullets tearing through the weak drywall to blast the room. Every third or fourth round, entering the room now at about fifteen or twenty every second, hits a stud in the wall with a thick
thunk
.
    Ivan is still standing as the bullets rip through his body, some exiting out his back in bursts of globby red, others staying in his meaty torso. His legs give out and his body drops in time to have his head meet a bullet on the way down, his skull bursting like a rotten tomato, spraying the wall above me with red and gray. He slumps over and catches a few more lead slugs before the bullets stop their horizontal downpour.
    I chance a faint movement to look at Thomas lying on his stomach. The floor is bloody and my view is obstructed by the annoying-even-in-death Jessie who looks at me with dumb eyes. The quiet that falls over the room now is as cold as the cement I’m laying on and I dare not move.
    The door creaks open and the footfalls that enter the room are confident. Unquestioning.
    The same way I’d walk into a room after I killed my mark.
    A sigh. “All too easy.” A woman’s voice cuts through the air. She chuckles with all