Angel and the Assassin 3: Sins of the Father

something. “Yes, that’s right.”
    Meekly the girls sat down at the table while Kael cleared away a stack of drawings
    and a plastic box filled with wax crayons and colored pencils. Angel served the girls
    little tubs of fruit-flavored yogurt and Fig Newtons with a glass of milk each. Already
    exhausted, Kael sat with them.
    Amelia crawled across the table with a biscuit and tried to feed it to Kael. “Have
    some, Uncle Kael.” He opened his mouth and let her put it in. “You’ve got a very big
    mouth, Uncle Kael. You took the whole biscuit in one bite.” Not to be outdone, Zoe
    brought him another one that she insisted on putting straight into his mouth as well,
    and he ate that too.
    At last they were upstairs with Angel, brushing their teeth. Kael could hear the
    water running freely and Angel’s voice rising above it. “That’s enough toothpaste!”
    In the untidy living room, Kael took a tumbler from the sideboard, removed a cat
    hair from it, and poured a whisky. With relief he tossed it back and refilled it. What was
    he doing there? He should have stayed home, but Angel insisted the girls wanted to see
    him, and they did seem to like him, even though he hardly spoke to them.
    Checking first for cat dander, he threw himself down in a comfortable chair,
    listening to the screams of laughter from upstairs. What the hell was so funny all the
    time? Freddie and Adam were mad to want a life like this. The lovely house with its
    stained-glass transom windows and polished wood floor was a disaster of scattered
    toys, spilled food, and cat hair. At his belt, the secure line mobile buzzed. Even before
    he opened the phone and pressed it to his ear, Kael knew what Conran wanted.
    “What the hell have you done?” The agitation in the whispered accusation was
    evident.
    “Hello, Conran,” Kael said calmly.
    “A man was found in a backstreet alley in Bermondsey, and you killed him.”
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    “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m at Freddie’s house with Angel.
    We’re babysitting.” The incongruity of an MI6 specialist operative spending an evening
    babysitting was amusing.
    “This was a couple of days ago. For God’s sake, convince me you didn’t kill the
    man.” Conran waited, and when Kael didn’t reply, he said, “The coroner says the
    victim’s jugular was slit with a blade about the size of a scalpel. I knew right away it
    was you after you said the other day that you wanted a hit. Did you kill him?”
    “Yes.” Kael swallowed a mouthful of whisky.
    “What is wrong with you?” Conran’s agitation was so strong in his voice that Kael
    could picture his pale blue eyes bulging and the veins throbbing in his temples.
    “Calm down, Stephen. You’ll give yourself a heart attack.”
    “Have you done this before? Killed without sanction? Aside from Clement, I
    mean.”
    “The city is littered with my kills,” Kael said impatiently. Who the hell did Conran
    think he was, the fucking Yorkshire Ripper? “Don’t be an idiot. Of course I haven’t.”
    “I can hardly believe this. I thought you had crossed the line when you were
    having sex with your targets before you killed them. But this! Did you pick him
    randomly, or do you have a profile you like to go after.”
    “No!” Kael shouted. Looking up the stairs through the double door archway, he
    lowered his voice. “I usually wait for you to tell me who to go after. What’s the fucking
    difference, you stupid dick!”
    “The difference is that one is necessary and the other is gratuitous. I’m bringing
    you in for a psych assessment. I thought you had calmed down since Angel. Now I
    don’t know what the hell to make of you.”
    The irony of a psych assessment drew a harsh laugh from Kael. “When we met, I
    was twelve years old and you were sixteen. You told me later you knew the day you
    met me that I was a cold-blooded killer. So you sought me out at Cambridge ten years
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    later, recruited me into SIS, and then trained me to be as assassin. And now—let me get
    this right…” He paused for effect. “You are complaining because I kill. You think I need
    a psych assessment because I kill. What’s wrong with this picture, Stephen?”
    “There is a huge difference between your work and killing some stranger in a back
    alley! The man was a successful architect, for God’s sake.” Kael assumed Conran must
    be alone since he had gone from