Angel and the Assassin: Be Brave

Ramirez. Will you take me instead?”
    “Follow me.”
    The code exchange was perfect. The taxi driver was his contact. The flight had
    taken thirteen hours, and with the time difference, Kael had landed at around six
    p.m.
    “They told me you were big and would wear black.” His contact spoke in
    Spanish. On a job Kael always dressed in smart, black trousers and a black jacket, a
    black crew-neck shirt, and black leather shoes with leather soles. He replied in
    perfect Spanish, “They were right.”
    It was a little after seven p.m. when the taxi stopped outside the Four Seasons
    hotel on Posadas. The hotel consisted of an old-fashioned mansion house and, a
    short distance away across the swimming pool, a modern tower. The driver stopped
    outside an innocuous back door of the tower that Kael already knew led to the
    kitchens and storerooms. “Thirty minutes,” the driver said.
    Kael exited without a word and entered the hotel. He had studied the
    instructions and layout thoroughly before destroying the papers. He emerged from
    the service passage into the emergency stairs and began to run. His target was on
    the tenth floor, and the workout would do him good after the long flight and the taxi
    ride. On the tenth floor, with his breathing and heart rate normalizing, Kael stood
    for several seconds, letting the calm settle over him. Utterly serene and intent upon
    his task, he pushed open the door into the hotel proper.
    The corridor was long, silent, and luxurious. Thick carpet muffled any
    footsteps, although Kael walked soundlessly in any case, like a ghost. Mirrors
    adorned the walls, and beautiful flower arrangements stood on long polished tables
    between the numbered doors.

    Angel and the Assassin: Be Brave

    55

    He visualized the layout he had studied and turned left, pulling on latex
    gloves. The target‟s room was about fifty feet from the corner. Without pause he
    walked in and closed the door behind him. He scanned the living room, crossed it on
    silent feet, and checked the bedroom. The target was in the bathroom. Kael smiled,
    remembering how he and Angel had met. He doubted this encounter would be as
    pleasant.
    The bathroom door opened, and Kael stepped back against the wall, wondering
    if his target would be naked and handsome. The man who passed without seeing
    him was barefoot, wearing his trousers and a shirt open at the neck. He was young.
    No more than thirty, but big-bellied and swarthy.
    Kael raised his weapon. The target, suddenly seeming to sense something
    wrong, turned, and their eyes met. He fired once, the sound muffled by the silencer.
    A ragged red hole appeared in the man‟s forehead, exactly where Kael had
    intended. The man keeled over backward, his arms out at his sides. Kael stepped
    forward and checked the pulse in his neck. There was none. He pushed his gun back
    into the shoulder holster and glanced at the TV.
    A pornographic movie was playing with the sound muted. On-screen a young
    girl, no more than sixteen years old—perhaps younger—was being raped by a huge
    man while several others watched. Either she was an incredibly good actress or the
    fear in her eyes was real. Kael picked up the remote and hit the Mute button to
    restore the sound. The pleading from the girl and the look in her eyes told him that
    she was an unwilling participant, not an actress. This was not a girl used to doing
    porn movies. She was a sex slave, and from the looks of her fair skin and strong
    cheekbones, she had been trafficked from Russia or one of the Eastern Bloc
    countries. He glanced dispassionately at his target once more before walking out,
    back the way he had come.
    Elation swept over him, and he ran down the ten flights of stairs as if he had
    wings on his heels. He was in his element. Angel had remarked on his short fuse the
    last few months. Conran had told him he was wound up to the point of being on
    edge all the time. They were both right.
    Did he need to kill in order to feel alive and to relieve tension? Or was it the
    job as a whole—the travel, the excitement, the unknown—that made his blood run
    fast? But there were no unknowns. Every job was planned down to the finest detail.
    Though that didn‟t mean nothing ever went wrong. Sometimes someone got killed
    just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he accepted it and
    had never lost a moment‟s sleep over it. Every second on a job, his mind was moving
    to the next possibility. If that goes