Hell Bent

disguised as an accident was the method a good assassin would choose.

And so, here he was, in the bowels of a private boy’s school, finding his way to the pipe room beneath the gym showers.

Where, at this hour, he knew he would find one John M. Arkanaw, gym teacher to the young, male, and privileged. At 4:15, sharp, every day, Arkanaw took a shower. He washed quickly, dressed in beige khaki’s and a red polo shirt, and was out the gymnasium doors by 4:45p.m. At which time, he drove home in his white BMW, to his pretty, 26-year-old, utterly oblivious wife.

Handlers never gave Jack any information but the absolutely necessary when it came to assigning him a job. However, Jack was a talented assassin and not unaccustomed to attaining the extra knowledge on his own.

In this case, he’d learned, via various contacts throughout the field and beyond, that Mr. Arkanaw was wanted dead by the parents of a boy named Christopher Barkin. He went by Chris. Apparently, Chris had been repeatedly molested and, indeed, raped by Arkanaw. The parents, when faced with their son’s confession and presented with the disgusting, incontestable, and incriminating evidence, had two choices. Sue the bastard. Or kill him.

They’d chosen the latter, and had the money to make certain it was the choice that came to fruition.

Jack stopped at the metal door and, out of sheer curiosity, tried the knob. It was locked, of course.

Within a few well-worked seconds, it was locked no more, and Jack moved on into the room beyond. It was pitch dark, and Jack wasn’t going to remedy that. He found the light switch along one wall and left it alone. He would need the darkness to shield what he was about to do.

He shined his flash light throughout the room, taking in his surroundings. White PVC pipes dropped from the ceiling, criss-crossing and gathering until they joined together into one larger pipe, which shot off toward the right wall and then on through it.

The room would be where the school’s janitors and fix-it men came to un-clog pipes or retrieve retainers or dog tags or other personal items that had been flushed down the toilet or fallen down one of the sinks. Somewhere in the pipes’ workings, there were mesh strainers and or filters, put in place to stop such items from continuing on to the sewer, and that made the janitors’ jobs a little easier. If not less messy.

Jack stood in the center of the room, switched off the flash light, and listened.

The sound of water trickling through one of the pipes made its way to his ears. He switched back on the flash light and followed the sound to its source, pinpointing the exact pipe currently in use. It was the only one being used at this time. It was the pipe that extended from the shower currently in use by Mr. John Arkanaw.

Jack pulled the backpack off of his shoulder and unzipped it. Then he pulled a sponge-lined basin from its depths and set it on the ground, directly beneath the pipe’s opening to Arkanaw’s shower.

He took another deep, steadying breath. And then, very quietly, and very carefully, Jack unscrewed the pipe’s fittings. He switched off his flash light once more and lifted the PVC away from the shower’s drain. Water immediately began to collect in the sponge-lined basin he’d set below it.

Jack stood still for a moment, watching the play of light and shadow across the opening of the drain above him. The light came from the shower room’s over-head fluorescents. The shadows were created by Arkanaw’s bare feet against the drain as he moved about in his shower.

Jack took an odd metal syringe from a pocket in his leather jacket and held it up. He waited, patiently, and purposefully, timing the man’s movements above him. And then, as a shadow passed over the drain once more, Jack inserted the syringe’s needle through one of the holes, injecting its entire contents into Arkanaw’s foot in a matter of milliseconds.

That night, the school’s janitors would enter the showers to find that John Arkanaw had been bitten on the bottom of his foot by a black widow, during his shower. An investigation into the school’s plumbing system would be led, where they would find that various nesting hour-glassers had taken up residence in one of the un-used pipes leading away from a bathroom no longer in use, but still connected to the system.

The entire event would cause people to shake their heads at the unlikely probability of it and the misfortune of John Arkanaw’s freak run-in with an angry mother nature.

But that’s what happened when you fucked with her children.

When Annabelle finally came out of the room, it was to walk, on somewhat unsteady legs, down the hallway and then be snatched roughly into the bathroom by a fist in the front of her shirt.

She stumbled into the bathroom and the door was quickly shut behind her. Cassie stood there in front of her, giving her a wide-eyed, pursed-lip look. “Dammit, Ann, I know what Jack is!” She put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to one side. “Why didn’t you fucking tell me?” She whispered loudly.

Annabelle’s heart skipped a beat for the third time in the past twenty minutes, and she fell back against the bathroom sink. “How-what-“”

Cassie rolled her eyes and shook her head. “He told me, goddammit. He frickin’ told me he was an assassin.” She shook her head, as if in wonder, and then added, “and so is Sam!”

Annabelle’s eyes were quite wide. “Well – Well, what the hell did you expect, Cass? I can’t just go around publishing the information!” She whispered back.

“I know, but…” She threw up her hands in frustration. “Jesus, Ann! A goddamn hired gun? And here I was calling him co-dependent? What if he’d had me axed for that?”

Annabelle sighed and ran her hands over her face. “Chill, Cass,” she said, adjusting her shirt and running a hand through her long hair. “You know he wouldn’t hurt anyone for something so stupid. Besides, it might be true.” She shrugged with that last bit, and then sat down on the toilet seat with a huff. She was mentally and emotionally exhausted.

Cassie stood there for several moments more, her hands still on her hips. Annabelle stared at the tiled floor. And then Cassie sighed as well. She moved to the sink and took one of the cups out of a disposable paper cup dispenser beside the mirrored vanity. Some people used them to pour mouth wash into so that they could toss the cup afterwards. But she didn’t use the cup for mouth wash. Instead, she filled the cup up with water from the tap and took a sip, turning back to face Annabelle. “How’s Dylan?”

“He thinks Jack killed his mom.”

Jack pulled the V-rod up beside the Fat Boy and shut it down. He glanced up at the windows to Sam’s apartment. The lights were still on in every room. That meant no one was asleep yet. That would make things easier.

He kicked down the stand and dismounted, putting the key in his pocket. They needed to retrieve the vial and note that Craig had given to Virginia six years ago. Since Craig was still alive, he would be able to reproduce the medication from memory. Hence, the vial and formula would be of no real use to anyone but Godrick Osborne.

They had to be destroyed.

And, the sooner, the better.

Cassie choked on the water she’d just tried to swallow, spewing it across the tiles in-between her and Annabelle. Annabelle spun on the seat, quickly moving her legs out of the way of the spray.

Cassie wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and coughed a few times. “What?” She croaked.

Annabelle looked up at her, a hopeless expression on her face.

“Are you serious?” Cassie whispered then.

Annabelle nodded.

Cassie looked around, her own expression bewildered. And then she turned back to Annabelle as she absently put the cup back down on the bathroom sink. “Did he?” she asked softly.

“Of course not!” Annabelle told her, firmly. It was a statement that might have been an out-and-out lie, for all she knew, but she wasn’t going to share her uncertainty. And, after nearly ten years of practice, she’d gotten pretty good at hiding her fears in order to protect Jack Thane.

Cassie believed her. She fell back against the bathroom door and let out a whoosh of air. “Oh, thank God.” She ran a hand over her face. “How did Dylan come up with such an idea in the first place?”