Death of an Assassin (Saint Roch City Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

A little more. There.
    The bartender stares at me for a moment, but everything about me is pointed now. Aimed. Mom said we give off pheromones. And that we could cater to the tastes of our… customers. The bartender stares, but he doesn’t leap across the counter. He traces from my face, down my neck to my chest, and back. With nothing but his eyes and palpable desire. No. He admires the view, he longs for the full experience, but he can contain himself.
    I pucker my lips at him and blow him an intoxicating kiss across the bar. It’ll be the best tip he gets tonight. I turn from the bar to walk away, my gown trailing behind me and clinging so that it’s nothing more than my melted shadow.
    By now, the quartet has grown tired of being ignored by the rowdy audience. Prerecorded music filters in through speakers built into the ballroom, the bass turned up so loud my heart begins to do battle with the beats.
    My eyes, as piercing as I ensured they would look, drill to the front of the room. Beside his beautiful fiancée sits Andrew Donahue. If my dossier from Malcolm is to be believed, he’s twenty-six years young and has already written himself a novel. Four DUIs, two assaults, and one rape case thrown out when the girl recanted and promptly disappeared a week later.
    Sometimes my job is a real pleasure.
    And, yes, his fiancée is beautiful. Or could be. Full lips. Miraculously real curves. Irises that could melt the burliest of men. She’s tanned, but it’s probably due to the amount of time she keeps very still under UV lamps. She hopes to grow into a flower, but instead is more of a weed.
    It’s not love. My dossier hints that she’s knocked up, hence the reason Andy’s got to get hitched. She’ll be on the Donahue payroll. The marriage license will be a contract with the baby to be the signing stroke. The poor bastard child will only exist to keep the money flowing.
    It will remain an unsigned contract because, even as I slink through the crowd, the provocative dances of couples and even triples parting before me as the Red Sea would, little Andy’s seen me. I pause and look back with a smile. From so far away, I can see him flinch and his knee hits the bottom of the table, rattling it and his bride-to-be. A glass tips and spills all over the poor woman’s dress.
    “Jeez, Andy! Why don’t ya watchit?” She scowls and slaps the boy’s shoulder. I find myself enjoying the mark just a little bit more. People who can’t enunciate deserve every ounce of pain the world is willing to dole out. “Ya know this is a new dress an’ everythin’, right? Ya bettah believe ya dad’s payin’ fah this.” She stomps away to clean her dress. All the while, Andy hasn’t noticed a thing she’s whined about. In fact, since I stepped across the dance floor toward his table, I don’t believe he’s even taken a breath. Convenient, as that’s just the way I want him.
    Before he can blink, I glide across the floor to his table and stand before him. I offer him my hand and lean over, threatening to spill out of my dress onto his table. His eyes, drinking in every bare inch of me, are more than hopeful for that very thing.
    “I wanted to congratulate you, Mr. Donahue, on your pending marriage.”
    He looks up at me, and I let him think I’m looking him up and down with at least a fraction of the desire he has for me. More intelligent men, ironically, would already be trying to mount me. But I’ve used words he probably doesn’t understand. He takes my hand, and he’s mine. He inhales deeply and tightens his grip as though I’ve shocked him.
    Oh, his never-to-be widow. She’s about to be unemployed. Without Andrew, she’ll never be able to prove the baby in her was his. Not for sure.
    Because I have plans for Andrew. And there won’t be anything left to test DNA against.
    “I was going to step outside for a cigarette, Mr. Donahue. Would you care to join me?”
    He shivers as he follows my stroll down the stone