Death Before Dishonor Page 5

  He slowed his breathing—ensuring not to fill is lungs to full capacity, which would trigger a perceptibly forceful exhale—and remained in place, waiting to see the intruder’s next move. He assumed that the intruder was either seeking a snack or passing through to the living room. If the intruder were just passing through, Yuri would linger until the intruder was out of sight, and then he would bolt into the foyer. However, if the intruder were planning an extended stay—which would surely include a light coming on—Yuri would rapidly find a better hiding spot.

  The pitter-patter stopped short of the refrigerator, and then there was faint illumination, dancing shadows, and jingling condiments. Yuri dove from the island, timing it with the refrigerator door to use the noise to mask his own, slid on his side between the dining room chairs, and disappeared beneath the low-hanging table cloth.

  “Pumpkin?” a young girl’s voice squeaked in the twilight. “Pumpkin, is that you?”

  Yuri gloated to himself about the accuracy of his guess.

  The girl called, “Pumpkin?” whom Yuri thought may have been an animal. Apparently, she thought the noise he had produced had been made by Pumpkin—the likely proprietor of the doggy door—since he had made mostly no sound at all. As long as she didn’t come snooping under the table in search of a furry companion, she was welcome to assume whatever she wished. If she did come under the table…well, Yuri would cross that bridge when the time came.

  The girl rummaged through the refrigerator longer than Yuri felt was necessary. How long did it take to grab some jello or yogurt and go back to bed? She had to have been having withdrawal from being away from her cellphone and social media this long. Yuri’s veins ran hot with aggravation—things tended to break when he became aggravated enough.

  Then a cat’s growl broke the silence.

  The girl stopped what she was doing, and Yuri heard the squeak of feet as she spun around. “Pumpkin, what are you doing?”

  Yuri looked to his left and saw Pumpkin: s plump, orange cat who was occupying the majority of a nearby chair. Pumpkin arched its back defensively, the hair on its spine standing up. It growled again.

  “Pumpkin!” the girl demanded.

  The damn cat was going to give away Yuri’s position if it didn’t shut up. Pumpkin wasn’t going to give ground; it didn’t give ground to Rottweilers, so why would it for humans? Yuri struck like a viper, grabbing the cat by its scruff and yanking it off the chair. Pumpkin writhed and bucked, digging its claws and teeth into Yuri’s hand and arm. While his gloves and sneaking suit protected him from the cat’s furious attempts to escape, it wasn’t going to give up the struggle, and eventually the girl would come looking.

  Just then, Yuri’s receiver crackled to life. “Status?” Terry demanded.

  Yuri pressed Pumpkin into the floor and shifted his weight so that he could free a hand to key the transmitter. “Now is so not a good time,” he whispered finally.

  Terry replied, “Give me an update as soon as you can.”

  Pumpkin shook violently and yowled. Yuri clamped down on the cat’s head with his free hand to muffle the cat’s vocalizations. This wasn’t going to end well: the cat was either going to stay and fight or bolt and make a tremendous amount of noise. Either situation spelled disaster for his operation. There was only one other option. The muscles in Yuri’s arm went solid. With a wet pop, the cat’s head jerked free of the spinal column. Pumpkin twitched silently in Yuri’s hands for a brief time and then went limp. After several seconds of silence, the girl lost interest in the cat and when back to the refrigerator.

  There was the hollow splash of pouring liquid filling a cup followed by glassy clinking as a container was returned to the refrigerator’s door. Yuri heard the rustle from a plastic container, which he assumed was the snack she was finally retrieving, before she approached the table and climbed into a chair to eat in the dark.

  Yuri checked his watch: four precious minutes had gone by; he couldn’t give up more time. The temperature in Yuri’s veins climbed to dangerous levels. The girl was slowing him down in a major way. He began taking slow breaths in through his nose, trying to ease the tension so that he could keep a clear head and sit patiently with his eyes closed.

  He heard the alarm chime several times as people entered and exited the house through the patio door. There was no telling where his target was now, whether he was upstairs or elsewhere in the house. The little girl was seriously cramping Yuri’s style.

  “Chastity,” said a voice in a deep Jamaican accent that Yuri instantly attributed to the target, Levarity, after having heard him speak countless times over tapped phone lines, “what are you doing sitting in the dark?”

  “I’m eating a snack, Daddy.”

  “In the dark?”

  Two more minutes wasted.

  “It only takes a second to eat a cookie, Daddy.”

  Yuri couldn’t see the look on Levarity’s face, but he was sure that it reflected the thoughts in Yuri’s head—that was the most hare-brained answer he had ever heard. Being eleven must have been horrible. To be completely incapable of formulating anything logical was possibly the worst punishment he could think of. He never wanted to go back.

  “Well, make sure you clean up after yourself, baby,” instructed a woman’s voice—Levarity’s wife.

  Yuri heard them leave; he focused on the sound of their footfalls. He was sure they had ascended the stairs. Since he knew his target’s position, all he needed to do was get out from underneath the table. But apparently, it took longer than a second to eat a cookie. He was going to be sitting there for a while, he guessed, unless he was as decisive with the girl as he was with Pumpkin.

  Yuri checked his watch again: three more minutes had passed. He couldn’t sacrifice more time, not to mention that the girl’s persistent drumming of the chair with her feet was driving him insane.

  Screw it, Yuri thought to himself, you know what they say about drastic situations. He grabbed an ankle in each hand and yanked her out of the chair. Chastity disappeared beneath the table with a squeak. Yuri coiled around her to muffle her cries, and he constricted her throat with his arm; soon she went unconscious.

  Yuri relaxed the pressure against her jugular and allowed her to roll gently onto the floor. He positioned her on her side, raised his balaclava to his nose, and hovered over Chastity’s mouth. He could feel humid pulses hit his cheek; she was breathing but definitely unconscious. Terry would be terribly disappointed, but whatever, he could get trapped by a child underneath a table next and blow the operation by trying to play the part of the good-natured ninja. That wasn’t Yuri’s style, and Ninpo made no explicit argument against him—even though Terry would say something like, “The ancestors would never have condoned killing children,” to which Yuri would reply that she wasn’t dead. When Chastity awoke, all she’d remember was being dragged under the table by a monster that lurked in the darkness. Ninpo’s code of silence hadn’t been violated, so there was no point in debating.

  Yuri reset his balaclava and combat crawled out from under the table. He scanned the kitchen and the foyer through the next arch. When he was sure it was clear, he proceeded into the foyer, checking the two doorways and a hallway that led away. Satisfied that he still maintained the element of surprise, he drew his tanto from its sheath and crept up the curving marble steps.

  A tanto was a traditionally ornate dagger that was used primarily for stabbing but could be used for slicing if the edges were sharpened. Yuri’s tanto was unique, and he held it in high esteem, a status symbol of his battle prowess. The handle, which fit securely in one hand, was wrapped in black silk in a crisscross pattern that formed diamonds at the intersection points. The handguard was particularly ornate, sporting two matte-black coiled snakes that overlapped head to tail to form a polygonal shape. The blade measured six inches in length, with an extremely fine double edge. Etched on the blade was a viper with its fanged maw touching the tip and the tail touching the handguard. Unlike a ninjatō, a tan
to was more than a tool. If the ninjatō needed to be left behind, Terry and Yuri—as with all Shinobi—felt no heartburn. The ninjatō was not considered the soul of the warrior to Shinobi like the katana was to the Samurai of old. Losing one’s tanto, however, was seen as shameful, although not grievous enough to warrant seppuku—honorable suicide.

  Yuri slithered down the hallway of the second floor, keeping the blade pressed into his leg to squelch any chance of reflecting ambient light and drawing attention. There was a television playing in a room as he crept past. The more white noise present, the better. White noise drowned out any noise he made.

  Before he could press on to the master bedroom, he needed to make sure his exit was prepared. All the windows and doors were rigged with sensors that would trip the alarm system if opened. That is, all the windows and doors except Levarity’s eldest daughter’s window.

  During their surveillance, Terry and Yuri had witnessed the daughter’s rebellious streak as she’d sneaked out of the window of her room and crawled along the awning to the garage. Of course, she’d had friends waiting for her at the bottom. Terry and Yuri often joked about the irony of the situation. Parents often said that their children would be the death of them. Indirectly, Levarity’s daughter was going to be responsible for his death. Her rebelliousness was going to afford Yuri the perfect means of escape.

  Yuri pressed his ear against the door of the daughter’s bedroom. He didn’t hear anyone, nor should he have since the daughter had left for the prom, but there was never anything wrong with being thorough.

  Staying low, he pushed the door open: the room was empty. Yuri slinked in, closing the door behind him, and skulked up to the window. He pulled the curtain back to introduce enough light for him to see. Then he searched the window’s frame for the alarm’s sensor. It was positioned in the upper-left corner of the window and required Yuri to climb on the sill to examine it. He realized how Levarity’s daughter had managed to escape without being noticed; she’d tricked the sensor into thinking the connection wasn’t broke by using another piece of metal whenever she opened the window. Sneaky little beast, Yuri thought. If it isn’t broke, don’t try to fix it; Yuri was going to leave through the window in the same manner as the daughter. If she hadn’t been caught yet, no one would spot him.

  With his exit strategy set, Yuri advanced into the hallway again in the direction of the master bedroom. He could hear a faint conversation as he stalked to the door. He pressed his ear against it and listened for any clues that would tell the position of his prey. There was the muffled echo of the wife’s voice, the splashing of running water, the patter of bare feet against a linoleum floor, and Levarity’s unfettered accent.

  Yuri guessed that the wife was in the bathroom preparing to shower and was conversing with the target through the door. What was the target doing? Was he facing the door? Was he around the corner? Was he on the bed? Was the bathroom door open? Would the wife see Yuri enter? Would he have to kill the wife too?

  Yuri pulled a fiber-optic camera from a pouch and pushed it under the door. Levarity was directly across the room from the door, lounging in a recliner and watching highlights of sporting events—his back was to the door. The wife was showering with the door open.

  Yuri withdrew the camera and stowed it. He wouldn’t have much time if he wanted the wife to live. He took a deep breath and then tightened his grip on the handle of his tanto as he reached for the doorknob.

  ***

  “Honey,” Levarity’s wife said as she crossed the bedroom from the closet to the bathroom, “Mercy looked so beautiful and so grown in her dress tonight, didn’t she?” She disappeared in the cloud of steam. “Our baby is really growing up, isn’t she?”

  Levarity never looked away from the massive TV. “I can’t believe you bought her that dress. I wanted to choke you when I saw her half-naked.”

  “Don’t be silly; she wasn’t half-naked. That dress merely reveals the midriff. It’s very classy.”

  “I don’t like my daughter looking like a whore, Paulina. I shouldn’t have let her go.”

  “Constantine!” Paulina yelled from the bathroom. “You should be ashamed of yourself, saying such a terrible thing about our daughter!”

  “It’s the truth!” he yelled back. “Never again. I’ll send Chastity to an all-girls boarding school.” His volume returned to normal as he said to himself rather than his wife, “I’ll kill anyone who puts their hands on her. I don’t care how old they are. Lemme catch one of them little boys even look at her wrong. The next person who sees one of them will be a fisherman.”

  Suddenly, a gloved hand seized Levarity’s face and slammed his head against the headrest. Startled, Levarity struggled to get up, grabbing at his assailant, but the assailant wrapped an arm around him, pinning him to the chair. Out of the corner of one eye, he could see a viciously pointed knife. Out of the corner of the other eye, he could see a shadow with two icy-blue, hateful eyes.

  “I can’t guarantee any fishermen will find you,” the shadow whispered. It whipped the edge of its knife across the front of Levarity’s throat, leaving a line of pink and red. Then the shadow plunged the blade into the space where the neck met the shoulder and jerked it. Blood coughed volcanically from the wounds, drowning the chair in crimson. The shadow held Levarity still by his face, muffling Levarity’s death-throes with its hand until he gasped his final breath. The shadow reached down and drew the blanket that was in the target’s lap up to Levarity’s neck and tucked him in cozily. The shadow patted the top of Levarity’s head and then stroked both of the blade’s broadsides along the material of the upper cushion.

  “Constantine,” Paulina said as she exited the bathroom, tying her robe, “I was thinking…” She looked to her right because she swore she’d seen the bedroom door closing; must have been her imagination, though. She continued, “I think that we should enroll Chastity in an all-girls boarding school. I was thinking it would be safer for her. You never know what could happen. What do you think?” She approached the dresser and began applying a face cream to her aging wrinkles. “Constantine?” There was no answer. “Constantine, are you listening to me?”

  Aggravated that he was not answering her because he was sleeping, she walked over to the TV and turned it off. She turned to look at her husband…

  Her shriek would have left banshees envious.

  ***

  Terry wove circles through the neighborhoods surrounding the Levarity estate. The teenagers took no notice; they were too engrossed in their festivities. The prom procession carried on with anarchic abandon. They were so loud that they probably woke people on the other side of the planet. Between the music and their screaming, it was miraculous that the police hadn’t pulled the limo over. Terry didn’t much care. He rolled all the windows up in the cab and pretended they weren’t even in the vehicle.

  He checked his watch—Yuri should have been wrapping up the operation by now. He had tried to get a status report from Yuri earlier, but he wasn’t obliging. Terry assumed that Yuri had encountered a bit of resistance, and Terry was a little worried. His first instinct was to turn around and go in after Yuri, but Terry did not have the gear to do so, nor did he want to take the chance of blowing Yuri’s cover. All Terry could do was his part and have faith that the ancestor spirits would guide his brother. Yuri wasn’t nearly as pious as Terry, but that wouldn’t deter the spirits. Yuri was, after all, a massively talented Shinobi who never betrayed Ninpo. Patience and faith were all Terry could concern himself with for now.

  Once he suppressed his anxiety, Terry realized that he had a craving for potato chips and pulled the limo into a gas station. He exited the vehicle and approached the vendor, grabbed his bag of chips, and paid the clerk. He opened the bag and popped a handful into his mouth as he watched the teenagers festively behave like wild animals. Terry thought about what he had been doing at their age—not partying in limos, that much was for sure. Ninpo never allowed such luxury. Instead, it advocated a harsh, sp
artan, and pious lifestyle based on honor and fighting prowess.

  It was by no means any way to raise children, according to Western societal norms. Children needed to be raised in a loving household with two well-off parents and taught the formula for financial success. Terry and Yuri hadn’t gotten that for most of their childhood.

  Whoever decided on this standard of normalcy apparently hadn’t taken into account a family like the Levaritys. On the surface, they met all the criteria of a normal family: two well-off parents that raised their offspring in a safe, neighborly residence surrounded by loving family. One could suppose that it did not matter to the authorities on normalcy whether the parents were church deacons or murderous drug lords as long as they met the vague criteria. Clearly, Terry and Yuri were raised improperly because they did not grow up in such a commercialized household.

  Above all else, Terry and Yuri had honor—Constantine Levarity didn’t. That was why he had been marked for death. That was why Terry and Yuri had taken the contract against him. With any luck, his children wouldn’t follow in his footsteps with their luxurious living and savage behavior.

  Terry realized that he had drifted away in thought. He stuffed another handful of chips into his mouth, turned left, and walked around the corner towards the restrooms. Drawing another set of keys from his pocket, he walked up to a money-green luxury sedan sitting in a parking space under a burnt-out street lamp. He depressed a button on the remote, and the car’s alarm disengaged, and the doors unlocked. Terry climbed into the driver’s side, situated himself, buckled the seatbelt, and continued to eat his chips.

  After several moments, Yuri swung himself over the top of the grimy cinderblock wall that divided the main road from the nearest neighborhood. Yuri sped over to the rear passenger door and dove in, closing the door behind him.

  Terry munched more chips and turned to look over the driver’s seat. “You’re late, dumbass,” he said sardonically.