Page 176 of Taming Seraphine

SIXTY-NINE

LEROI

I crawl on my belly to the suitcase stuffed with Anton’s remains. If I’m lucky, the assholes behind the door will stop shooting and leave. Based on how they’re concentrating their shots at the lock, I’m guessing they’re trying to access the apartment.

Let them.

I could use this opportunity to shoot back, maybe hit one of them, but leave myself exposed to the second. Instead, I shuffle backward to the dining room table and extract another gun I left taped beneath the chair.

Sending a silent word of thanks to Anton’s body parts for teaching me how to use a gun with both hands, I crouch behind the case and wait for them to break in. Hopefully, they think I’m not shooting back because I’m already dead. I keep my breath slow and even to force my heart rate not to spike.

I need my aim to remain steady.

The next two shots cannot miss.

The first of them enters wearing a mask, his head whipping from side to side. My jaw clenches, and my arms twitch.

Not yet.

As the second one steps into the apartment, I spring up and fire two shots. One intruder falls, another fires back, but I’m already diving behind Anton’s remains. The bullets embed themselves in the case.

I take aim again and catch the second assassin in the throat. She drops her gun and falls to the floor.

Shit. Miko had better have barricaded Seraphine in his apartment, because this is far from over. Any worthwhile assassin wouldn’t enter enemy territory without backup. Killing these two will have repercussions.

I crawl beneath the dining table toward the balcony door, ease it open, and slip out, just as something falls into the middle of the living room with aclunk.

FUCK!

I’m halfway up the stairs when an explosion shakes the walls, sending debris and shards of glass flying. One of the guns slips from my fingers as I clamber up the emergency stairs to the rooftop garden.

For now, the concrete space is empty, but won’t stay like that for long. I jog naked across to the roof, having lost my towel some time between now and the first gunshots. I need to get to my phone in the downstairs apartment and check on Miko and Seraphine.

* * *

After an embarrassing dash down the hallway, I get dressed and log into my backup device that’s a clone of the one I hope got destroyed in the explosion. There’s already a message from Miko saying he and Seraphine are heading to an address they found for Gabriel.

It’s a different location from the one Anton had on his phone for Seraphine’s mother, so I decide to split our efforts and head there instead.

Ten minutes later, I’m walking across a front yard and ringing the doorbell of a pastel blue house. The woman who answers is petite and blonde with cornflower blue eyes set within hardened features.

There’s no mistaking the family resemblance.

“Evangeline?” I ask.

Her eyes flash, and she tries to slam the door, but I force it open with my shoulder.

Pushing past her, I step into the house. “I’m here about your daughter.”

She claps both hands over her mouth and makes a noise in the back of her throat, as if struggling to hold back a scream. Her blue eyes widen, their pupils dilating. “Get out of my house. S-Sera isn’t here.”

The normal response to someone asking about a daughter who’s been missing for five years is to ask questions or show concern.

It almost reminds me of the horror I saw in my mother and sister’s eyes when I killed that asshole and then the terror they showed when I tracked them down to where they’d moved. They looked at me like I was a monster. Evangeline stares up at me like I’m her judge and executioner.

I take another step forward, and she backs away and stumbles over a rug.

“But you know where she is, don’t you?” I ask.