Assassin (8 page)

When she glances up and quivers all over at seeing someone
towering over her on top of the hay bales, Troy can’t help the wicked grin that
spreads across his face. Cassidy tries to hide the fact that she jumped by
slowly pulling out the ear buds and gently closing the laptop lid.

“Troy, I didn’t see you there.” She must have spent all that
time composing her voice so that it wouldn’t squeak when she spoke.

“Obviously,” he slides down beside her and leans over to
open up the laptop lid, but she keeps a firm hand on it. “What are you doing up
here?” Her gaze looks troubled, so Troy takes his hand off the laptop and leans
away. He’s suddenly aware of how close he was to her, and it felt as if he
belonged in her personal space.

That’s dangerous thinking, Ro-I mean Troy.

“I was watching a movie down here so that Reese’s Pieces
could get some sleep in between feedings. I didn’t want to fall asleep, but
sitting down there with nothing to do was getting awfully boring.” Troy pulls
up one leg so that he can rest his elbow on his knee, puts his cheek on his
fist, and stares at her with a quirked eyebrow.

“So what is it that you were watching that I’m not allowed
to see?” He has a very good idea of what it might be that she was watching, and
he’s intrigued to know if he’s right. Her cheeks blush, but she starts to open
the laptop lid. Expecting to see Back Door Slut three or something similar on
the screen, Troy frowns when he sees what looks like a sappy romance.

“They’re kind of my guilty pleasure. I know they’re silly,
but sometimes it’s nice to see that good guys exist and all. And that women can
actually interest them, you know?” Troy’s still wondering why she would be
embarrassed about watching a chick flick. She’s a chick, right?

“Good guys do exist?” He sounds as if he’s asking about
aliens, and Cassidy chuckles as she pushes him away playfully.

“Of course they do! Somewhere, at the end of a rainbow,
there’s a good guy waiting to hold the door for me. Or maybe he’ll make me
breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day. Perhaps he’s always been really kind to his
mother, and she’s the sweetest lady around. Or maybe he’ll take me on a long
walk on the beach-” Troy puts a finger over her flapping lips and smiles at
her.

“So what I hear you saying is, you’d prefer a man that
treats you like glass, wears an apron, and is a Mama’s boy?” Cassidy rolls her
eyes as she closes the laptop lid and sets it aside. She pulls her face away
from his finger before she can do something embarrassing, and neatly wraps up
her headphones before they’re lost in the hay.

“I’m just saying that sometimes a girl likes to be treated
like,” she pauses for a heartbeat. “Well, like a girl I guess.” Her shrug of
indifference only spikes his curiosity. Is this what women wanted from him all
along since he was thirteen and developed muscles? He just thought they were
interested in what was between his legs and nothing more. Hell, most of them
never complained when he left before sunrise, and they did the same to him.

“So the movie is about a guy treating a girl like a girl.”
Before she can stop him, Troy has the laptop in his hands and he’s flipped it
open. He turns away from her and blocks her attempts at getting the device back
with just one hand, and it infuriates her. A person shouldn’t be this strong!

“It’s none of your business, Troy! Hey, hand it back!” She
realizes that may hap they’re both being childish, but she does it anyway.
Cassidy tugs on his earlobe until he tilts his head to the side to allow some
give. The laptop is forgotten in the hay as he growls low in his chest.

In a flash, his arm is around her waist as he pulls her down
into the stray strands of hay on the wooden flooring. One of the horses stomps
with worry below them, but Troy ignores it. His hand is on her chest just above
her breasts as he holds her down, straddles her, and holds her wrists above her
head with his other hand.

“Are you going to do that again?” He asks her calmly as she
breathes heavily from the exertion of attempting to get free. Cassidy wiggles
her hips and turns her head away from him, but she’s not screaming, so he must
not be frightening her.

“I will if you keep touching what’s mine!” He chuckles, and
the sound makes her feel warm all over.

“Didn’t your father ever teach you to share?” It has the
desired effect. Her lips twitch up at the corners in the darkness illuminated
by a full moon and stars.

“He did, but he also taught me about respect for other
people’s property.”
She has me there
; Troy contemplates how to come up
with a response to that.

“What about respecting other people’s bodies?” Her cheeks
flush, and he realizes what he said as soon as they do. Her flesh feels warm
against his, and he’s suddenly very aware of the woman beneath him.
Too
aware
, Troy lets go of her wrists and climbs off her in one lithe move. He
hands her the laptop and tries to come up with something to say other than an
apology. Grant would be appalled if he knew that Troy Red touched his daughter
in any way.

But Cassidy doesn’t seem too appalled by the gesture.

“You can watch it with me if you promise that you won’t make
fun of the guy.” Troy thinks about it for a long time, and Cassidy moves to get
up and leave. He reaches out a quick hand and pulls her down by the belt loop
on her jeans so that she’s next to him. Without a word, he flips open her
laptop and rests half on her leg with the other half on his. It’s not the warmth
from the hard drive working away in the device that is making it warm.

It’s the heat that flares up from Troy whenever Cassidy
twitches. The movie is only fifteen minutes in, and Troy inches her cellphone
out of her pocket so gently she barely notices.

“What are you doing?” She hisses at him trying to get the device
back. He flips it on and marvels at how trusting she is.

“No password? That’s a huge security risk, Cassidy.” He
finds the alarm and sets it for the next feeding time for Reese’s Pieces and
sets the cellphone down between his legs. She dare not reach where it’s sitting
lest she touch something warm, and returns her attention to the movie. The
sound is low enough that the horses beneath them are not disturbed.

It’s boring up until the point where the two main characters
begin to take their clothes off. Cassidy’s face flushes and Troy can see it in
his peripheral vision. She moves to skip ahead, but he lays a hand over hers to
keep her from ruining the scene. It’s just starting to get extremely heated
when she twitches her leg away from his involuntarily, and the laptop hits the
wood beneath them.

Troy tries to right it, but her fingers are intertwined with
his. At some point,  she must have sneaked her fingers in between his, and now
they’re caught. The moment he pulls away is the moment that she will realize
he’s noticed, and it will embarrass her even more than watching a love scene
with him. If it were any other woman, he wouldn’t give a damn. Hell, he
wouldn’t be watching a movie with her at all unless it was a shoot ‘em up one.
Or something much more heated than a romance chick flick.

Cassidy is the first one to pull her hand away, only out of
necessity to bring the laptop back up into position. The movie has paused, and
she moves to hit the fast forward button. Two fingers graze over the flesh of Troy’s
arm, and the hairs rise in response to her light touch. His nerve endings feel
on fire, and all he can think about is what her face must look like when she’s
losing herself.

The movie starts to play where it left off, and to his
shock, Cassidy leans into his arm. In response, Troy raises it so that she fits
underneath and pulls her in close. Despite the cool air, she feels warm against
him. Making it through the scene without embarrassing himself or her is almost
like trying to thread a needle, but he manages it. In fact, he makes it through
the entire movie without jumping all over Grant’s daughter.

It’s past time to feed the foal, and Cassidy offers to fill
up the bottle. She disappears in through the front door as Troy watches, and he
sees the kitchen light flick on. His breath is crystalizing in front of him,
but he can’t seem to shake the feeling of her warm body beside him. Realizing
that he’s playing with fire, Troy tromps back into the barn to see if Reese’s
Pieces is up.

For the rest of the night, neither one of them touch. But
Troy ends up catching Cassidy glancing in his direction more than once. He
doubts she gets much trading done, and he can’t seem to keep his mind off the
way her fingertips felt against his arm.

“Hey, whatever happened to that Hilly girl?” Olivia’s
mixing up a batch of chocolate chip cookies, for her daughter or her brother,
she’s not sure. Both of them get a beater to lick when she’s finished, and both
of them manage to get cookie dough batter on their chins.

“Eh, she’s not into Rambo movies.” Olivia rolls her eyes
to the ceiling and gives Lilly a meaningful look.

“The cookies will be done in twenty minutes, why don’t
you go upstairs and wash up before we eat them?” A bottom lip juts out, but
Lilly recognizes why she’s being dismissed. Troy also recognizes why and
attempts to slide off the breakfast bar stool in retreat. “Uh huh, you stay!”
Olivia’s finger points at the vacant stool, and Lilly mouths ‘haha’ to her
uncle before she flounces off up the stairs.

“Now, why did you really break it off with her?” Troy
stares at the dough being spooned onto the cookie sheet, and wonders what lie
he’s going to tell his sister next. The truth is he wasn’t able to tell Hilly
what he did for a living. And she knew his lie about working second shift at a factory
was just that, a lie.

“I didn’t break it off with her, she broke it off with me.”
He hopes that will satisfy her into going on another ramble about how he’s just
too good for these women. The truth is he’s not good enough for them.

“Oh come on, Robert!” The Troy in the dream knows that
this is not real, and flinches when she uses his real name. He used to flinch
when she used his real name anyway because she usually said it with exasperation.

“What?” Her hand is frozen over the cookie sheet as the
dough plops off, and suddenly the room grows cold. Troy stiffens as he attempts
to listen for the intruder, but he hears none. Just as his sister begins to turn
with a horrified expression on her face, Troy is launched from the dream into
darkness.

“Troy!” The loud shout of his name brings him to, and Grant
breathes a sigh of relief when the man lets go of his wrist.

“Sorry,” Troy mumbles as he sits up in bed and rubs the
heels of his palms on his eyes. It’s sometime late in the afternoon the
following day, and it’s time for him to take his shift with Cassidy again. They
had to fix the hay bales today so that they were stacked properly.

“It’s alright, son. I just wanted to wake you up, so you don’t
miss dinner tonight. Or you’ll eat more than your fair share of the breakfast
again tomorrow morning.” Grant pats him on the back once before he leaves the
room whistling. But Troy doesn’t miss the way he rubs at his wrist gently with
two fingers. If he’s not careful, he might actually hurt the old man.

Cassidy’s already sitting down with another crockpot roast
in front of her for dinner. She’s nibbling on one of her rolls as she flips
through a few internet pages. Last night, Troy attempted to understand what
she’s doing by investing in small businesses worldwide, but it was useless. He
sits down to enjoy a quick meal with the two people he’s come to view as
friends, and the phone rings.

Something tells him it’s not the usual telemarketer calling
at dinnertime, and everything seems to slow down. His heart rate feels sluggish
as Grant picks up the phone and says a friendly ‘hello’. Someone answers and
Troy sees the way Grant’s fingers tighten around the receiver. He glances once
at Troy before he tells the person on the other line that there is no one by
that name living at the premises. Then he gently puts the phone back in the
receiver, and sits down as if nothing happened.

Cassidy hasn’t realized that something monumental has
occurred as she taps away at her keyboard with a vacant look on her face. Her
father ignores the way that Troy tries to learn something from the old man’s
expression and eats his dinner like nothing is wrong. The silence is killing
him, but Troy eats his own supper. Only it feels as if he’s eating bricks
rather than beef stew, and he has a feeling that soon he won’t be the only one
in the witness protection program.

He has to get them out of here before whoever just called
and asked for Robert Trenton shows up.

“I don’t understand why we have to leave! What the fuck
is going on here?” Cassidy’s voice is shrill as Troy throws her belongings into
her father’s truck. Grant is already packing a bag upstairs, and Troy’s few
belongings are all in the bed of the truck. The horses have been taken care of
by the agents already, and the foal is being transferred to their new home.

“My cover has been blown, which means that you and your
father are in danger. I don’t like this as much as you, but the agent knows how
to care for horses. She’ll feed Reese’s Pieces on the way. We have to take a
different route than them to make it less obvious.” Troy puts a hand on
Cassidy’s shoulder in an attempt to calm her down. “It has to be done this way,
alright?”

He feels his heart sink and hit rock bottom when her eyes
begin to fill with tears, and he keeps himself from pulling her to him for a
comforting hug. Grant is coming out the doorway with a duffle bag in hand, and
an agent following him. Cassidy’s bottom lip trembles as she looks at the barn,
the house, and then back at Troy.

“This is your fault.” She whispers the damning words he
knew were coming, and then she clambers into her father’s truck. Troy doesn’t
bother glancing at Grant as he makes his way to the familiar, light blue
mini-cooper sitting at the end of the driveway.

“She’s not right, you know.” Moonlight Rogers actually
attempts to make the burly man in front of him feel better, but it’s not
working out too well.

“So what’s my name now?” Troy asks as he slips into the
passenger seat. Mr. Rogers meanders around to the driver’s side and holds out
his hand. Without a word, Troy puts his old driver’s license in the guy’s palm
and looks at the conflicted face of Robert Grant sitting in his truck.

“I don’t know yet. We’ll know that when we get you to the
safe house. I do know that six miles outside of town you’re buddy will pull
over, and he will be transferred into a new vehicle. Everything they packed
will be confiscated.” Troy sighs as he looks out the front windshield of the
small, clown car. The agent starts it, and they’re off at around one that
morning.

“I know, but I just thought it would make them feel
better for a little while longer.” Shocked by the man’s obvious tone of caring,
Moonlight glances at Troy several times.

“I understand.” Their journey down the bumpy driveway is
hazardous, and neither one of them speak until they pull over to the side of
the road outside of town. And it’s only when Moonlight tells Troy to stay in
the car while the other two are transferred to another vehicle. Cassidy looks frantic,
but Grant seems to be taking this all in stride. He tries to crack a smile at
his new driver, but it wanes quickly.

“Where are you taking me this time, Moonie?” The agent
slides back into his car and narrows his eyes as he looks at Troy. All thoughts
of the man having changed leave the agent’s mind as he glances in his rearview
mirror and takes off. They head north.

Several hours pass by, and the light of the rising sun is
on the horizon when Moonlight finally speaks. It’s not to Troy, though. It’s
over his cellphone to the man behind them. That’s when Troy watches the vehicle
that Cassidy and her father are in disappear down another street, and his
fingers tighten in rage.

“I thought we were staying together?” His voice is calm,
but when it’s this quiet is when someone dies. Moonlight hangs up his phone and
sticks it back in the console.

“You are, calm down, jeez Robert, Troy, whatever the hell
your name is! They’re just taking a different route to get there. It’s procedure,
don’t ask.” His fingers don’t uncurl until four hours later as they’re just
crossing over another state line. The black sedan that Cassidy and Grant are
riding in appears beside them on the highway, and Troy gets a glimpse of the
old man in the back seat. He’s fast asleep with his head lolling back, and Troy
wishes he could be this laid back about his life being uprooted for the second
time in two weeks.

Around ten that morning, Moonlight Rogers pulls his
mini-cooper into the parking lot of a small airport. It’s so small there is
only one plane sitting outside and absolutely no one else around. Cassidy looks
slap happy when she stumbles out of the sedan, and Grant looks no better even
though he slept. Troy doesn’t attempt to comfort either one of them or speak.
Cassidy would most likely slap him if he tried.

“Now where are we going?” She has her hand over her eyes
to block the sun so that she can see, and her pink streak is sticking out from
her head as if she’s been running her hands through her hair over and over
again.

“I can’t tell you that, but I can tell you that it won’t
be that much longer.” The earth begins to shake and quiver under Troy’s feet,
and he grabs onto Cassidy. The plane starts to crumble away as if it’s
dissolving, and then they’re thrown into darkness.

“Hey kid, wake up!”

“Cassidy!” His voice feels raw from screaming, and he tries
to push the hands that are attempting to hold him down away.

“I’m over here. What the hell is going on?” Suddenly he
finds his eyes and opens them to find that he’s lying on Robert Grant’s couch
with the old man attempting to hold him down. As soon as Grant realizes that
Troy is actually awake this time, he moves off the man and glances to the
doorway of the kitchen. Cassidy’s standing in it wiping her hands on a dishtowel
with a confused look on her face.

“Cassidy? Grant?” His head feels as if it’s going to fall
off his shoulders at any moment the way it’s pounding, and he feels nauseous.

“Yeah, we’re here. It was a dream, one hell of a dream at
that.” Grant sits back down in his chair and flips off the television. There
was a movie playing about the end of the world.

“When did I fall asleep? I don’t understand. I don’t
remember.” Cassidy sits down on the coffee table in front of the couch and lays
the dish towel across her lap as she reaches out a hand. Before he can tell her
that her father is watching with hawk eyes, the back of her hand goes to his
forehead. It feels like an ice cube against his flesh.

“He’s running a fever, Dad. Maybe we should call a doctor,
set up an appointment. I’ll get some Aspirin.” As soon as her hand is gone from
his forehead, Troy slumps back and lets the back of his head rest against the
pillows. He feels like Beethoven stomped all over him a hundred times.

“Who called earlier?” That was the last thing he remembers
before he fell asleep, or moved into delirium. How did he get out to the couch?

“At dinner? It was no one. They were looking for-” Grant
shuts up as soon as Cassidy comes back into the room with a glass of water and two
pills. Troy doesn’t miss the fact that the old man doesn’t want her to know
something, and neither does she. Instead of badgering her father about it,
Cassidy makes sure that Troy takes his medication before she heads back out to
the kitchen. He hears her on the phone with someone and assumes that she’s
making an appointment for him without even asking him.

“They were looking for Pamela Alstein. Don’t ask me about it
now; wait until Cassidy goes out to care for Reese’s Pieces.” Swallowing
another mouthful of the water, Troy tries to remember if either one of them
mentioned that name before.

“What happened after dinner?” Grant’s small smile of confusion
makes him feel sick again.

“You mumbled about your head hurting and came out here to take
a nap before heading out to care for that foal. It’s been about half an hour,
Troy. You started dreaming, and I woke you.” The old man clears his throat and
opens up a book to make his point that he doesn’t want to speak about it. Did
Troy say something that would incriminate him in the case of whether or not he
wants Cassidy? Suddenly embarrassed, he tries to stand, but a wave of dizziness
has him crashing down onto the couch again.

“Why don’t you just lie down and I’ll get you a blanket,
okay?” That’s Cassidy back from her phone conversation. Troy tries to turn his
head to let her know that he’s fine, but another wave of nausea has him
propelling himself from the couch and into the small hall bath. He barely gets
the toilet lid up before his stew re-enters the world.

“Christ, I’d better go find a bucket.” The sound of Grant’s
footsteps retreating upstairs just makes the pounding in his head worse. Did he
eat something he shouldn’t have? If that were the case, the other two would be sick.
Maybe it’s lack of sleep and his inability to think about going into the courtroom
in two days to testify against the big boy that is dragging him down.

“Dad’s got a bucket, Troy. Do you want to come out and sit
on the couch again?” Cassidy sounds as if she’s talking to a sick animal, and
it just makes him irritable.

“No, could you just turn on the light and close the door?
I’ll be out in a little bit. Go take care of Reese’s Pieces.” The frustration
from his predicament is in his tone, but Cassidy does as he says without an
argument. As soon as the door clicks, he vomits until he believes his stomach
is in the toilet with his dinner, and flushes. He looks even worse than he
feels.

“Shit,” he mumbles as he rinses out his mouth and tries to get
the film of sweat off his face with cool water. Troy’s cheeks look hollowed out,
and his flesh is too pale. If there were a zombie apocalypse, he would be
mistaken for one and killed on sight. “How the hell did I go from feeling fine
to looking like this in a matter of a few hours?”

“The flu can do that to you!” Grant is opening up the door
as he comes in to survey the damage. “Come on, if you’re back on your feet I
think you can make it to the couch. Cassidy’s outside with Reese’s Pieces, so
there’s no need to be embarrassed.”

“Whoever said I was?” Troy flinches at the hoarseness of his
voice, and washes off his face one more time before he heads out to sit on the
blue, cloth couch with a white bucket in front of him. It looks like a five
pound bucket used to hold a severe amount of paint or some such, and Troy
wonders if Grant believes someone like Troy would need one.

“How about we turn on the TV and watch some Jeopardy?” Troy’s
groan of agony is the only thing that reaches Grant’s ears as the man lets his
head loll back. Worried, he stands up to check and see if Troy has passed out,
but his eyes are wide open as he stares at the ceiling.

“Your head?” He asks warily.

“No, your choice of show to watch.” Troy mumbles and Grant chuckles
as he takes his place in his chair.

“Maybe you’ll learn something.” But Troy is passed out by
the time the first round has started, and his deep breathing indicates that
he’s in a sound sleep.

It’s nine thirty by the time Troy wakes up again, and Grant
is still sitting on the chair with the television on. Yet his attention appears
to be solely on the book in his hands. When Troy sits up and pinches the bridge
of his nose between his thumb and his finger to get the pain to subside, Grant
finally glances up.

“You’re awake.” He says absentmindedly as he flips a page.
There’s some noise from the kitchen, and then the front door closes gently.
Cassidy’s left the house again, and it’s just Grant and Troy inside.

“Tell me about Pamela Alstein.” The naked expression of
grief on Grant’s face startles Troy when he looks up, and he immediately
regrets saying it the way he did. It takes a few seconds for Grant to get his
emotions under control, and to bide his time he puts a bookmark in. Then he
sets the book down on the tiny table  by his reclining chair as he turns the
volume down on the television.

It’s not that he wants the room to be quiet while they’re
talking about Pam, but he wants to know if Cassidy comes back into the house.

“Why don’t I get you some aspirin again? This is a long
story.” Judging by Troy’s body height and weight, he could sustain another six
aspirin without bleeding out from a cut. Grant gets himself under control by
the time he has the aspirin and another glass of water. His house guest thanks
him for the small favor and looks abashed at his straight forward question.

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Grant. It’s just I thought it
was someone calling about me.” Running a hand through his short, dark hair,
Troy tries to think of the last time he didn’t want to upset someone who wasn’t
family.

“I understand. Pamela Alstein is Cassidy’s mother.” Troy
finally understands why Grant didn’t want to talk about it around Cassidy. From
what he’s seen, any mention of her mother makes her upset and moody the rest of
the day.

“She said her mother is dead.” He pushes the empty bucket
aside and leans forward to grab his glass of water. Grant looks upset by the entire
situation, but he’s holding himself together pretty well.

“Cassidy probably thinks that would be better.” He sips on
his water and puts it down again, looking at his hands in his lap. He’s leaning
forward and whispering now as he begins to explain. “Cassidy was just eighteen
months when her mother showed up on my doorstep. The poor woman was clothed in rags,
and her child had a makeshift diaper made out of an old, stained t-shirt.
Sometimes people lose their way on these back roads, and I thought she was
mistaken in coming to my home. But as I was closing the door on her face, she
said my name.” Grant pauses as he remembers the way the woman had looked on his
steps.

“How did she know your name?” Troy prompts him, afraid that
Cassidy might show up any second now and overhear them discussing how she came
to live with Robert Grant.

“When I was a kid, I was adopted. My adopted parents owned a
farm not far from here, and they took in kids from an orphanage about thirty
miles north of here in New York. One of those kids was Pamela Alstein. We
struck up a friendship, but it was never more than that. She left at the age of
eighteen to become an actress in Hollywood, and I hadn’t seen her for six years
before she showed up on my doorstep strung out on heroin and carrying a baby.