HANS: Alliance Series Book Four

Cassandra backs out of her driveway, nearly clipping her mailbox. Then she takes her time playing with the radio before she finally pulls away, turning off Holly Court and disappearing from sight.

I give her the usual eleven minutes.

She has a track record of forgetting things and coming back for them, but she never turns around if she’s more than five minutes away. So, when that eleventh minute starts, I tuck the empty container under my arm and step outside.

I don’t look around. I don’t try to sneak over. Both of those things give away the fact that you’re doing something shady. It’s always best to act like you belong.

Plus, there’s no one here to see what I’m doing anyway.

The lots on our little cul-de-sac are large, and beyond the edges of our mowed lawns is a thick forest of trees. Both leafy and evergreen. So unless someone is on one of our properties, or coming down our street, they wouldn’t see me walking between Cassandra’s house and mine.

They won’t see me now, and they haven’t seen me the dozens of other times I’ve done this.

My boots are quiet on the steps up to her front door, and I use the duplicate key in my palm to unlock the handle. When it turns and the door opens, I shake my head.

“Why have a deadbolt, Butterfly, if you’re not gonna use it?”

I set the empty dish, lid attached, on her literal welcome mat, wipe my boots off on said mat, then step over it and shut the door behind me, relocking the handle. Just because she should be gone for a while doesn’t mean I won’t leave everything how I found it.

It doesn’t take me long to do my usual rounds, but I don’t rush through them.

I tell myself it’s because I want to be thorough. That I need to make sure every window is properly locked—twice, because I may have missed it the first time.

I don’t dwell on the way I enjoy being in her space. I don’t think about the way the air feels different in here. The way it tastes different in here.

The living room doubles as Cassandra’s home office. On one side of the room, the gray couch faces a subpar TV mounted above a fireplace she never turns on because someone—me—keeps disabling the gas line because someone—her—has left it on unattended one too many times. She’s thankfully given up on calling out the repair man, because I don’t want to feel bad about her spending money on repairs when I’m only going to fuck it up again.

The other side of the living room has a bright white table tucked against the wall, topped with a small lamp, her work laptop, a ceramic cactus, and an empty floral-printed cup with a matching pink straw that looks big enough to fit half a gallon of liquid.

Walking through the kitchen, I make sure all the appliances have their cords fully plugged in and that they haven’t tangled since I checked them three days ago.

I pull the stove away from the wall, making sure the connections and valves are just as I left them. They are.

Pushing the stove back into its place, I notice the fruit bowl next to her sink is overflowing. With zucchini.

A shudder runs down my spine, and I wonder if there’s something I can do to them that would make them rot overnight so she’s not able to make anything else with them.

I slide my hand into my pocket, ready to pull my phone out so I can search to see if such a thing is possible, but I stop myself. Because if Cassandra woke up tomorrow to a bowl of rotten produce, she would feel sad.

She’d probably frown. Potentially pout. And I can’t be the cause of that.

I pull my hand free and let it linger on the railing as I climb the stairs to her second level.

This house is as old and shitty as mine, except Cassandra has actually put in effort to make her home cozy. She’s painted the walls in every room. The kitchen is a bright blue, her bathrooms are teal, and her bedroom—I step into the small space—is a gentle gray with soft pink bedding and rugs.

I inhale, and that rare feeling of calmness settles over my shoulders.

Her bed isn’t made; it never is.

I flip on the light in her attached windowless bathroom and glance around, making sure nothing has been left on.

The mirror is still slightly steamy—accounting for her wet hair when she left the house—and the mix of shampoo, body lotion, and hair products makes me want to roll around on her shaggy bathroom rug.

But I don’t.

That would be weird.

Turning the light off, I move back into the bedroom.

The window faces the street, and through her open curtains, I can see the front of my house. But there’s a tall tree in Cassandra’s yard, meaning she doesn’t have a good view of my front door, which I use to my advantage, ensuring she can’t see me retrieving the offerings she leaves for me on my front step. I’m rarely off on my calculations, but if she were to stand right here, forty-eight minutes after turning off her bedroom light at night, she wouldn’t get a clear view of me opening my front door.

Still facing the window, I walk back—two steps, three—until I bump into her bed.

Then I sit.

This is her side of the bed. Doesn’t take a genius, or an obsessed stalker, to figure that out.

I pretend it’s morning. That she’s just woken and sat up, and I look out through the window.

This is her view.

My home.

Me.

I take a deep breath and scoot over an inch, then another.

Is this exactly where she would be sitting?

Slowly, I reach down and unlace my boots, then pull them off one at a time.

Then I lift my feet onto the bed.

I’ve never done this before.

Never crossed this line.

So I’ve touched her bed before, run my hands over the cool cotton sheets, but that’s nothing.

I lie back.

The mattress is okay. Not good enough for my Cassandra. But it’s comfortable.

I settle my head on her pillow.

It’s too soft. Too girly.

I look up at her ceiling. At the sparkly mini chandelier she installed over her bed.

This is the last thing she sees each night.

I close my eyes and pretend.

Just for two seconds, I pretend she’s here with me.

My eyes snap open.

A vehicle is approaching.

I sit straight up, disoriented in a place that borders on familiar and wrong.

The lighting has changed.

The shadows have shifted.

I look at the clock on the nightstand.

“Fuck me.”

I swing my feet over the edge of the bed and slide them into my boots, lacing them quickly.

“Did you seriously fall a-fucking-sleep in Cassandra’s house?” I’m so mad at myself. I can’t believe I fucked up this badly.

Not that it’s any real wonder. The stomachache I got from those mushy-ass cookies kept me up half the night.

Eyeing the rumpled bedding at my side, I run my palm over it once more before I stand, the cotton cool under my touch.

I stay far enough back from the window so I’m not visible to anyone below, but from this angle, I can still see out. And Cassandra’s car slows to a stop in the driveway, yards from where I’m standing.

“Shit.”

Her garage is attached to the side of her house, connecting through the small laundry room off the kitchen, which is right below me. The overhead garage door works, I’ve checked, but unless it’s snowing, Cassandra always chooses to park outside. For a reason only known to her.

I could sprint. I could get down the stairs, turn at the base of the staircase, duck into the laundry room, and slip into the garage, pulling the door closed at the same moment she slams the front door behind her. Then I could exit through the window in the back of the garage or wait for her to fall asleep and then go back through the laundry room, into the kitchen, and out the door that leads into the backyard.

I could do all of that. But that would require me to have moved by now, which I haven’t. And I don’t.

Cassandra steps out of her car, and my heart races for a reason other than the threat of getting caught. My heart is racing because she’s close. So close.

She has an iced coffee in one hand and a Target bag in the other, and she uses her perfect hip to shove the car door shut.

A little midday shopping trip, playing hooky from work?

The angle blocks me from seeing the expression on her face, but her body language telegraphs the fact that she’s trying to hurry. Either she really has to pee, or she’s trying not to be late for a work call.

I honestly don’t know if she would run upstairs to use the bathroom attached to her bedroom or if she’d use the other one downstairs. But I’ve watched her through the living room windows enough to know that it’s not unusual for her to have a virtual work meeting at any time of the day, so I’m hoping that’s what she’s in a hurry for.

As she moves beneath the bedroom window to the front door, I slowly unlock the window latch. Thankfully, I test these often enough, so it’s used to moving and does so silently.

Slowing my breath, I listen, and when I hear the front door open, I start to slide the window up.

By the time the front door slams shut, I’ve slid the windowpane all the way up.

The screens are still blessedly not in place. Cassandra removed them this spring to clean, but they’re still piled up in the corner of her garage, not installed.

I lift my left leg up and over the sill.

“I’m home! I’m home!” Her voice echoes up the stairwell, and I freeze.

Is she telling the empty house that she’s home, or does she somehow know I’m here?

I hear the crinkle of her dropping the shopping bag onto the floor, then the squeak of wheels on hardwood, and I picture her dropping into her little office chair.

So, a work meeting.

Half in, half out of her window, I stand motionless.

If I climb out now, I could crouch on the little section of roof right below the bedroom window, wait for her to finish her meeting and leave the living room, then drop down to the grass below. Or⁠—

My phone vibrates with a text.

Very few people have my number.

Still standing with my leg out the window, I pull my phone out of my pocket and look at the message from K. It’s a city, a location, and a time.

I know the place, and if I’m going to be there on time, I need to get on the road in the next thirty minutes.

The phone vibrates again in my hand. This time K is calling.

She never calls.

I squeeze my fingers around the phone, indecision warring for a moment before I accept the call.

I put it against the ear closest to the window, leaving the other one to listen for any movement from downstairs.

“Here,” I whisper.

There’s a pause. “Bad time?” Karmine’s voice sounds amused.

“Not the best,” I admit.

She snorts. “Fine. I’ll talk to you after.”

Rather than answer, I hang up and slide the phone back into my pocket.

We both typically work in life-and-death situations, so I appreciate the brief call. But after means she’ll meet me at the location after I’m done. And that means I don’t have time to wait for Cassandra’s work call to wrap up.

Fuck me, I guess.

I can hear the muffled, tinny noise of many voices talking through a speaker and assume the meeting downstairs is just starting.

That’s my signal.

I shift and slide my body out the window.

It’s not until I’m lowering the window from the outside that I realize I should’ve checked and made sure I didn’t leave any hairs on Cassandra’s pillow. My strands are not the bright gold they were when I was a child, but the dark blond color is still nothing close to her wavy black strands.

Losing your fucking edge, Hans. Maybe it is time to retire from assassin work.

Standing to my full height, I reach up and grip the edge of the roof.

Just not tonight.

I heave myself upward and use careful steps to crest the center point of the roof before starting my decline, aiming toward the back of the house.

I know the sightlines Cassandra has from her work desk, so I’m able to avoid her view by aiming for the corner above her bathroom, dropping lightly onto the roof of the garage, then lowering myself to the yard behind. Staying to the side of the yard, I walk the thirty feet across the lawn and enter the woods behind Cassandra’s house.

Then I start to jog.

I stay out of view as I work my way through the woods and around the end of the cul-de-sac until I finally emerge from the same woods behind my own house.

Now, it’s time to work.