Inflict: A Novel

Chapter Seven

Destroy the house. Destroy the house.

Connor's internal mantra helped him to focus on his new task at hand, and not the dead body he'd left in the next room. If he needed to, he could syphon a bit of gas from his Harley, but he was in a Russian's home. A Russian who had been drunk.

Mikhail had a whole cabinet devoted to spirits, Connor found. Had he been in the mood for a drink, this place would have been just as good as a damn bar. Unfortunately, he had other things to worry about, and other uses for the liquor.

Connor grabbed two bottles of whiskey, cracking them open and tipping them over as he walked through the bottom level of the house. The smell of the liquor almost overtook the smell of the blood in the house, but it wasn't nearly enough to do the trick entirely. It probably didn't help that Connor was bloodstained and filthy, his hands covered in reddish-brown tracks of drying blood.

It wasn't a smell he could escape.

Even if he wanted to.

Connor went back to the liquor cabinet and grabbed two heavy, unopened bottles of vodka. They'd do the upstairs, surely. He was so focused on his task, of soaking the hallway carpets upstairs in vodka, that he passed by several opened doors without bothering to look inside. After all, bedrooms were full of things like curtains, linens and mattresses that didn't need any extra help going up in flames.

He'd been so focused, in fact, that he only noticed her as he headed back to the stairwell.

Maybe it was the white she wore that caught his eye. Maybe it was the blonde curls hanging down her back, with the hint of red undertones shining under the hallway light, spilling into the room.

Connor didn't know what exactly caught his attention and made him stop, but there she was. Quiet as could be, kneeling down on both knees at the foot of the bed, her back to the door and her head tilted down just enough to make it look as though she might be in prayer. Except she couldn't be praying, because her hands rested limply at her sides, unmoving like the rest of her body.

He almost wondered if she was alive for a second.

Her back barely moved.

Her shoulders rarely lifted.

It was as though each breath she took was careful—measured. As if maybe she could be so quiet, so stone-still, that she wouldn't be seen at all.

Connor blinked. "Lass."

The bandana still tied around his mouth did nothing to muffle his call, but the girl didn't move a single muscle to say she had heard him. There was no way she hadn't heard him downstairs for the last hour, not to mention before that, when Mikhail had come at him with a feckin' bat.

What was this woman doing?

"Lass!"

Nothing.

Irritation bubbled in Connor, if only because this job was meant to be quick and easy, and suddenly, it felt like neither of the sort. His father's orders had been clear: kill the Russian, keep any souls that could be sold.

Connor still thought that was odd, seeing how Sean had known Mikhail was separated from his wife, and had no other children living in his home. Yet somehow, Sean had made a point to be clear there could be someone else inside.

Had Sean known about this woman?

Connor stared at her for a minute longer, wondering to himself if he was even using the right word. She seemed wee for a woman—skinny, fragile, and all too delicate. Even in the darkness where she rested on the old carpeting, bathed in a bit of light from the hallway, he could see her figure. Of which, she barely had any. The bones of her shoulders protruded through the thin fabric of her white dress, and even her limbs were thin like sticks.