Suicide Mission (Guarded Secrets #1)

30: "You should have stayed away."

I had been listening to Ash talk about his top cases for a few hours now, silently waiting in the ducts for a moment to strike. He had killed another family about five years ago the same way he had done with my family, but the son and daughter survived from what I could figure. It was hard to tell because nothing he said was straight forward. It seemed as if he spoke in code, I guess in case he ever got bugged, but it took a lot of effort to get in here. I doubted that he would ever be bugged, and if he was the person would be found and killed. I felt a shiver run down my spine at the thought and tried to focus on the parents the kids had lost.

It had happened before my family's car accident, he said that it was one of his first jobs, and now the girl was finishing her last year of college and the son had gone off the map. He disappeared one day, and hasn't made an appearance since. It was strange, how could someone just disappear and not resurface? Unless, I thought just as Ash slammed his fists onto the table and forced those thoughts out of my head while I tried not to gasp from the sudden noise.

"Do you have any information on him or are you just bringing me more bad news?" Ash asked Theo, the tall blond who I could barely see through the vent cover, and his right hand man. Theo was the only one that responded or talked to Ash, but he also took most of the heat from him. He followed orders, but something about his posture and the authority in his voice told me that he was who Ash delegated everything to.

Ash was in hot pursuit of the son who had escaped him the last few years. He wanted the entire family gone as he wanted me to be dead and buried like my family, although to do that, he needed the son. Because Ash knew that if he got rid of the sister before the son came out of hiding, then he would lose the last piece of the family. The son would never reveal himself after his sister was killed, so they had to wait. He had to have all of them or it was wasted. That's just how his job was, but he seemed to enjoy it a little too much in my opinion.

"He knows too much. He knows my face!" Ash cried out. "You have to find him! He could find me!" Then he could do exactly what I was planning to do; kill Ash Crest. "Do you know anything?"

"Nothing yet, sir. He dropped off the radar five years ago and hasn't resurfaced since. We've been keeping track of his sister, and she is still trying to find him so that's reason to believe they haven't been in contact with each other. I'm sure if we stay with the sister he will eventually resurface to talk to her."

"Jackson goes off the map for almost five years now, and no one can find him? How is that possible? He has to pop up at some point! He needs supplies and everything, why hasn't he been seen getting those things?"

"Living off the land?" Theo suggested cautiously. He must have known that was a stupid suggestion, I thought it was, and judging from Ash's violent response of slamming his fist on the table again, it was a dumb suggestion to bring up.

"Theo, just find him. I want him handled, and if it comes to it I will do it myself personally," he said as a cruel smile curved onto his lips. "I also want another case handled personally. I think it's time to end her life, end her suffering so to speak."

"The Night girl, sir?"

"Yes, her. I was tripped up for a while by the name change and relocation since we hadn't kept a close eye on her, but the file was easy enough to peel open when I wanted it to," he said proudly. I rolled my eyes at his words, from what little I heard about Ash I figured he paid someone a nice sum of money to let him peak in the files he needed. Little did that person know or care that they hadn't just put me in danger, but also my adoptive family.

He's going to kill more people. There would be more families like mine, dead and gone, and if the kids survived they could turn out exactly how I was. There was nothing particularly wrong with me, but I knew how it felt. The solitude, the depression, and the never ending pain. No one should have to go through with that, and I wasn't going to let them. Without another moment of hesitation I crawled away from Ash's office. I had to find a different place to make an attack, and the vent wasn't the right choice because I was in a compact location, which would easily be used against me. I needed a distraction, and to do that I needed to get out of the vents and into the house itself. There were guards everywhere, and they would definitely be in the halls, I just had to figure out how to get most of the people out of the building.