A Locked Box

Chapter 16

   Time passed quickly, hours ticking by like minutes. Kat seemed to forget her troubles briefly. Of course, the demons that followed her everywhere, even in sleep. For Devin, it felt good to just relax and joke around. While his friends were great, Kat seemed to have an aura that kept him on his feet. She was unpredictable while most of his friends were so obvious, most of their pranks had lost their fun. It was good for both of them to have some fun in their stressful lives.

   Devin stood, stretching his stiff muscles. They had moved from video games to movies and were lying against the couch comfortably. Kat had stayed stationary. Turning, Devin bit back a chuckle to see her peacefully asleep. Her uniform blazer was laid across her lap as a blanket and her head balanced perfectly on the couch cushion. Grinning, Devin gently placed the blazer over her shoulders and nudged a pillow under her neck. She would hopefully sleep comfortably.

   Smiling to himself, Devin took one last look at the sleeping Kat before turning on his heel and heading for his bedroom. Grabbing a folded blanket, he rushed down on tiptoes to lay it by her in case she woke up in the middle of the night. Going back into the bedroom, he changed out of his school uniform and into a dark gray V-neck T-shirt and baggy sweatpants. It was as he was snuggling into the sheets of his decent sized bed that something clicked in his head.

   Kat had been willing to fight someone just for cash. Hurt someone for money. The thought was alarming. Not mention her emotionless behavior and how she seemed to know when people were looking at her. The way she had pinned him against the alley wall just hours earlier. How her grip had set so perfectly over his mouth that he could not speak. How strong her grip was. It all seemed to make sense. She was not the ordinary college student that Devin had thought. She was something colder. Something that was trained to hurt others. Something that was trained to kill. Was she an assassin?

   Devin shook the panicked thought away. She would not be in college, around so many innocent people to be one. Besides, what had he had seen just down in the living room had been proof enough that she was human. He had spent the whole day with her and had had unimaginable amounts of fun. How could an assassin be so funny or friendly. But her chilling question from the other day was ringing in his ears.

"Would you kill someone to protect another?"

   He was sitting up and pulling his laptop into his lap before he could stop himself. Typing in the address bar, his eyes widened in shock as he read through the first article that popped up in the search results. A thirty-two-year-old man named Calvin Harper was found in his office by his secretary earlier today. The time that had been released to the public was just ten minutes after Kat had left the school building. Devin remembered watching in confusion when she had turned towards the front doors instead of the cafeteria. Now everything seemed to make sense.

   Maybe Kat is an assassin!

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   Devin woke to up the sound of a loud bang and a string of unusual curses. Throwing off the covers, he groggily stumbled out of his room and down the stairs. He almost tripped on the discarded spatula on the kitchen floor. Kat sat on the ground against the white cupboards, tenderly holding her hand. Her face was twisted in pain as she gingerly touched the now bright red side of her hand.

   He knelt down beside her. "Are you okay?"

   Kat glanced up before looking back at her hand. "Yeah, I burned the whole side of my hand. So yes, I'm just peachy," she snapped. The pain was making her irritated.

   Devin chuckled at her sarcasm as he stood and opened his freezer. Pulling out a large piece of ice, he wrapped it in a towel before handing it to her. "Put this on it until I get the first aid kit,"