The Assassin's Deception

Chapter 17

KAITLYN STONE
I knew there wasn't a point in checking his pulse and Blair was long gone. He'd sent the message he intended to.
No one close to you is safe from me.
"Kaitlyn, I'm so sorry." Jonathan said from behind me.
Had I not been so numb it might have startled me. I gripped ahold of his arm as he wrapped it around me.
"Jonathan." I said his name as the first wave of pure emotion hit me.
"Come on, Kaitlyn. Come on." He pulled on me to get me back out of the house.
He sat me down in the car as the other agents pulled up.
"Kaitlyn." Kay said gently crouching down next to Jonathan in front of me.
"It's my fault." I muttered not looking at her.
"You know, he would hate for this to stop you."
I shook my head for a moment before looking up at her.
"I'm going to kill him."
"Kaitlyn."
"He's taken my life from me. Even now I was thinking about pushing all of you as far away from me as I could. I'm taking it back. I'm not going to keep running. I'm not going to keep isolating myself. I'm not."
"Nor should you. What do we do now?" She asked me.
"We regroup back at my house with Cameron and Jonathan's team and we take this right to him."
She nodded at me.
"What about the crime scene?"
"We let New York PD handle it for now. It's all we can do. We don't have the resources to move the... the body."
"I need to see if Blair left anything else."
"He didn't." Wyatt said walking up to us.
"The kill was enough of a message." I sighed looking at Jonathan.
"I'm going to end this, Jonny. I promise you and Cameron will be safe."
"I know, Kaitlyn. We know." He said looking at Cameron.
"Can you drive?" I asked him.
Jonathan nodded.
"We'll pick up Dina, Gunter and Jordan and meet you there." Mike said.
I nodded pulling my legs into the car before Jonathan shut the door and walked around to the driver's side.
"Is there anything I can do?" He asked.
"No. Not right now." I sighed looking over at him.
"Whatever you need. We've got you." Cameron added touching my shoulder lightly.
"Thank you."
I turned to stare out the window.
I could remember the day I met Scott. My mother brought him home for dinner and for the first time everything felt normal in my short ten year old life.
The day they got engaged and my mother told me that she was getting out of the game I I almost resented him because I couldn't understand why I hadn't been enough to get her to stop but he was.
I was thrilled when they got married when I was thirteen and life really got as close to normal as it ever was.
I remembered when my mother died. She'd hung herself in the foyer from the banister on my sixteenth birthday. I found her hanging there when I got home from school that afternoon and the first thing I did was call Scott.
Call 911, Katie. It's going to be okay, Kaitlyn. We're going to be okay.
A normal stepfather would have shipped me off to foster care for the last two years until I turned eighteen but not Scott Walker. If I was completely honest with myself I did love him. He was the closest thing to an actual parent I'd ever had. I knew he loved me. I had no one when my mother died outside of him and Chase. Now Drake Blair had taken them both away from me and I'd be dammed if he would touch Jonathan again.
I swallowed hard in the passenger seat.
"What are you thinking?" Jonathan asked gently.
"About how good he was to me and I don't know if he knew how much I appreciated him; how much I loved him." I answered not able to look at him.
"He knew, Kaitlyn. He knew." He assured me.
"I hope you're right." I sighed looking back out the window as we pulled up to my home.
Sitting in my living room waiting for the others Jonathan took my hand gently doing his best to comfort me. I didn't have time to mourn, not yet. In that moment I was overcome with anger and rage.
Mike and Dina arrived first followed by Kay and Gunter, then Wyatt and Jordan.
"I know what I said back at Scott's house but I think I need a couple hours to adequately deal with this. You are all welcome to sleep if you can. Kay, Mike, and Wyatt know what we need to do in order to find him if you would rather start there." I said before standing up and walking down into the basement where I had set up an MMA style gym.
As much as I wanted to hit something I couldn't bring myself to even move from the bench against the far wall. I had all of this anger and pain in my heart and I knew that nothing would make it go away.
Killing Drake Blair wouldn't bring Chase or Scott back. Being an assassin wasn't about personal vendettas but I couldn't and wouldn't let this one go.
"Kaitlyn?" Jonathan said walking down into the basement.
"I thought I'd come down here and beat the shit out of something but when I got down here something hit me that stopped me in my tracks." I sighed looking up at him.
"It's grief." Jonathan said walking over to me.
"Grief..." I pondered the thought for a moment.
"Even losing Chase didn't stop me like this."
"You've blocked out your feelings for so long but you let me in the other night. You let yourself be vulnerable with me and it's not that easy to just close back down again."
"I need to. I have to end this before he hurts or kills someone else."
"How about this? Follow me."
He led me up to the master bedroom on the second floor.
"What are we doing?" I asked as he pulled me over to the bed.
"This'll be our room. This'll be your safe place; where it's just you and me and you can let go and be vulnerable. When you walk out of this room you're the badass assassin who doesn't need anything from anyone but in here you can just feel whatever you need to feel." He said sitting on the bed before pulling me into his arms.
"What did I do to deserve you?" I asked gently kissing him.
He pulled me onto the bed so I could lay in his arms.
"Are you okay?" He asked kissing the top of my head.
"No." I shook my head and allowed myself to break in his arms.