Blood of the Assassin - By Russell Blake Page 0,11

chest, and another in his upper shoulder. His arm was twisted at an unnatural angle, broken, and his skin was the color of a shark’s belly.

Heinrich tried to speak, but all that came out of his mouth was another gurgle. Jean-Claude knelt and leaned over him, turning his head to better make out whatever he was trying to say.

“What? What is it, Heinrich? Who did this to you?” he demanded.

Heinrich tried to raise his good arm, but then it fell back to his side as he coughed blood all over the side of Jean-Claude’s face.

The Frenchman pulled back in horror, momentary thoughts of blood-borne diseases racing through his brain – hepatitis, AIDS, Ebola...

Heinrich coughed again, laboring for breath, and then with a groan, lay still, his chest ceasing its straining, his eyes open, staring into eternity with a puzzled frown. Jean-Claude watched life quit the German’s body, and then his arm froze on its way to his face to wipe away the blood.

There was something in Heinrich’s hand. Clutched between his dead fingers.

Jean-Claude reached out, trembling slightly from shock, and gently eased the object from his death grip.

A USB flash drive, crimson smeared across one side of it.

Jean-Claude stood, and then his blood chilled in his veins. He heard a sound from the street – the front door. A crash.

Like someone kicking it in.

Mind racing frantically, he pocketed the flash drive and glanced at himself in the mirror, taking in the drying blood spackled on his profile with alarm. Moving to the kitchen he quickly grabbed a dish towel and wiped the splatter away as he calculated his options.

The chances were good that they didn’t know what apartment Heinrich was coming to.

Then again, it was only a matter of time until they followed the blood trail to his front door. At which point, whoever had done this to Heinrich would repeat the process with him – an eventuality Jean-Claude wanted to avoid at all costs.

Which meant that he would need to beat them to the stairs.

He threw the towel into the sink, grabbed a butcher knife, and moved to the dining room table to grab his notebook computer before creeping to the door and looking out the peephole.

Nobody.

Yet.

He took a final look at Heinrich’s bloody corpse and then eased the knob open. Grateful the hinges didn’t squeak, he pulled the door towards him and stepped into the hall.

And heard footsteps on the second floor – two below his.

He debated whether to risk closing up the apartment, then erred on the side of caution and stepped silently down the hallway, passing the central main stairs, up which the sound of the pursuers had drifted, and continued to the service stairwell at the far end. His hand shook as he reached out and gripped the handle, and then he froze when the door creaked as it opened.

The footsteps stopped; then suddenly accelerated.

Abandoning any pretension of stealth, he bolted into the landing and took the steps to the roof three at a time, figuring that it would take whoever was after him longer to climb them than to follow him if he went down – gravity being his friend in this case.

At the steel roof door he stopped again, listening intently. A rustle greeted him from below. Exactly like someone creeping up the stairs would sound, trying to avoid giving away their position.

He unlocked the deadbolt and shouldered the door open, then sprinted across the roof to the next building, which was the same height. He leapt across the five-foot chasm, praying that in the dark he had gauged the distance correctly, and stumbled as his dress shoes skidded on the slick surface. Ignoring the pain from his ankle, he willed himself forward to the rooftop exit and felt for the latch.

Locked.

Shit.

He was halfway to the next building, its roof a story lower, when he heard a scrape from his building. His only hope now was that it was so dark that his pursuers wouldn’t be able to make him out. Not a great bet to have to make, he realized, and increased his speed.

He hesitated at the roof edge, and then, hearing the sounds of running steps from his building, he backed up and then hurled himself into space, swearing silently, grateful that he spent a decent amount of time in the gym, but fearing what the landing would do to him. When his feet pounded into the roof he instinctively let his knees buckle and then he was rolling, the notebook