Crowed (Team Zero #2) by Rina Kent

A shadow looms over me, but my fingers aren’t even able to pull the trigger. Someone screams in the distance.

The shadow yanks my gun away. I try to clutch their sleeve, look at them, but my hold is too weak.

No one but The Pit’s assassins and Hades know about killing contracts. The clients don’t know who will pick the contract. Since the target didn’t show up, someone set me up. Someone wants me dead.

The shadow retreats. I hear distorted sounds from two civilians. Male. Female. Their muffled French words are horrified, talking about calling an ambulance. The police.

Fucking hell. If I’m caught, in a foreign country, it’s game bloody over.

I try to get up. Escape…

The fucking darkness swallows me whole.





Eloise


Everything is empty.

The house. The garden. Me.

I drag my body out of the spacious kitchen, leaving my soup barely touched, and saunter into the gigantic sitting hall. Old wood creaks under my feet. I always wanted to fix it, but what’s the point?

The washed-out carpet barely hides the cracks in the wooden boards. The tall windows’ glass hasn’t been wiped in ages, creating ghostly memories and preventing the late afternoon light from shining inside.

My ancestral home, just like me, is trapped in endless darkness. I’m starting to wonder if there will ever be a way out.

Most of the time, I stop wondering altogether. My shrink calls it dissociation. I call it being numb.

That numbness has been lodged inside me for so long, I don’t think it will ever go away.

I don’t want it to go away. The alternative is destructive.

The alternative means to care, and I have no energy to care anymore. For long months, I’ve been a ninety-year-old woman trapped in a twenty-five-year-old body. And like any ninety years old, I’m waiting for it to simply end.

My attention falls on the framed pictures at the entrance, shadowed by the glimmer of light. My chest tightens. Invisible hands pry their way into my heart, squeezing and stealing my air supply.

My fingers reach for a frame under which is written ‘Mon trésor, Eloise’ in Maman’s French handwriting.

Her treasure. She called me her treasure.

In the picture taken seven years ago, she had a big grin on her face while hugging me on my graduation day from high school. At least back then, she could smile without looking like a corpse. She could still walk and talk and sue the hell out of those scammy insurances companies that wronged her clients.

Then, things went downhill. From failed surgeries to relapses to seizures until her frail body had no fight left.

Until her heart came to a screeching halt.

No one calls me their treasure anymore.

It’s been six months since her death, but I still wake up hoping everything was a nightmare.

All I have left of Maman are these frozen memories. And numbness. Infinite numbness.

I don’t even cry anymore. None of my tears or screams or roaming the hallways like a stray ghost managed to bring her back.

A soft whine pulls my attention to the nudging at my long summer dress. My poodle, Charlotte, stares at me with huge dark eyes, her silver hair in desperate need of a brush. Or better yet, a cut and a wash. I might have forgotten about the vet appointment. And the appointment with my shrink.

I need to get it together. At least for Charlotte.

With a smile, I pick her tiny body in my arms and hug her. She makes little noises of satisfaction.

I sigh against her fur. “I’ll miss you, too, Charlotte.”

Time to do the ‘real life’ thing.

“See you tomorrow.” I set her on the sofa, and when she doesn’t respond, I translate it in French. No matter how much I trained her, she only barks in response when she’s talked to in French.

I pull a piece of paper from my notebook and scribble ‘Charlotte’, then I fold and drop it in an enormous glass jar sitting between the photo frames.

‘Write one thing that makes your day’ is the only coping mechanism I’m keeping from my shrink. Maman and I used to do this since my grandfather’s death.

For six months, Charlotte’s name is the only thing I’ve written.

I make sure her bowl is full of food, pick up my bag and keys and head to the front door. My head cranes to stare at the tall frame of my grandfather, posing against a helicopter. It’s an old picture of him during World War Two.

He was quite the looker. Sharp jawline and dreamy green eyes that Maman and I inherited. Papa was very popular with the ladies, but he only cared about his childhood sweetheart. He married my grandmother and built this mansion for her.

“Je t’aime, Papa,” I say. I used to always tell him that whenever I went out. After his death eight years ago, I kept the habit by addressing his picture.

Papa, Maman, and I were a team. Now, I’m all alone.

But at the very least, I still have this house that contains endless memories of them.

Charlotte follows me until I close the huge wooden door with a cringing squeak. My dog continues watching me through the blurred window. She has an opening to go out, but she usually waits for me inside.

The scent of the sea fills my nostrils. It’s sunny outside, but all I see is grey. Summer is the season of fun and tourism in our southern French town, but all I feel is winter.

My two-storey, large house sits on a hill overlooking a rocky shore of Marseille’s sea. Time ate away at the paint, showcasing patches of stone. The oak forest, leading to the mountain, surrounds the property from all the other three sides.