Chapter 18

At first, Rain found the waiting nearly impossible. She was anxious to get the hit over with, and waiting in the bushes for the time to come was making her nerves raw. But after a while, she couldn't help it as she was pulled into old memories the more she thought about who it was she was going to kill soon.

There was very little known about Daniele "Cutie" Cutillo. She'd seen a few smudged pictures taken when he was a young man with dark brown hair, but it could have been anybody.

Cutillo had become somewhat of a backstage player after the raid that had gotten her brother killed. He'd learned to keep his head down and the FBI had been unable to maintain up-to-date information on him. The last reports Rain had read three years ago had been vague to say the least and hadn't even been able to pinpoint where he lived, let alone his level of criminal activity at that time.

Rain remembered the day, at age fourteen, when she'd been told her brother was dead. She'd been pulled out of history class, a happy occasion in and of itself. But the somber nature of the school clerk who had come to bring her to the headmistress' office had filled her with dread the closer they'd come to the heavy wooden door that marked the old woman's personal domain. She'd expected to be told she was being expelled or that her father had passed away from a heart attack or anything other than the words, "Your brother, Timothy, was killed in the line of duty last night. I'm sorry."

Her first thought had been that the old woman hadn't needed to say his name; she only had one brother and she wasn't likely to forget his name. Her next thought had been more of a feeling of loneliness than anything else. Timmy had been her last connection to their father after their mother had died.

Rain had been eleven when her world had been turned upside down. Before that, she'd enjoyed a loving family with plenty of money to cater to her every wish. Luckily, there had been plenty of discipline to go along with it, so she'd never exhibited the spoiled brat syndrome that so many other children with her social standing usually demonstrated.

But then her mother had been diagnosed with cancer. It had already spread from her breasts to the rest of her body and there was nothing anyone could do except to prescribe medication to ease her pain. Rain had watched as her mother had gone from a vibrant loving woman to a drugged out zombie in the space of a few months. Her father had simply closed down and spent less and less time at home, unable or unwilling to watch as his wife took her final steps to the grave.

One month to the day after Rain's eleventh birthday, her mother had succumbed to her disease. The next day, her brother had moved out and her father had packed her off to an elite girls-only boarding school. She'd lost her mother, her father, her brother, all her friends, and the only home she'd ever known in just a few days.

She'd managed to stay in touch with her brother through constant letters and phone calls, but her father had in essence died before her mother had. The phone calls they'd endured had consisted of inquiries as to her grades, which he'd already known from reports he'd received from the school, and whether she'd needed any money. She never went home for vacations or breaks and he never arrived for a visit.

In later years, and after many psychology classes, Rain had realized the fact that she was almost an exact duplicate of her mother, just as her brother looked like a carbon copy of their father, was probably too much for him to take, but it didn't stop the pain she'd felt at his rejection of her at a time when she'd needed him most in her life.

When her brother had died only three years later, it had been the last straw for both her and her father. The lines of communication had all but dried up and there had been no family left to try to put back together. For all intents and purposes, Daniele Cutillo had murdered her family.

Now, it was time for some paybacks. Rain still loved her father, no matter how deeply she had buried those feelings to hide from the pain they caused, and she felt the loss of his love and support as if it had been taken away from her that very morning. No one could have told her that her father had already pulled away by the time her brother had been killed. As far as Rain was concerned, Timmy had been her last link to both of her parents and Cutillo had shot that link in the head, taking with it any hope she'd ever had of having her family in one piece again.

"Hey, are you all right?" Case whispered.

Rain looked up and blinked away the tears that had started to form in her eyes. It was nearly pitch black where they were. The lanterns that had come on in the garden and the lights that now illuminated the central courtyard were barely getting their light through the bushes up on the hill where the two women had settled. So, Rain was pretty sure Case couldn't see her watery eyes. She was probably just checking in.

"Yeah, I'm ready whenever you tell me it's time," Rain whispered back.

"Good. You want a snack? It's only quarter after seven, so there's plenty of time to digest it," Case grinned in the darkness.

"Okay."

Case slowly and quietly pulled out a bag of peanuts and a small bottle of water from her backpack and handed them over. She took Rain's gun in trade, so that Rain could open the bag without having to worry about her gun going off in the process. She muffled the sounds as much as she could and Case nodded her approval. Rain offered the bag to her, but Case shook her head and held up the two guns in explanation.

"I'll eat after you, so you can cover me," Case whispered.

Rain nodded and upended the bag to pour half a dozen peanuts into her waiting mouth. She crunched through them and then took a moment to open the bottle of water so that she could wash them down. She cringed at the loud cracking sound that came as the safety seal was broken on the cap of the bottle, but Case shrugged her shoulders and shook her head to indicate that it wasn't as bad as Rain thought. Rain's hand around the cap made the sound barely audible and Rain was responding more to the vibration she felt than the actual sound being made.

A few minutes later, they traded activities and Rain held both guns at the ready while Case took time to down some food and water. Rain just shook her head at the almost complete lack of sound that came from Case. It took her half a minute to open her bag of peanuts and it was the same for the water, but the sounds she made blended in with the night sounds of animals and tree branches brushing together, along with the wind moving by.

Case even munched quietly, letting her saliva soften the nuts until she could slowly bring her teeth together to mash the food into a paste that could be chewed without any noise coming from her mouth. Case didn't even appear to be aware of the amount of care she was taking in being quiet and Rain wondered if she would ever have that kind of patience with anything. Then she thought about the past three years of her life and realized she was a lot more patient than she gave herself credit.

When Case was done, she put the trash back in her pack and then retrieved her gun from Rain. She checked her watch and saw that it was only a few minutes before eight. It was time to set up the gun and prepare for their getaway. Case turned off the vibrating alarm on her watch and motioned to Rain that they needed to get into position.

Rain nodded and they gathered up their things and moved out of their hiding place. It was only a dozen paces to the edge of the embankment. It made up a wall of dirt and grass, which sat directly across from the mansion and its garden.

Rain set up the sniper rifle and quickly got into position to line up the sight within the general vicinity of the garden. When she was satisfied, Case motioned her away so that she could take the woman's place and watch for the Target.

Case had already told Rain that on a hit like this, it made more sense for Case to watch and take the strain of the position for the time that they would have to wait for the Target to show up. Then she could let Rain take over with a fresh set of muscles. It was better than Rain having to stay tense the whole time and possibly ruin her very good muscle control by the time she had to make her shot. Though practice could allow a sniper to maintain the same position for hours and still be able to make a perfect shot without any problems, Rain hadn't had time to build up that kind of stamina or discipline.

While Case watched the lighted interior through the dining room's sliding glass doors, Rain worked on relaxing her muscles and practicing the shot in her mind. She knew how important visualization was from her martial arts studies. Sometimes, just seeing yourself perform a maneuver perfectly twenty times in your mind was more beneficial than practicing it twenty times in real life. If you believed you could do it, you had a better chance of making it happen than someone who wasn't so sure.

Case saw the Target stand from the table and nod to his guests before heading toward the sliding glass door in front of him. Case pulled her eye away from the telescoping sight on the rifle and sat up. Rain was immediately at her side and taking her place on the ground in front of the gun. The dirt was warm from Case's body heat and it had a relaxing effect on Rain's nerves, one that had been eluding her.

Case reached for her backpack and pulled out one of the pairs of goggles and put it on. She kept them flipped up, so that they didn't interfere with her already night-adjusted eyes, and then she pulled out the second pair of goggles and prepared them for Rain to put on as soon as the woman was done. Case zipped up the bag and put the straps over her shoulders, so that she wouldn't have to worry about carrying it and possibly dropping it during their sprint.

Rain settled herself and grasped the rifle, her right index finger wrapping around the trigger comfortably. She watched, as Cutillo stepped out onto the cement patio and reached into his inside jacket pocket for a polished silver case of imported cigarettes. He slid one out of its holding slot and brought it to his lips. He replaced the case in his pocket and then went to an outer side pocket to bring out an equally shiny silver lighter. He cupped his hand around the end of the cigarette, as he flipped the lighter open with his other hand, and Rain watched, as he sucked at the stick to help it catch light.

Cutillo put the lighter away and started his stroll through his gardens. Rain kept the crosshairs centered on him as best she could and after a minute, she recognized the path he was taking. He must have had a very good day. He continued to follow one of the paths she had memorized, but every time he paused long enough for her to attempt a shot, one of the Japanese lanterns that lit up the garden got in her way. She could have shot through it, but she knew that would immediately alert the guards to a problem and both she and Case were hoping to already be on their way when it was realized that something was seriously wrong.

Rain went ahead in her mind, following the path that Cutillo was taking, and set up her shot between two bulbous glowing lanterns. All she had to do was wait for Cutillo to enter her sights again. She kept both eyes open and let the overlapping images tell her exactly when the man walked into the shot. He didn't pause, and neither did Rain, when his eyes passed through her crosshairs.

"You killed my brother, you bastard," Rain mumbled, as her finger squeezed and she saw Cutillo fall to the ground.

Rain watched for another moment and saw the hole just above his left eye where her bullet had tunneled into the hard bone of his skull and then easily entered the soft tissue of his brain. A quick scan down his body showed that there was no pulse in his neck and his chest wasn't moving. She aimed another shot for the heart and pulled the trigger again. Sometimes people survived shots to the head against all odds, but adding a shot to the heart would be pretty much impossible for anyone to survive.

"It was only supposed to be one shot," Case whispered, as she pulled on Rain's shoulder to help her up.

"I wanted to make sure," Rain replied calmly, and quickly collapsed the gun and shoved it into the waiting bag Case was holding open for her.

Case shook her head and handed the goggles to Rain after the tall woman had slung the rifle bag over her shoulder.

"Come on, we've gotta go," Case whispered, and took off into the bushes.

Rain flipped on the goggles and took one last look at the dead man below her.

"I got him, Timmy," she whispered, and then turned to chase after Case's retreating form.