by Elle Kennedy
“That’s just the way Charron is,” she said. “He’s been like that since I’ve known him.”
“And how long is that again?”
“Ten years, give or take.”
“And you trust him?”
“Of course not. I don’t trust anybody.” She rolled her eyes. “But Charron hasn’t done anything to piss me off, and he hasn’t betrayed me, so he’s as trustworthy as it’s gonna get.” Her gaze once again focused on the street. “His text said he has a lot of dirt on Durand. I figured it was worth a meeting.”
She caught sight of a guy in all black walking in their direction, and her hand instinctively hovered over the knife at her hip. Her long flowing top shielded the weapon from view, while her tight jeans hid the two pistols strapped to her ankles.
She relaxed when the kid got closer. Just a twenty-some – thing-year-old Goth wearing earbuds and bobbing his head to his music, no doubt some horrific thrash metal about skulls and death.
Noelle sipped her English breakfast tea and carefully catalogued the other patrons on the patio: two single women reading the newspaper at their respective tables; a trio of young male hipsters chatting animatedly over espressos; a lone young man talking on his smartphone; and a couple in their late teens who’d been arguing for the past five minutes, their voices slowly rising in decibels as the seconds ticked by.
“I know there’s nothing going on between you!” the brunette was grumbling. “But she’s still your ex-girlfriend and I don’t want you hanging out with her!”
Noelle stifled a sigh. Ah, to be young again. In her life, she didn’t lose sleep over whether the man in her bed remained friends with his exes—she was more concerned with putting bullets in people’s heads.
“You don’t get to decide who I’m friends with, Zoé!”
Tuning out the couple, Noelle turned back to Jim, who looked both preoccupied and alert.
“Charron’s late,” he said flatly.
She checked the time on her phone and saw that Jim was right. Charron was two minutes late. It wasn’t an obscene amount of time, but it still troubled her. Her colleague was always on time, and he also happened to be as paranoid as she was, which meant he would’ve shown up early to recon the area, just like she and Jim had.
So where the hell was he?
“We wait one more minute and then we go,” she replied, keeping her voice low.
He nodded in agreement.
“How would you like it if I was still friends with Louis?” the blustering Zoé demanded.
“That’s different!” her boyfriend shot back.
As the couple beside them continued to bicker, Noelle didn’t miss the annoyance in Jim’s eyes.
“Did you talk to Juliet?” he said absently.
“Yeah. She can’t help us out yet. Isabel just wrapped up her undercover job in South Africa—she was cozying up to Juliet’s target—so Jules needs to go in and take care of it. She gave me an ETA of two days.”
A flash of silver crossed Noelle’s peripheral vision. She shifted her head and noticed that an older-model Mercedes had stopped at a red light in the intersection in front of the café.
“Two days is too long.” Jim sounded frustrated.
“She’s working. I can’t just pull my operatives off a job to cater to your every—” Noelle halted abruptly. “Something’s wrong.”
Jim had stiffened at the same time she did. “Yup.”
They were already sliding out of their chairs.
“Hurry,” she murmured as he reached into his pocket for his wallet.
Her instincts hummed like a swarm of bees, the alarm bells in her head a clear indication that something was off about this entire situation.
There was a blur of movement in the corner of her eye, and she turned just in time to see the passenger’s-side window of the Mercedes rolling down.
She automatically went for her knife, which was closer to her hand than the guns at her ankles.
“I don’t care that you’ve known her since you were kids!” Zoé was shrieking. “You can’t see her!”
Noelle glimpsed another flash. A hand at the window, the vague impression of a gun muzzle.
“That’s it! I’m not having this conversation anymore!” Officially fed up with his girlfriend, the teenager at the next table bolted to his feet.
His sudden change of position placed him directly in the path of the Mercedes, effectively blocking Noelle and Morgan from view.
A nanosecond later, the kid’s chest was riddled with bullets as gunshots exploded in the afternoon air.
Chapter 17
Morgan didn’t have to time to think, only to react.
As a rapid wave of gunfire leveled the poor kid who’d been fighting with his girlfriend, Morgan flattened himself on the concrete floor and withdrew his Sig from his waistband.
“Take cover!” he shouted at Noelle.
He didn’t have to bother—she was already on the ground, grabbing at the legs of their metal table so she could overturn it.
Pandemonium had hit the second the Mercedes driver had discharged his gun. Shrieks of terror echoed all around them and footsteps pounded on the pavement as screaming patrons and pedestrians fled the scene. Tables and chairs were knocked over as people ran for their lives, and the clay flower planters on either side of the café’s front door exploded, sharp shards flying in every direction.
Morgan dove behind the cover that Noelle had provided them, then ducked out and opened fire. He half expected the Mercedes to be gone, but the car was still on the street, and its driver was still shooting at them.
The kid who’d chosen the most ill-timed moment to step away from his table lay on the ground five feet away. Flat on his back with his lifeless brown eyes staring up at the cloudless blue sky. Blood pooled all around him, crimson rivers that trickled toward the table Morgan and Noelle were hunched behind, like skinny red fingers trying to claw their way over.
“Xavier!” The petrified scream had come from the dead guy’s girlfriend, who launched herself at him.
Earsplitting wails of horror ripped out of her throat as she touched her boyfriend’s face, unconcerned about her own safety. Sobbing, she planted both hands on his torso and attempted to perform CPR on his bullet-ravaged chest.
“Get down!” Morgan yelled, but the girl was too focused on saving her boyfriend to listen to the warning.
And two seconds later, she wasn’t alive to hear him.
The bullet struck her in the back of the head, an arc of blood spraying out as she collapsed on top of her boyfriend’s body. Dead.
Morgan cursed and glanced at Noelle, whose expression was downright apoplectic.
Her associate had betrayed her. They both knew it, and he could see that she was practically foaming at the mouth over Charron’s act of treachery.
Morgan fired two more shots, then took cover behind the metal table. But there was no return fire, no counterattack from the shooter. Only deafening silence.
For one blessed moment, he thought their assailant had driven off, but then he heard the slam of a car door, followed by the telltale click of someone sliding a magazine into place.
Shit. The shooter was out of the car, reloading his weapon.
Ballsy motherfucker.
A second later, they were under attack again. The sharp rat-tat-tat of a submachine gun blasted in the air. Bullets struck every corner of the patio, splintering the ceramic planters, bouncing off metal and concrete. The window behind them shattered into a million pieces, covering him and Noelle with a shower of glass.
When Morgan popped out to fire again, he caught a glimpse of a lanky man in black pants and a tight black muscle tee. The man staggered as Morgan’s shot connected with his chest, but it didn’t slow him down.
Fuck. The asshole was wearing body armor.
; Screams continued to echo all around them, panicked footsteps, the squeal of car brakes as every vehicle on the road came to a screeching halt.
Through it all, the shooter kept advancing on their table like the goddamn Terminator.
Morgan turned to Noelle with urgency. “He’s wearing body armor. Head shots only.”
“Then shoot him in the fucking head.” Her beautiful face was smudged with dirt, courtesy of one of the exploding flowerpots, but there wasn’t an iota of fear in her eyes.
If anything, she seemed completely unfazed by the chaos around them.
“Hard to do when he’s waving that fucking Uzi around,” Morgan shouted over the din.
Another hail of bullets rocked the table, and he grimly noted that soon it would be nothing but a metal skeleton. At which point, they’d be royally screwed.
They had to make a move, and it needed to be now.
A soft curse of pain suddenly left Noelle’s mouth, but when he glanced over, he didn’t see any signs that she’d been hit. “You good?”
She nodded in response, gripping her pistol with ease. “I’m great. Now can we please take care of this bastard already?”
Adrenaline sizzled in his blood as his gaze met hers. He didn’t have to say a word. Her imperceptible nod told him that she’d read his mind and was in total agreement about the unspoken plan that had formulated between them.
“One,” he murmured.
Noelle let go of her gun and wrapped her fingers around the ox-bone handle of her knife.
“Two...”
She gave another brisk nod.
“Three.”
They sprang to action in one simultaneous motion. Noelle’s knife hissed through the air and lodged into the shooter’s upper arm, causing him to falter and lower his gun, just for a split second. But a split second was all Morgan needed to finish it.
One bullet. Right between the eyes.
And the Terminator went down like a light.
In the ensuing silence, all Morgan could focus on was his even breathing, the steady beating of his heart, the lingering adrenaline coursing through his veins.
Then he drew a breath, stood up, and offered Noelle his hand.
After a beat of hesitation, she took it and allowed him to help her up.
As sirens howled in the distance, Morgan could feel dozens of shocked stares boring into his back. He looked around warily, unhappy about their audience. People were cowering behind trees and lampposts, hiding inside bus shelters and behind newspaper boxes. Every pair of eyes was glued to the grisly scene in front of the café.
Morgan approached the dead man on the pavement and studied his face, then glanced at the woman by his side.
“Charron?” he prompted.
“What the hell do you think?” She scowled, her incensed gaze fixed on her associate’s corpse. “Come on. We have to go.”
Morgan nodded. Yep, it was definitely time for them to get the fuck out of there. They couldn’t afford to be around when the cops showed up and the entire area turned into a three-ring circus.
“We can’t go back to my town house,” she muttered. “It’s been compromised now. I’ve got another safe house near the Right Bank.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
He started to walk off, but Noelle didn’t follow. To his surprise, she sank to her knees next to Charron’s body and leaned forward so she could withdraw her blade from the dead man’s arm.
“Are you kidding me?” Morgan couldn’t stop a snort of amusement.
“It’s my favorite one,” she said defensively, sheathing the knife before gracefully rising to her feet.
He rolled his eyes at her, then concealed his own weapon by shoving it back in his waistband.
A moment later, the two of them hurried away from the scene of the crime, leaving dropped jaws and dumbfounded stares in their wake.
• • •
“That son of a bitch. Goddamn traitor.”
Noelle stormed into the living room an hour later, still holding her cell phone in her hand. But it didn’t stay there long—she was so livid she ended up hurling the phone at the cream-colored wall, putting a dent in the drywall and knocking an expensive framed print right off its hook. It came crashing to the hardwood right along with the phone, which slid under the end table and disappeared beneath the leather sectional sofa.
Noelle made no move to rescue the cell. Fuck, she’d probably shoot the damn thing if she ever saw it again.
“I take it you figured out why your friend decided to shoot at us?”
To her annoyance, Jim looked like he was fighting back laughter. He was standing near the window of the elegant penthouse, sipping on a bottle of Stella Artois he’d found in the fridge earlier.
He’d offered her one before she’d disappeared into the bedroom, but she’d declined. She was too riled up to drink, and after what she’d just discovered, she was even more pissed off.
“Apparently Gilles Girard decided to take away my exclusive claim to you,” she said bitterly. “The contract on your head went wide last night.”
“Shit.”
“Yep, every contract killer in Europe will be coming after you now.” She cursed under her breath. “Son of a bitch Charron. The second I asked him for intel about Durand, he must have known that I was in contact with you.”
“Guess you weren’t as close as you thought,” he said dryly.
“We weren’t close at all. But there’s a little something called professional courtesy,” she grumbled. “You don’t go around poaching other people’s hits or trying to kill another contractor. What happened to ethics?”
This time Jim didn’t try to hide his amusement. The infuriating man started to laugh, for so long she almost marched over and slugged him.
To make matters worse, her arm was bleeding again, thanks to the piece of jagged metal that had sliced into it during the shoot-out. She’d just finished bandaging the wound, but evidently she’d misjudged its depth. Damn thing required stitches after all.
“Before we get into a ludicrous discussion about ethics,” Jim said, “why do you think it was your questions about Durand that led Charron to connect you to me? I thought Girard went out of his way to keep his client anonymous.”
“I already told you. Charron knows everyone in France. He probably knew something we didn’t that connected Girard and Durand.”
She crossed her arms and tried to apply pressure to her wound without alerting Jim, but his sharp gaze didn’t miss a thing.
“You’re hurt.”
There was something hauntingly familiar about the way he phrased it, the flat tone he’d used. It took a few seconds, but it suddenly dawned on her that he’d spoken those same words, in that same tone, on the day they’d met.
And he wore the same fierce expression now as he had then.
She took a nonchalant step toward the door. “I’m fine. Some metal ricocheted off the table during the shoot-out and cut up my arm. I’m going to stitch it up now.”
Before he could respond, she left the living room and strode down the corridor toward the rear of the penthouse, where the bedrooms were located. She rarely ever used this safe house; a few years ago she’d pretty much given it to Bailey, who stayed there between jobs.
Bailey had been out running errands when they’d arrived, and Noelle was genuinely eager for the woman to get back. It would be nice to finally have a buffer between her and Jim. He evoked so many conflicting emotions inside her, and when it was just the two of them, those emotions always managed to breach the surface. It was much easier to mask them when other people were around.
Noelle entered the guest bedroom she’d chosen to crash in. Even though she technically owned this place, it was more Bailey’s than hers, and she wasn’t about to commandeer the master bedroom from her operative.
And
people said she didn’t have a heart.
She stripped out of her long-sleeve shirt and carefully peeled the bandage off her arm, cursing when she saw the rapid flow of blood seeping out of the cut. With a sigh, she went into the bathroom to grab a first-aid kit, returning to the main room just as Jim appeared in the doorway.
“Give me the kit and sit on the bed,” he ordered.
“I can stitch it up myself.”
“Sit on the fucking bed.”
Too tired to argue, she plopped down on the edge of the mattress and held out the first-aid kit.
He took it from her, then rummaged around until he’d retrieved a needle, antiseptic wipes, a pair of medical scissors, and transparent, dissolvable stitches.
“You want a painkiller or something?” he said gruffly.
“No.” She winced as he used a disinfectant-soaked gauze pad to mop up the blood. “I don’t like painkillers.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“You do?”
He nodded. “You told me that when we first met. The doctor who splinted your fingers tried to prescribe you some painkillers, but you refused. I asked you about it later and you said you didn’t like taking pills because you needed the pain to be fresh. You said you didn’t want to forget it.” She felt his blue eyes probing her face. “But you never told me why.”
She hesitated at his unspoken question, then decided there was no reason not to answer it.
“Because of René,” she said with a small shrug.
From the corner of her eye she saw him thread the needle. Then he gripped it between his deft fingers, poised over her flesh. “Ready?” he murmured.
“Do your worst.”
She didn’t even flinch when the needle pricked her arm. She was a master when it came to blocking out pain.
“So...” Jim cleared his throat as he skillfully maneuvered the needle through her skin. “What does René have to do with you taking pills?”
“At the beginning...when he first came to my bed...” She gritted her teeth as an acute pain gripped her flesh. “I didn’t want to feel anything, so I stole some of my mom’s painkillers. I figured if I popped enough of them, I’d get really drowsy, and then I wouldn’t have to focus on what he was doing to me. I wanted to be so numb that I couldn’t feel a damn thing.”