Welles laughed, glancing down at his walking stick. “We’ll see.”
Acid left him scooping out a large helping of rice from a silver bowl and sashayed across the dancefloor to where Spook was sat at a table still stuck in conversation with the nerd.
“Hey there,” the nerd cooed, as she sat. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m—”
“Beat it, will you?” Acid cut in. “I need to speak to my friend. In private.”
The man looked at Spook, then back at her.
“Go away,” she mouthed, glaring at him with every fibre of her being.
Not taking his eyes off her, the young man got to his feet and, with a loud tut, slunk away into the crowd.
“Thanks for that,” Spook slurred, sipping at a glass of fizz. “He was sending me to sleep.”
“Not a problem. How you doing?”
Spook shrugged. “Okay. Weddings are really dull, aren’t they?”
“Absolutely dreadful affairs.”
“Sofia looked great, though. Beautiful. Don’t you think?”
Acid narrowed her eyes. “I suppose so. By the way, I’ve got you a present. I meant to give it to you earlier, but I forgot.”
This got the kid’s attention. “A present? For me?”
Acid reached for her clutch purse under the table and removed a small purple velvet box. She handed it over. “Here.”
Spook accepted the gift and turned it over in her hands. She shook it. Held it to her ear. Doing the whole bit.
“Just bloody well open it, will you?”
Acid watched as Spook carefully lifted the top off the box to reveal a single bullet. She lifted it out and held it up in the light where the name Raaz Terabyte could be seen etched into the casing.
“This is one of your special bullets.”
“I didn’t kill her. You did,” Acid said. “You should be the one to lie it down with the others when we get home.”
Spook put the bullet back in the box and placed it on the table. “Does this mean you’ll let me help you from now on?”
“You already have helped me. You found Davros, the Sinister Sisters.”
Spook screwed up her nose. “More than that. I want to help you, properly. Like I said in the helicopter, it doesn’t mean you can’t do it on your own, you just don’t need to any longer.”
Acid chewed on her bottom lip. “I’ll think about it,” she said softly. “Thank you.”
“What? Woah.” Spook arched an eyebrow. “You know, I think my hearing is playing up. I could have sworn you just said—”
“Don’t push it, sweetie.”
Acid reached for her drink, a double Jameson with too much ice. She took a long swig. “I spoke to Welles,” she said, her attention on the glass, swirling around the contents. “Everything’s cool, but like we thought, you’re listed as one of the dead. From the island.”
She glanced at Spook. A look of puzzlement had crumpled her slight features. “Meaning?”
“Meaning you’re truly out of society now. Like me. Neither of us exist anymore.” She raised her glass. “Here’s to being a glorious nobody.”
Acid drank, hoping the alcohol might loosen the knot in her stomach. Because this wasn’t Spook’s fight. It never had been. She was another casualty of the tumultuous whirlwind that surrounded Acid Vanilla.
“Screw it, so what,” Spook said. “I was getting sick of being Spook Horowitz anyway. Maybe I’ll change my name, like you. What do you think of Shinobi Helix?”
“You’ve given this some thought, I see. Would this be why you didn’t erase your own name from the island’s guest list at the same time you erased mine, by any chance?”
A shrug. “Maybe.”
Acid laughed. “You’ll do for me, Shinobi. Cheers.” They chinked glasses. Drank.
“You want another?” Spook asked.
Acid crunched a piece of ice between her teeth, spotting someone across the far side of the room. “Okay, but make it a quick one. Just showing our faces, remember? You get them in. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Where are you going?”
She got to her feet and grabbed up her purse. “Just something I need to do. Back soon.”
Sofia Swann, now Mellencamp (that was going to take some getting used to), threw her arms around her new husband’s neck and kissed him passionately on the lips.
“You having a good day, Mrs M?” he asked her, coming up for air.
“Sure am,” she purred. “But these heels are killing me. You mind if I go get changed into my evening gear already? I really want to be able to dance.”
Mike didn’t take his dark eyes from hers. “You do whatever you want. As long as you’re here. As long as you’re my wife. That’s all I damn well care about.”
Sofia smiled back. A smile she wondered would ever leave her. “Thanks. Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll be back.”
She rode the elevator up to the tenth floor and practically floated along the corridor that led to the Plaza’s lavish Bridal Suite. Her mind was a swirl with all the possibilities she might manifest for herself over the coming years. A house in the Hamptons, two kids, and growing old with Mike. A perfect future, and one she’d almost let go of, lost forever on that terrible island.
Despite the heavy trauma she’d endured, Sofia felt optimistic. She’d already booked in a heavy chunk of sessions with Stephanie, her therapist, and day by day, with Mike’s help, she was putting that awful ordeal behind her.
But not just yet.
Not entirely.
Because another reason Sofia was feeling particularly excited right now was she’d just finished the final edit on an article. Three thousand words about her experience on the island. In fact, another reason she’d slipped away from her own wedding reception just now was so she could give it one last read-through before sending it off in the morning. Sofia didn’t like to tempt fate, but she could easily see the cover of Time. Hell, she could see a Pulitzer. Then a book. A movie, even.
She slid her key card into the lock and waited for the satisfying click-clunk as the green light let her inside. Once there, she headed for the bathroom and checked her mascara, applied a little more lipstick, before moving into the main bedroom where she let out a yelp of surprise.
“What the hell?”
Acid Vanilla was lying on the king-size bed opposite, Sofia’s laptop open in front of her. “Quite the read,” she mused, pursing her cherry-red lips.
“Acid? What are you…? I didn’t… I…”
“You do know you can’t print this, don’t you? Any of it.”
Sofia moved closer. “I don’t mention you. Not by name, at least. Please, I—”
“I told you specifically to leave it alone.”
“But the story, it needs to be told. We can’t let them get away with it.”
“We didn’t, sweetie. They’re all dead.” Acid closed the laptop. “Are there any other copies?”
Sofia looked at the floor. “It’s saved in my cloud account. That’s all.”
“Okay. Spook can delete that easily enough. We won’t touch anything else.”
Sofia peered through her hair as the enigmatic assassin slipped the laptop under her arm and walked up to her. “I’m sorry. I can’t risk it.”
She raised her head to meet Acid’s intense gaze, looking deep into her eyes. “Worth a try, I guess.”
Acid was a foot away from her. She leaned in close. So close Sofia could feel her breath on her cheek. “Don’t ever write about what happened again,” she whispered, the consonants popping in her ear canal. “Not about Engel, or the island, or me. Especially not me. Or I promise you, Sofia, I will kill you, your husband and all your family.”
Sofia swallowed a gulp. “But we’re… I mean, I thought you were…”
“I’m Acid Vanilla. Don’t underestimate me. Ever. Do you understand?”
Sofia nodded. She sure did.
“Good,” Acid said. Then, without warning, Acid’s lips were on hers. They
were soft, warm. Without thinking, Sofia opened her mouth and kissed her back. It was forceful, intense, passionate. And over in moments.
Acid pulled away first, her eyes sparkling in the light from the crystal chandelier above. “I’ll see you around,” she said. “You be good now.”
She gasped a garbled response, but by the time she’d got her words out, Acid Vanilla was gone. A little in shock, she walked over to the bed and sat.
“Fia? Is everything all right?” It was Mike. He put his head around the door.
“Who the hell was that woman? Friend of yours?”
She looked up. “Did you say anything to her?”
“No. She passed me in the corridor as I was coming to check on you. Winked at me. It was kind of unnerving. What did she want? Who is she?”
Sofia lay back on the bed and let out a deep sigh of acceptance. “Don’t worry, darling,” she told her new husband. “She’s just someone’s plus one. In fact, I don’t even know her name.”
The End
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Have you read them all?
The Acid Vanilla series
The Watcher
Acid Vanilla is an elite assassin, struggling with her mental health. Spook Horowitz is a mild-mannered hacker who saw something she shouldn’t. Acid needs a holiday. Spook needs Acid Vanilla to NOT be coming to kill her. But life rarely works out the way we want it to.
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Making a Killer
How it all began. Discover Acid Vanilla’s past, her meeting with Caesar Beowulf, and how she became the deadliest female assassin in the world.
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Stand-alone novels
Double Bad Things
All undertaker Mikey wants is a quiet life and to write his comics. But then he's conned into hiding murders in closed-casket burials by a gang who are also trafficking young girls. Can a gentle giant whose only friends are a cosplay-obsessed teen and an imaginary alien really take down the gang and avoid arrest himself?
Double Bad Things is a dark and quirky crime thriller - for fans of Dexter and Six Feet Under.
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Cookies
Will Miles find love again after the worst six months of his life? The fortune cookies say yes. But they also say commit arson and murder, so maybe it’s time to stop believing in them? If only he could...
“If you life Fight Club, you’ll love Cookies.” - TL Dyer, Author
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About the Author
Over the last twenty years Matthew Hattersley has toured Europe in rock n roll bands, trained as a professional actor and founded a theatre and media company. He’s also had a lot of dead end jobs…
Now he writes Neo-Noir Thrillers and Crime Fiction. He has also had his writing featured in The New York Observer & Huffington Post.
He lives with his wife and young daughter in Manchester, UK and doesn’t feel that comfortable writing about himself in the third person.
For Suzanne & Alba
Copyright
A Boom Boom Press ebook
Ebook first published in 2021 by Boom Boom Press.
Copyright © Boom Boom Press 2015 - 2021
The moral right of Matthew Hattersley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Contents
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THE WATCHER
i
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
SEVEN BULLETS
i
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
THE HUNT
Chapter 1
3 days earlier…
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
The Acid Vanilla Series Page 74