Who knew where Mike was? He had surely moved away to a safe distance, before activating the explosive device. He would find her. He just had to follow her position on the GPS from the mobile phone he had given her one hour earlier, when they had paid a visit to one of his refuges in the city to get what they needed. It was a beautiful flat and Amelia had been sorry to leave it so soon. She was so tired. She’d just slept for a handful of hours that night, and now that the tension was loosening up, drowsiness was creeping over her. Her eyelids had become heavy. She was looking forward to the time he reached her so that they could get away and she could rest.
A constant shuffling interrupted her thoughts. She was in an alley running along the back of a block of flats. She had nothing to fear. It had to be just a pedestrian. The weird thing was that the noise was getting closer, although she wasn’t walking slowly at all.
It was just a sensation, a pure instinctive reaction on her part. She glanced behind her.
“Hey, you!” the man called, speeding up as he came towards her.
Monroe!
Amelia started running.
“Stop! Police!” His shoes thundered as he gave chase.
No, not him, no. She couldn’t let him recognise her, least of all let him catch her. She dug deeper into her remaining energies. In spite of her tiredness, her body was accustomed to constant training and it responded, pushing her forward. Her motivation was so strong it gave her the strength she needed. She could leave him behind. Monroe was twenty years older than her and had a rotund belly as proof of his non-existent fitness regime. She smiled, hearing his steps becoming weaker and farther away.
The lane bent to the left. She could do nothing but follow it.
In horror, she stopped. A wall closed off the opposite end of the alley. Oh, fuck.
She resumed running. She had to find a way out, maybe a door, some stairs. There had to be one. She had a gun, she could use it to make her way.
“Stop or I’ll shoot!”
She halted as she heard the intimidation. She knew the detective wouldn’t really shoot at her, given that she had no way out, unless attacked she him. She was really in a trap.
Keeping her back to him, she stretched out her arms. One was holding a jacket, the other a gun.
“Put down your weapon,” he ordered. His voice was closer now; she could hear the shuffling of his feet on the tarmac.
Panting, Amelia crouched down, dropped her jacket and laid the weapon on the ground.
“Slowly.” Now Monroe was very close.
Perhaps, if he had come close enough, she could have taken advantage of his surprise when he recognised her, to disarm him and escape.
“Stand up …” the voice behind her said, with an uncertain tone. There was something else, a rustling.
She turned slowly, until she met his gaze.
“Jennings?” the detective murmured, as his mouth opened in astonishment. “What … what the hell is happening here? Are you …?”
Unwillingly, Amelia’s sight moved to the other thing she’d heard. At the same time that thing placed a gun against the back of Monroe’s head; and he winced. She stepped forward, reaching out with an arm.
“I’m sorry,” Mike said, then he pulled the trigger.
“No!” Amelia shouted in a surge of desperation, whilst her hands reached her chief’s body, as it touched the ground. Bent over him, she kneeled on the tarmac. “No, no, no!” She wept and yelled. She raised her head to look at her partner. “Why did you do that?” She knew full well the answer, but couldn’t contain herself. “He was a good man, an innocent. Why did you kill him?” She turned her attention to the corpse and started shaking it, as if that could be of any use. At last she gave up and broke into inconsolable crying.
Mike crouched down in front of her. He reached out to her face and forced her to look at him. “He’d seen you.” His limpid, blue eyes appeared sad, but his voice was controlled. “We can’t allow somebody to know you’re alive and involved in this business, before we leave the country. I had to do that.”
“It isn’t fair,” she whined, shaking with sobs. She pushed him away with both hands, but he closed in more firmly, seizing her shoulders.
“Amelia!” His was a hard, scolding tone. “You must calm down now. We must go at once.” He took out his rucksack and laid it down. Then he rose and walked away.
She didn’t have the strength to look at what he was doing. She dropped her arms to her thighs, doing nothing but staring at a plastic bottle cap, half crushed, abandoned beside the pavement.
Mike returned. He’d taken her gun and was placing both weapons into his rucksack. He closed it and put it on his shoulders. He offered her a hand, inviting her to stand up; he was holding her jacket with the other. “Come on.”
Tormented, Amelia looked at that hand. A part of her wanted to do nothing. She preferred to stay there and wait for the police, let them arrest her. The people who had died during this insane day, including those she had killed, were guilty of something, in one way or another. But Monroe, he wasn’t. She used to know him, she knew he was a good person. It should not finish this way. “I can’t.”
“Sure you can!” he insisted, stooping. He was staring into her eyes now. “You can’t go back, you know.”
She was listening to him, but struggle to ascribe any meaning to his words.
“Fuck, Amelia, you asked me to bring you with me and now don’t you want to come? Do you want to be arrested and spend the rest of your life in prison?” His face was contracted, livid with anger. “I won’t let you do this. Now it’s me who wants you to come with me.”
She felt her mouth open up, while she welcomed those unexpected words. The choice was between the certainty of a cell, and the unknown future with this man who now, for the first time, stated he wanted her to be with him.
“It isn’t true that I consider you responsible for Yasir’s death. I’m sorry for what I said earlier, okay? I didn’t really think that,” he added, cracking a smile. “Come with me.” He offered his hand again. “Come on.”
Amelia took it and let him help her to stand. Any hesitation of hers had now faded away, just like what was happening with her shadow. She looked up. The sky was closing in. A fresh gust reached her and tousled her hair.
After laying her jacket over her shoulders, Mike put his arms around her and led her away.
A few minutes later they were walking along the pavement of a busy street, among people who didn’t pay any attention to them. A normal couple strolling. Mike was holding her tight with an arm. Amelia had placed hers around his waist and was resting her head on his shoulder. Her face was still wetted by tears, but she’d stopped weeping. She was dizzy, tired. She craved sleep, hoping that when she woke up all the horror would have vanished, or at least lessened.
“Where are we going now?” she asked him in a whisper.
“To see a person who can provide us with new documents and then another one who can give us a lift towards a definitely sunnier place,” Mike replied, while a few raindrops started falling, forming tiny stains on the concrete.
“Tell me that all this includes a good sleep sooner or later. I can’t take it anymore.” She didn’t want to sound funny; she wasn’t in the right mood for that. She really couldn’t take it anymore.
He gave a faint laugh. “You’ll sleep during the intercontinental flight. And I’m quite convinced that once we reach our destination you’ll be able to make use of a comfortable bed for as long as you like.” And he pulled her to him even tighter.
What Amelia was feeling was strange. She was about to leap into the void, following a man whose job was to kill people. Her sense told her she was getting herself into trouble, even deeper than she already was. It was true, though: she had no other choice. Or rather, the other choice involved a life sentence, prison, the end of everything. But she would be lying to herself if she tried to convince herself that she was following him only because she could do nothing else. The uncertainty
towards which she was moving excited her. Whatever happened with him, whether it worked out or not, a new Amelia was about to be born. What she had been before didn’t exist anymore and now she felt free to create a new her, without any more external conditioning from the people who had influenced her life until now.
“My family.” The thought of her parents interrupted her reverie for a moment. “They think I’m dead, they’ll be desperate.”
She felt him shaking his head. “You can’t speak to them.”
“I just want that they know I’m okay.” She didn’t have a good relationship with them, but she couldn’t let them believe their only child was dead. She raised an imploring gaze towards Mike.
“When we reach our destination, we’ll see what we can do. Do you think they can keep this information to themselves … for your sake?”
Perhaps, yes. In spite of everything, they would never do something to harm her. “Yes,” she replied, trying to appear certain.
He studied her for a moment. “Fine,” he said at last and wiped her cheek with a hand.
Amelia smiled at him and held him with her other arm, closing her eyelids and letting him lead her. Yes, things would be all right, somehow.
“My real name is Michael Campbell.” Mike’s words interrupted that moment of peace.
“Michael Campbell,” she repeated, reopening her eyes and turning to him.
He almost laughed, as if she’d said something funny. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard it pronounced by someone else, including myself.”
“Nice to meet you, Michael Campbell.” And it occurred to her that it was really nice. Even if he had been the architect of her descent into hell, she was happy she’d met him. “I’m still Amelia Jennings.”
“Not anymore. You’ll soon have a new name.”
“A new name …” She really would become another person. It didn’t seem such a bad idea either. “Okay.”
She lowered her gaze again, as they continued to make their way amongst hurried employees, parents barely holding their children, people of all races, religions, and cultures, all the mix to be found within the metropolis of London.
“You owe me fifty thousand pounds!” she exclaimed out of the blue. She felt like joking again.
“Really?”
“I’m afraid you do, given that I had to finish the job for which I’d paid you.”
Mike laughed. “I would have done it myself, if you hadn’t stopped me.”
“Ah, all excuses. You can’t do things by halves.”
“All right,” he said. “Well, what’s fifty thousand pounds, when you have twenty million?”
Oh, yeah, small change. “Twenty million.” That was a lot of money. “Listen, Michael Campbell.” She forced him to stop and put herself in front of him. She smiled, amused by what she was about to say. “Would you maybe marry me?”
He looked at her, perplexed, but at the same time he appeared alarmed.
“Well,” she added. “I know it’s a bit quick.” She laughed.
Mike shook his head, as he smiled. He resumed walking and she let him lead her again. “You’re always the hurried one, aren’t you?” he teased her.
“Always,” Amelia replied, as they took the steps down to the Tube.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the members of my publishing team in Italy who worked with me on the original version of “Kindred Intentions”: Gabriella Serrenti, Alessandra Fadda, Silvia Marongiu, Stefania Mattana, Maristella Di Caprio, Marco Mincarini, Giovanni Venturi, Silvia Molinari and Tore Mocci.
Special thanks go to Veronica DeLorenzo, who provided extensive comments for the first draft of the novel; to my parents, who have learned to love every literary genre I’ve tackled; and especially Federico Fadda, my number-one fan and test reader par excellence, for his unwavering love and support.
I would also like to thank all my readers around the world. I hope you enjoyed the read!
About the author
Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli is an Italian science fiction and thriller author.
She has lived in Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy) since 1993, earning a degree in biology and working as a writer, scientific and literary translator, and freelance web copywriter. In the past she also worked as researcher, tutor and professor’s assistant in the field of ecology at “Dipartimento di Biologia Animale ed Ecologia” of the University of Cagliari.
She writes original fiction since 2009.
Between 2012-2013 she wrote and published a hard science fiction series set on Mars and titled Deserto rosso.
The whole Deserto rosso series was also published as omnibus in December 2013 and hit No. 1 on the Italian Kindle Store in November 2014.
Deserto rosso was published in English, with the title Red Desert, between 2014 and 2015.
It includes the following books: Red Desert - Point of No Return, Red Desert - People of Mars, Red Desert - Invisible Enemy and Red Desert - Back Home.
She also authored two more a science fiction novels in Italian: L’isola di Gaia (The Isle of Gaia) and Per caso (By Chance).
Her crime thriller The Mentor (Il mentore, 2014) was published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2015 and became an Amazon international bestseller hitting No. 1 on the Kindle Store in USA, UK, and Australia in October 2015.
Kindred Intentions (Affinità d’intenti, 2015) is her eighth book.
She’s also a podcaster at FantascientifiCast, an Italian podcast about science fiction, an Italian Representative of Mars Initiative, and a member of the International Thriller Writers organization.
She’s often a guest both in Italy and abroad during book fairs, including Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino (Turin Book Fair) and Frankfurter Buchmesse (Frankfurt Book Fair), local publishing events, university conventions as well as classes, where she gives speeches or conducts workshops about self-publishing and genre fiction writing.
As a science fiction and Star Wars fan, she is known in the Italian online community by her nickname, Anakina.
You can find Anakina (or just Carla, as her friends call her) on:
Anakina.blog: ladyanakina.blogspot.com
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The official international website of Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli is www.anakina.eu.
Her official Italian website is www.anakina.net.
More books by Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli
The Mentor (AmazonCrossing, 2015)
Detective Eric Shaw, chief of a forensics team at Scotland Yard, together with Murder Investigation Team detective Miriam Leroux, is investigating the death of a previous offender, killed by two pistol shots: one at his neck, in a style recalling an unusual execution, but preceded by another shot at his groin, which seems having a more personal implication.
However, his attention at work is often distracted by criminologist Adele Pennington, a beautiful woman more than two decades his junior, by whom he realises he is attracted, though his feelings aren’t returned.
Meanwhile, the details about a very similar crime are described in an anonymous blog, unbeknownst by the London police. The a
uthor of the blog signs herself Mina, like one of the victims in a case Shaw investigated many years ago.
Free on Kindle Unlimited.
The Red Desert series:
Red Desert - Point of No Return (2014)
Red Desert - People of Mars (2014)
Red Desert - Invisible Enemy (2015)
Red Desert - Back Home (2015)
Thirty years after the Mars exploration mission ‘Hera’, whose crew died in mysterious circumstances, the ensuing political issues that slowed NASA’s race to conquer space have finally ended. This time the five members of the new ‘Isis’ mission will not travel the 400 million kilometres for a short visit. This time they are destined to become the first colonisers of the Red Planet.
Among them is Swedish exobiologist Anna Persson, come to this adventure to start a new life away from Earth.
But Mars has got an incredible discovery in store for her, a key to a mystery hidden in the depths of Valles Marineris.
If you read Italian, you can find more novels by this author.
La morte è soltanto il principio (2012)
L’isola di Gaia (2014)
Per caso (2015)
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Copyright and disclaimer
Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli asserts the right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, changed, re-published without the prior written permission of the author.
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