by Amity Cross
Suddenly, X began to cough, water pouring from his lips, and he rolled onto his side, wincing as the pain from his gunshot wound tore through his body.
“Christ,” I said with a hiss, staring up at the lit dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. Talk about a close call.
X moaned loudly and began to shiver violently.
Finding a blanket in one of the compartments along the side of the boat, I propped him in the corner by the controls and wrapped it around his shivering form.
“Hawkes?” he asked thorough chattering teeth.
“Fuck, you’re a tough bastard to kill,” I replied, glad to see he had his wits about him.
“Mercy.” He tried to push himself up, but all he did was make the boat rock.
“All in good time, my friend,” I said. “I’ve got to get you to shore before you die of hypothermia. I’m not even going to start on that bullet wound.”
“Moltke…”
“He’s gone,” I said with a frown.
“I need to go after him,” X exclaimed, trying to stand again.
Shoving him back down, I shook my head. “All in good time. You can’t chase the fucker when you’re dead.”
He sank back into the corner and clutched the blanket tighter around himself.
Turning, I brought the engine to life and powered the speedboat back toward the shore. The current had brought us a long way while I fought to bring him back to life, the commercial wharfs of East London lit up on either side of us.
“Mercy!” X moaned beside me, his voice audible above the engine noise.
Glancing down at him, he looked like hell warmed up, or in his case, frozen over.
“I’ll get you back to her, X,” I said. “Don’t you worry about that.”
My safe house was dark when we arrived.
X shivered in the backseat as he lay on his side bleeding all over the upholstery. I was going to have a grand time explaining that to the detailer when I went to get it cleaned.
I practically dragged X inside, his arm flung over my shoulder, his feet scraping along the ground and up the stairs like a zombie.
Helping him onto the kitchen table, I stripped his damp clothing off his body and cast it aside. He all but fell back onto the hard surface as I lay a blanket over him to help bring his temperature back up. Grabbing a reading lamp from the lounge room, I plugged it into the socket by the table and pointed the globe toward the wound, illuminating the true extent of the damage.
Rolling X’s body to the side, I placed a clean sheet under his shoulder, then retrieved a box of latex gloves from the cupboard and pulled a pair on my large hands. It had been a long time since I had to administer this kind of first aid, but as the situation presented itself, the procedure came back to me like I’d never skipped a day.
Feeling the wound with my fingers, I examined the location of the bullet. Common sense told me to leave it where it was, get the bleeding under control, and stitch him up…but that all depended on how deep the metal was embedded into his shoulder.
I’d witnessed the fight from afar and through a sheet of rain, so I had no idea how close Moltke had been when he pulled that trigger. My finger hit rough metal, then tendon and bone, and I knew I had to do something about it. X could lose the functionality in his right arm, and he’d curse me to hell and back if he ended up a handicapped assassin.
Grabbing my surgical kit, I pulled out my tools and selected a pair of long nose pliers. Back in the day, I’d been required to patch up a lot of guys on the go. Gunshots, blunt force trauma…and many more gruesome wounds that required a steady hand and an analytical mind to patch up without proper medical care. When you were in the employ of bad men, hospitals were a no-go zone. This old dog had picked up a lot of tricks in his day.
Beginning my work, I dug into the wound, dabbing the blood that rushed to the surface with a wad of gauze in my left. X’s eyes flew open as I searched for the bullet, the tip of the pliers scraping against bone.
He grunted, his mind obviously foggy with cold and the pain that was no doubt assaulting every nerve ending in his body.
“Apologies,” I said as he gritted his teeth. “I’d leave it in, but it’s far too close to your shoulder. I assume you want to use your arm again.”
X grunted, his hands tightening around the edge of the table. His eyes were glassy, but he held on, not uttering a single word.
Resuming my task, I hooked the pliers around the bullet and plucked it from his flesh. It clinked as I dumped the little shard into a dish, blood clinging to the disfigured metal. Then I packed the wound with gauze, allowing the flow of blood to begin to clot before I attempted to sew it back together.
“Some swan dive, X,” I said, holding my palm firmly against his shoulder. His gaze met mine, and I could see the anger plain as day. “I know your pride is hurt, but get the fuck over it.”
He allowed his eyes to close, effectively ending the conversation. Pride and arrogance in his work was something he had in common with Vaughn.
Checking to see if the blood flow had begun to clot, I peeled away the gauze and was satisfied there wasn’t too much damage. Time to sew him up, disinfect, and slap a bandage on it. That was the extent of what I or anyone else was able to do.
In the space of fifteen minutes, he’d been shot and drowned…until I plucked his sorry ass from the drink. X had been lucky, all things considering.
Readying a needle, I sat back onto a stool and fumbled for my glasses. Fucking old age.
X’s eyes cracked open, and I shook my head in bewilderment. “You should have taken the fucking shot when you had the chance.”
He grunted, his eyes rolling back into his head, and just like that, he was out again.
Damn, X was one tough motherfucker.
Chapter 17
X
When you’re good at everything you do, failing hurts more than just your pride.
The faint patter of rain reached my ears first, droplets landing against a window to my left, and the soft sound of wind forcing its way through branches and leaves of a tree that stood just outside. That was the thing about being an assassin. Knowing your environment and the sounds it made, even through darkness, was a part of the whole. It was an item on a list that affected the accuracy of the shot.
My shoulder felt tight. I felt the flesh pulsing, heat radiating from the wound like the searing flame from a furnace.
Water rushed to meet my plummeting body, and I jerked upright, my eyes flying open.
“Mercy!” Her name exploded from my lips, my heart hammering in my chest.
I felt a hand on my chest and another pushing on my forehead, forcing me back down. I struggled at first, then I remembered the boat.
“Easy,” Hawkes said, settling me back down onto a couch. “You don’t want to tear the stitches.”
My limbs felt heavy, my movements sluggish at best, and I raised my good arm, placing my hand on my forehead. Hot.
“Where am I?” I asked, my voice sounding faint and far away.
“You’re safe,” he replied.
“What…” I tried to remember what had happened, but it all got a little fuzzy after the bridge. I was fighting Moltke, and then I was here. A few blurry images and sensations filled in the gap, reminding me of a time in the not too distant past where I was remembering a life that I was conditioned to forget. The thought made me sick to the stomach, and I took a few deep breaths.
“If you’re going to throw up, there’s a bucket,” Hawkes said, nodding toward the floor.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I drawled, the contents of my stomach beginning to settle.
“Even the best of us blow at some point,” he said with a chuckle. “Glad to see you’re not dead.”
I frowned.
“I saw you fall from the bridge,” he went on. “Had to fish you out of the Thames…”
He trailed off, and I knew he wasn’t telling me the whole story. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know, but my chest felt t
ender. I’d probably drowned. The thought should have alarmed me, knowing if Hawkes hadn’t been there I’d be dead, and Mercy would be forced to face Moltke on her own, but I was still very much alive.
Mercy… My mind turned to her, and my heart flared. I’d made her a promise. I’d planned to kill Moltke, and he’d all but killed me instead. I’d planned to return to her and…
“Shall I contact Mercy?” Hawkes asked like he could read my fucking mind.
“No.”
“You don’t want to go back to her?”
“No,” I snapped, pain searing through my shoulder. “No, I need to do this alone.”
“Why?” he asked as he cleaned up his workbench. “After seeing you two work together when we tracked Lafayette, I don’t see the issue.”
“I don’t need the lecture, Hawkes,” I said, pressing lightly on the bandage he’d wrapped around my shoulder. The white gauze was tinged with red, the area hot to the touch.
“I see,” the old man mused, pushing his glasses up his nose. Since when did Hawkes wear glasses? “It’s about your pride.”
Grimacing, I pushed to a seated position, my head spinning. “What did I say about the lecture?”
“I see it going one of two ways,” he went on, ignoring my shitty tone of voice. “You go into this blindly, driven by your rage, and shoot at anything that moves in hopes you’ll find your target. Or you take your time, watch and listen, then line up your strategy and trap him in a corner.” He shook his head. “One is fast, the other takes time. I know enough about your training to know which is the more logical approach.”
I rolled my eyes, my head beginning to pound with the mother of all headaches. “How long have I been here?”
“About a day.”
A day? Moltke could be anywhere, and Mercy… I needed to leave this place and settle the score before he went after her. He knew she hadn’t died that night at the wharf, but after my unexpected swim in the Thames, he couldn’t be so sure about me.
“I need to leave,” I said, realizing I was pretty much naked underneath the blanket Hawkes had draped over me.
The old man nodded at the armchair next to the couch behind me. “I washed your clothes.”
At least he knew the stakes and wasn’t trying to keep me from leaving. I turned my gaze toward the chair where I saw the neatly folded stack of clothing and my boots drying out by the radiator.
Hawkes was like a father figure for all of the wayward assassins and criminals that came out of London. I referred to him as an old man, but he couldn’t be anymore than fifty. For our kind of life, that was way past retirement age…and a fucking feat of strength and cunning to have survived that long.
He raised an eyebrow. “If you insist on leaving, you’ll want to at least wash up.” Gesturing to the hallway behind him, he added. “Bathroom’s through there.”
Standing on shaky feet, I collected my clothes and shuffled down the hall to the bathroom. The room itself was a tiny little cubicle—as the usual minuscule flats in London tended to be. A shower over a bath, a toilet crammed into a corner, and a mirror and basin in the last remaining square inch. Still, the water was hot, and steam filled the space quickly.
Rubbing my hand over the condensation on mirror, I pulled at the gauze, revealing Hawkes had stitched up the hole the bullet had torn through my flesh. Three little black loops pulled the puckered skin together. It was crude, but not half bad for an old guy with glasses.
It would hinder my range of motion, but there was nothing I could do about that. The pain was manageable. I’d been through much worse and was here to talk about it. MI6 trained all of its high-level field agents to compartmentalize pain in the event of capture. I’d forgotten a lot of that training, but it was also something The Watchman had focused on. Pain was a driving force. It was a source of energy that could be manipulated and used toward the final goal.
The pain could be managed.
Stripping off my boxers, I stepped into the shower, hissing as the water stung against the wound, fueling my need to kill that fucking bastard Moltke.
As the water pounded on my back, I anchored myself against the wall, my thoughts driven back to the river. I didn’t remember hitting the surface, nor did I remember being dragged away by the current. If I had been on the brink of death, my heart still in my chest, then what people said about there being a light at the end of the tunnel was all bullshit. My life didn’t flash before my eyes, either.
Instead of there being fire and brimstone, was hell just a vast, empty nothingness? Darkness that stretched on forever and ever? Where souls were trapped for eternity?
Was that what awaited me when I inevitably died? No matter the things I’d done to atone, learning to care and to love, protecting the woman I loved… Was it ever going to be enough?
Maybe I was destined for hell, no matter what I did.
If that were the case, then after I killed Moltke, I’d convince Mercy we should leave MI6 and live our lives on our own terms for as long as we still drew breath. Hell was a long time dead without the sweet memory of burying my cock inside her body.
Shutting off the water, I climbed out of the shower and dried myself off, feeling much better now that warmth spread through my bones. I dressed the bullet wound once more, not bothered in the slightest that I’d have yet another scar to add to my collection, and pulled on my jeans and T-shirt, funneling the pain away to another place where it couldn’t touch me.
When I opened the door, I was surprised to find the scent of cooked food on the air. Following my nose, I found Hawkes bashing around in the kitchen. He’d laid out a plate of food—some kind of stew and mash potato—a glass of water, and some white pills.
“Food and pain killers,” he said before pushing a little white bottle toward me. “And a couple more for the road.”
The bottle rattled as I picked it up and read the label. Codeine. Swallowing my pride, I downed the pills that were sitting beside the glass of water. Then I slid into the chair across the table from him and picked up the fork.
Shoveling the food into my mouth with no regard for common table manners, Hawkes began dishing up a serve of tough love.
“Do you have a plan?” he asked. “I assume you intended to finish this Moltke off last night.”
“I will have a plan once I can reassess the lay of the land,” I replied between mouthfuls. “He would have changed his operation after my supposed death. Upped his timetable.”
“He has the hard drive Mercy warned me about,” Hawkes said. “If she knows he has it, then so do MI6.”
“She doesn’t know if I stopped him or not…” I trailed off, glancing up at him. “Does she…”
He shook his head. “I haven’t been in contact since I forwarded her message to you.”
So she didn’t know I’d been shot or that I’d made it out. Unless Moltke had gotten to her and dug his boot in. I couldn’t go back to her, not yet… If she thought I was gone, then was my continued duplicity worth it? The monster inside of me was whispering sweet nothings into my ear, urging me to use her anguish as a tool in the fight against Moltke.
“This isn’t a simple hit,” Hawkes went on, oblivious to the thoughts inside my head. “It’s okay to ask for help. Mercy Reid is the next best thing to cloning your sorry ass.”
He was right, but I couldn’t lose her. If Mercy died, I couldn’t go on, and everything we’d fought for would be for nothing. A better world, a better life, a better soul… It would mean shit if she wasn’t by my side. That’s why I had to protect her. That’s why I’d tied her to that bed and betrayed her trust. In time, she’d understand. I’d get to Moltke long before he managed to get to her.
“This is my mission,” I said. “The last. After this, it’s obscurity.”
Hawkes didn’t reply, he just took a deep breath, his expression giving away nothing. Now I was beginning to understand why Vaughn had valued his confidence so much.
Swirling around on his stool, he opened the kitchen
drawer and pulled out a Glock pistol. Checking the mechanism, he loaded a clip before retrieving some spare ammunition. Shit, the things that man kept in the junk drawer.
Placing the gun on the table, he slid it toward me, and it landed gently beside the little bottle of pills.
His gaze met mine, and I already knew what pearl of fatherly wisdom was going to come forth before the words even formed in his mouth.
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
Chapter 18
Mercy
Staying away from that meet was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do.
I understood I had to remain in hiding until I received word from X. He didn’t have to explain it to me like a baby, I knew most of his thought processes as well as I knew my own these days, and everything I knew told me to leave him be. He’d come back when he was ready.
It didn’t mean I wasn’t still extremely pissed at him. He’d fucked me like he’d never fucked me before—the best sex of my life if you asked me—then he’d tied me to the bed like a moron. Talk about a fuck and run.
I glanced at Jackson as he sat in the armchair across from my position on the couch. The ‘Mercy naked and tied to the bed incident’ was now and forever a shelved topic.
For the time being, we had limited ourselves to the safe house. After contacting Hawkes about the hard drive, I was reluctant to do more. Meddle any more than I already had and I might jeopardize X’s mission. Bringing Moltke to justice, whether it was in handcuffs or a body bag, was our first and foremost priority.
Still sucked that I had been benched…involuntarily.
Reaching for my bag, I pulled out the file I’d brought along with us when we’d cleared out of the cottage and came to London to begin working for Section Seven. A little light reading to pass the time. Maybe it would offer a clue or some insight into what we were facing now. Doubtful, but there was hope.
“What’s that?” Jackson asked, watching me flip through the wad of papers.