The Assassin In 5F

by Nana Malone

  “One of your people is willing to let you die.”

  “No. I need to call it in.”

  “And you will, from somewhere safe.”

  “And let me guess, you've got somewhere safe?”

  “Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. We'll pop by my place for more supplies.”

  “What, so you're going to take me to Exodus? Am I your prisoner now?”

  “If you want to play a prisoner game, we can have fun with that. But no. I just want to keep you off the street and intact for now. We'll come up with a better plan when we have some breathing room.”

  She winced as she pressed her side that I’d just applied the gauze to.

  I had hidden the medical tapes with the gauze and eased it down. “It's rough and dirty, but it'll do the trick. It'll hold.”

  “Thank you.”

  I blinked down at her. “What? Was that an actual word of thanks?”

  “You know, I liked you a lot better before. You were less of a dick.”

  I chuckled then. “I like you a lot better now. You're mouthier. I can see the real you peeking through.”

  “Was that a barb? Because let's be real, we were both lying.”

  I pressed my lips together. She had a point. We had both been lying to one another. And I could be mad at her for it or accept it.

  She raised one brow. “You recognize I didn't tell you who I really was because it was classified, right?”

  “Same. So we're in the same boat. We lied to each other, and we have no idea of the truth about each other. So we can fight about it, or we can get the hell out of here.”

  Chapter 8

  Lyra

  “What the hell did you do to her?”

  Addie sounded annoyed, and I wasn't sure exactly what was wrong. Everything was fine, right?

  I was floating down, and I tried to turn into it and find solid ground, but a searing pain sliced through my side. Then I sat up with a jolt. “Fuck me.”

  Addie was quick to my side. “Oh God, she's still bleeding.”

  Then there were hands. So many fucking hands on me.

  And then I remembered. Marcus. Marcus was there, and I’d been shot.

  Bit by bit, the events of the last few hours came back to me, including my demands that Marcus use my phone to call Addie and let her know what happened.

  Marcus’s voice was like whiskey promises. “Hold on, love. We’re checking your suture.”

  That seemed perfectly reasonable. Once I was fully awake, I knew not to move. I felt the pain. “I'm fine. I'm fine, Addie.”

  “Sorry to break it to you kid, but you hardly look fine.”

  “It’s just a flesh wound. It hurts like a son of a bitch, like someone stabbed me with a hot poker, but other than that, I'm fine.” Funny thing was, I didn’t sound fine.

  I lifted my head and watched as she checked Marcus’s work. “All right. I guess in an emergency, this isn’t that bad. Let’s get a fresh dressing on it, and then we'll get her cleaned up. Did you give her antibiotics?”

  Marcus shook his head. “Not yet, but I have some here, fortunately. I'll have someone drop a fresh pack off at the new safe house.”

  Safe house? Was that where we were? I didn’t remember much after stopping at his flat for supplies. By the time we stepped outside, my vision was graying.

  I remembered nothing after that.

  A quick glance around told me I was in a minimalist apartment. Cold gray walls. Barely any furniture. No personal touches. A blank slate.

  “You thought of everything. Too bad you’re a big dick.”

  I heard Marcus mutter something under his breath along the lines of, “Well, I have a really big dick.”

  When Addie turned to me, she smirked. “He’s hot, but he’s rude.”

  All I could do was laugh. “Would you two stop bickering for a moment, please? My head hurts.”

  Marcus disappeared for a second and came back with the antibiotics and a glass of water that I downed.

  Once Addie had my wound cleaned and rebandaged, she sat back and asked, “Who came for you?”

  I shook my head. “I wish I knew. I was dead asleep. Next thing I knew, I had guys in my house who were very enthusiastic about putting holes in my body.”

  She turned and scowled at Marcus. “And just how did you end up there?”

  “I'd been watching her place,” he said matter-of-factly.

  Her brows lifted.

  He only shrugged. “It's a long story.”

  Addie stepped back. “Oh, it's my night off, so I have time. Explain this long story to me.”

  I cleared my throat and filled her in on the details.

  “After our research session yesterday, I went home to bed. I didn’t talk to anyone.” Addie frowned. “And there was no way anyone could have trailed us. We were clean. So what the hell?”

  “Unless someone has had a plan to attack Lyra while she’s vulnerable all along. Victus has been watching her place for a week.”

  Addie shook her head. “Impossible. The Firm does regular sweeps.”

  “Like I told Lyra, someone hasn’t been doing their job.”

  Addie sat on the edge of my bed. “There’s no way. I’ll talk to Roz. This has to be a mistake.”

  I shook my head. I knew what she was feeling. The same slice of betrayal that I’d already experienced. “Until I know what’s going on, we tell nobody.”

  “You don’t mean Roz, though. She trained you.”

  I hated it too. But a hit squad had come to my house. “Not even Roz, Addie. I mean it.”

  “Jesus, this is messed up.”

  It was only going to get worse. “Ads, we've been fed a bill of goods about Exodus. I don’t think they’re any worse than we are. The point is, someone's gone out of their way to make us believe that they are.”

  “You're saying someone at The Firm wants us to not trust Exodus?”

  “I'm not sure. But we need to look into why. The truth. I’m tired of being dicked around.”

  Addie ran her hands through her blond curls. “Okay, so do you think someone inside The Firm told them where to find you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But to send six guys after you? That's overkill. You send one assassin. A sniper on a roof somewhere takes you out with a single bullet. Reasonable, if you can call it that. Not in your apartment while you're sleeping. Even then, you send just the one. Not six.”

  My stomach knotted, twisting and turning in a ball that bounced all over my belly. “Someone wanted to make sure, I was very, very dead. The question is, why?”

  Addie frowned. “Is it Tyler?”

  “I'm not sure. It could be.”

  Marcus frowned. “The same twat I met at your office that day?”

  I pursed my lips at him. “Yeah, that's him.”

  “Your ex?”

  I sighed, seeing where this was headed. “Yes, my ex. But honestly, I'm not sure you can even call it that. I was only an assignment to him.”

  Marcus's brows lifted then. “An assignment?”

  “Yes. When I started as an agent, I was too green. If there were any sexual situations on missions, I essentially froze up. I couldn't do my job. So Roz had Tyler brought in to teach me how to be more at ease. He's very good at his job, because he managed to convince me we actually had a relationship beyond him teaching me to be at ease with my body.”

  “I hate that arsehole.”

  “Yeah well, that makes two of us.”

  Marcus turned to Addie. “I have the proof her place was surveilled.”

  Her gaze snapped to his. “Show me. Maybe I’ll recognize someone.”

  Addie crossed her arms as she studied Marcus’s laptop where his surveillance of me for the last week had been recorded. “I'm telling you, Lyra, Tyler is fishy. His appearance back in LA was timed with Prochenko’s reappearance and all these missions where we've had exposure. And okay, fine, I'm willing to accept that maybe Exodus isn't as bad as we’ve been led to believe, but those
missions have all nearly gone bad. And this isn't the first time. Three years ago Tyler was on several missions that went wrong. I always assumed that's why he got transferred to New York for a while.”

  My brow furrowed. “You think they sent him for retraining?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. I always thought retraining meant that you would never be seeing them again, but he’s still kicking.”

  I frowned. “I'm not sure how we keep chasing Tyler down. I have been ordered on mandatory vacation by Roz. I don't want to expose you, Addie. I do want to know what Tyler is up to, though.”

  “I'm going to keep looking into him. He's going to make mistakes somewhere. What are you two going to do?”

  Marcus rubbed his jaw. “Let's go back to the beginning. Prochenko came after us. So it's back to him. Let's figure out what the fuck Victus wants with us.”

  * * *

  Lyra

  “Can we trust her?” Marcus asked.

  In the dark, in our new safe house, I lay wide awake, wondering how this was now my life. What I should have been doing was going into the office to confront Tyler. But something was off there. My mentor was either protecting him or couldn't see what I saw. So going to Roz wasn't safe. And currently, I was meant to be on vacation.

  If I used the next few days carefully, I could come up with incontrovertible proof and be rid of him. I just had to stay this course that I never planned to be on. This was such bullshit because I loved a plan. I thought about plans, executed them, made backup plans for my plans, and this whole depending-on-other-people thing was really sticking in my craw. And now this fool was asking if I could trust the only dependable person in my life?

  “ Yes, we can trust Addie. Besides, she's all I’ve got at the moment. Roz has to follow protocols.”

  To my left, his voice was low. “I'm sure I don't have to tell you what will happen to us if the wrong people get hold of your location right now.”

  I resented that nudge. As if I didn’t know I’d almost died. “What is your problem with her? With us?”

  “I don't have a goddamn problem. This isn't personal. When are you going to see that?”

  “You know, it feels personal.”

  He sighed. “I get that. I really do. But I'm just trying to keep you safe.”

  “Why? Obviously, what we had wasn't real.” Even as I said the words, I didn’t believe them.

  He was silent for a long moment. “You know, I could spend the next three days trying to convince you that it was real, but you've already made up your mind.”

  “What am I supposed to think?”

  “You're not supposed to think anything. I just want to keep you alive.”

  “So I’m just another job to you?”

  “Christ, you are so unbelievably stubborn. I can't even imagine what it's like to be that stubborn. You can't see the truth when it's right in front of you. To me, what we had, that shit was real. And I'll be damned if I let another woman who I love die when I could have done something to stop it.” He dragged in a deep breath. “So think what you want. I'll just be over here saving your arse.”

  What was that? Did he just say—

  My brain couldn't even process the words that had come out of his mouth. “Wh-what did you just say?”

  He sighed. “You caught that, did you?”

  “Well, you threw it out there, how could I not? Why would you say that?”

  “Because it's true.”

  I swallowed hard. My insides melted at the words and the idea that he could care about me like that. I just wasn't sure if I could believe him. I'd been lied to before.

  “Look, you don't have to say it back. You don't have to get in your head about it. Just know that I'm going to keep you alive no matter what it takes. We’re going to find out who’s after you. And then when all is said and done, we’ll both go back to our lives.”

  “Can we go back? It’s not that simple.”

  “Well, like I said, the idea is that if we figure out who the hell is after you, we clear it up, make sure you’re alive and okay, and then you and I can go back to our separate corners. We don't have to do this anymore.”

  I wasn't sure why, but that hurt. Even though I knew he wasn't who he claimed to be. Even though I knew that this couldn't possibly be real.

  But he said he loved you.

  He wouldn't be the first. And he probably wouldn't be the last. In this line of work, who were we if not our deceits, our lies, the little things that we had to tell ourselves to get out of bed every day? Like, I'm not a murderer. I'm not an assassin. What I do is for the greater good.

  Except was it?

  “I don't even know what to say, Marcus.”

  “It's fine. Just think of me as someone who’s here to help you resolve whatever this is, and then it’ll be over and you won’t have to see me anymore.”

  Because I didn't want to touch what he'd said, I scooted around it. “Are you talking about your fiancée?”

  When he spoke again in the darkness from the floor, his voice went soft. “Yes. Her name was Simone. She was an agent too. There was a raid in one of our safe houses where I was recuperating after I had been severely injured. She, uh, she didn't make it.”

  I could hear myself say the words as the pain and sadness struck me. “Jesus, I'm really sorry.”

  “It was a hard lesson to learn. But yeah—I won’t let you be a sitting duck.” There was a beat of silence. I couldn’t even let myself process his words, so I shoved them down to join the other feelings I didn’t let myself deal with. “Thank you for telling me about her. She must have been something if she was another agent.”

  “Look, I don’t want to dwell on that, okay? We'll hunt down this weapon Victus is after. They'll be forced to talk to us then. Once that's done, you never have to see me again. I will get reassigned, and then you can move on. Matter of fact, you can even move on with Tyler if you want.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s a low blow.”

  He chuckled. “I mean, really? That guy?”

  “He was different then, just so you know. Really sweet.”

  “Right. Really sweet.”

  “Hey, he was nice to me. I felt important. Seen.”

  “I find it hard to believe that you were that naive. The guy is a dick.”

  “Clearly, I have a type,” I muttered.

  I heard a slapping motion as if he'd clutched his hand to his chest. “Ooh, that was the low blow. But really… I'm sorry he hurt you. He was a fool.”

  Somehow those simple words settled in deeper than anything else I'd told myself over the years. Which was bullshit because I didn't need him to validate me or my feelings.

  But it felt nice knowing that someone else could see what Tyler hadn't. God, I was pathetic. Even I knew it. Tyler was a fool. A moron. A grade-A asshole. “Yeah, thanks.”

  “It’s just the truth. Don't get all wrapped up in your feelings about it.”

  I rolled my eyes. “God, were you always such an annoying asshole?”

  “Yes, but you were distracted by my body.”

  “Stop it.”

  He chuckled. “Well, I’m just stating facts, love. It’s up to you to believe them or not.”

  “I thought you were stating facts before, too. We probably have to have all of our date conversations over again now. Wait, do you even have a brother?”

  He laughed. “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, okay. At least that wasn't a lie.”

  “But I have a niece, not a nephew.”

  I grumbled. “Of course, you do. You know, it's funny because even though I was lying to you too, it just… I don't know. It feels worse, being lied to.”

  “Yeah.” He was quiet again for a moment. “Why do you think the dating app matched us, anyway?”

  In some ways, that was a tough question. Because there was a part of me that was convinced that the dating app was broken. Flawed. But I could see myself with him even when we'd been fighting. We'd been a hundred percen
t in sync.

  “It probably saw something compatible about us when we answered the questions honestly. Except, we couldn't exactly be honest with each other in person.”

  “And isn't that a shame? We would have probably been having a lot more fun.”

  “Probably.”

  “Where did you go when you disappeared on that first date?” His voice was low, mellow.

  I laughed at his question. “I had a mission in Bulgaria. I was chasing a human trafficker.”

  “Ah, I've been rethinking a lot of that. All those little things you would say and do. I'm supposed to be great at catching liars, watching people. But I ignored every single clue from you.”

  I laughed. “Well, I ignored your clues too. Where did you go on our second date?”

  He laughed then. “God, my excuse was the worst. I mean, come on, food poisoning? But I couldn't think of anything better at the time. I had to fly to Chechnya. After a bomb maker.”

  “Christ, that was you?”

  He chuckled. “Yup.”

  “Wow, your team did good work there. We wanted to go after that bomber, but Roz told us we’d lost the lead.”

  If he was surprised by my magnanimous attitude, he didn't say anything. But then his next question threw me. “Why did you try to break things off after the third date?”

  I thought hard on that one. “I was trying to keep you safe. I was worried Stannis was after me.”

  “God, you pretended to let me teach you how to fight,” he laughed. “Who were you fighting at the Bacchanal?”

  “Victus member, since Stannis was a no show.”

  “Of course, you were able to stay on mission.”

  “If I recall, you were trying to distract me. You were on a mission too?”

  “Only one of us was doing great at our job that night. Christ, you fight like a demon. I can’t believe you convinced me you needed training.”

  I laughed. “I will say you were a very good teacher.”

  “How were you ever able to hold back in that fight with Stannis?”

  I laughed. “Well, remember all those drunken boxing movies back in the day? I just pretended I was doing one of those things. Execute a strike, act like I was falling over.”

  “You let me sit there like a twat showing you how to make a fist.”