“All right,” he said, moving towards his Monster. “But you’ll have to follow me this time. No cheating,” he added with a wink. “And definitely no hair raising antics on Auckland’s inner streets.”
His bike roared to life, but he waited for me to mount mine. I shook my head, offering a wry grin. He had no idea I already knew where he lived.
Just as I reached for the ignition on the Diavel my cellphone began to ring in my helmet speaker. I glanced down at the phone as I pulled it from my jacket, the grin disappearing at the name flashing on the screen.
The timing meant something; it couldn’t not. Right when I was having doubts about this assignment, my emotions, and my sub-target. Right when I questioned the status of Adam’s bike. It meant something; a warning. And when the phone rung off before I could answer it, I knew.
Caleb was watching. Somewhere, somehow, he had eyes on me and Adam.
What to do? Stay and protect Adam or abandon him to his fate?
What did I know about Caleb Hart? He’d saved my life once. Backed me up on an assignment in China that went bad. He’d risked his neck to get me out. Him and Ava, the Department’s sharp shooter. We’d evac’d together. Spent the night in Hong Kong, holed up in a ramshackle hut, halfway up the side of a skyscraper.
It had been one of the best nights of my life. We’d been safe. There’d been three of us to carry the burden. I’d not been alone. We’d even shared a laugh and a bottle of some disgusting local spirits.
Caleb Hart had been my friend that day and here he was when my world was falling apart.
I couldn’t decide what it meant, but I knew it was a message of some sort. Go with Adam and Caleb would do something. Don’t go with Adam and risk putting a target on his back for someone else.
But who was the sharp shooter? Ava again?
I looked up at Adam, who had switched his bike off when I’d pulled my cellphone out to glance at the screen. I lifted a finger, indicating to him in that simple move to wait, and started dialling. I couldn’t trust anyone, but I could send a message of my own.
Ava answered on the third ring. It didn’t mean anything. Even if she was asleep, she’d be prepared.
“This is a surprise,” she said in that soft lilt she had that defied who she was underneath the delicate features and sex kitten look.
“It’s a night for surprises,” I murmured back.
“And to what do I owe this one to?”
I looked around the street we were on, then glanced back down at Adam’s bike. I needed to check it, make sure it was clean. But doing that would expose too much to this man I was feeling emotions for that I’d never felt before now.
“Do your remember Hong Kong?” I said, realising even that little tidbit was enough to raise suspicion in Adam. He watched on silently, but didn’t show anything untoward on his face.
“How could I forget?” Ava said on a soft laugh. “Caleb and you sang kindergarten songs while you toasted each other’s prowess.”
I smiled. It had been a good night. A rare night. Anything but empty.
“Do you know where he is now?” I asked.
She hesitated, just long enough for me to discern she was caught off guard. Asking after another specialist was not common. In fact, it was frowned upon.
“Are you in Guangzhou again?” she asked finally. Code for was I in trouble and needing back-up?
Did I trust Ava as much or as little as I trusted Caleb?
Better to have the chess pieces exposed than not know who you were playing.
“I might be. Are you busy?” Meaning was she on assignment?
“This is unorthodox, Charlie,” she whispered, as if saying the words quietly somehow kept them out of the wrong ears.
She knew better, which led me to believe this was the old Ava I was talking to. Not an Ava that was assigned to test me. Ava Cole was a brilliant sniper, but an empty shell she could never be.
I realised I liked her. I’d always liked her. But then I’d liked Caleb as well before today.
“I’m home,” I said into the helmet mic. Adam watched on unemotionally.
Silence was my only reply over the phone.
Then, “I’ll be there within ten hours.” She was in South-East Asia. South America would take too long.
Or she was allowing herself enough time to coordinate with Caleb and giving me false hope.
“You know where to find me,” I offered, feeling a resolve settle into my frame. Everything was in question right now. Every single thing.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t contain it. Expose it. Finish this.
I looked at Adam again, thought about what ASI could be tied up in. Wondered just how far this sham of an assignment went. Was I reading too much into this just because I’d experienced an attraction to a target that made me feel? Made me breathe?
“While you fill in the next few hours,” Ava was saying over the phone, “consider where you have been.”
The line went dead and so did my heartbeat. What did Ava know? What was she trying to tell me? Was it just standard specialist advice; trace your steps to see when things got out of hand. Easy then. They’d got out of hand once I’d arrived at ASI. Or had they? Is that what she meant?
This was getting complicated, but at least I’d made a move, shown my hand. If the Department wanted to play with me, I was up to it. But was Adam? ASI?
“I gather Mount Eden is off the cards tonight,” Adam said softly to my side.
I looked over at him, then reached up and unbuckled my helmet, removing it with one hand as the other slipped my cellphone out of sight. I turned and placed it on my bike’s seat and then crossed the short distance to where he stood.
He hadn’t removed his helmet. A defence mechanism if ever I saw one. He’d ridden a roller coaster tonight. Chased me, hunted me, and hadn't quite caught his prey. Sure, we’d had a moment on that wharf and the potential had existed for more, but I was beginning to see that Adam Savill was one switched on guy. That conversation with Ava had set off alarm bells inside his head. He didn’t know why he should be concerned. He couldn’t figure out yet what form that worry should take. But he knew something wasn’t right.
I needed him to trust me, even as I acknowledged that I would never fully trust him in return. I needed him to still want me, and I wasn’t looking too closely at the real reasons why that might be.
I reached up and unbuckled his helmet; he stood statue still, arms at his sides, breath all but forgotten. I lifted the helmet off slowly and placed it down on the Monster’s seat. Then I licked my lips, looked up at him from under my lashes and leaned forward, brushing my lips across his in a barely there kiss.
“A friend of mine is in trouble,” I whispered, moving closer despite him not inviting me in. “I’m worried about her.” It was Caleb I was worried about, not Ava.
Or maybe it was me.
“I understand,” Adam said, and if he wasn’t standing so stiffly I would have said it sounded genuine.
“Rain check?” I asked, letting my hot breath wash over his whiskered chin and down his neck.
“Of course.” I was losing him and the dismay at that thought almost threw me.
“Friends, remember?” I said, trying for a different tack. Feeling that pushing him on more right now would blow my chances for days. I didn’t have days. And neither did ASI.
I wasn’t overly concerned about Nick Anscombe’s business, other than the fact that Adam worked there and could get caught in the crossfire. All that mattered now was getting out of this mess and not taking down a good man while I did it.
There were a lot of things to hate the Department for, but right then I despised it.
“Friends,” Adam murmured, keeping his distance, even if the pulse at the base of his neck thrummed.
“Friends with benefits,” I said on a wink and turned back to my bike, lifting up my helmet and preparing to don it.
“I don’t get you,” Adam admitted over my shoulder. His voice was
quiet, but by no means soft. He was angry.
I put my helmet on and threw a leg over the bike, but didn’t start it. I should have. I should have kept going and not looked back. I should have remained silent like they teach you. Not given too much away by opening my mouth, my mind. My heart.
I glanced back at him, saw he was still standing where I had left him, a few feet from his bike. I had to clear that bike, but not while Adam was aware of it.
My eyes caught his; turbulent blue mired in distrust.
Damn.
“I’m scared, all right,” I said, unable to stop the words from spilling. “Shit scared.”
He took a step toward me. “Charlie,” he whispered, this time the tone was soft.
I shook my head, revved the bike into life, and peeled off from the side of the road. I didn’t look back.
By the time he passed me, where I had pulled over and hidden myself, every self recriminating expletive had coursed through my too active mind.
He didn’t go home. His home or mine. He ended up at a house in Ellerslie; a 1950s painstakingly refurbished weatherboard bungalow. One that I knew from dossiers belonged to Ben Tamati and Abi Monaghan. I parked the bike out of sight and made my way on foot to the edge of the property, noting the CCTV cameras, linked in to ASI at a guess, and the barbed wire hidden along the top of the fence.
Adam sat on the back deck beside a mammoth barbecue and didn’t knock on the door. His bike was parked just out of his sight, behind a black SUV I knew was driven by Tamati. I slipped out of the shadows, avoiding the cameras, and got to work on the bike.
All the while I wondered just what the hell had brought him here and how much he’d figured out tonight.
Unknown territory. I was thick in the middle of it, surrounded by no man’s land, dwarfed by my own inexperience. I’d never felt so alone or lost before now.
I’d never wanted a friend, someone to confide in, as much.
The shell was cracking, God alone knew what would fall out.
Chapter 9
Fucking Hunter Spooks
Adam
A steaming mug of coffee was plonked down unceremoniously on the table beside me. Ben took the seat opposite, his own mug already to his lips. The smell of caffeine mixed in with dew on the grass. I shivered as I wrapped my hands around the overheated cup, blowing ripples across the surface, staring at nothing, too many thoughts.
“Why didn’t you come in?” Ben asked finally, clearly his customary silence wasn’t on the cards this morning.
“Didn’t want to wake you.”
“Abi spotted you at half three,” Ben announced. “Thought it amusin’ to leave you out in the fuckin’ cold.”
I smiled. I’d always liked Abi’s sense of humour.
“You on a hunt last night?” Ben asked.
In a manner of speaking, I was. I just didn’t know how to admit I’d been hunting Charlie.
And let her get away.
“No. I wasn’t on a hunt.” Even to my ears, the words sounded full of rage.
Ben said nothing. It was what I liked most about the man. Usually silence was his companion. Unless he had a point to make.
It was me who broke it, after we’d consumed our coffees without a single comment.
It was always going to me who broke it; that was Ben’s point today.
“Were you and Abi ever friends with benefits?” were the words I chose to shatter the silence with.
Even the birds in nearby trees stopped singing for a moment.
Ben stared at me, a blank look on his face.
“Ah, no?” he said, not sounding so sure. “What does that even mean?”
I shrugged. Fucked if I knew. I thought I did, but obviously not.
“Hang on,” Ben suddenly announced. “Do you mean a friend who, you know, meets you between the sheets?”
Or gives you a blow-job on the Maraetai wharf and then ditches you without a backward glance. I nodded.
“Um,” he said, leaning back in his seat and staring across the lawn to the swing hanging under the cherry tree. “I guess ‘no’ would be the answer to that particular question.”
I nodded. It’d figure that Ben and Abi had a normal start to their relationship. Not some quasi hook-up that left you feeling confused.
“Of course,” Ben added, not aware of my turbulent and fucked up thoughts, “Abs and I didn’t really know each other at all, when we fell into bed. Been shadowin’ her, so knew her habits. Knew what sorta woman she was. But I wouldn’t have called us friends.”
“What were you then?” I couldn’t help but ask.
Ben shifted in his seat, still staring across the lawn at nothing, but I was sure he was seeing everything. From back then, when he first saw Abi, and then set out to take her, claim her, and make her his.
“It sounds stupid,” he admitted finally. “But it was real.”
“What was?”
“What we felt.”
“Love?” I almost laughed out loud.
“Fuck you,” he said, but not with conviction. “I knew the moment I saw her that she was real. The moment I touched her, I knew I’d never let her go again. If that ain’t fuckin’ love, then I’m fucked if I know what is.”
“Poetic,” I said with an amused smile.
“Well, e hoa, if you’ve found yourself a friend with benefits, ask yourself this: Does she feel real?”
Oh, Charlie was real all right. She was lethally real.
And why did that thought spring to mind? She’d done nothing to make me fear for my life - my sanity maybe - but not my life. And I’d scoff at anyone who said I feared for my heart. That was ludicrous.
And yet, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Fixating on what had happened on that wharf and afterwards. There was something about Charlie; I didn’t know what, but there was. I couldn’t help feeling she was the one in danger. It made no sense. It set me on edge. I felt hunted and yet where was the hunter?
Helping a friend and not in my bed.
“She’s real,” I whispered, hoping as soon as the words were out of my mouth that they hadn’t been heard.
“Well, fuck me,” Ben announced, quashing that hope in one fell swoop. “What’s her name?”
I shook my head. “Not going there.”
“Chicken shit,” he said on a laugh. We both stared at the swing and said nothing.
The back door opening broke the silence this time.
“If you both don’t get your butts inside for showers and something to eat,” Abi declared, “we’ll all be late for work this morning.”
Fuck. Work. Charlie had assessment today and then was meant to accompany me on the hunt tonight.
It was ridiculous how thrilled my body felt at that prospect.
“Adam’s fallen in love,” Ben announced, standing up and stretching like a jungle cat. Within a split second Abi was rubbing up against him, taking advantage of his position and nuzzling his chin with her cheek. “Mornin’, red,” he murmured, laying a kiss in amongst her blonde hair.
I looked away. “I’m not in love,” I argued.
“Did you get some last night?” Ben pressed.
“Not going there.”
“He got some,” Abi proclaimed.
“How does that make me in love?”
Both of them looked at me as if I was mad.
“Ah, duh!” Abi said as Ben huffed out an amused laugh.
“You’re here, aint ya,” he groused. “If it wasn’t love you’d still be fuckin’ her senseless in your bed.”
“How the fuck do you figure that?” I demanded, coming to my feet.
Ben shook his head and wrapped an arm around Abi’s shoulders. She looked tiny against his over muscled chest and tattooed forearm.
“Why are you here, Adam?” he asked. “Askin’ ‘bout friends with benefits. Sittin’ in the fuckin’ cold night air for half the fuckin’ night. Why?”
Why was I here? Because I thought Ben would help make sense of a night I could never f
orget and didn’t really want to remember. Because I thought I might have made the biggest mistake of my professional life and fucked the new girl because I couldn’t keep my dick in my pants long enough to ask myself why was there something about her that made me feel hunted.
“I was followed last night,” I said before I realised that was what I wanted to say at all.
“To my fuckin’ house?” Ben demanded, stepping away from Abi toward me, and in the process shielding her small frame behind his back. As though I was a threat to his woman.
“Lost them in Epsom. I wasn’t tailed here.”
“You sure?” he demanded, glancing around the back lawn as though an intruder could get past ASI’s surveillance.
“Certain.” I wasn’t, but I was pretty sure. Pretty sure wouldn’t wash with Ben, so “certain” it was.
“Best place for him to come, Ben,” Abi said softly from beside him. “No safer house in all of Auckland.”
“The fuck-knuckle sat on our deck all night and didn’t say a fuckin’ word,” Ben growled.
“His gun was out,” Abi announced, surprising me and scaring the fuck out of Ben. “I saw it.”
“And you didn’t think I should know this when you came back to our bed?”
Abi blushed. Ben groaned and shut his eyes.
“You distracted me.”
“Fuck me,” he muttered. Then sharp eyes lifted to my face. “Who were you with last night?”
“No one,” I replied automatically.
“Not wearin’ it,” he snarled back. “Who the fuck is your friend with benefits?”
“It wasn’t her,” I argued, realising that it was. That all of this was about Charlie. The new girl who had started at ASI and turned everything upside down.
Fuck. This was serious. I had to let Nick know.
I sat down on the chair I’d just vacated and placed my head in my hands, not relishing the day ahead one fucking bit.
“Abs,” Ben said softly. “Go take a shower, yeah?”
“OK,” she whispered back, doing what he asked without question. Is that what love meant? An understanding, an agreement, the ability to trust without query?
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