Charlie/Bill nodded and kept his eyes locked on me as the five of us huddled together and exited the room. We had to be on the lookout for further armed henchmen on our way to the car, and we had three floors and a front yard to cover before we were safe.
I looked at our real target’s face for the last time as the door closed to the entertaining room. The little girl had to be carried by the barmaid in her arms, and no doubt had many questions to ask about her mother. I toyed with the idea of bringing them both back to the compound instead of releasing them as soon as we were clear of the mansion. I could imagine the life that lay ahead of them belonging to a household like Big Bill’s. At least, as a hired assassin, I had the choice ‘to kill or be killed’ in the palm of my hand. I didn’t have to live my life according to the desires of a domineering asshole. It pissed me off that Big Bill put us through all this, and with Diablo dead, I’d never have the chance to see if we had something there. Sure, I could have had sex with him in the showers, but I hadn’t wanted to start a relationship like that. I’d wanted him badly, but I’d wanted him to want me like the man in my dreams. Not up against a wall with a crowd staring. And now I’d never get the chance to find out if that dream could have been a reality if enough time had passed.
As we passed through the room and into the relative safety of the hallway, I changed my mind. I looked at Charlie/Bill one last time, realization dawning that our paid objective to kill Big Bill remained to be met.
“Go on ahead, Emily. Shoot anything that moves,” I said and quickly passed the hostages to her and Helen.
Chapter 4
Four Years previously…
Harry and I were childhood sweethearts, losing our virginity on our prom night, just like every other cliché high school couple does. He was skinny and had acne, and I was teased as being the fat girl in the class, so I guessed that as the leftovers of the graduating year, we were destined to be together. At eighteen, we thought we had it all worked out. We would go to college, get our degrees, get married, and have four or five children. But life rarely works out the way you plan it.
My parents couldn’t afford the college tuition, and girls like me didn’t get scholarships. Harry didn’t want to go off without me by his side, so we settled for retail jobs and living with my parents until we could afford to move out. His parents cut him off and wouldn’t speak to him again, which they would come to regret.
It was a sunny afternoon. We had both finished work and, as was our custom, consumed a picnic lunch on a shaded riverbank. We ate as if we had spent a week on a diet of rice and water and lay next to each other, holding hands and cloud gazing while very little happened. Some days, we would just talk and talk while others, we would curl up together and be comfortable in silence, secure in each other’s presence. Some said we were a pair of desperados who couldn’t find anyone else, but I always felt that fate pushed us together at a young age by making us undesirable to many of the opposite sex.
We didn’t care. It was love. And anyone who ever says there’s something that can fulfil you as much as finding that person you connect with is a liar. When I was with Harry, nothing else mattered.
“It won’t always be like this, Shauna. One day, I’ll be a manager and drive a company car and make enough money to support both of us. We’ll end up in that house with the white picket fence with little ones bouncing around and making us laugh,” he told me.
I smiled, not because I wanted money, the nice house, car, and everything else. I smiled because he wanted to give me all of that. “I love our life, Harry. I mean I would love to live somewhere not with my mum and dad, but I don’t need all of that material stuff. All I need is you.”
He rolled over and kissed me, lying on top of me. I felt like doing something crazy so I opened my legs a little and grabbed his hand, guiding it up inside my dress until I let it rest where my panties should have been.
“Oh, my God. Shauna!”
“I want you to fuck me right here, right now,” I said. His finger travelled inside me, and I wanted him to hurry up and put something else inside me where he would be able to delve deeper.
Harry sat up and looked all around, and when satisfied no one else was within sight, he lowered his work pants and underwear to his knees and crawled back on top of me. I grabbed hold of his cock and pulled it into me, groaning as he filled me with his stiff appendage. It always made me feel like a goddess when he fucked me as if I was the most desirable creature on the planet.
I closed my eyes and forgot about the world as he pumped me slowly at first, speeding up every few thrusts until he reached his climax. Collapsing on top of me, I held his ass cheeks tight and whispered in his ear to stay inside me.
“I wish I could last longer,” he said to me, “but you’re just so fucking sexy.”
“Maybe she needs a real man,” we heard a voice say.
We peeled away from each other, and as Harry tried to pull up his pants, I saw his uncle kick him in the stomach. Harry yelled in pain, and I stood up and swung a hand at the man’s chest.
“I love a feisty chick, especially one with a nice big trunk like that,” he said after catching my hand before it could strike him. He pulled me close to him and lifted my dress, his other hand squeezing my ass like a vice.
“Let her go,” Harry stood up and stared at his uncle. “You do something to her, and you’ll end up back in jail.”
“I fuck little boys like you in prison on a daily basis, so I’ll take my chances.” He moved his hand between the cheeks of my ass and pushed against the resistance I built up as I squeezed my thighs together. A fingertip touched my pussy, sending a wave of anger through me resulting in him receiving a kneecap in the balls.
Hitting the ground, he pulled a gun out and pointed it at me. “You’ll fucking pay, bitch.”
I stood there, frozen in shock, my heart hammering at the sight of that barrel pointed at me along with the instinctive fear of what it meant.
“No!” Harry yelled, jumping at him. As he crashed on top of his uncle, I heard the pistol go off.
Harry’s uncle stared at me wide-eyed and shook his head. “I…I… didn’t mean to shoot him.” He waved his arm around, the gun shaking in his hand as he looked at the limp body draped across his chest. I knew him to have been involved in armed holdups and assaults, but murder had been in a category higher than he had been associated with previously.
I ran over and cuddled Harry lifting him to lean in my lap. “Please don’t leave me. Not now, Harry.” The tears flowed like I had never cried before. My high school love was bleeding out and not responding to me at all, and I couldn’t seem to stop the red stain from spreading from where his heart should have been
“Oh fuck. Shauna, I didn’t mean to kill him, please—you need to understand.”
I glared straight at him. “Put the fucking gun down, you mother fucking prick.”
“I can’t go back to prison. They’ll kill me this time, Shauna. I won’t hurt you if you promise not to tell the cops.”
“Put the gun down NOW.” I felt like someone else had taken over my body as I watched him place the gun next to him and slowly put his hands in the air.
“Step away from it.” I watched as he did as I said, wondering what power he thought an eighteen-year-old girl had over him. “From the age of five, my daddy showed me how to fire a gun,” I said as I left Harry’s lifeless body on the grass and walked over to the displaced revolver. I picked it up, my hands wet with Harry’s bright red blood.
“Shauna, you’re not a killer.”
“You said it yourself—you can’t go back to prison.” I aimed the weapon at him, not realising the kick the gun would give as I fired it and missed him by a few feet.
Sweat poured from his brow. “See, you don’t have it in you. You can’t control that thing.” He smirked, walking towards me as I fired again and missed.
I couldn’t believe how much the gun moved in my blood-slicked hand each time I fired. He was nearly upon me
. The next bullet would have to count.
“You stupid bitch,” he said, grabbing hold of my wrist.
I looked him in the eye and spat in his face, and shoved my gun-holding hand towards his face. I don’t know where the strength came from, but before I could put much thought into it, I fired once as I placed the pistol under his chin. The back of his head flew upward before his body fell lifeless to the ground.
I had made my first kill, and while waiting for the police to arrive, I couldn’t help but worry I would soon be in prison. But the officer in charge took me aside and smiled at me, telling me everything would be okay. He said I would never have to see someone I love die again while watching helplessly.
The next day, I found myself in the compound of the Praying Mantassassins. I lost weight. I learned how to control the heaviest of weapons and how to use my newfound sexiness to make money from killing people who really deserved it.
Chapter 5
I removed my shoes and tiptoed barefoot to the door I had just exited. I stood on the other side of the room containing so much death within its walls. I could have just walked away with the others, but reminiscing about my youth reminded me of why I got into this line of work to begin with. I allowed my mind to clear and then put my emotions aside.
Simply put, Big Bill had to die.
I prepared to step back into the ‘room of death’ when I saw a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye. I brought one of my hands around, holding the pistol gripped tight between my fingers around in the direction of the movement, and spied a person hiding under a table. I hadn’t seen this woman before, and when I looked directly at her face, the beauty of her dark chocolate coloured flawless skin almost froze me in place.
“Please don’t shoot me,” she said, her voice as smooth as her complexion.
“He’s still in there,” I said. I kept my other weapon at the ready should anyone come through the door.
“I can help you. I was hired to kill his rival, too. He lied to me, just as he lied to you. He must pay.”
I saw the tiny pistol in her hand, the type only good for close range kills, but it was better than nothing. I turned my attention back to the opened door. We looked at each other, and nodded, dashing into the room and peeling away from each other in opposite directions. We both fired as soon as we saw live targets, watching men fall as we fired round after round barely taking a breath as we spilled further blood. My new African companion sprinted directly at the last man standing, his shit-eating smirk remaining in place even as the woman charging at him placed the barrel of the tiny pistol at his forehead.
“Wow. Two beautiful women both here to kill me. Tell me, aren’t you supposed to fuck me before you snuff me out?” he said. “Princess Africa, I’ll give you the pleasure of going first. And then you, Miss Red Dress, I’m saving you as the best for last.”
“We’re well past that, Bill,” I said. “I can’t leave here without finishing the job I was hired for, to kill William Watsburg.”
“You can’t just come into a man’s house and shoot everyone including the host. If you kill me, there will be consequences, the type you can never survive. Your organisation might be strong, but you can’t take on a cartel and the CIA. This is much bigger than you and me, Talissa…”
A shot rang through the room bringing an abrupt halt to Bill’s speech as the woman I’d found hiding under the table ended his talking as she pulled the trigger. She turned to me and smiled. A smile short-lived as sirens wailed in the distance.
“Come with me. We have to go,” I said.
She followed me as I ran back through the room we were in a few minutes ago and headed for the stairs ahead of me. Her speed was much quicker than my own, and as she made it to the ground floor, I had just made it to the bottom of the first flight of stairs. A number of bodies lay randomly as we made our way to the front door of the house.
The others had made it to our transport. In the clear of the night, I could see flashing red and blue lights approaching up the road running parallel to the ocean. They would be upon us soon. If we were to make our escape down the driveway leading to the road, it had to be now.
“Talissa, we need to get moving,” Helen yelled, standing behind the vehicle she’d arrived in separately.
The volume of the sirens intensified, and I had to come up with a plan. “Emily, can you drive?” I asked.
“Of course, I can,” she answered, giving me a look like I was stupid.
“You take the barmaid and my new friend here away. I’ll take this little girl and Helen. We need to each go a different direction so at least half of us get away.”
“Are you sure about this?” Helen asked me.
“Oh, yes. I’ve never been so sure in my life.” I picked up Beth’s grief-stricken daughter and put her in the back of Helen’s vehicle, and waved Emily and the other two off as they drove away.
“Come on, Talissa. We need to go,” Helen yelled as she got to the driver’s seat.
I jogged around and sat in the passenger seat. Helen started the car, but before she put it in gear, I aimed my gun at the side of her head.
“Geez, woman. What the fuck are you doing?”
“Someone gave Bill information about all of us and the only way he could have known about us all was with eyes and ears inside. I know it was you or else you would have been shot by his men,” I said.
“No way, Talissa. Why would I turn on a group of people who included someone who is like a daughter to me?”
“Because you knew about the Praying Mantassassin recruitment process. You knew that only one of you two could make it through to the next level, so you found a way to get yourself into a gig that would ensure we could skip that process and neither you nor Emily would have to die should you survive.”
“That’s bullshit, Talissa…” her words died as I pulled the trigger and stopped her chatter. Wasting no time, I grabbed the little girl from the back of the car and ran as fast as I could to hide in the fake oasis at the front of the house.
A few minutes later, the lights were down the driveway, and I made my move when the first car parked about ten feet away from my hiding spot. Scooping the girl in my arms, I left any weapons behind and ran towards a police officer who appeared to be in his forties.
“Help me, help me,” I called out. “There were some crazy people shooting each other at the party.”
“Lady, please calm down. Did you get a good look at any of them?”
“No, I hid as soon as I could and rescued this poor girl who lost her mother in the crossfire. I was just there as a guest. One minute, I was sipping champagne and the next…” He shone a torch on me, the light forcing me to turn my eyes away.
“We’ll need to ask you a lot of questions, miss, but I have to say thanks for saving the life of a little girl.”
It was time to step up the act. “There are dead people everywhere. I thought I was going to die.” In my line of work, the ability to force tears was a handy trick to have up my sleeve.
A female officer made her way over. She put a blanket around me and embraced me. After a couple of minutes, she spoke to her superior. “Sergeant Hall, want me to put her in the back of my car?”
Chapter 6
“You deliberately came close to exposing our organization by nearly getting busted and then killed a fellow Mantassassin on nothing more than gut instinct. By rights, I should have you killed for your conduct, Talissa. But you’ve been one of the best, which is why we’ve decided to let you go, instead.”
“But, sir…” I pleaded into the intercom, shocked at the announcement. For my insubordination, I did deserve death, and maybe that’s what I truly wanted after all the years of causing it to happen to other people. But to be let go? That filled me with icy fear.
“But nothing. You’ll be given money. And a new identity to begin a new life. Find a man, settle down, buy a house, and maybe have some kids. Live a normal life. You’ve more than earned it. Just remember though one day,
we might need you back. So keep your skills up and don’t get back into that same shape you were in when you arrived here.”
“Helen was the mole. I can prove it if you give me a few—”
“You’re not listening to me, and I’m starting to get a little unhappy.”
Tears welled in my eyes, real ones this time. I knew nothing else anymore except the life of an assassin. The Mantassassins had been my family for so long I’d forgotten what a real family was like.
“Where do I start?” I asked as my heart pounded. “How do I go and live a normal life now after everything I’ve done and seen? I was just a girl when your man Gary found me.”
“Pack up your things. I’ll have some information printed for you. I’ll put you in contact with a woman who knows her way around and maybe some people you can talk to about work. If you ever see any of the others, don’t tell them this, but you’ve been one of my favourites, and I’ll miss you. This is why you don’t die—well, not just yet anyway. Have a good life.”
The boss ended the chat, and I sat looking out the window for a couple of minutes at the freshly mown lawn outside thinking about all those years of training before making my way to my room. I would have to slip back into society and be a regular woman, not able to fuck and shoot at will. How the hell was I supposed to live like that?
******
“Did you kill her?” Emily asked as I entered my room. She sat on a chair near the table with a pistol in her hand.
I nodded. If the girl wanted to kill me, the answer wouldn’t matter. “She was the mole, Emily.”
“You know that’s not true, and it wasn’t your decision to make. To kill her. You should have let her come back here, and then you could have made the accusation. I could kill you, bitch, but they’d only come after me, and it would be a waste. You better pray that I never see you out in the world.”
7PM - Talissa Page 4