The liquid slid across her tongue, stinging her throat all the way down and filling her mouth and nostrils with the smell of apples as if she were inhaling a heady perfume. She almost coughed. But, she managed to get the first too-large swallow down and amended the second sip to be much smaller.
Beatrice smiled at her, a new twinkle in the woman’s gorgeous, feline green eyes. “I never ‘ave liked flying much either, you know,” she said, her smile never wavering. “So, I always carry emergency stashes. ‘Course I don’t shit bricks over it like you do, but still, I can completely understand.”
Annabelle couldn’t help the smile that stole over her face. She could imagine that her own eyes held somewhat of a twinkle at that moment, and not all of it was due to the liquor.
“Now, dear, let me get a few things aired out with you, if you don’t mind,” Beatrice continued, as she extracted the bottle from her purse and poured herself another serving. “I ‘ave to admit that I ‘aven’t got much in the way of.. oh, say.. feelings for Jack any longer. He’s just too no-nonsense and goody-two-shoes for my liking. But ‘e’s a good man, nonetheless, and I want you to know that.”
Annabelle could only stare at Beatrice. Jack? Goody-two-shoes? Did Beatrice have any inkling of how far off the mark she was with that one?
“Oh, I know all about his little career choice, dear,” Beatrice leaned in close and whispered, her grin ear to ear. “Tha’s why I married ‘im, see?”
Annabelle’s jaw dropped open. “What?”
“For the fun of it, Annabelle!” Beatrice’s whisper had grown louder and Annabelle now glanced over her shoulder nervously. She peeked around the corner of the kitchenette to find that everyone was as they’d left them except that Dylan was now staring blankly out the window and Cassie was sound asleep.
She turned back to face Beatrice. “What career, exactly, are you talking about?” Annabelle asked, just to play it safe.
“Oh, you know, the little shooty-shooty.” She made the sign of a gun with her free hand. “Bang, bang, somebody’s dead.” She laughed, taking another swig of her drink. Annabelle watched her begin to rock very slowly from side to side.
Beatrice Hughes either had the metabolism of a rabbit or was a severe lightweight. Or both.
“So, you know,” Annabelle repeated, slowly. “What he does for a living.”
Beatrice’s eyes widened and her expression became incredulous. “A living? Posh! Dear, do you have any idea how many sovs that man makes, doing what ‘e does? It’s no small potatoes, I can assure you!”
Annabelle said nothing, deciding to allow Beatrice to do all of the talking. She took another small sip of her brandy.
Beatrice’s expression became serious then and she put her drink down, turning her full attention onto Annabelle. “But the sad truth is, Annabelle, I was young. It was the shrapnel I was after, in every sense of the word. I liked the danger and I loved the money. And I never really loved Jack.”
Annabelle put down her glass. “That’s why you divorced.”
“Aye. Just after Ian was born, I told Jack ‘ow I felt.” Beatrice’s gaze slid from Annabelle’s face to stare over her shoulder at some unseen place far away and long ago. “I can remember the look on ‘is face. Jack nodded, see, and said ‘e felt the same. The divorce was finalized in two days flat.”
“What about Clara and Ian?” Annabelle asked, her tone soft, in deference to the subject matter. She was filled with curiosity. She really wanted to know more about this stage in Jack’s life.
“Jack was content to leave them with me. We’ve always known that it was risky bringing children into his world. But we loved Clara so much and then… Ian just happened.” Beatrice shrugged and picked her glass back up, finishing off its contents in one swallow. “I was on two forms of birth control at the time, too…”
She put the drink down and turned back to Annabelle. “He said ‘e’d come back whenever ‘e could to see the kids. An’ ‘e does, more or less, but they still miss ‘im.”
Annabelle felt cold, suddenly. She hugged herself and felt goose bumps lining her arms. She imagined Jack’s kids and how much they would need their father. She imagined how much Jack must need them. But he lived here, in the states, and even if he lived in England, could he ever really be with them as much as he wanted to? Would his past follow him around? Catch up to him?
Threaten his family?
“I don’t think Jack ‘as ever really loved anyone but you, Annabelle.”
Annabelle blinked. The sudden change of subject and its directness was nothing short of shocking. “Pardon?”
“Oh, please,” Beatrice had come out of her memory stupor now and was smiling again. She took the opportunity to wink at Annabelle, nudging her in the arm. “You don’t think I ‘aven’t been able to wheedle enough info out of him over the years that I know all about you now, do you?”
“He talks about me to you?”
“Why, of course, dear!” She gave Annabelle a slightly reproachful look. “I am a woman, you know. An’ I can tell certain things. That man’s been in love for nigh on ten years now. Since he met you.”
“But he’s married two other women.”
Beatrice’s brow furrowed then and she blinked. Then her eyes got wide and her mouth formed a perfect “O”. “You mean you don’t know what’s really going on with those –”
A shadow fell over them and Beatrice looked up. She immediately blanched, an expression of guilt and a touch of fear crossing her pretty features.
Annabelle spun around to find Jack towering over them, an unreadable expression on his handsome face. His blue eyes burned bright as he gazed down at Beatrice. And then the gaze slid to Annabelle and she felt the full weight of it. She swallowed.
Had they done something wrong?
“Beatrice, please take your seat. We will be landing soon.”
Beatrice nodded once and immediately slid past the two of them to disappear around the corner. Annabelle stayed where she was. Not because she wanted to. But, because Jack blocked the exit.
He watched her in silence for several long moments, taking in the glass in her hands and the glitter in her eyes and probably a million other things that Annabelle wasn’t aware of because she wasn’t a professional killer.
Finally, she couldn’t take it any longer. “What is it, Jack? What did we do wrong?”
“You did nothing wrong, Bella.”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, what did Beatrice do wrong?”
At this, the corners of his mouth twitched into a smile. “Don’t get me started on that one, luv.”
Annabelle’s gaze narrowed. He was going to play games? Okay. Fine. She could play too. “What was Beatrice about to tell me with regards to your other wives, Jack?”
Jack’s smile disappeared.
And then the plane bucked under them and Annabelle’s glass slipped from her hands to shatter at her feet. She cried out in surprise as she was thrown off balance and her boot slipped on the now wet floor. She would have gone down if Jack hadn’t caught her.
Samuel Price’s voice sounded overhead, through the intercom system. “Sorry people – just some warm air playin’ with Betsy. We’re comin’ in for a landing, so get to yer seats and best buckle up.”
Annabelle’s heart was racing painfully in her chest. “No, Sam! No warm air! No turbulence what so ever! Do you hear me!” She screamed at the unseen intercom system, unable to hold her fear in check.
Jack helped her around the spilled brandy and out of the kitchenette. His grip on her arms was tight. He could feel her muscles bunching up under his grasp. She was going into terror mode.
“Annabelle, calm down. Sit here.” He lead her to the closest seat and sat her down, somewhat forcefully, because she wouldn’t sit at first. He could tell that she would have much preferred to run. To bolt at any second and make a mad dash for the door. Which would be very bad.
He kept his hand on her shoulder, effectively holding her down. “Buckle the seat belt
, Bella.”
Annabelle didn’t hear him. She couldn’t. The plane bucked again and all of the breath left her lungs. Stars swam in her vision. She felt nauseated.
Jack knelt beside her and buckled her in himself. Though she didn’t try to leap out of the chair and sprint away as he was doing so, she sat stiff as a board, rigid from head to toe with mind-altering fear.
“Bella, look at me.”
She didn’t, of course. He’d come prepared for the worst of all possible eventualities as far as her fear of flying was concerned. That was why he had the syringe filled with tranquilizer waiting in his jacket’s breast pocket. But he didn’t want it to come to that. She wouldn’t easily forgive him – if ever – for sticking a needle into her arm. And, it wouldn’t be an easy task to accomplish anyhow. Annabelle wasn’t a weak woman.
It would be much, much better for everyone if she would just calm down and listen to him.
“We’re going to die,” she said suddenly, breaking the silence between them.
“No we’re not,” he told her firmly. He took her chin in his hand and forced her to look into his eyes. It wasn’t as easy as he would have preferred. “We’re not going to die, Bella. Not on this plane, anyhow. Sam is landing right now.”
“You’d better get in your seat, da’,” Clara told him as they could all hear the landing gear being dropped.
Annabelle pulled her face out of his grip and began to chew on her lip. She squeezed the ends of the arm rests, digging her nails into the leather. “Sit down, Jack,” she told him, gritting her teeth as she spoke.
Jack blinked. Had she just given him an order, despite her current state?
She looked up at him, her almond eyes shooting daggers. “Sit the hell down, Jack!” she yelled at him and he found himself automatically moving to the nearest seat.
Jack sat down just as the wheels touched the runway and Sam put on the breaks. If he hadn’t been sitting, the force of the stop might have thrown him down the aisle.
The plane slowed and Sam pulled it around to park it parallel with another waiting limousine.
Annabelle stared out the window at the waiting car. The sun was coming up on the horizon. To her, it seemed like the loneliest thing in the world – a nearly empty tarmac in the early morning light. It was like John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane”, put into a picture. And she was so, so tired…
Still, she wasn’t so tired that she wasn’t the first one off of the plane when they were able to disembark. She stepped down from the last stair and then turned and looked up at the plane she’d just exited. From where she stood, at that moment, she could admire its streamlined splendor and giant engines and even the stout-looking wings.
Planes were so much more beautiful when she didn’t have to be on them.
“Okay, let’s get the hell off of this air strip,” she told Jack in a low whisper. He smiled and led them to the limousine, holding the doors open for them as they climbed in.
Sam came down the plane’s stairs and strode to Jack, who closed the door he’d been holding open and turned to face him.
“You coming?” he asked.
“No, you know me,” Sam smiled. “I never ride in cages. And, besides,” he added, “I need to run some checks on Betsy. Where ya headed?”
“Forest Hills.”
It was roughly a forty to fifty mile drive from Monticello, where they’d landed.
Sam nodded. “I’ll catch up with you later. In the meantime, get some grub goin’, will you?”
Jack chuckled. “Fine. If you’re late, you’re eating it cold.”
Chapter Fourteen
During the ride South through New York, the inhabitants of the limousine more or less kept to themselves and gazed out the windows. It was May in New York state and the snow was melted, trees were beginning to green again and a few hearty, stubborn flowers were beginning to bloom. At some point, Jack turned on the radio, which carried through the car’s interior over a high-tech stereo system.
Apparently, it was going to reach sixty-five degrees later that day and then shoot down into the upper forties over night.
“Have you ever been to New York before, Dylan?” Cassie suddenly asked, breaking the silence. Dylan turned to face her, yanked from what Annabelle figured were probably none-too-comfortable thoughts.
“One Christmas, when I was five. We came to see the tree at Rockefeller Center.” He paused, swallowed, and then turned to gaze out the window again. “It was my mom’s last Christmas.”
Cassie’s eyes widened. She turned to Annabelle, a helpless look on her face. Annabelle gave her a sympathetic shrug and a slight smile. It wasn’t Cassie’s fault. She was only trying to be nice. Annabelle guessed that any topic at all, at this point, would most likely remind Dylan of his parents in some way.
“I think someone’s following us,” Clara suddenly stated.
Annabelle turned to her. The girl gestured out the back window and Annabelle followed her gaze. “See the red Altima?”
Annabelle nodded.
“Three blocks back, it traded with a silver Azera. A few blocks before that, I noticed a blue Toyota SUV. Might have been one of the new highlanders. They all had black tinted windows.”
Annabelle watched the red Altima. It was true that the windows were too dark to see through. Her heart began beating faster.
That was how they really did it. Not like it was in the movies. One car didn’t follow a few cars behind you the whole way. No. A child would notice such a thing these days. What a tail actually did was switch off. They were all linked via radio. One car would follow for a while, trading places with another later on. This made a tail virtually undetectable, unless you knew what to look for.
And, apparently, Clara did. Her father taught her well. Annabelle wasn’t sure whether to be happy for her or to feel pointedly sorry for her.
“Jack, you catch that?” Annabelle asked, raising her voice for the benefit of the intercom system.
“I’m way ahead of you, luv. Nice going, Clara.”
There was a pause in his speech, at which point Beatrice patted her daughter’s cheek proudly. And then Jack continued. “Before the highlander, it was a black Impala. And I believe that took the place of a silver Taurus.”
“Wow, they really made sure to mix up their brands, didn’t they?” Dylan sat forward, his hands on his legs, his expression now distinctly nervous. “What do they want?”
Clara shrugged. Cassie couldn’t answer. Everyone looked at Annabelle.
She took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. Even Jack deigned to come to her rescue, as the intercom remained annoyingly silent. “Most likely, they’re after the clue that your father left behind, Dylan. They want to know where we’re going – that we’re looking for Craig Brandt at Columbia University.”
“Who are they?” was his next question.
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“I do.” Jack said.
Everyone looked toward the front of the car, even though a barrier separated them and the man in the driver’s seat. There was another stretch of silence.
“Of course!” Clara suddenly stated excitedly. “They’re hit men. Only hit men would know to follow this pattern.” She chewed on her lip, her cheeks flushing pink. “But who hired them – that’s the question.”
“Jack?” Annabelle prompted.
“Sorry, Bella. I haven’t got an answer for that one.”
“What are we going to do?” She wanted to know next.
“Try to lose them.”
“In a limo?” Dylan asked incredulously. “Is he serious?”
“He’s got a point, Jack. We haven’t got much of a chance.”
To that, Jack didn’t reply. And the inhabitants of the car fell into an uneasy silence. Dylan’s eyes were wide. Clara sat on the edge of the seat. Beatrice clutched the “oh shit” bar above the car’s back windows. Annabelle chewed her lip and looked toward the front of the car. Jack wasn’t speeding up and he wasn�
��t making any particularly difficult maneuvers or abrupt turns. So, what was he doing? What was the plan?
They kept driving, coming to a slow as they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and entered Manhattan’s major populated area. Yellow taxi’s dominated the streets, criss-crossing lanes with what seemed like reckless abandon but was actually practiced expertise.
“The Altima just changed lanes.” Annabelle said.
“Getting ready for another switch. It’s a long drive for an effective tail.” Even through the slightly metallic filters of the stereo system, Jack’s British accent and calm, confident tone gave Annabelle comfort.
“And there’s the black BMW. Bit of an obvious choice, don’t you think?” Clara stated, with a shake of her head.
Annabelle nodded. A black BMW had taken the place of the red Altima. It was a bold move. Everyone noticed a jet-black BMW with black tinted windows. Especially one as shiny and new as that one. But then again, in New York City, they were literally everywhere. It was a frequent and utterly commonplace sight. To the unsuspecting and ignorant mark, a black BMW that suddenly appeared and then disappeared just as quickly would raise no suspicion. And that was apparently what the people following them were counting on.
Which meant they didn’t know that their quarry included Jack Thane – and his highly observant daughter.
That thought made Annabelle smile. It was a definite trump card if their followers didn’t know who they were dealing with.
“What the-”
Annabelle turned to face Cassie, whose expression had changed from worry to one of surprise as she stared out the window at their changing surroundings. She followed Cassie’s gaze to find that they had just pulled into the covered lot of the prestigious City Coach Limo rental office.
Limousines of every size, mostly black, stretched across literally hundreds of parking spaces. There were limo’s set up for anywhere from six to maybe twenty-five passengers, all lined up according to size and color. Scattered here and there among them were the occasional Mercedes Benz S500 and Lincoln Town car. All in black.
A smile spread across Annabelle’s face. Jack was a bloody genius.
Hell Bent Page 15