Hell Bent

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Jack was aiming his weapon at the man on the couch. But within short seconds, he was lowering the gun and re-holstering it.

  Annabelle wasn’t sure what it was he’d decided about the couple, but whatever it was, it must have meant that the man was not a threat. And the two bodies on the floor probably confirmed as much.

  Jack slid his gun back into its holster and adjusted his leather jacket over it. His gaze never left that of the man on the couch, who was holding Virginia Meredith’s hands in his own. Annabelle noticed that Virginia was crying. Actually, now that she looked more closely, she saw that both of them were crying. Virginia’s expression was stricken. The man’s was helpless.

  And then Jack took a deep breath, glanced once more at the two fallen men on the floor, and came the rest of the way into the apartment, closing the door behind them as Annabelle and Dylan followed him in.

  When he’d shut it and re-locked it, he turned back to the man on the couch. With a tone much less mystified than Annabelle would have expected, considering what he was about to ask, Jack said, “Mr. Brandt, I presume?”

  Annabelle’s eyes widened.

  Dylan’s must have too, because under his breath, he muttered, “No fucking way…”

  Craig Brandt, for his part, only took a deep breath, slowly stood, and nodded.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Jack had called in re-enforcements. It took roughly an hour for all of them, working together, to clean the mess in Virginia Meredith’s apartment. The bodies, Jack and Sam disposed of. The blood, Annabelle wiped up from the hard wood floor. The towels used for the job were also taken by Sam and disposed of. And the one blood stain on Virginia’s faux fur rug was brilliantly exercised by Beatrice. Who, apparently, was just made to be the perfect spouse to an assassin or… say… a mobster.

  The apartment was incredibly intact and undamaged for the sight of a double-homicide. Which was fortunate, because, once they’d finished up, Jack was able to simply right the couch back into its original position and then sit down on it to face Craig and Virginia, who had once more taken their places on the love seat opposite him.

  Jack opened his mouth to speak, and Craig held up his hand in placation.

  “Look, Mr. Thane, I already know what you’re going to say; what you’re going to ask. So, why don’t I just save you the trouble and tell you what’s going on?” He offered.

  Jack’s brow raised and he sat back into the couch. He shrugged, gesturing for Craig to continue. Craig nodded.

  Annabelle studied him. Brandt wasn’t a bad looking man; probably standing at just under six feet, with an athlete’s build. He wore blue jeans and a red t-shirt over a long-sleeved white thermal. His hair was brown and wavy, resembling Dylan’s.

  Annabelle sat down in the plush tufted chair in between the two couches. Sam stood by the front door, as if guarding it. Dylan took up guard duty at the double glass sliding doors, which were now covered by drawn curtains.

  Clara and Beatrice joined Annabelle, standing on either side of the tufted seat as if she were their queen. She smiled at the thought, and then forced herself to concentrate on the issue at hand.

  “I knew I was in trouble when Teresa was killed,” Craig began. “I discovered the cure in the middle of the night and sent her an email right away. I couldn’t have been more idiotic, I know that now. But we were best friends. We went to the same grade school and high school together. I was best man at her and Max’s wedding.” He shook his head, as if disgusted with himself. “I was going to present my findings to Mr. Osborne the next day. Teresa immediately sent me an email back, ecstatic for me. She wished me luck.”

  “That night, she was killed. I got the news the next morning. Max called me.”

  He stopped, swallowing repeatedly. They let him re-gain control of his faculties and, in a few minutes, he went on. “That day, I realized what had happened. Somehow, I just put two and two together. I saw the grant, the cure, Teresa’s death – all of it. And I knew my life was in danger too. So, I decided to leave town.”

  “I called in sick to work and thought about where the hell I would go. I needed a duffel bag big enough to put more than one set of clothes in. All I had were the small ones, since I used to play a lot of sports.” He sighed. “I figured it would be best if I bought one new. And then, when I was thinking about this, I realized that if I went off the radar, my cure would have to disappear as well.” He became more animated now, his voice raising slightly as he continued. “I couldn’t let my discovery die along with the memory of Craig Brandt.” He looked at each of them in turn. “I went out the fire escape of my apartment because it was a lot faster than going down the main stairs or using the elevator. And because I didn’t want to be seen.”

  He looked at Jack, who nodded once in understanding.

  “I ran down the alleys behind my apartment complex and then took a taxi a few blocks away.” He looked at Virginia. “I came here.” She was watching him silently, her eyes glistening with more, un-shed tears. She gave him a small smile. He squeezed her hand and went on.

  “I gave a vial of the solution to her, along with a note that contained the calculations necessary to reproduce it.” He turned back to them. “I told her to hide it and she promised she would. But, she almost didn’t let me leave again.” He smiled at this and Virginia lowered her head as her cheeks flushed pink. “She told me I shouldn’t return home and that it was too dangerous.” He paused and gently cupped her face in his hand. “She was right.”

  “I took a taxi back to the same place I’d picked it up and got out. I still needed to buy a bag and pack, so I headed down the sidewalk toward a convenience store at the corner.”

  He paused, and Annabelle could tell that he was remembering. He’d gone very still. His color had paled and his gaze slipped to the floor.

  “And then there was an explosion. It rocked the whole block. I hit the pavement, just like everyone else.” His voice became very soft, taking on a far-off quality. “This is New York; the pain was still very fresh in all our minds – not enough time had gone by.” He shook his head slowly, once. “We thought the world was coming to an end. All over again.”

  Everyone in the room nodded in silent understanding.

  And then he seemed to square his shoulders and re-focus. He went on. “When we stood back up and looked around, I realized that the smoke was coming from my apartment complex. They’d blown it away.”

  He stopped again, swallowing against something that had formed in his throat. “They meant to kill me. Instead, they’d killed my cats. I hadn’t had time to get them out. To say nothing of packing. I had… Nothing.”

  “You went into hiding, pretending to be dead.” Dylan said the words softly. His own expression was as lost as any Annabelle had ever seen. He was even more pale than Craig. He looked like a ghost. She knew he was wishing that his own parents had done such a thing. At the very least, his father, who obviously knew he was in trouble or he wouldn’t have left this puzzle trail for his son to follow.

  “Yes,” Craig nodded. “And I’ve been hiding ever since.”

  Annabelle wondered whether she should get up and go to Dylan; give him a hug. But even as she wondered this, Clara moved toward him instead.

  “There, there,” she whispered softly, placing her hand gently on his shoulder. He looked at her and his eyes widened slightly. Then a bit of color returned to his cheeks and he cleared his throat.

  Annabelle’s brows raised. She looked over at Jack. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes were locked on the two teenagers as if drawn there by magnets.

  “How did you know Miss Meredith was in trouble?” he asked, without taking his eyes from his daughter and Dylan.

  “I’ve been keeping an eye on her,” Craig admitted. He turned back to look at her. Now it was his turn to blush. Virginia blinked, obviously not knowing exactly what to think of that.

  Jack took a slow, deep breath and let it out through his nose as he pulled his gaze away from t
he couple standing by the sliding glass doors and ran a hand through his hair. He stared across at Craig and then at Virginia. “I’m afraid you’re both going to have to disappear for a while now,” he told them. “Not just from New York. Osborne’s reach extends beyond the boundaries of the city. You’ll have to leave the country.”

  Virginia’s eyes widened. “But my store-”

  “Will have to be closed due to an unexpected family emergency,” he told her, before she could even finish voicing her objection.

  “It’s not as hard as you would think,” Craig told her, turning to face her once more. But, her brow furrowed and she opened her mouth to object again.

  Jack caught this one too. “Or, you can stay here and get tortured and killed,” he told her flatly, stealing another agitated glance toward his daughter.

  Annabelle bit her lip.

  It really wasn’t funny.

  “I’ll ‘elp you pack,” Beatrice said, coming around the chair to take a seat on the couch, sandwiching Virginia Meredith in between her and Craig. “It won’t take us long at all, luv. I’ve done it lots of times.”

  That got Jack’s attention once more. He turned to look at Beatrice, who had her hand on Meredith’s shoulder, just as Clara had with Dylan. His expression became troubled.

  He blinked and looked down at the floor.

  And then he stood. “An hour. No more,” he instructed. Then he turned to Sam, who was watching him carefully. Annabelle saw the look they exchanged. Then Sam stepped aside and Jack left the apartment. Sam closed and locked the door behind him.

  Annabelle sat there in the chair as Virginia, Craig, and Beatrice stood and made their way down the hall to one of the rooms beyond.

  Behind her, Clara excused herself to go to the restroom and Dylan stepped out onto the balcony “to get some air”.

  Annabelle shook her head. Well, well, she thought. ‘Love is a many splendored thing.’

  A storm of massive proportions was raging in Jack Thane’s mind. He could not believe how stupid he’d been over the last twelve hours. Ever since he’d slept with Annabelle…

  Craig Brandt had been keeping an eye on Virginia Meredith. That meant that he’d seen Annabelle and Dylan talking to her at Meredith’s store. The simple fact that Jack had failed to notice another man monitoring the goings-on at The Lavender Garden lent credence to the fact that he was way, way off his game. Never had he screwed up this badly before. It was just embarrassing. Worse, it was deadly.

  He’d made some incredibly impressive mistakes. He’d dragged every single person he cared about into a toxic, lethal situation. And then, just to make sure that everything was as bad as it could possibly get, he’d done something that had managed to royally fuck up any hope he had of keeping them safe.

  He’d fulfilled a desire he’d had for ten years. But it hadn’t had the effect it should have had. It was pure hell to find that when you scratched an itch, that itch only got worse.

  She was all he could think about now and it was going to get them all killed.

  “Bugger and hell,” he muttered under his breath. He moved through the alleys, making good time, his boots pounding out the pavement as fast as his thoughts spun in his head. “Fuck,” he added. “Shit and piss and bugger fuck,” he finished, running his hand through his hair for good measure.

  Okay, he was starting to feel better.

  He continued through the back streets and alleys of Manhattan. Jack had made sure that the meeting place he and his handler had decided upon was not far from Meredith’s apartment. He needed to pick up the profile on his mark and he didn’t want to waste too much time doing it. For the first time in a long while, he didn’t have access to the transportation he really wanted. He just hadn’t had the time or opportunity to pick up a bike and didn’t feel like being locked in a cage right now.

  He needed air. He needed wind.

  But it would have to wait. He turned the corner, exiting onto a busy city sidewalk, and then crossed the street with a throng of pedestrians. He made it to another corner and ducked back into the alley.

  Since his childhood, he’d been moving through the shadowy labyrinth of the alleyways of the world. In Sheffield, there were a plethora of them. He’d had more than his fair share of time to traverse them. Over the years, he’d learned which alleys would let him through, and which turns would dead end, blocking him off and sending him back the way he’d come.

  Now, as he moved through them, avoiding beggars and drug dealers and getting closer to his destination, his conscious mind was on anything but the human refuse of the city. That, he circumvented on auto-pilot.

  His mind was now on Beatrice and the fact that, as she’d mentioned in Meredith’s apartment, she’d had to pack quite often during their marriage. It was true. He’d dragged her all across Great Britain, and even Europe. It had been par for the course of wedding an assassin who hadn’t yet made a large enough footprint to allow him to bed down in relative safety, protected by the multitude of employees he now hosted to keep himself and the ones he loved secure.

  He regretted that.

  But, then, he wondered why he should regret it. After all, she’d known what she was getting into. And, come to think of it, he wasn’t sure she regretted it all that much.

  Still… There were the children to consider. Ian was still too young to notice it much. But what had it done to Clara?

  The teenager knew how to break and enter undetected, pack for a week in five minutes, get out of a pair of handcuffs unaided, and aim and fire a handgun, for Christ’s sake. Was that especially healthy for a girl her age?

  Dylan has been through worse.

  That thought brought him up short in the alley. He stopped in his tracks as the image of Clara and Dylan floated before his mind’s eye.

  It’s innocent, he told himself.

  Is it?

  Of course, it is. She’s a good girl. She hates to see people in pain.

  But, would it even be so bad if it wasn’t all that innocent? He wondered about that.

  She’s not a toddler, he reasoned. She could do worse. He’s a bright boy. And he’s involved now…

  It’s innocent!

  Fine. Whatever you say.

  Christ…

  He was bloody talking to himself. Without even speaking. This was all enough to make him want to put his head in a cannon and light the bloody fuse. It would save him the pain of fighting with Annabelle over flying to England, at the very least.

  Because he was really looking forward to that. It was bound to be a boat load of bloody fun.

  He swore under his breath once more and began moving again. He arrived at his destination with another turn around a corner. An Indian restaurant waited half-way down the street. He ducked in, sparing a glance around to make sure no one really noticed.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Annabelle glanced in to the room as she passed by in the hallway. Craig and Virginia were still sitting on the edge of Sam’s bed, talking. They’d been conversing for the last hour and a half, and she wasn’t surprised at it. They had a lot to discuss. He’d been gone for a long time. Virginia had lived a separate life for just as long.

  And they loved each other. That, alone, was a conversation piece.

  The group of them – Annabelle, Beatrice, Clara, Cassie, Dylan, Craig, Virginia, and Sam – had been in Sam’s apartment for a few hours now. Jack had been gone for three. Annabelle guessed that Jack had basically left them to Sam’s charge, trusting him to keep them safe while he went off and…

  And what?

  Well, as much as she sort of wanted to ignore the verity, she was pretty sure that he was out whacking someone. It was his job, after all.

  Annabelle moved down the hall to the last room, where Dylan had gone some time ago, to be alone. Everyone else was in the kitchen, drinking black vanilla-caramel tea and talking about the shock that of Craig Brandt being alive. Except for Beatrice, who claimed that she’d known it all along. Cassie had rolled her ey
es at that.

  Annabelle knocked on the door.

  “Yeah?” Dylan’s tone was tired.

  “Dylan, it’s me, Annabelle. Can I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  Annabelle opened the door to find him sitting on the guest bed, in almost exactly the same position that Craig and Virginia had been sitting in on Sam’s bed. She joined him there and put her hands in her lap. She stared down at them.

  “I know what you’re gonna say,” he began quietly.

  “Really?” Annabelle asked, her brows lifting.

  “You’re going to tell me that my dad didn’t have time to go into hiding. He was killed mere hours after he found the information on the laptop. He never could have gotten both of us to some far off safe place in time.”

  Annabelle’s brow furrowed.

  “Right?” he asked, turning to face her.

  She hadn’t been going to tell him that at all. In fact, the truth was, she’d had no idea what to say to him, so she’d just been planning on sitting there beside him in companionable silence. There to lend a shoulder, should he need one.

  But there was no point in telling him that.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “It’s true, Dylan. Your dad did everything he possibly could in the time he had. He did manage to keep you safe, after all. That’s a father’s number one priority.”

  Dylan nodded once and turned away again to look back at the floor. They stared at it together. Never before had a plain beige rug been so interesting to so very many people.

  At last, he spoke again. “I know what Thane is.”

  Annabelle’s spine stiffened. It was an automatic reaction. She kept her tone even and asked, “What do you mean, Dylan?”

  “He’s not a real-estate mogul, is he?”

  “Yes, he is.” It was true. He’d made millions off of his properties. That just wasn’t all that he was.

  “It’s a cover. I’m not stupid.” He shook his head once. His voice was still soft, his tone still tired. “He’s an assassin, isn’t he?”