Hell Bent

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Soon, the entire group was down the ladder and once Jack and Sam had both made it down as well, the two worked together, turning toward the ladder and grabbing hold of it to slide it along two connected metal rungs to steel couplings on the other side of the trap door hole.

  Annabelle was highly impressed with the mechanism. The ladder drew a thick metal sheet behind it and then locked firmly into place, sealing off their passage so that no one could follow them down.

  “It’s bullet proof, right?” She found herself asking, simply needing to be sure.

  “It was taken and compiled from the sides of a German King Tiger Tank,” Jack answered, shrugging slightly. “So I can’t personally vouch for it. Germans, and all.”

  Annabelle breathed a sigh of relief, but Sam and Jack didn’t give them time to get comfortable.

  “Keep moving,” Sam urged, and Jack spun Annabelle around to face the corridor that led off to God-only-knew-where. The lot of them ran down the corridor, and before long, the reverberating sounds of metal upon metal followed them through the man-made tunnel. The bad guys were trying to get through.

  There were no turn-offs or tributaries the way there had been with the corridors beneath Buell Hall and Columbia. Instead, the escape route led them about a quarter of a mile straight ahead, and then curved slightly to the left.

  Here, the air grew cooler and the carved-out walls more damp and Annabelle wondered if they were bordering a river. At one point, they passed under a small steel door, set into the cement ceiling of the tunnel. They kept going, past this door, and Annabelle couldn’t help but question what it was. And, with the darkness and dampness and the low ceiling above them, she also couldn’t help but wonder how Jack was holding up.

  She glanced back at him. At once, she caught sight of the blood that had seeped through the bandages around his midsection and left thigh. Her heart leapt into her throat. He wasn’t healed enough yet for all of this.

  They traveled a distance further before the tunnel ended in a steel door. It looked like the kind you’d find in a submarine, with the giant wheel used to pry the door open.

  There was a circuit breaker box on the wall beside the door, and next to the box was a strange key pad. Jack popped the door open on the box and ripped out every wire, leaving them dangling free. The lights went out. No one moved.

  In the darkness, Annabelle could hear Jack and probably Sam working on the wheel of the submarine door. Far down the tunnel, in the darkness they’d left behind, there was an explosion. It rocked the corridor and particles of dirt and rock fell from the ceiling above them to skitter across the ground.

  And then Jack had the metal door open and light streamed into the tunnel. No one wasted any time climbing up out of it. Jack stayed behind long enough to turn back to the key pad on the wall and punch in a series of numbers.

  Then he, too, climbed up through the exit and he and Sam swung the door shut behind them. It automatically sealed itself tight, emitting a slight popping noise as it did so. From beyond it, Annabelle could hear the sound of sudden, rushing water.

  “You flooded the tunnel,” she stated. It wasn’t a question. She was simply recalling the metal door in the ceiling that they had run underneath when things had gotten more damp and cold. It must have been an opening to a body of water above them.

  “Yes,” Jack said simply, and they all stood up to look around.

  They were in a ditch next to a taller mound of dirt, covered with vegetation of different kinds. Annabelle pressed against the mound of dirt and climbed up, peeking her head over the edge. Before she even looked, she knew what she would find.

  Blue water stretched out before her, and in the distance, she could see the trees that surrounded Jack’s mansion. They’d just tunneled underneath a small lake.

  “Cor, tha’s bloody brilliant, da’,” Clara said from where she’d climbed up beside Annabelle.

  Behind her, Jack leaned against the opposite mound of dirt and watched Annabelle climb back down the other side. She was still holding something in her right hand. She’d been holding on to it ever since her escape from beneath the bed during the grenade attack.

  Though he was practically dizzy with pain and waning adrenaline, his curiosity got the better of him. “Bella, what have you got in your hand?”

  Annabelle turned and straightened and then looked down at the smudged bit of white in her right palm. She carefully dusted it off and unfolded it, revealing two small booklets of Wild season tickets. She gave a small shrug and, without looking back up at him, she said softly, “I really wanna go.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Sam’s boat settled into a rhythmic bouncing motion as it rode the waves of New York’s harbors. Annabelle could tell that they were headed back in the direction they’d originally come, but Jack was being particularly close-mouthed about their next destination.

  She chalked it up to exhaustion and blood loss and tried to relax.

  Poor Reese had been let out of his trunk days ago and had been under close guard by Sam’s men on the boat, in the open water. Jack wanted him alive for questioning, and Sam had to agree it was a good idea, as long as Reese was in the middle of a vast expanse of murky water, unable to either retrieve or give away information that might put Jack and their group in any further danger.

  For the most part, they’d kept the assassin drugged up. It gave Annabelle chills to think of how many times they must have stuck needles into his arms. Still, she realized it was probably the best way. He wouldn’t fight if he was asleep, and the men guarding him could take breaks to use the restroom and eat. It made sense. It was just creepy.

  Right now, the well-dressed balding man was seated on the very trunk he’d been trapped in several days before. He still wore his suit and wool trench coat, though his attire had taken some understandable damage. His glasses were also missing.

  His wrists were secured behind his back in a pair of metal cuffs that Annabelle had never seen before. They were smooth, devoid of key holes or notches and she wondered how the hell they came off and on.

  The rest of them were standing more or less on the opposite side of the cabin, except for Craig, who’d gone to use the boat’s tiny restroom, and Beatrice and her daughter, who were seated side by side on the ship’s prow, holding on to the railing as they enjoyed the roller-coaster-like rise and dive of the boat’s movement over the waves.

  It looked like a lot of fun, actually, and Annabelle would have joined them if it hadn’t been for her shoulder. The sprain hurt a little more today than it had yesterday and she wasn’t sure she could hold on to the railing tight enough to keep from going overboard.

  The others were busy talking about Max’s suicide letter. Annabelle wasn’t sure whether she was toning out because she really wanted to go and ride the waves or because she didn’t actually want to talk about Max.

  Either way, when she mentally rejoined them, Dylan was sulking on one of the attached wooden and metal stools beside the captain’s table. His expression said that he had once more surrendered to his deeper thoughts.

  “They certainly messed up the suicide, itself,” Cassie was saying. “It’s really hard to kill yourself with Klonapin. At least, quickly.” She paused. “But the medical records were fixed, and whoever took care of that did a really good job.”

  “Godrick Osborne hired more than one man to clean up his mess,” Sam told them, his tone even, his voice soft.

  “The Colonel said as much when we were at his warehouse,” Annabelle offered, deciding to join the conversation. She distinctly recalled the Colonel’s troubled expression when he’d mumbled that he hadn’t been the only one hired to solve Osborne’s problems.

  Jack spoke up then. “Osborne has pulled out all the stops, I can assure you.”

  Sam glanced at him and their gazes met.

  Annabelle’s own gaze narrowed. “Okay, so who was the man outside the mansion, Jack? The one whose voice you so obviously recognized?”

  Jack turned to
look at her, his brows raised in slight surprise. She rolled her eyes. “Oh come on – there may as well have been a text box above your head with scene directions that said, ‘character recognizes a voice from the past’.”

  Jack blinked and then smiled. Sam whistled low. Craig came out of the bathroom and Beatrice and Clara chose that moment to head back in through the glass opening that led to the stern of the boat.

  Jack glanced at them and then looked back at Annabelle, who was waiting expectantly. “Very well, luv, you’re right. I know him.”

  This had everyone’s attention. Even Dylan came out of his own personal hell long enough to listen in.

  “Know ‘oo?” Beatrice asked.

  “The guys who were shooting at us at the mansion,” Virginia filled her in. Beatrice nodded, her eyes widening.

  Jack sighed. “His name is Adam Night.”

  Annabelle gave him a disbelieving look. “You’ve got to be kidding me. No one is named ‘Adam Night’.”

  Jack shrugged.

  Sam cut in. “No one knows his real name,” he told them. “He’s probably forgotten it, himself.”

  “He’s been Adam Night since we were kids,” Jack explained.

  “Since you were kids?” Annabelle asked. “You mean, together?”

  “More or less. We were at the same orphanage together.”

  “I’d say ‘more’, not ‘less’,” Sam said.

  Jack cut him a glance and sighed. “Fine. ‘More’.”

  The people in the cabin who were not all that familiar with Jack looked at him with a mixture of sadness and surprise. Annabelle, Beatrice, Jack’s daughter, and Sam, however, had already known the truth of Jack’s past. He’d been an orphan in Yorkshire. And, apparently, he’d had a friend.

  “Adam was brought in as an infant, just as I was, and roughly at the same time. He was a few years younger, or that’s what they estimated. But there was no accompanying information on him. So, they called him Adam because he seemed to be missing one of his ribs.”

  “What?” Dylan blinked. His eyes narrowed. “He was missing a rib?”

  “You couldn’t really tell, but as always, a physician was brought in to examine the new child. The doctor said it was a birth defect of some sort.” Jack took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “They gave him the surname of Night because of his hair.”

  Annabelle thought about this for a moment and then asked, “What is the deal between you two?”

  Jack went on. “Adam was younger, but a great deal more… fearless than I,” he began. “He was always the first of our group to wind up or mess someone about-”

  “What?” They all asked, at the same time. Except for Beatrice and Clara, who were surprised by their question.

  Jack blinked. “Sorry.” He’d slipped into the past to tell this story, and it had come through in his language. He cleared his throat. “He was always the one who caused trouble. He’d be the first to pull a prank, assuring us we could do it. Then he’d be the only one who wouldn’t get caught.”

  There was a lot he wasn’t telling them. Adam had been Jack’s brother, in so much as two unrelated people could be brothers. Adam had always confided in Jack about what he was thinking and what he wanted to do. When he stole liquor, it was to share with Jack, no one else. And when he smoked, he and Jack smoked together as they sat on the roof of their orphanage and made fun of the people who mulled around below them.

  But they didn’t need to know any of that. When it came down to it, the important thing that they understood was that Adam was crazy dangerous.

  While Jack had fallen into the Business more or less by accident, Adam Night had out-and-out decided it was what he wanted to do. And so he had.

  And he was very, very good at it.

  “Night is an assassin with no barriers,” Jack told them. He was called in on only the most insane assignments. The ones that no one else would take. And he only sometimes finished the job. However, it never remained incomplete because Adam couldn’t do it. It was always because Adam had simply decided the target was too easy. Or too boring.

  The higher-ups and their handlers had a very difficult time getting a hold of Adam Night. The enigmatic, frightening hired gun had been in more than a few manila folders, himself.

  No one could kill him, though. Hell, no one could ever find him.

  But when he did accept a job that he chose to complete, rumors of what he did to his marks infiltrated the circle of handlers and piece men until Adam Night had become a bad word in the households of assassins across the globe.

  And he’d once been Jack’s best friend.

  “So, basically, he’s a really bad guy,” Annabelle mumbled, turning away to gaze out the window.

  “Aye, luv. A really bad guy.” Jack replied softly.

  From where he was seated atop his trunk, the quiet and watchful Reese finally spoke up. Everyone had almost forgotten he was there. “You have no idea,” he said softly. He wasn’t trying to be a smart ass, and his tone wasn’t overtly cruel. It was a simple affirmation. His expression was almost sad. “I’ve come across the bodies he leaves behind. He doesn’t just kill them.”

  Everyone was a little paler after that comment. Jack stared at Reese for a moment and then let the comment go, turning to Craig. If Craig looked a little sick, it was nothing compared to how he looked after Jack said, “He’s been hired to kill you.”

  “You’re not… You’re not going to let him, right?” Craig asked, stumbling over his speech as his tongue had most likely gone numb with fear.

  The truth was, if Adam Night wanted Craig Brandt dead, Craig Brandt was probably going to die. There would be little Jack could do to stop it. And the fact of the matter was that if Adam had really wanted Craig badly enough, the little game he’d played at the Middlesex mansion wouldn’t have occurred. Virginia Meredith simply would have woken up one morning to find her lover scalped or some other such grisly nonsense and cold as stone, lying next to her in bed.

  Adam was having fun. He was letting his brother know he was in town; he was saying “hi.” Jack wondered how long the little reunion would go on before Adam got serious. Or bored.

  Jack was hoping for bored.

  When he didn’t answer, Craig swallowed audibly. “Then we need to get out of here, don’t we? Go somewhere else? Like, far away?” Virginia took his hand and squeezed it tight. She turned entreating eyes upon Jack, who ran a hand through his hair.

  Here it was. What he’d been dreading.

  “Yes, we need to get out.” He said. “We’re taking you to a researcher in Essex who should be able to get you set up to reproduce your cure.”

  Beside him, he could almost feel Annabelle tense up. He reluctantly turned to face her.

  Annabelle stared at him a few silent moments and then cocked her head to one side. “What?” she asked, very softly.

  “We’re going to England, Annabelle. Today.” Jack told her, speaking slowly and softly. He was having trouble making eye contact with her. Instead, he looked at the wooden slats in the floor and, again with the nervous gesture, ran a hand through his blonde waves.

  Annabelle swallowed almost as audibly as Craig had. “Jack, I don’t fly. You know that.” She swallowed again, though it was getting hard to with how dry her mouth had gone. “I made a once-in-a-life-time exception to come here because it was necessary. This is where Columbia is. This is where Craig Brandt is.” She glanced at Craig, nodding in reference. He hesitantly nodded back. “But there’s no way in hell that I’ll get on a plane to go to England.” She wanted to make herself very clear on this point.

  She steadily stared up at him. Finally, he met her eyes once more. His expression was inscrutable.

  She hadn’t missed the fact that he’d used her whole name when he’d addressed her about this. He only did that when his emotions were really strong. He was determined in this and that really scared her.

  He pulled his gaze away from hers then and looked over her shoulder. Something flicker
ed in their blue depths.

  Annabelle spun around to see that he was looking at Sam. Who had silently made his way to the archway leading out of the cabin and was standing in front of it, blocking the exit.

  What the hell?

  “Anna, try to think about the fact that you finally get to visit England,” Cassie made her way across the cabin to put a gentle hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Hell, I’m actually really glad that I have to go with you because I sure as shit want to see England! We can try to get Sean Bean’s autograph!”

  “I know you’ve always wanted to go,” Dylan offered next, shooting a slightly resentful look toward Jack as he continued, in as supportive a tone as he could muster. “You’re always telling me you want to see Yorkshire.”

  “It’s not the destination, Dylan,” Annabelle told him. She tried to breathe evenly as she went on. “It’s the trip.” She was seething with anger at Jack at that moment. And, frankly, none of these people were helping. She wasn’t getting on another plane; that was a given. Especially a plane that planned to cross water. But, what pissed her off the most was the fact that Jack had just decided, without consulting her in the least, that she was going to yet again face her worst fear so that she could leave her country to go visit another one that very day! Where the hell did he get off?

  “Not to worry, luv,” Beatrice chimed in. She was digging around in her large purse again. “I’ve got a fresh supply of bevvy that can get us aled up ri’ proper.” She grinned widely as she pulled out an un-opened bottle of Jose Cuervo. “’Ere we are! We’ll be just fine then, won’t we?”

  “Cor, Miss Drake, you’re goin’ about this all wrong, eh?” Clara said then, drawing Annabelle’s attention from Beatrice. “It’s like when you know the big bloke in the play yard wants to clobber your brains out. You don’t let ‘im smell your fear, do you? Nah, you let ‘im know you think he’s go’ a tiny wanker, you do! Teach ‘im you’re no’ a coward!”

  Annabelle’s eyes widened, her mouth dropping open. “Clara! You do not tell an airplane you’re about to get on that it has a small penis! It’ll just get pissed off at you and want to get even!”