Hell Bent

by Heather Killough-Walden

  “My things, Sam. You’re dead, remember? So kind of you to leave everything to me, by the way,” he’d teased him as he’d faked a dreamy look and sighed.“ I do believe I’ve now become one of the richest men in the world. Too bad no one can know about it.”

  Sam had rolled his eyes and laid back down on the pillows. They both knew that Jack would probably never even make use of a quarter of Sam’s “things,” and if he’d wanted to, he could have done so without inheriting it, anyway.

  “How do I look?”

  Jack turned at the sound of Annabelle’s voice and stared at the woman who stood across the room from him.

  It was as if he were back in that bar again, his eyes falling on her for the first time. His breath was gone, his heart skipped several beats, and he wondered whether he was dreaming.

  She stood tall and ethereal, her long hair shimmering in the light from the room behind her and he could smell her shampoo from here. All signs of bruising on her face had faded, leaving her skin smooth and luminescent, but for the tiny line of red that still remained from the shard of brick that had sliced her three days ago.

  Her long, white dress was filmy, adhering to her perfect form, yet shifting, becoming iridescent at the slightest movement. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips full and pink and parted ever so slightly.

  She was so much more than the sum of her parts that he didn’t imagine there were words in the Oxford dictionary that could describe her beauty at that moment.

  He opened his mouth to tell her this, but no immediate sound came out.

  She grinned at that and laughed. She may love the sound of a Harley’s engine, but to Jack, the greatest sound in the world would always be that laugh.

  “I’ll take that as a good sign,” she said, still smiling broadly. “And you don’t look so shabby yourself.” Her eyes trailed down his body, taking in the double-breasted black suit, black shirt, and black silk tie that were so customary at the loss of a loved one. For some reason, in this Business, the women always wore white to a funeral. He supposed it might have something to do with how backwards the entire affair was in the first place. After all, death was the every-day occurrence for hired guns.

  “Are we ready, then?” She asked softly, when he still didn’t say anything.

  Jack’s gaze slid, inexorably, from appreciative to hungry in a matter of short seconds. Annabelle’s eyes widened as he strode across the room to stand before her. He loomed over her, his height and powerful presence making her dizzy. In reaction, she tried to take a step back.

  He had her pinned up against the wall and out of breath before she had time to blink.

  She guessed they were going to be late to Sam’s memorial service.

  Jack, for his part, didn’t think Sam would mind.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  To Annabelle, it didn’t feel as if they were going to a memorial service. She wasn’t wearing black and she wasn’t sad – and Samuel Price wasn’t dead. That was sort of the clincher. Instead, she felt as if she were going out for a night on the town with Jack Thane. It was something she’d never done before. Not just the two of them, dressed to the hilt. Jack had never taken her on an official date.

  And though they were once more on speaking terms and she’d more or less forgiven him for putting her to sleep for the flight to England, the fact of the matter was, there were still a lot of matters left unresolved between them.

  The last three days had been extremely full. People had been coming and going, Jack’s most trusted employees secreting his family away and seeing to it that Virginia Meredith and Craig Brandt arrived safely at their own destination. Sam’s immediate medical concerns were addressed with lightning speed and Jack had spent a good deal of time making certain that Sam’s safe house had basically become a satellite hospital of its own.

  Information had been sent and delivered on various fronts, giving Jack the heads-up he needed to make certain everything continued to run smoothly and there were no nasty surprises. In the midst of these preparations and situations, Jack had turned to Annabelle, handed her a credit card, and told her to go and buy what she needed to live with him for at least several months.

  If she hadn’t been so over-all tired and still a good amount of scared, she may have questioned this request. After all, she was an American, when it came right down to it, and she loved her country. To her, it was like any love affair. There were good times and there were definite bad times, but you stuck with each other through thick and thin because to do anything less would be weak and shortsighted. The United States of America wasn’t built on wishy-washiness. And if it were to remain strong, its people had to be strong too.

  But, she had been tired when he’d told her to go shopping and she’d also known that now wasn’t the time to discuss an entirely unforeseeable and uncertain future. So, she’d taken the card and gone to town with it. Her old reservations against using his money had gone out the window. She’d figured, What the hell? He’s loaded – let’s have some fun.

  After all, she’d earned it.

  Jack had told her about the truth of the shooting in the secret tunnel beneath Buell Hall. And it made her feel… strange. Sort of sick, but sort of proud too. Strong, and weak at the same time.

  I’ve killed, she thought to herself. I have pulled my trigger and taken a life. Many lives. And it’s not as if I did it by accident. I certainly aimed first.

  It was a humbling thought, and one that would suddenly darken her mood, stealing the colors from around her, making everything seem a little colder.

  So, when she’d gone into London with Jack’s throng of bodyguards, she hadn’t held back all that much. Anywhere and everywhere that she found something that made her feel more comfortable, that brought her some semblance of peace and warmth, she latched onto it and put it on his card.

  She’d even purchased a pair of Ugg boots, even though it was May and the boots were therefore on sale. Which sort of rankled. She finally got a chance to spend big bucks and what did society go and do? Make the object of her desire cheap! It was kind of a rip.

  But, once she’d gotten the boots back to the apartment and put them on, her opinion of them had changed in a heart beat. They were warm! They were soft! Comfortable! And easy to run in! The list could go on and on.

  She vowed to buy more next winter season. With her own money.

  And that was another thing that had been shadowing her of late. She was out of a job and wondered when she would next have one. She didn’t like the idea of being unemployed. It was… nerve wracking. She needed something to do, and preferred it to be something half-way important to someone other than herself.

  At DesignMax, she’d made peoples’ businesses boom by giving them beautiful web pages that were eye-catching, informative, and easy to operate. She’d been able to rely upon her inherent creativity in this manner, while successfully making a living at it.

  It was stressful. Some of the customers were jerks. But, deep down, she’d been happy. Happy enough, anyway.

  Now… She felt as if she were floating, with no solid foundation beneath her and no clear picture before her of where she was going. She felt like she was just waiting. For what, she didn’t know.

  “You okay, luv?” Jack asked her from where he sat in the driver’s seat – to her right. She wasn’t sure she would get used to that any time soon. Up ahead, cars zoomed by on the right side of the road and she had the minor urge to grab the wheel from Jack and steer them back over to the opposite side of the road, where her internal workings swore to her that they belonged.

  “I’m fine,” she replied, dragging herself out of her thoughts for a moment. She glanced at him and then glanced back out the window. “So, I guess Sam’s pretty wealthy, huh?” She asked, sort of curious about assassins and their finances.

  “Aye. The wealthiest among us.”

  She gave him an impressed look. “Why’s that?”

  He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment and then narrow
ed his gaze on the road. “His father pulled a job in Dallas in the early sixties that set Sam up for good.”

  Annabelle frowned. “His father?”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “He had to go into deep cover after the job was completed, so the stipulation was that the payment be given to his son. And it was.”

  “Big payment,” she muttered, thinking about how much money Sam would have to own to have more than any other assassin, including Jack.

  Jack took a deep breath, his own expression a little troubled. “It was. One of the biggest.” He fell silent for a moment, his gaze distant. “Sam also has one advantage over everyone else in this field,” he said then. “He was raised by a piece man, so his training began very early. In the time he’s been working in this Business, he’s accumulated more money, on his own, than any other hired gun. Add to that his father’s money, and you have one rich man.”

  Annabelle stared at Jack, wide-eyed. Not only because it was nearly impossible for her to even imagine that kind of money, but because she’d just figured out what job Samuel Price’s father had actually done.

  “Early sixties… Dallas…” She mumbled.

  Jack turned to her then, slowly placing his gloved index finger to his lips. That simple gesture was all she needed as a confirmation.

  It was a good ten minutes before she was able to speak again. In that time, the stars had winked out above them as clouds had begun to roll in. They were stuck in traffic. It was Friday night.

  Annabelle cleared her throat and rubbed her temples, which had begun to ache a little. “Can you explain something to me, Jack? About the Business?”

  “Of course,” he answered softly.

  “How is getting married time and again a ‘cover’?”

  He shrugged. “Expensive honeymoons in foreign countries and large donations to churches help explain a lot of tax anomalies,” he told her simply. “It also provides the means to other codes, such as the one you heard me utter over the phone when I told an employee to ‘get Sherry to Rome’.”

  Annabelle blinked up at him. She remembered that. After Max had been killed and the police had become suspicious about his apparent suicide, they’d gone to Jack’s house to question him. Jack hadn’t been there, of course. But his wife had. And she’d quickly made sure that Jack knew about the incident.

  Annabelle could recall the phone conversation Jack had, word per word. “You said, ‘Get Sherry out of the country. She’s been wanting to visit Rome. Tell her that I’ve asked her to meet me there.’ Then you said, ‘a few days, four at most.’”

  Jack’s brows raised. He cut his gaze to her and then turned back to the road. “You have an amazing memory, Bella.”

  She shrugged. “Yeah.” She did. She always had. As Adrian Monk would say, it was a gift – and a curse.

  “When I spoke those words, I was basically giving Sherry, herself, the heads-up on what was occurring. At the time, I wasn’t certain we weren’t being monitored and whenever possible, Bella, we try not to take chances.” He paused, formulating his explanation before he went on. “‘Rome’ is a red-alert term. I was making certain she understood that Detective Chen’s visit was sure to be followed up by whoever it was that killed Max.”

  “What about the ‘she’s always wanted to visit’ part?”

  “It comes from the term ‘nice place to visit, but wouldn’t want to live there’, and refers to the nearest safe house, wherever that happens to be at the time.”

  Wow, Annabelle thought. That’s complex.

  “And the ‘few days, four at most’?”

  “Sherry had asked me who was involved. That answer told her two things. One, I didn’t have a name, and two, there was more than one person involved.” He smiled at her. “Four at most.”

  Okay, Annabelle thought, I’m in way over my head. I need to get back to the real world, with normal sentences and normal businesses and no flying bullets…

  “Relax, luv. You’ll be fine,” Jack told her softly. He was eyeing her carefully, as if he could sense her overwhelmed apprehension. She caught his gaze for a moment and then pulled her eyes away. He turned back to the road.

  “Jack, there’s something that’s been bothering me.”

  Jack kept his gaze trained on the road. A fat raindrop landed on the windshield. And then another one. Only an hour before, the sky had been clear, the moon full. Now the night had drawn a blanket, thick and stifling. Lightning arced across the London sky line.

  His black driving gloves tightened on the wheel.

  “What is it?” he asked, keeping his tone even. It was hard. There was a storm coming. He could feel it. And it wasn’t just outside.

  Annabelle hesitated a moment, and then cleared her throat. Her fingers nervously fiddled with the material of her dress. She pulled her white wrap more tightly around her shoulders and bit her lip.

  “I saw the detail of men you had watching over your family.”

  Jack said nothing. His grip grew tighter.

  “There were quite a few of them even before you increased their number.” She paused. “And I couldn’t help but wonder…” She felt stupid asking this. Of course, his answer would be ‘no’. It couldn’t be anything other than ‘no’. After all, for all intents and purposes, he’d been married, right? Anyone going after the people he loved would go after his supposed wife and family. Not her. But she needed to hear it from him.

  “Did… Did you ever have people watching me too?”

  Lightning split the night sky. Thunder rolled.

  Ah, Christ.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Annabelle threw open the car door at the next stop light and jumped out of the car. It was the fastest series of maneuvers she had ever managed, involving her seat belt and the door at once.

  “Annabelle!” Jack reached out for her a split second too late. She raced, blindly, down the street beside the cars, irrespective of where she was going or what she was going to do when she got there. She was so angry – so fueled by a passion beyond her understanding – that she simply needed to get away. To run away as fast and as far as she could. She needed wind and didn’t have a bike. Running would have to do.

  It was either escape, or pull the gun out of the holster strapped to her thigh beneath her dress and kill Jack Thane with it.

  Behind Jack’s black luxury sedan, three other dark colored cars threw open their doors and Jack’s hired guns shot from the cars to race after Annabelle.

  Jack had his own door open and was sliding over the roof of the sedan just as the first of his men joined him. “Go around!” he bellowed the order, not slowing as he tore down the street after her.

  Absently, Annabelle was extremely glad that she’d chosen to wear flats. She was equally glad that she was a very fast runner; long legs helped a lot, and years of gymnastics and running, despite the pain, had made her agile and strong.

  Her hips were already beginning to ache, but she ignored them, enraged beyond any ability to reason.

  Behind her, Jack dodged passers-by and sprinted at full speed to catch up with the fleeing woman fifty yards ahead. He’d considered the possibility of her doing something like this but had honestly believed that Annabelle possessed more sense than to take off on her own in an unfamiliar city, without an escort. When Godrick Osborne so badly wanted her dead.

  He’d been wrong. She possessed no sense at all whatsoever.

  He winced as he thought to himself, or she’s so bloody beyond pissed that she doesn’t give a fucking toss what the hell happens any more…

  And when it came down to it, he knew damned well that she possessed a good deal of common sense. Everyone had their breaking point. He’d simply pushed her too far.

  He swore under his breath as she turned a corner and shot out of sight.

  At that moment, Annabelle hated everything about Jack Thane. She hated what he was and everything he stood for, with his codes and guns and tranquilizers and his false marriages and his hired goons spying on her for… How
long? How long had she had shadows following her, knowing her secrets, watching her from the darkness like fucking peeping toms?

  What of the boys she’d dated since meeting Jack Thane? Now that she considered it, they hadn’t exactly been dates. They’d all broken up with her after barely meeting her and before they’d even had a chance to get to know her. One had only so much as asked her out when he called that night to say that he’d suddenly changed his mind.

  Suddenly.

  It was Jack all along.

  She screamed in wordless outrage, but the sound was captured and drowned by the thunder that rolled overhead and the rain that began to slam into the world around her by the bucket load.

  In the heat of it, she managed to retain just enough sanity to know that there was no way, in the end, she could out-run Jack Thane. He would catch up with her. And she would have to shoot him. And she wasn’t sure she would feel too good about that. You know, when she’d had time to cool off. Later.

  She realized that the only way to get away from him long enough to have any real time to think was to hide. But where?

  She knew nothing practical about London. Except that she could now confirm that the rain did seem to come at the most inopportune moments, as a friend had once jokingly told her. She was running full-tilt and that didn’t give her time to slow down and notice anything.

  And she could feel them closing in on her. She could feel Jack and the others. Like homing beacons that had spread out into a city that they were a hell of a lot more familiar with than she was. She felt desperate, in that instant. So very, very desperate.

  What would she have to do in order to get away?

  Air left her lungs in a painful rush as he tackled her from behind, lifting her off of the ground with an arm around her waist and a hard spinning motion that shoved her roughly into an adjoining alley and up against a wall.

  She gasped as her lungs expanded again and she found herself struggling immediately, rage and pain fueling her movements. But he held her fast, her wrists pinned to the bricks above her, his body pressed against hers to keep her from kicking him.