Hell Bent

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Osborne noticed the movement. He cursed and dove for cover behind another counter a few feet away, drawing Virginia Meredith along with him.

  Annabelle swore again, this time barely refraining from standing and stomping her booted feet in frustration. She couldn’t see what was happening behind the counter. She wondered why Osborne hadn’t just shot Virginia and then taken Craig out next. Maybe he still needed something from Brandt. And he could always use Virginia against him.

  Damn…

  She swung the rifle to the side and peered at Adam through the scope.

  Night turned around and strode to the door of the lab’s exit.

  No, no, no… Don’t leave, Adam!

  At the door, he paused and glanced back in her direction. It wasn’t possible, but their eyes met anyhow. He grinned then, teeth flashing. He pressed the door open, and then disappeared into the darkened hall beyond. In a few moments, he was out of her view.

  “God dammit!”

  Annabelle’s cell phone rang. She blinked, pulled back from the gun’s scope, and swiped her sleeve across her eyes. She glanced down at the LCD screen of the phone on her belt. It read: JACK.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she re-opened them, she peered once more through the gun’s scope. The phone stopped ringing. There was no change in the scene in the lab. Osborne was behind one counter with Virginia and Craig had taken shelter behind another. Nobody was moving.

  Annabelle’s mind raced. If Osborne thought that he was being targeted from afar, maybe he wouldn’t chance moving until he had back-up. Which he was most likely calling for right now.

  The men he called wouldn’t be told to enter the lab, where they were sure to simply get shot like the last two guys had. No. They would be sent to deal with the long-range shooter that currently threatened Osborne.

  They would be sent to take care of Annabelle.

  “Shit.” Annabelle stood and spun around, running toward the roof access door.

  Again, the phone on her belt went off. “Mother piss bucket!” She hissed, not even realizing what was coming out of her mouth. Why had she brought the phone with her in the first place?

  She’d brought it so that she could call for help if she needed to. In the case of an emergency.

  Did this qualify as an emergency?

  She blew out a sigh and ripped the phone off of her belt. She cradled the gun with her right arm as she pressed the phone to her ear with her left. “What!”

  “Bella, Dylan is missing. He snuck past my men.” Jack said.

  Annabelle stopped in her tracks.

  It took a second to process the new information and then she was spinning back around and nearly sliding into the spot she was laying in before. Once more, she positioned the rifle in front of her and peered through the scope.

  Down below, in the lab, Godrick Osborne was once more standing, pulling Virginia Meredith along with him, making certain that her own body shielded his from the window. He moved toward the exit door, Virginia reluctantly being dragged in front of him.

  But before he could reach the door, it came open of its own accord, and in walked Dylan Anderson. The door slammed shut behind him and Osborne froze, as did Virginia. Dylan’s arms dropped slowly to either side and Annabelle could clearly make out the Colt .45 in his right fist.

  He said something to Osborne. Annabelle couldn’t tell what it was.

  Osborne reacted by jerking Virginia roughly, making her cry out. Annabelle couldn’t hear the sound, but she could see the look on Virginia’s face, her mouth open wide. Annabelle could only see a sliver of Osborne’s head from this angle, like a crescent of a moon. From her limited perspective, she guessed that Osborne was holding his gun to the other side of Virginia’s head again. The poor girl had a barrel aimed at her from both directions.

  Dylan looked nervous now. His grip on the gun fidgeted, his fingers flexing and un-flexing. His eyes darted between Virginia and Osborne.

  Annabelle’s heart beat drummed in her ears. Time had slowed, almost stood still.

  And then, quite suddenly, it sped up again.

  Osborne, apparently having decided that enough was enough, withdrew his gun from Virginia’s head and leveled it, instead, on Dylan Anderson.

  Dylan reacted as quickly as he could, but it wasn’t fast enough. He was a kid. He’d never shot anyone before. He was the good guy in this equation, which meant that he was the underdog, the one wronged, the nice person simply out for some kind of desperately desired justice.

  It also meant that he wasn’t a killer, and hence, lacked a killer’s reflexes.

  For some reason, however, Annabelle didn’t seem to lack them at all.

  For, in that same instant, when time at once stopped and skipped into the future at full speed, Annabelle gently squeezed her trigger. The 20-caliber Hornady bullet spun across space and time at what would seem like many to be electric speed.

  The window to the lab didn’t even shatter. The hole the bullet made was tiny and the glass spider-webbed around it with a beauty nearly poetic. Osborne’s body jumped to the left as that same bullet entered his right temple and exited through his left ear.

  Virginia Meredith at once felt the man’s arm go limp around her and she dropped to the ground and scooted away even as Osborne was still falling.

  It took an eternity for Godrick Osborne to hit the floor. His form swayed, his eyes open yet unseeing.

  Dylan Anderson slowly continued to raise his weapon, aiming numbly at a bad guy that was no longer standing there.

  It wasn’t until Osborne sank to his knees and then, ever so slowly, toppled forward to land on what was left of his face that Dylan realized the man had already been shot and began to lower his gun once more.

  The teenager stared, blinking rapidly, at the now very dead Godrick Osborne, lying face down in a spreading pool of blood a few feet in front of him. He watched the rapid tide of red make its way toward him and found himself unconsciously stepping back out of the way.

  On top of the roof of the next building, Annabelle Drake felt the distant ache of her weapon’s recoil on her right shoulder. The curve of the trigger was a bend of cold, smooth steel beneath her finger. There was no sound but the buzzing of nothing in her head. That severe silence that follows a gun blast.

  It was a throbbing drone that drowned out the rest of her world as Annabelle continued to hold her breath. She couldn’t let it go. And she wouldn’t let it in.

  It wasn’t until Craig Brandt slowly stood from where he’d been hiding behind the counter and Virginia Meredith ran into his arms that Annabelle realized she wasn’t breathing. Even then, however, she couldn’t make her lungs move. No expanding. No contracting.

  She simply gazed, unmoving, at the felled man in the expensive suit who was now missing half of his brain. The floor of the lab had been painted red. So much blood. Three bodies worth.

  Like an explosion, the roof exit door behind Annabelle suddenly burst outward, slamming noise in to her world and air into her chest as if she’d been hit with a tidal wave of existence. She found herself spinning around on the ground, letting go of the rifle she’d used to kill a man.

  Her head pounded as her lungs suddenly and violently expanded. But that was the only part of her that worked; her legs would not lift her. She couldn’t even get them beneath her.

  A large man dressed in the same manner as Osborne’s personal guard stormed the roof, his gun arm up and ready. Within a few short moments, he had located Annabelle, and turned to level his weapon upon her.

  Once more, a bullet split the sky. And, the sound, like thunder, followed after.

  Annabelle jerked with the explosion. She blinked once, and waited to feel the pain. But as she gazed at the man with the gun and waited for her body to bleed and die, she instead witnessed his own legs give out beneath him. He hit the ground, and then fell forward. His gun went spinning across the roof to skitter to a stop a few feet away.

  Annabelle hadn’t been shot
at all. The fallen man had never had a chance to pull his trigger.

  Still stunned, Annabelle looked up from the dead gunman to the man who had been, unseen, behind him, standing in the roof exit doorway.

  Jack slowly lowered his weapon. Their eyes met.

  Annabelle drew a second, shaky breath. Sirens wailed in the distance.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  It was something of a Houdini act, the way the Business tended to the clean up after a mess of a job like Godrick Osborne’s.

  Some times a mystery was best put to rest with the truth. This was one of those times. Back in the United States, Max Anderson’s death was now officially considered a murder, and one Godrick Osborne, the killer.

  Detective Chen, her partner, and the entire Twin Cities police force believed that when Annabelle Drake and Dylan Anderson had fled the country out of fear that Osborne would kill them, as well, Osborne had tracked them down and nearly accomplished exactly that.

  That was where the truth of the situation went from black and white to a less distinct gray and the story became embellished, with the help of well-paid props and a few careful bribes.

  Osborne did, indeed, manage to find Annabelle and Dylan, but he’d been unfortunate enough to do so while they were hiding out in a private residence, where one Jack Thane kept and displayed many impressive war relics, including several hand guns and rifles from Vietnam, Desert Storm, and the war in Iraq. A hefty tax payer and benefactor to the British Museum, Jack Thane was granted authorization to keep the items, as long as they were locked safely behind glass.

  Glass could be broken. And Osborne’s bullet wounds were easily explained.

  Concerning the reports of weapons’ fire in downtown London… A series of explosions in a medical lab had apparently caused the unfortunate and untimely deaths of three lab technicians, not to mention massive amounts of property damage. The victims were found in their once white lab coats, mortal wounds riddling their charred and unidentifiable bodies. Luckily for him, Dr. John Sinclaire, who headed the research at the lab, came away unscathed.

  Dylan Anderson decided to return to Minnesota for his father’s funeral and for the reading of his father’s will. But, when that was done and said, he had plans to turn right back around, board another plane, and head to the UK once more. It seemed there was nothing left for him in Minnesota. And he’d just had a birthday. He was now eighteen, legally capable of deciding what to do with the rest of his life. He wanted to spend at least part of it in England. Apparently, there was something of interest to him there.

  Jack attempted to bridge the gap between he and Dylan by helping the boy get the papers he would need to apply for citizenship in England. It worked. Sort of. It would have worked a lot better had Dylan and Clara Thane not begun dating.

  As for Annabelle…

  An account had been set up for her, into which 612,580 British Pounds had been deposited. Godrick Osborne’s death had been worth a cool million in American dollars. Annabelle Drake found herself suddenly, almost shockingly, loaded.

  And gainfully employed.

  The higher-ups in the Business insisted on recruiting Annabelle as a long-range sniper. The job she’d done on Godrick Osborne had been a long-shot, and one she’d pulled off flawlessly. Annabelle had suddenly become a valued contractor; she didn’t fit the profile of an assassin and yet she’d proven herself capable more than once.

  She wasn’t sure, yet, how she felt about any of that. The truth was, she wasn’t feeling a whole lot of anything at all. She was sort of numb, still.

  She went through the motions of setting up a cover and finding a place to live, feeling, the entire time, as if she was walking through a strange sort of dream. She had access to more money than she’d ever had in her life, and couldn’t think of a single thing she wanted to spend it on.

  She took care of the necessities, renting a flat in London and an office space downtown, where she would claim to run day-to-day operations as an apprentice to Jack Thane, the real estate mogul. It would allow her access to her money without having to make any uncomfortable explanations as to its origins. Cassie had decided to remain in England as well, and work, in both public and private capacities, as Annabelle’s “assistant.” At least Annabelle could honestly afford to pay her well.

  But that was about as far as Annabelle had gotten.

  Right now, as she stood in front of Max Anderson’s open grave and listened, vaguely and distantly, to the pastor read from the Psalms of the Old Testament, her mind wandered to that little girl – the niece of the congressman who had paid Godrick Osborne to find a cure for Erythromelalgia.

  Craig Brandt had gone public with his findings, crediting John Sinclaire and Virginia Meredith as partners in the discovery. It would be years yet, unfortunately, until the drug passed the plethora of tests necessary to take it to market. Annabelle wondered whether the girl could afford to wait that long.

  Modern medicine was a strange thing. It saved lives, and it took them away. They were the reason that Annabelle stood there, now, saying her last goodbyes to a dear friend. Without a drug that had allowed her to slip into a comforting oblivion for the flight across the Atlantic, she never could have made the return trip home. Nor would she be able to head back to the UK later.

  They also took away her pain.

  Annabelle slipped her hand into her pocket and felt the small container of hydrocodone pills that rested there. Working for the Business gave her access to any drug she wanted or needed at any time. It was a freedom she had yet to fully wrap her head around. But, she’d made use of at least part of it, requesting a bottle of Vicodin right off the bat. She’d partly done it because she’d lost her other stash somewhere in the muddled mess of the last few days. And she’d also partly done it just to see if she actually could.

  She turned the bottle of pills between her fingers and felt them flip over. Yep. She could.

  Drugs definitely helped.

  “… ashes to ashes…” A shovel full of dirt hit the white coffin below, scattering across its shiny surface to tumble into the darkness on either side.

  And drugs definitely hurt.

  How many people had died in the last few days because of the pharmaceutical industry? And six years ago? Teresa Anderson, Max Anderson, the Colonel, Godrick Osborne, and a dozen unknown, nameless individuals who’d signed up on the wrong roll sheet. Because of medicine.

  Annabelle pulled the small bottle out of her pocket and stared down at it.

  “… dust to dust…”

  Another load of dirt joined the first six feet below. Dylan covered his face with his hands where he stood beside the opening. Clara came up beside him, silently offering comfort.

  Annabelle blinked. And then tossed in the bottle.

  *****

  Several yards away, from the sheltering shade of an oak, a man on a motorcycle watched in grim silence as the funeral progressed.

  A woman beside the open grave tossed something into it.

  And then, as if reconsidering her actions, she moved as if to jump in after it. A tall teenage boy, also beside the grave, hurried toward her, managing to wrap his arms around her to hold her back. Others joined him as the woman tried harder to make it into the grave.

  The figure on the motorcycle shook his head, his lips curling into a smile.

  And then he started up his bike and rode away.

  Epilogue

  The noises in the mall were like echoes around Annabelle; they caught her ears at a glance, and from a distance. She watched as a little girl and boy gazed into a window across from her bench. They leaned in, palms pressed to the glass, and stared at the new Star Wars figures. After a few moments, they whispered between themselves, sharing some secret their mother couldn’t hear.

  Annabelle knew what they were saying.

  She watched the boy point and the little girl smiled. Annabelle smiled too. Then she blinked.

  And the little boy was gone.

  The young girl stood alo
ne, the boy once beside her now merely the ghost of a memory. As she continued to gaze into the window, this time sharing her secrets with only herself, her red-haired mother knelt, softly speaking her name.

  The child turned to face her. They spoke in hushed tones. The girl nodded; they held hands and then slowly moved away.

  A yard, two, ten, and the pair were gone. They were slight and delicate phantoms that haunted garishly lit halls, cushioned in their imperceptible existence by the noisy silence of a thousand unseeing eyes.

  Annabelle watched the space where they had disappeared, and then she turned to gaze into the window in front of her. There were no Star Wars figures. Instead, there were Webkinz and Neopets and Twilight posters. But the fingerprints on the glass were the same. They’d been left there by a little girl or a little boy. Or, maybe both. Maybe even twins.

  “Ian has a Webkinz, you know.” A deep Yorkshire accent sliced easily through Annabelle’s thoughts.

  She glanced up. Jack Thane stood beside the bench, his thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his jeans. He was dressed in riding gear – black jacket, black boots. Dark sunglasses hung from one of the pockets of his leather jacket.

  They hadn’t had a chance to speak since the incident in London. The clean up had been harried, the funeral set with blinding speed, the flight had been a drugged-up blur. Her life had managed to pull a chameleon act in the short space of a few days; it was no longer recognizable as her own.

  And she had yet to make things right with the man she loved.

  He was a welcome vision, despite her twisted-up emotions. At six foot two, with wavy blonde hair and piercing blue eyes stolen from the depths of the Atlantic, he was a sexy, welcome vision. He always would be, she guessed. He was just that kind of man.

  The expression on his handsome face would have been unreadable to anyone else. But Annabelle knew him well. A number of things were going through his very quick, very efficient brain.

  He knew what she had been thinking. The sympathy in his eyes told her that much. He’d always been able to read her like a book, so that was no surprise.