“So why would it be a bad idea to let her know that I’m alive? That she may be in danger?”
“They may be monitoring your email. It could lead them to you or her. Think about it. If they are after you and you let them know she is important to you, then it will send them after her to use against you. If they are after her, it could just alert them to wherever she is right now.” He frowned at me. “Where is she?”
“Italy? I didn’t ask for a detailed itinerary. It’s their honeymoon. They’re probably holed up naked in a little villa somewhere.” Standing up, I went to look out the windows. “I think they were driving, so they could be anywhere.”
We were silent for a while, the only noise the sound of his fingers dancing across the keyboard. I was starting to feel drained, the insanity of the day catching up with me now that the adrenaline had calmed.
“I don’t like this.”
“Which part?”
“Any of it. All of it. This is a giant fuc—stupid mess.” Using my fingers I pushed the blinds open wide enough to see through. “I don’t have a passport, I don’t have any money—I have nothing.”
“That’s not true.” Owen’s voice rumbled through the room.
“What?” I shot him a look over my shoulder. “I’m baggage for you. Nothing but a hassle to give you a headache.”
“Not true.” He sat back from the little table in front of the sofa. “And you have a gun. I’ve found that those are just as helpful as money or passports at times.”
I smiled at him and turned back around to look at the gravel path in front of the house. I didn’t want to show him just how vulnerable I felt at that moment, but I could feel him watching me out of the corner of my eye.
“Ava, I’m not going to dump you on the street.” I heard him stand up, but didn’t turn around. “It may not be comforting, but you’re my best link to all of this and I need to know what’s going on.”
“Your handler can help you with that.” I shrugged. “Or your Facebook group.”
“No one has heard anything. Seems like the wires are too quiet right now. My contacts are antsy.” He had moved closer to me, but I still didn’t turn around. “Something is happening and everyone is on guard.”
“So, it is a Facebook group?” I glanced over my shoulder at where he stood. He was watching out the window with me.
“I’ll send you a friend request.” His chuckle did a lot to make me feel better.
“What will your likes be? Shooting? Maiming? Do you take James Bond quizzes and post your results? Which Bond are you?” I shifted so I was facing him.
“I guess you’ll find out.” He reached out and tugged a lock of my hair.
“I’m not ready to die, Owen.” I looked at him with steady eyes. “I just decided to start living.”
“I’ll never lie to you, Ava.” He lowered his voice like we weren’t already alone. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’ll do my best to make sure you get to live your life the way you want to.”
“Why?” I was always good at asking questions when I probably shouldn’t.
“I don’t know. Maybe I like the challenge of doing something different.” He paused. “Or maybe I just want to see you happy. I miss that smile from the café.”
I had no idea how to respond. Instead of saying anything, I leaned forward and kissed his cheek. His stubble brushed against my skin and I fought the urge to turn into him and nuzzle along his neck. I knew I should be ashamed for being attracted to a man who killed people for a living. Knew I should be trying to get away from him and running to the police. And yet…
And yet, I was still there, putting my trust in a man that I met while he was trying to kill another man. There was something seriously wrong with my decision making abilities right then, but there was nothing I could do to change how I felt.
BY THE TIME it was dark outside I was going stir crazy. There was a television, but nothing could hold my attention. Owen still hadn’t heard from his contacts and wasn’t saying much. I had a feeling that he was lost in his head. Maybe plotting to take down a government or steal someone’s ice cream cone. Okay, I didn’t really think he would steal someone’s ice cream, but I honestly wasn’t sure what was going on in that head of his.
I also wasn’t sure what was going on in my head. I went back and forth between trying to figure out what I would tell the police and how I could contact Tess without attracting unwanted attention. The pistol Owen had given me was sitting on the arm of the chair I was using.
My imagination got the best of me at one point and I wondered how many people that gun had been used to kill. But then the sensible part of me kicked in and I refused to worry about it. Those people were dead and I needed to protect myself. Callous? Maybe. Didn’t make it less true. And feeling bad about it did nothing but cloud my need to keep myself safe.
Besides, I’m sure they didn’t care.
Owen stood up from his spot on the couch and stretched. I watched him, my eyes traveling over his body as he twisted and turned. He wasn’t very bulky, built more like a swimmer. Tall and lanky with muscles that made my mouth water. I shouldn’t stare at him, but my modesty had run out the door when I decided the gun was my friend.
“Get some sleep.” He looked over at me. “You should try to grab some while you can.”
“I don’t think I can sleep.” I shook my head.
“Why don’t you go try? There’s a bed in the other room. I’ll stay out here and sleep on the sofa.”
“What if someone shows up?” A shiver raced down my spine.
“There are alarms and security cameras.” He turned his computer to face me. The screen was broken up into four different images. One of the front of the house, one of the back, another showing the narrow driveway that led down the side of the house and the last one was pointed at a barn of some sort just in front of a tree line.
“Are all of your safe houses this well guarded?”
“No.” His eyes stared at the computer and I had the impression that he was avoiding looking at me.
“This one must be special.”
“It’s vulnerable. The security system makes it less so.” He gave a lazy shrug.
“Uh huh.” Not the whole story, but that was okay. It was his story to keep.
“We’ll be safe, Ava. Go get some sleep. We don’t know when we’ll have another chance.”
I chewed on my lip and thought about it. Sleep didn’t sound that bad, but how could I trust that nothing would happen to me while I slept? What if he decided to ditch me? What if someone came looking for us while we were unconscious?
“How do you do it?”
“Do what?” He raised one eyebrow.
“Sleep, knowing that you have enemies.” I played with the hem of my sweater.
“I trust my equipment.” He stood up and held his hand out to me.
“It must be pretty good equipment, then.” I felt my cheeks flush at the unintentional flirtation. But that smile was playing across his lips again, and I liked seeing it.
“Yes it is.”
I let him pull me to my feet. I grabbed the pistol from the chair arm and let it hang loosely in my fingers. Tugging gently, he pulled me toward the bedroom where he had gotten my clothes earlier. The room was dark, but he flipped on a light on the small table next to the bed. I watched as he pulled back the blanket and fluffed the pillows. He turned to look at me once he was finished and stuck his hands in his pockets. That simple gesture made him seem somewhat vulnerable.
“It’s not fancy, but it’s comfortable.”
“It’s great. Thank you.” I looked at the bed and forced myself to smile. If he wasn’t an assassin I would think he was trying to be sweet.
“Get some rest.” He turned and paused by the door. “I’ll be on the couch. Nothing will get past me.”
“Will you be able to sleep?”
“Don’t worry about me, Ava. This is a normal day for me.”
He closed the door without l
ooking back. I sat down on the bed and took a deep breath. The bed was comfortable and if I wasn’t running for my life I might even have appreciated the charm of the little cottage I was stuck in, but right then I was too busy trying to make sense out of the craziness that had completely taken over my day.
Eventually I lay down and tried to get comfortable. Owen was right; I needed to sleep. Exhaustion weighed heavily on my shoulders and I felt like there was a beach’s worth of sand under my eyelids. While my mind was racing, my body was waving a white flag. There would be time to worry about everything in the morning. If Owen decided to bail on me, I’d figure out something. If he decided to kill me…well, there probably wasn’t much I could do to stop him.
I shivered and pulled the quilt up higher on my shoulders. Deep down, I didn’t feel threatened by Owen. He’d had his opportunity to ditch me and hadn’t done it, but I still wasn’t sure about his motives. Did assassins have scruples? He might be British, but he wasn’t exactly James Bond. He did his job for money, not out of duty to Crown and Country. He wasn’t Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, either. Though I had a feeling he lived in a world that was cold and lonely much like those two characters.
My eyes drifted shut as I contemplated my murderous knight in shining armor. Even in my dreams I couldn’t escape my reality. Rachel at the coffee shop made a gun with the foam on my café mocha before chasing me down the block with a knife, but the worst were the ones about Mr. Song. He was walking through the building where I used to answer phones and the lights were flickering. I chased him past airplanes that were half-built, begging him for forgiveness, but he never stopped, never looked back. Instead he stopped at the door to the engineering wing, his shoes drenched in blood, and knocked.
“Please forgive me!” My fists clenched. There was blood on my hands, caked under my nails.
“Ava.”
“I didn’t mean to kill you.”
“Ava.”
“Please!” I reached out to touch Song.
A hand closed on my shoulder and I woke screaming. Owen looked down at me with sad eyes.
“Shh. You’re okay. It was just a dream.”
I took in a lungful of cool air and choked. Bile rose in my throat and I covered my mouth. Pushing past Owen I ran to the bathroom and got rid of last night’s soup. I clung to the cool porcelain and wept as quietly as I could. I tried to choke back my sobs but there was no stopping them. My eyes burned and every muscle in my body felt as if I had just completed a marathon by the time I was finished. Pushing away from the toilet I leaned back against the bathtub and rubbed the back of my hand across my nose.
Owen knelt down next to me and held out a wet wash cloth. “Finished?”
“Think so.” I took the wet rag from him and pressed it to my face. “Sorry ‘bout that.”
“No need to apologize.” He sat down on the floor and leaned against the tub next to me. “I thought it would happen yesterday.”
“You thought I would break down and toss my guts yesterday?” I leaned my head back and looked at him from the corner of my eye.
“Killing isn’t easy. The first time is always the worst.”
“Did you throw up after your first… kill?” Hit? Mark? Murder? I didn’t know the lingo.
He let his head fall back and closed his eyes. I watched as he swallowed and wondered if he was reliving it in his head.
“Two days later.” For all the emotion he expressed he could have been an android. Which meant it was probably more important in some way than he would let on.
“A real tough guy, huh? Two days.” I shrugged. “I guess I shouldn’t be ashamed that I lasted a whole day. That’s almost as good as you.” Which was probably only because I had been too busy running for my life to stop and really think about it all. Or maybe my moral compass was off. I’d been too worried about my life to think of the one I had accidentally taken.
His lips curved upward just a hair.
“Was he really a bad guy?” I turned my face to watch him carefully.
“Yes.” His deep voice was firm. I didn’t have to say who I meant.
“He killed women and girls?”
“Most prostitutes don’t retire, Ava. They live a life where they trade part of themselves for money; sex and companionship are commodities. It’s a high stakes world and Song was brutal.”
“How do you know for sure it was him?” I tried to brush some of my tear dampened hair out of my face.
“A local madam lost some of her girls to Song. They ended up dead not long after.”
“And what, she cared about the turncoats?” I frowned. “If it’s such a brutal world, you’d think she’d have chalked it up to what they deserved. Not spend money to avenge their deaths.”
“Too right.” His chin jerked decisively. “From what I found, she was more angry that some of her high rollers followed the girls to Song’s business and never came back, even after their favorite girls were gone. That’s bad for profits so she decided to make a spectacle and remove him from the scene. He encroached on her territory and then spat in her face.”
I thought it over. “Why not just lure his girls away from him?”
“Money. If those girls come to her looking for a job she has the upper hand and can pay less. She’d have to dangle a large carrot to get them to come to her otherwise.”
“It’s a prostitute turf war.” I shook my head. “Like in a movie.”
“Fiction is usually grounded in some sort of reality.” He stood up and offered me his hand. “Would you like to get some breakfast?”
“I’d really like to brush my teeth.” I let him pull me to my feet.
“Extra toothbrushes in the medicine cabinet. Then we eat.” He closed the door behind him and I stared at my reflection. I had hopped on the carousel of death and had no idea which way it was going to take me.
DECIDING WHICH VEHICLE to take to town gave me pause. We could use the stolen car because I’d changed the tag while Ava was sleeping. Or we could take the old farm truck from the garage. Then again, people might recognize the truck and it would be better to keep a low profile here. Most of the people I ran with long ago were gone or locked up, but it paid to be safe.
Ava might object to using the stolen car, though. Watching her cry in my mother’s bathroom had been like a knife to the gut. How was I supposed to comfort her over killing someone? Patting her on the back would have been patronizing. Any sort of comment I made would sound empty. I would have made tea, but we were out. So I’d gotten her a rag and sat on the floor instead.
The gentlemanly thing would be to take the truck so I didn’t upset her any more, but my pragmatic side pointed out that it would be better to keep her alive than to soothe her feelings. She was just going to have to suck it up.
The bathroom door knob turned and I stopped pacing. I’d felt heat before, but having someone else by my side as I dealt with dangerous people was a new experience. It made me uneasy to feel responsible for another person’s safety, and it was wearing on my nerves. With slow, deliberate moves I picked up my laptop and placed it back in the safe. No reason to telegraph my unease.
I closed the safe and froze when I saw Ava. All traces of the makeup she had worn the day before were gone, letting a vulnerability shine through her eyes that was at odds with the defiant way she held her chin. When her gaze met mine it was like being kicked in the gut. I’d just watched her get rid of everything I’d fed her the night before. There were circles under her eyes and she was pale, her hands twisting the hem of the over-sized sweater she was wearing, leaving the material disfigured. But something in her eyes remained fierce.
I’d never seen anyone so beautiful in my life.
I couldn’t tell you what it was that drew me. She would never be a model and she wasn’t sultry or glamorous, but just a look at her made me want to bundle her up somewhere safe so that I could enjoy her smiles forever.
“Ready?” I cleared my throat.
“Where are we going?” Her
voice was low, hoarse from her earlier sickness.
“Breakfast.” I slid my guns into my shoulder harness and slipped my blazer over them. I hadn’t taken the time to change since we’d gotten to Oxford.
“And then where?” She looked around the room and then shook her head. She had nothing to bring with us.
“We need more supplies.” I opened the front door and waited for her to go through.
“Duct tape, tarps?” Her lips quirked into a smile.
“Har, har. Look who woke up with a funny bone.” I rolled my eyes. “I meant more food, maybe some soap.”
She didn’t respond, just shook her head.
“Besides, I have plenty of the other stuff in my super-secret kill room.”
She stumbled a bit and shot a glare in my direction. “Not funny.”
“You started joke hour.” I quickened my pace so I could get to the car and open the door.
“I’m officially shutting it down.” She tried to look annoyed but couldn’t hide the amusement in her eyes.
“Kill joy.” I closed her door and moved around to the driver’s side.
“Nope, that’s your job.”
Ouch. That one stung.
“Way to beat a dead horse, Ava.” I set the car in drive and headed for town.
She snickered loudly. “What, that doesn’t fall under your job description, too?”
“I leave the animal slaughtering to my apprentice.”
“You have an apprentice?” Her tone lost some of its laughter.
“No, Ava. I don’t have an apprentice. There is no assassins’ guild. No journeymen trying to work their way up the ranks. No apprentices mucking bloody rooms.” I sighed. “And I don’t beat animals.”
“Sorry.” I could see her suck her bottom lip into her mouth. “I’m in unfamiliar territory.”
“No problem.” I kept my voice calm. “You’re going to have to trust me and if that means answering random questions then I will do my best to supply the correct response.”
“Look, I’m not used to depending on other people. I take care of myself.” She frowned out the window. “So this is new for me.”
The Accidental Assassin (Assassins #1) Page 6