by Tiana Laveen
“You’re not going anywhere until you give me a kiss.”
Smiling, she yo-yoed back into his arms and pressed her mouth against his. Gently cradling the back of her head, he slicked his tongue within her mouth and made her melt, fall to pieces right before him. He wrapped his hand around her neck and brought her close, then placed his mouth against her collarbone and kissed, squeezing her.
She blinked and swallowed nervously, but he wouldn’t let go… release her.
“Ahhh!”
He slammed her hard against the wall, laughing loud, darkness in his eyes, his gleaming white teeth looking like fangs, while an invisible heaviness filled the room like fog.
GET. DOWN… he mouthed before flinging her to the floor like a rag doll.
“You mothafuckers must think I’m a moron!” He grabbed a gun that appeared out of nowhere as the closet doors burst open with a loud bang. “COVER YOUR EYES!”
But she couldn’t. She simply sat there on the floor, partially hidden behind him, her chest filled with pain as anxiety and fear took over. The man pumped bullets into the assailants and in seconds, left them riddled with holes. She started to scream but covered her mouth with both hands. Their eyes were set upon Savage as they hit the floor like sacks of russet potatoes, blood everywhere. Breathing hard, he glanced at Zaire who was going insane, her eyes full of tears. He snatched his phone, keeping his gun high as he approached and surveyed the bodies. Looking back at her, he shook his head.
“They must’ve gotten in here after I left, when you were asleep.”
“How’d you know they were in here?” Her voice trembled.
“As soon as I made my way into the room, I noticed that plant had been moved. You’d have no reason to move a fucking plant.” He pointed to the corner of the room. “I also saw the closet door was somewhat open and noticed slight movement there.” He marched over to the plant, messed with the leaves, and pulled out a small black device. With deft hands, he popped it open and ripped out the wires, destroying it. “The plant was bugged. I turned the music up to help muffle anything that might go down. The gun had a silencer on it, I always use a silencer when I’m indoors, in a public place. I closed the window to make them think I was comfortable, so they’d relax and enjoy the peep show. Opened the windows to make love to you just how I wanted to… show you a damn good time. Took my time with you in the shower, just in case I didn’t make it out of here alive… wanted to give you something nice to remember. I’d already alerted someone to let them know I had someone in here so they needed to help ya if I got killed… Hold on.”
He typed something on his phone, then tossed it on the bed. “Had to confirm.”
“WHAT?! Why were these people in here?! Who are they?!”
“I can’t get into all of that, but I can tell you this much. You’re in my world now.” He pointed at himself. “There’s no turning back. What you’ve seen, you can’t unsee and you’re too smart for me to try and explain this away. This is the real world, Eva. Not the fake, cutesy domain that’s been sold to people like you, a lie you live by. Only a few know the truth.”
“Oh, God!” She got to her feet, unable to stop shaking. She tried to avoid looking at the two dead men riddled with bullets, their bodies bleeding out. Savage had shot them so fast and moved like lightning… didn’t even seem human. He was like some machine…
“Someone will be coming to get them in a minute, baby. Don’t worry.” He checked out his reflection in the mirror, then ran his hand over his hair to fix a few stray strands.
“Don’t worry? DON’T WORRY?! I just saw two men jump out the closet with guns and you shot and killed them dead before they even had a chance to say, ‘Boo!’ I might be next!”
“Nope. They don’t know we’re involved. In these cases, they just go after the target. Me.”
“What kind of shit are you involved in?! You’re a criminal, aren’t you?! Oh shit!” In shock, she stumped her foot, while praying to God and begging for all this to be some crazy dream.
“Sometimes, bad boys play for the good side, Zaire.” He casually lit a cigar, cast his sights towards the dead bodies, then turned back in her direction. “Nah, I’m not a criminal. The police aren’t after me, the judges aren’t after me, no one you put your trust in is after me. I handle the riffraff. I take out the trash.” He blew out swirls of smoke. “I play for the winning team.”
“This… this can’t be happening.” She swallowed hard. “Who are you?!”
“I told you who I was the first time you asked. You just chose not to listen. My name is Maximus Savage. I’m an assassin, Eva.” She averted her gaze, unable to look him in the eye, and hugged herself. “Let me give you the cliff notes… My father got in a bit of a jam when I was a kid. The police came to arrest him for a probation violation. He crossed state lines, and they found me. I was taken away at age twelve and thrust into therapy with a child psychologist.
“My parents were deemed unfit to raise me and for a short while, I stayed with a foster family. But during that time, Eva, I told the therapist what I could do. She added a remark in my files that I had an unhealthy preoccupation with violence and guns. I told her I could do a somersault and kill someone at the same time, that I could kick a bastard in the neck and destroy his vocal cords in one swoop.
“No one believed me, but I wanted to prove it. The therapist called the police, believing I may have witnessed violent crimes committed by my father and now may be a sociopath since I described in great detail my dreams regarding murder. They weren’t dreams. I saw it all happen… The police, intrigued by this and seeing me as some sort of possible informant, a damn rat and freak, decided to test me out when they got me in another room. Alone. They hated my father. He’d made things hard for them, even exposed some of their treachery; so they thought it would be fun to poke the bear, mess with his son. After interrogating me about my dad and comin’ up with nothing, they took me to a warehouse. To this day, I don’t know exactly where they drove me but it was out in the middle of nowhere. They told me that if I could hit five out of seven targets, they’d let my Dad go. I remember them laughing, having a real good time of it…
“I was given seven knives and seven targets placed half a football field away. I landed those knives, at age twelve, in each of the heads of the damn dummies. In disbelief, they handed me a gun with seven bullets. Yeah, these fuckers did this, gave a gun to a kid, upped the ante. Told me if I shot six out of seven in the exact locations they specified for each one, they’d have Child Protective Services drop the charges and I’d be back home with my family. I made ’em shake on it. I then took that gun, shot one in the head, one in the knee, one in the chest, one in the upper thigh, one in the lower thigh, and two in the neck. I landed EACH. AND. EVERY. SHOT. I was fast and strong, my vision was good and as they say, I was a natural born killer.”
She inhaled, afraid to breathe again.
“I do not have that switch in my brain most people do…” he continued. “The one that is grossed out by blood, pain, torture, murder.” He tapped the side of his head. “I am not moved by tears. I can’t be manipulated by public displays of emotion. I barely feel anymore because I’ve been doing this so damn long and the life I’ve had. I’m numb. I remember giving a damn. I remember wondering what it would be like to not have bloodthirst… but that’s just not me.” He tossed his hands up in resignation and smiled sadly. “Some people are just born… backwards. I don’t give a shit about much. I’m cold, dead on the inside. I know how to fake compassion and concern. I wouldn’t say I’m a psychopath, I do have the ability to care, it’s just not something I tap into often. Caring will get you killed… You’re a psychologist by trade. I know you understand this.”
“How did you become… what you are, Maximus? Why did you choose this?” Her voice shook, terror taking over.
“I didn’t choose this; it chose me. Those same men who’d arrested my father told the FBI about me. They came to the door on my eighteenth birthday and a
sked me to join a private agency they’d set up as a secret arm of the organization. Their mission was to remove the fuckers that are too slick to get caught up in the prison system and too dangerous to keep around. There are people in this world, baby, who make Charles Manson and any other crazy bastard you can imagine look like a fuckin’ cupcake. The real bad guys rarely make the news. They’re too smart to be caught by the police. I find them. I exterminate them. The end. I’m a highly sought after, government mandated and appointed, artillery expert to the hilt, and a twenty-two-year veteran in this cold ass industry.”
“If the government hired you, then why were those men trying to kill you?”
“The prey never likes the predator, baby. Now, to tell ya the truth, I rarely have situations like this. Most of these fuckers are afraid to try anything like this. This is a recent development.” He grimaced at the dead bodies and shook his head. “Unfortunately, I am still trying to get to the bottom of it.” He slid his gun in his jacket and walked up to her, hugging her tight. For some odd reason, she didn’t feel afraid of him. She believed the words he said. As crazy as it sounded, they rang true. She jumped when the hotel door suddenly unlocked and opened. Savage wore a blank expression when two men dressed in white jumpsuits came in. Without saying a word, they gathered the bodies up and placed them in black body bags. Savage turned her away from the scene, made her face him.
“I know this much, and so do you, honey. You’re safe, all right?” She nodded, every nerve ending in her body soared. “I’m a walking deadly weapon. I’m trained to hunt, target, and kill. Period. And now, I’m also your lover and protector…” She buried her head against his chest as he caressed her arms, landing a tender kiss against her forehead. “Nothing has changed. You’re just no longer in the dark, baby. Sleeping Beauty, you’re woke. The blinders are officially off… Welcome to the jungle.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A Time to Obey and A Time to Kill
“Well, you got it wrong.” Savage stared lazily at his neatly made California king size bed in his master suite. Black sheets and pillows covered it from top to bottom, a burgundy throw pillow arranged in the middle. He blinked several times and rubbed the side of his head as the sound of firing guns invaded the recesses of his memory bank. As if in slow motion, he could see the blood flow, hear the screaming, smell the panic all over again… Faded memories of the woman he’d been screwing while the pool party turned into a bloodbath flooded his mind.
“Savage, we had everything on surveillance.” His friend’s voice broke into his thoughts, making him push the blood-splattered deliberations to the side.
“Evidently not my hotel room. Somehow, that got left off the roster. What the fuck was goin’ on?”
“It was because—”
“Look, Harlem, it’s been a long ass weekend.” He scratched his forehead, growing tired of the whole ordeal and pissed beyond belief. The last ten hours had been pure hell. Calming Zaire down, doing a make-shift debriefing of sorts. Flying back to California and handling a check-in mandated by the U.S. Government. And worst of all, still not hearing directly from Austin. “All I asked is that someone watch floor twenty-one during the hours requested. If my specifications had been followed, this would’ve never happened or at least, I would have been alerted in time to handle the situation so our fucking Hazmat team wouldn’t have needed to be called! I had to send them an emergency text to get the fucking bodies up! What were their names?”
“I have them in the database. We’re still running identification on the two men though. I should have the full scoop tomorrow.”
“I moved between two floors for my own safety the entire time I was in Las Vegas at the Bellagio, but I told you I was going to the suite that night. Why weren’t my orders followed?”
“We turned off the monitors.”
“What?! Then how in the fuck can you tell me the floor was on surveillance?!”
“It was, but they were turned off for several hours. The reason is—”
“Jesus!”
“Savage, stop takin’ the Lord’s name in vain. You know I don’t like that shit.”
“Stop taking the Lord’s name in vain?! I almost met the Lord because of you! My job is to take out the riffraff, the pieces of shit in this world that even the local authorities and FBI are too chicken shit to deal with, and this is the thanks I get—someone in our own circle making my life a living hell! All I ask for your guys to do is watch my back while I do my damn job. The sloppiness is fuckin’ unbelievable and I wish you would come back on board, in the flesh, instead of staying behind a computer screen because when you were watching me personally, versus your crew, none of this shit ever happened! You were always on top of your shit!”
He screamed so loud, his damn throat felt sore. “Now I am dealing with incompetent pricks who don’t know their asses from a hole in the wall.”
Harlem sighed. “I can’t come outta retirement, man. I gotta family now.” The man sounded sorry and lame.
“What do you mean, retirement? You still work for us!”
The man huffed and smacked his gums. “You know what I mean, Savage…”
“Back to the other shit, what did you mean by you turned the surveillance off?”
“I, uh… picked up a conversation you were having…”
“A conversation I was having?”
“Yeah. Sounded personal…”
Shit. The plane… I called him when Zaire was in the bathroom.
How much did he hear?
“What are you talking about?”
“You made some plans with a woman. You were, uh, how should I say this? Tryin’ to convince her to let her guard down.” Fuck. He heard everything. “I knew if I could hear the conversation, others on our team would be able to do the same as we were all connected to you at the time via the app. So I made the decision to cut the connection on my end, since I am the motherboard basically, and that way nobody could overhear. You had called me, remember? But I guess you hadn’t turned off the app on your end.”
“Damn it… Still a learning curve for me. Dennis had us start using it last week so we could contact each other from remote areas. I thought I had disconnected… I guess not.” His face felt flushed.
“So, with all of that going on, I forgot to signal it again for the hotel time you allotted. It totally slipped my mind to turn the connection back on. I could say ‘my bad,’ but since you had to kill two guys and we missed them entering in the first place, I don’t think that would be good enough. I’ve talked to the team. Man, I’m sorry.”
Savage shook his head and slumped on his bed, placing his gun on his lap. The app was new software that had been installed on their phones by their head computer whiz guy. It was invisible, untraceable, secure… However, surveillance mode allowed everyone in the group to hear and see through either cameras installed in a given area, or access the main port—that being Savage’s phone—and the microphone or camera. At the time of his call to Harlem, he’d accessed the microphone feature but apparently hadn’t disconnected. Thus, he was now busted.
He’d been overheard in hot pursuit…
I get lax with Harlem, and plus, I knew I wanted to invite her to stay overnight with me. I wasn’t thinking straight. This woman has my head all fucked up. I never do slipshod shit like that…
“App or not, your instincts saved your life, Savage.”
“I’m just glad I realized real quick that something was wrong when I got back to the hotel. I knew not to try and make an excuse for her and me to attempt to leave. That would have been far too risky if they felt made. They would’ve come out right away and started a war and she was naked when I first came through the door, so never mind…” He shook his head. “It’s over with… I survived. All right, so, uh, next week I have the—”
“Wait, man.”
“What?”
“We’ve got an issue here. You have a witness.”
“So? I’ve had them before. A problem arises and
I solve it.”
“You killed her, too?”
“NO!” Savage rolled his eyes and groaned. “I spoke with her about it. Didn’t get into too many details, naturally, but she knows.”
“Knows what?”
“She knows what I do…” He was met with silence, on top of more silence, on top of a shitload of silence. Huge heaps and bountiful bounds of silence.
“Savage, you told her you were an assassin?” Harlem asked, disbelief in his tone.
“Yes.”
“Un-fuckin’-believable!”
“What?! No one ever believes me anyway and what’s the point of lying about it? Who is she going to tell? Who would believe her and even if they did, no one is going to do anything about it, whatever police officer or guard she’d report it to. I have yet to meet a guy in this line of business who is able to keep this charade up as long as I have. You weren’t there, all right? She deserved the truth.”
“She deserved the truth? This ain’t Mother Teresa! It’s a chick you’ve been smashin’ all weekend! We need to talk further about this. Did she believe you?”
“Not initially.”
“Savage, yes or no?”
“I’m not a fuckin’ genie! My name isn’t psychic Savage, reader of the stars or some shit! How the hell should I know?”
“BECAUSE YOU WERE WITH HER ALL FUCKING WEEKEND!”
“What difference does that make?! You’ve been married to your wife over ten years. Can you now suddenly read her mind?!” Harlem huffed. “You’ve got special powers now that you’ve put in a decade? Give me a fucking break and how dare ya cop an attitude with me, when you’re the reason I’m in this mess in the first fuckin’ place and then you—”
“All right, all right! Let’s not argue about it. Hell, it’s done now. This isn’t good. We’ll deal with it though.”
“Don’t worry about it. I had to say something though, man. I had to kill two guys in front of her. It was unavoidable. What did you expect me to do, huh?” He yawned. “Pull out an ink pen like I’m Will Smith from ‘Men in Black’ and pretend to erase her memory? She’s not stupid, far from it, but I was able to calm her down. She and I talked for a long while and she’s under the understanding that basically I’m a souped-up cop with clearance to do what I did. I told her to not tell anyone about it, not even her friends.”