The Art of Possession

by Cari Z

  “I’m nearly done,” he said quietly. “Alex, don’t you—don’t you think this is a bit precipitous? I mean, what harm could she possibly do to us in a place as public as this?”

  “The mind boggles,” I replied with as much honesty as I could muster. “I’d rather not give her the chance. Trust me on this, please.” It was a trial, our first trial as a team—would Mal allow me to take the measures I thought were necessary in order to keep us safe, or would he dig in his heels and say I was imagining things? I looked him straight in the eyes and forced my fingers not to flex.

  After a moment, he nodded. “I trust you.” He slipped into his shoes—plain brown loafers now—and zipped his bag shut. “Let’s go.”

  I led the way out of the room, checking the hall first. It was silent—utterly, unnervingly silent. I couldn’t hear anything coming from the room between ours, not the television, not the shower or faucet… but as I passed it, it was almost like I could feel the presence within it, like the man was right there behind the door, listening to us as hard as I was listening to him.

  I clamped down as hard as I could on my paranoia, took Mal’s elbow in my hand, and walked us briskly to the stairs.

  It was time to get out of here.

  Chapter Six

  I WOKE up to the dank scent of cigarettes in my nose and a head feeling like it had been stuffed with mothballs. I lifted my face up from the pillow and looked blearily around the small bedroom I shared with Alex.

  Well, had shared, supposedly. He wasn’t here now, and I hadn’t stayed awake long enough to watch him fall asleep last night. Perhaps it had been just me. I rolled over onto my back, stared at the water-marked ceiling for a moment, and contemplated the utter ridiculousness of my life. I mean, fleeing thieves who were also potential assassins just so that we could turn around and track them down again? When had I become James Bond?

  You aren’t James Bond, and neither is the man who picked you up last night.

  Alex’s contact had reminded me a bit of Jason Statham, what with the Cockney accent and bald head beneath his egregious hat. We met him in the lobby of the hotel—Alex seemed to know him on sight and walked right over to him. They stared at each other for a moment, and then the man reached out, took my bag right out of my hands, and said, “This way, guvs.”

  “I can take—” I started, but Alex shook his head and just ushered me along. I followed them out to the waiting cab, feeling….

  Well, feeling a bit like I was being tossed around for no bloody reason. I wasn’t an—an operative, or an agent, or whatever these two were called, but I thought I was fairly reasonable when it came to taking precautions for my own safety. Fleeing into the dark of night with someone we’d never met before didn’t seem like the smartest path to take, that was all. And to be told to pack, to move, to take the stairs, step here, nod there….

  I jerked my arm out of Alex’s grasp. He held his hands up apologetically, but otherwise appeared unmoved. “You first,” he said, gesturing to the cab.

  What was I to do? My bag had already gone to the passenger seat in front. I got in.

  What followed was an hour of driving around to check for tails, I supposed, before we finally made landfall less than a mile from the hotel, on Villiers Street. The flat was a studio three floors up and permeated with the smell of stale tobacco and damp. Our guide—who I still didn’t have a name for—pointed out the bedroom and the tiny bathroom. “Two cots in there for you,” he said, throwing my bag onto one of them. “I’ll be out here.”

  I frowned. “You’re staying?” I’d gone from no roommates to two in the space of a single evening, and not in the fun way either.

  The man shrugged. “Someone’s got to be your watchman.”

  “Thank you,” Alex said, cutting off any further complaint from me. “We appreciate it.”

  “Whatever makes the old man happy, eh?” He’d settled down on the mildew-stained couch and turned on the telly without another word.

  “What old man?” I’d hissed to Alex as soon as the bedroom door was shut. “And why do we need a watchman? And also, this place is filthy! What good is avoiding detection by the thief if we’re killed during the night by inhaling toxic mold?”

  To my surprise, Alex hadn’t been annoyed. He’d smiled, in fact, which ramped up my own annoyance considerably. “He’s just talking about my boss, who set this up for us. This guy… look, he’s rough around the edges, but he wouldn’t bring us somewhere that wasn’t safe. We’ll be all right for one night, and tomorrow we’ll be on our way. I promise. I’ll take care of you.”

  I sighed, my anger draining away, and sat down on my cot. The rickety structure creaked beneath my weight. “I don’t need a caretaker,” I said, holding his gaze and being as clear and succinct as I could. “I’m not your child, nor am I your client. You said we were partners in this, and I’d like to be treated like one.”

  Alex nodded after a second, his eyes shadowed. “I know. I’m sorry if I get pushy, but I’m accustomed to making moves in the field without having to think of anyone else. I’ll do my best to treat you as a partner in everything, as long as it doesn’t compromise our safety.”

  “You really think staying at the hotel would have compromised our safety?”

  He rubbed his fingers over his eyes. “I can’t know for sure. But I didn’t want to take the risk.”

  That was the best I could ask for, I supposed. “I understand.”

  “Good.” That had been that, for the most part. I’d washed up and gone to bed, exhausted and half-fearing that the creaking, squeaking thing beneath me would fall apart in the middle of the night.

  It hadn’t, and now it was morning, and I was so desperate for a cup of tea I felt inclined toward murder. I sat up, swiveled around so I could find my shoes with my feet—no way was I touching this floor without a layer of leather between it and me—and staggered off to the bathroom. At least there weren’t visible roaches in here.

  By the time I emerged, dressed in my last clean set of clothes, my need for tea had grown to monstrous proportions. I looked around, ready to make my case to Alex that caffeine was immediately required, but he was nowhere to be seen. His contact was, though, still sitting on that hideous couch, feet up on the coffee table, sipping a cup of—

  “Oh my God, where did you get that?”

  He looked at me and smirked. “In the kitchen, guv,” he said. “Kettle’s still hot.”

  It was, and I didn’t even care that the only tea on offer was an ancient box of Tetley. The mug was clean, the water was steaming, and three minutes later I was drinking the nectar of the gods. I wandered back into the living room, sipping slowly, my head close to the top of the cup so I could wallow in the steam. “Where’s Alex?” I asked after a moment.

  This time the man didn’t bother to look up from the television, where it appeared that Arsenal was raking Chelsea over the coals. “Gone for food, he’ll be back soon.”

  I sipped more tea, cleared my throat, then asked, “Were you really out here all night?”

  “’S my job, innit?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I can’t imagine a job that revolves around watching other people sleep.”

  “Sleep researcher,” he said promptly.

  “Be serious.”

  “I am serious. It’s an important job.”

  “What you are now, or being a sleep researcher?”

  “Both.” I rolled my eyes, and he smirked again. “Look, it’s not anything you want to know more about, all right? I looked out for you because that’s what I was paid to do, nothing else.”

  Ha. He could dissemble all he wanted, but I knew that Alex wouldn’t leave us in anything less than perfectly safe hands. Again, so long as we didn’t die of toxic mold. It wasn’t my place to push, however, and honestly I was less interested in this man for himself than I was for what he knew about Alex. “Do you know much about Kensington International Security?”

  He snorted and upped the volume on the television
. “More than I want to, mate.”

  I ignored his attempt to end the conversation and sat down next to him. The couch squeaked like a dozen mice had just gone into their death throes. I winced, but steadied myself. “What sort of people do they hire?”

  He glanced at me. “You askin’ what sort of man you’ve fallen in with on whatever it is you’re doing?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You don’t know about the job?”

  He held up a hand. “I don’t want to know about the job. ’S none of my business, I’m not here to help with any of that.”

  Fair enough. “Then yes, I’m asking about what sort of person Kensington hires.” What sort of person is Alex Tucker? How can he go from friendly to dead serious and back again in a heartbeat?

  The man looked down at the remote in his lap, ran the edge of one neatly trimmed thumbnail into the grimy plastic groove on the bottom of it. A curl of black goo lifted out of the crevice. “KIS goes for former military, mostly. High-level guys who did their time in a spec ops unit. That’s who they like for in the field—almost always men, too, although they’re gonna have to branch out if they want to keep up, because some of the best operators out there today are women.” He finished cleaning out one side of the remote and moved on to the other side.

  “Lots of tech staff, in-country support staff when they can, dedicated handlers to make the jobs go smooth as possible. They’re good, some of the best in the business. They tend to get a little mission-focused, though.” He lifted his eyes, not to look at me but to stare a little above the television set, unfocused. “It can make ’em slow to handle surprises.”

  He’d given me a lot more than I’d thought he would. “I guess you’ve worked with them a lot, then.”

  “Nah, never.”

  “Then how did you know all this?”

  “Know what?”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re quite shitty at being evasive.”

  “I’m not being evasive, guv.” His smirk morphed into a full-on smile. It made him look slightly less like a hooligan. “I’m stonewalling you. Big difference.” He glanced toward the door. “Sounds like your guy is back.”

  “What?” How could he possibly hear that over the blaring of the television and the squeaking of the couch? Yet, a moment later, the door swung open, and Alex stepped inside. He was wearing the same clothes he’d had on yesterday and carried a bag from Pret A Manger in one hand. He didn’t move like a man casually bringing breakfast home from the nearest café, however. He stalked across the floor and thrust the bag at me, the look on his face nearly a glower.

  “Eat fast, we need to leave. The Strand’s been evacuated.”

  “What?” I stood up, almost spilling my tea in the process. “Why on earth was it evacuated?”

  “Gas leak,” he said tersely. “Or at least that’s what they’re reporting.” Alex looked at our host. “Turn that to the news,” he said, pointing at the television.

  The man flipped channels without a word. “—precipitated a small fire on the top floor,” the reporter was saying. She was positioned in front of the hotel, bunches of people milling around behind her. “Fortunately, the affected rooms were unoccupied, and no one was injured.”

  “Huh.” The man on the couch looked from the TV to Alex, seeming reluctantly impressed. “Looks like you were right to get out.”

  “Oh, come now,” I said before I remembered to keep my big mouth shut. “This wasn’t necessarily meant to target us.”

  Alex looked at me incredulously. “How can you not see that? It’s the most obvious thing in the world.”

  “Not really,” I replied, feeling defensive. “Accidents do happen. It’s entirely possible that this truly was unintentional.” It has to be unintentional. I’m not ready to be the target of a murderous thief. I wanted this chance, wanted the opportunity to regain a measure of my former career, not to mention my self-respect, but I wasn’t willing to risk my life for it.

  “Maybe,” Alex said at last, “but the odds aren’t good. Either way, it’s time to go, so eat and pack your stuff up. We’ve got a plane to catch.”

  “You’ve got a lead?” our third wheel asked. “Where is it?”

  Alex glanced at him. “I thought you didn’t want to know.”

  “I don’t ask because I care, mate, I ask because I need to know if you’re going to be back here beggin’ for sanctuary again within the week.”

  “Right.” If his tone had had any more layers of sarcasm in it, it would have qualified as an archeological dig. “It’s not local, not even in the UK. You won’t have to worry your pretty head about us after you drop us at Heathrow.”

  Our host bristled. “What am I, your chauffeur?”

  “You were last night.”

  They stared at each other, unmoving, unblinking, until the tension rose to the point where I just couldn’t take it any longer. “Right,” I said after clearing my throat. “So I’m just going to take this and… go in there and… yeah. Out soon.” I retreated to the bedroom, shut the door on the game of “Who has more testosterone and less to lose?” and decided, fuck it, I was going to eat this—I glanced in the bag—ham and cheese stuffed croissant, and I was going to like it, and fuck both of them.

  I ate, and despite the offering being rather limp after sweating into its box for a while, it was still tasty. There was a muffin as well, which I put in my bag as a snack for later on. I shrugged into my tweed jacket, checked the room to ensure I’d grabbed all of my things, and reentered the living room, possibly expecting to see that the two gentlemen had ninjaed each other into headlocks by then.

  Instead, they were standing rather demurely by the door, chatting in low voices. Alex had gained a suitcase of his own—more of a backpack, really, only with straps and locks and all sorts of bits likely designed to keep people with wandering fingers from getting into it. He looked at me, a picture of calm. “Ready to go?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Great.” He looked at our host again. “Lead on, Jeeves.”

  “Go fuck yourself, mate.” He did lead us back downstairs, though, and out to his car. He even drove us to Heathrow, which ended up being a too-long, too-quiet ride. It was the first time I’d ever been relieved to walk into a bloody airport, that was for sure.

  We checked in, checked baggage—I had the feeling that Alex had to check his due to some questionable content, otherwise he wouldn’t let it out of his sight—and made it to our terminal with an hour to spare.

  “So,” I said as we sat down in the overly square, highly uncomfortable chairs that populated the sitting area. “How did you learn we’re meant to go to Marseille?”

  “My boss contacted me,” Alex replied. He looked rather tired beneath the eyes but sounded all right. He was sipping on a coffee he’d bought at a kiosk in the terminal—he’d offered me a tea as well, but now that I’d had my caffeine fix, the stuff the kiosk was offering would inevitably be a disappointment. “He got an alert from one of his friends in the police force that they’d had a woman who matched the description of our thief get on a plane to Marseille early this morning. The officer who reported it hadn’t been sure enough that it was her to approach her, but the footage they got off the security cameras confirms it.”

  I frowned. “That’s rather disappointing.”

  “Which part, Mal?” Alex asked, leaning back until he could rest his neck against the back of the chair. His profile was sharply defined against the morning sunlight entering through the floor-to-ceiling windows beside us. Part of me wanted to trace it with my forefinger. I told that part very sternly to shut it.

  “Well, all of it. That she got away, that we have to chase her down. That this vaunted law enforcement blockade didn’t work out.”

  “They often don’t,” Alex offered. “Unless you’re living in an authoritarian country where no one thinks twice about privacy, it can be pretty easy to escape detection. She had covered her hair with a scarf, dressed in baggy clothes, didn’t have any makeup
on. It wasn’t as easy as picking her out of a lineup, that’s for sure.”

  “Won’t we have a similarly hard time finding her in Marseille?”

  Alex smiled. The expression brought his attractiveness back to the fore and reminded me that my current situation, despite its many flaws, had a few bright spots as well. “Now there, we caught a break. KIS has an office in Toulon, and our manager there was able to get to Marseille before our thief’s plane landed. She’s got eyes on her, and by the time we land we should have her location. Hopefully we can retrieve the scepter in under twenty-four hours and let you begin authenticating it within the next day.”

  That would be a rather quick and satisfactory end to this little romp. Very satisfactory, yes. One day with this perfect specimen of manhood? Ha, far more than I needed.

  You are such a terrible liar, Mal.

  “Providing things go to plan and we don’t get any more weirdness like gas leaks and fires in the hotels we’re staying at,” Alex added. “Which, don’t get me wrong, would be great, and we’re way more likely to be successful with Patricia on our side, but in my experience, jobs don’t usually work out so neatly.”

  I—wisely, I thought—decided not to ask him about his last job. “Is Patricia your coworker?”

  “Yeah, she’s our go-to person in the south of France. I just finished working with her, actually. She’s good, she gets shit done and doesn’t dish a lot of it out.”

  That sounded lovely. “It must be nice to have coworkers that you can rely on.”

  He rolled his head toward me. He was… really, objectively, he shouldn’t have been so handsome. His jaw was scruffy, his nose was crooked, one of his eyebrows was bisected with a rather nasty scar, and his hair was just beginning to gray at the temples. He was the antithesis of everything I’d sought out before—polished, suave men who wore suits every day and got manicures unironically. Yet I felt comfortable with him and comfortably attracted to him. It was pleasant, but I had a handle on it.