Pink Slip

by Katrina Jackson

  “And sexy,” Kierra prompted.

  “Very sexy,” Lane chuckled into her hair.

  And then they pulled away from her and walked toward the front exit.

  Kenny moved in the other direction and raised his gun. “Follow me.”

  Chanté reached out for Kierra’s hand and she grasped it, taking one last look over her shoulder. She sent a silent prayer after Monica and Lane, hoping they would be okay.

  “You three are so sweet,” Chanté whispered. “And fucking hot.”

  Kierra couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up from her chest.

  “Shh,” Kenny hissed.

  Oh right. The mission.

  Monica

  Monica had always believed that she was a good person at her core.

  But there was something about the calm that overtook her when she had a gun in one hand and the other resting on the hilt of a knife that made her question whether that wasn’t a delusion. How could she be a good person and a good agent at the same time? But after a few years in The Agency she’d given up the moral quandary as a moot point. She’d was good at her job and she enjoyed the work, there wasn’t any reason to complicate her life any further. But then Kierra had waltzed into an abandoned airport hangar like a lamb on its way to slaughter, innocent and doe eyed, and upended the life Monica and Lane had built, bringing those old questions to the surface again.

  Suddenly it mattered that the trafficker she’d sniped had a family. And it mattered that she slept like a baby after a kill. It was of the utmost importance that she could remember the face of every kill she’d made, but not necessarily all of their names. These small matters grew around a larger point of contention. Because suddenly any deep cover job that required that she and Lane be away from home for more than a night or two, held less and less appeal. The separation from Kierra didn’t seem worth it. And that was before Serbia.

  For three years she’d told herself that they could just want Kierra without ever having her. They could enjoy the shameless flirtation of her skimpy outfits and infatuation and hide their own longing. But it never had to be more than that, because no matter how she twisted and turned the dilemma, she and Lane were not good people. And any more intimate encounters with them would only put Kierra in danger.

  But then Serbia happened and all of those boundaries that Monica had used to protect Kierra from them and guard their hearts from her went up in smoke. And then Serbia ended and Monica had had to accept that they couldn’t go back to a time before they’d had her. They’d never stood a chance.

  She’d spent three months listing, feeling as if there was a puzzle piece missing from the grand scheme of their world, but unwilling to admit it. Seeing Kierra for the first time in too long had felt eerily like seeing Lane for the first time on campus that day all those years ago; as if a piece of herself she hadn’t known was missing had been slotted into place.

  Now they almost had her back and Monica wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of that.

  Asif gestured with his hands that there were two guards down the hall on either side. He nodded once and then launched himself into the hallway, his gun raised high. He shot the guard on his left while Lane, crouched at Monica’s feet aimed and shot the other.

  They’d tracked Sergei across town to a luxurious hotel in the city’s financial district. The tracker Monica has surreptitiously placed on his body indicated that he was in the penthouse. It had taken half an hour for Asif to hack into the security system, but once he had they’d been able to ride the service elevator up to the top floor undetected. He wouldn’t compromise their communication silence, but Monica knew that Lane was going to launch into a very long speech about how criminals always had the worst security systems once the operation was over. She’d sat through some version of it before and was not looking forward to having to half-hear it again. But, she reminded herself, that there was Kierra back at the safe house. And Monica would happily listen to Lane drone on and on about firewalls and double blind passwords and motion detectors and whatever the fuck else was missing from a shocking number of criminal residences, if she could do so with Kierra, and eventually Lane, in her arms.

  Monica brought up the rear, walking backward down the hallway, a gun in each hand aimed in the general radius of center mass should anyone suddenly appear and interrupt them.

  Asif used the keycard he fished from one of the guard’s pockets and dipped it into the card reader. It beeped and unlocked. He slowly pulled the handle up and pushed the door just barely open. They held position, waiting for any unusual sounds from the room that might indicate a trap or some other sticky situation that Lane and Asif would be happy to shoot their way through. When they were satisfied that the coast was as clear as it was ever going to be, Asif slowly pushed the door fully open. He stayed low while Monica and Lane took cover on either side of the door jamb.

  They moved into the penthouse foyer slowly, guns cocked.

  The room was silent. Or at least they thought it was silent until they heard the sounds of heavy panting and grunting coming from the room across the sitting area. Monica assumed it was the bedroom. She turned to look at Lane who was shaking his head in disbelief. They had killed all of Sergei’s guards, cut off his boyfriend’s ear and threatened his life and Stepanov was horny.

  Granted, Monica could relate. Their lives were on the line but there was a moment back at Menagerie when Kierra had straddled Lane and looked at her, a challenge in her normally submissive gaze, and Monica had seriously considered shooting a few slugs into the ceiling and kicking everyone out of the building. Except for Chanté, who wasn’t really Monica’s type but when she’d seen the way that Kierra’s eyes had glued onto Chanté’s thick thighs she’d decided then and there that she could be for tonight. Anything for Kierra.

  They moved swiftly, but cautiously, across the sitting area. Lane crouched to pull the door handle down, but Monica shot her hand out and gripped his shoulder. She tilted her head to indicate that she wanted to take the lead on this. He shook his head no. His eyes were wide with shock and fear. An unusual mix for him.

  Lane never disobeyed her orders. Monica knew he suspected that she was compromised. And she was willing to accept that he was probably right. But he also knew that she was the best shot of the three of them. And Stepanov had threatened Kierra’s life.

  So she was also very angry and more dangerous than usual.

  She raised her eyebrows in a silent challenge that Lane wanted to meet, but couldn’t. Their missions only worked if there was clear leadership. And that leadership was Monica. It always had been and it always would be. They both knew that Lane would follow her wherever she led, even if it was straight into the line of fire. But this time, she just wanted to handle business and lead him home. To Kierra. Finally.

  After a tense moment, where Monica could see that he was waging an internal battle, he finally nodded at her, a tight dip of his head. He shifted out of her way, pulled the door handle down and pushed it open.

  Monica hung back as the people inside yelled and scrambled.

  A volley of shots sprayed through the door. Lane had moved out of the doorway just in time. They stood there waiting as a voice they recognized as Stepanov’s yelled in Serbian for his guards. Another voice they recognized as Sergei’s prayed. And then one more voice that Monica didn’t recognize simply wailed.

  But they waited. Asif and Lane looked at Monica, their eyes beseeching her to give the word for them to move in and finish this. But Monica was not brash. She didn’t have Lane’s outgoing charm or the recklessness of most of her male colleagues. She was smart and patient and the best fucking spy in The Agency for a reason. She waited and waited and waited until she heard Stepanov clamoring off of the bed and rushing toward the bedroom door, cursing for his guards. He assumed that one of them had been trying to watch them have sex. Not that that his reckoning was coming.

  It was a gamble, one that Lane might have taken, but not a foolish one. Monica couldn
’t peek around the door into the room or else she would give her position away. So she had to turn into the doorway blind. Gun already raised, search for her target and fire in the second or so before Stepanov realized what was happening. For a brief moment she would be completely exposed.

  Stepanov’s steps faltered as she came into view, his frustration shifting into fear as recognition contorted his face. She shot him dead center in the forehead before he could even get his index finger back on his trigger.

  The aftermath was all sound and confusion.

  Sergei threw his body onto Stepanov, crying in anguish, a crude bandage wrapped over his missing ear. Monica could only look down on him in judgement; crying for a man who wouldn’t send him to a hospital to get his ear reattached because he was horny was not an emotion that she could relate to. The other man in the room seemed to deflate in relief.

  Lane called for their local cleanup crew – which was a small cell of Agency operatives embedded in the police department – to take Sergei and the other man into custody. When they arrived, Monica’s team slipped out of the room. The pushed into the stairwell, walked down two flights and then rode the main elevator to the lobby. As the doors opened, Monica draped her body around Asif’s frame, seeming to whisper into his ear, while Lane started to tell a completely fictional story about a Hooters in El Paso and a wing eating contest as loud as he could in his exaggerated Texas drawl.

  Monica feigned a slight stumble as they walked through the lobby, giving the illusion of intoxication. They walked at a leisurely pace out the front door, turned left and then right, heading toward the crowded main drag of this posh tourist section of downtown Berlin.

  Once they were far enough away, Monica straightened and pushed away from Asif, who turned toward them, a wicked smile on his face.

  “Well, this was real,” he said, saluting at them.

  “You’re not coming back to the safe house?” Normally she wouldn’t have asked the question. In fact, normally splitting up would be the smartest move that they could take. But Chanté.

  Monica watched that exact train of thought flicker over Asif’s features. His will seemed to falter, but then he shook his head, his smile widened and he began to back away from them.

  “Make sure she gets her regular pay and my bonus,” was all he said before he jogged across the street and jumped into a cab idling at the corner.

  Monica watched him, stuck somewhere between disbelief that he could abandon his asset, and the woman he clearly loved – even if that love was complicated – and total understanding. Because she and Lane had done exactly that once. They’d strolled away from Kierra, walking through Club Ménage as if she wasn’t behind them, her heart breaking, their hearts breaking, just three months before.

  She turned to Lane. “Let’s go,” she said, tilting her head in the opposite direction.

  “But,” Lane started.

  Monica shook her head. “That’s none of our business,” she said, grasping his left hand in her right, their fingers tangling naturally.

  She didn’t have to say anything else, because it was clear. Asif and Chanté’s mess wasn’t any of their business because they had to get back to Kierra.

  Lane turned his head to watch the cab’s taillights disappear in the distance, but Monica kept her gaze forward, leading him home.

  seventeen

  Kierra couldn’t believe how normal it all seemed.

  They’d driven back to the safe house as if they’d just spent a regular night out. Chanté and Kenny fought over which terrible Europop station to listen to as if Monica hadn’t cut a man’s ear off. Kierra sat in the back seat, watching to make sure that no one was following them, but also singing along to a Robyn song she’d loved in college, as if Monica, Lane and Asif weren’t out there on a mission to kill Stepanov.

  She and Chanté had clung to one another standing in the foyer, while Kenny had gone through the house and checked to make sure that it hadn’t been compromised.

  “I really like your perfume,” Kierra whispered to Chanté.

  “Thanks. Asif bought it for me.”

  Kierra squinted at her in the dim room. “Asif doesn’t seem like the perfume buying type.”

  “Sorry I meant, I hacked his credit card and bought this for myself.” She smiled sweetly at Kierra.

  “He’s a spy. Should his credit card be hackable?”

  “Sweetheart everything is hackable. If it’s not nailed down or a figment of someone’s imagination, it’s asking to be stolen.”

  Kierra chuckled. “When they said you were a thief, I thought they meant a pickpocket. But you’re like a hacker. Like a real life hacker?”

  Chanté tried to pretend that she wasn’t ecstatic to hear that her reputation preceded her. And then she ruined her valiant effort by curtseying, which made Kierra laugh louder than she’d meant to.

  “I am,” Chanté said. “But I can also pick your pocket. Only… that dress barely has enough fabric to cover your ass let alone hide any valuables.” She raked an appreciative and lustful glare over Kierra’s body. “Besides, I mostly try to keep my thieving to corrupt corporate executives and Asif.”

  “You two have a very strange relationship,” Kierra whispered.

  “You’re dating a married couple. Define strange.”

  Kierra nodded, “Okay fair point. But we’re not dating. Not technically.”

  “So what are you doing?”

  Kierra opened her mouth to answer, completely unsure of what words would come out of her mouth because she honestly didn’t know, when Kenny turned on the living room lights and came back to the foyer. “All clear,” he said. “Who’s hungry?”

  “Me,” Chanté yelled, jumping up and down. “I can make toast if anyone’s interested.”

  “No toast,” Kenny called over his shoulder, heading to the kitchen. “I need real food.”

  And that was how Monica and Lane found them, standing around the kitchen island, eating sandwiches and listening to Chanté’s impassioned treatise about why a pair of six inch acrylic heels were actually the perfect weapon. They’d been so engrossed in her story that they didn’t even hear Monica and Lane enter the safe house until they were practically in the kitchen.

  Kenny stood up straight. “How’d it go?”

  Monica nodded at him, but looked at Kierra to answer. “Stepanov’s dead. It’s over.”

  “Are you sure? Is Sergei going to come after me next?”

  “I doubt it. He knows what will happen if he does.”

  Kierra sighed in relief, slumping against the kitchen island. How odd that it had all ended while she was eating half a turkey club. She’d expected something a little more dramatic on her end.

  “Where’s Asif?” Chanté’s voice was a tangle of emotions that Kierra did not want to experience; fear and disbelief and hurt and anger.

  Monica answered in a calm, quiet voice that Kierra found she liked in the way that she liked every version of Monica and Lane’s voices: reverently. “He’s fine. We split up. He said to give you his bonus. And Kenny will take you wherever you want to go.”

  Chanté’s smile faltered for a brief second before rebounding in full force. But her happiness didn’t meet her eyes anymore. “Okay,” she said. And maybe if everyone else’s eyes were closed they might have believed her.

  She turned to Kenny and smiled, “Want to run away to Amsterdam with me?”

  He rolled his eyes at her but swiveled his head to Monica, silently asking for permission.

  “It’s best that we all get away from here as quickly as possible. Amsterdam is just as good as any other city. Someone will be in touch about your next assignment when the time is right.”

  He nodded, turned to Lane and nodded again. And then he turned to Kierra and smiled. “So do you still hate me?”

  She had to laugh at that. Their first meeting at the Dublin airport felt like years ago. But it had barely been a week. It was hard to believe that this smiling man with the strong jaw and bro
ad chest was the same person who’d coaxed a days-long migraine from her as the annoying social director of a fake writer’s retreat. She shook her head, “Not as much.”

  He laughed and turned to Chanté. “Come on then. Let’s go get arrested.”

  She turned to Kierra and stage whispered. “He’s just joking. He hates jail.” And then Chanté pulled her into a tight squeeze. “I’m really happy Stepanov didn’t kill you.”

  Kierra didn’t know exactly what to say to that, so she squeezed Chanté harder and hoped that that conveyed everything she was feeling which ranged from a strong glee that she wasn’t dead and a sad sorrow that Asif wasn’t a better man.

  Chanté and Kenny slipped out of the kitchen and Kierra wondered if she’d ever see them again.

  When it was just the three of them alone, Monica and Lane standing at one end of the island, Kierra at the other, she could feel all of the day’s stresses beginning to catch up with her. She opened her mouth to speak but Lane cut her off.

  “Hold that thought. We need to get out of here as quickly as possible.”

  “You said it’s over,” Kierra said.

  “It is, but the best jobs are get in and get out. You never want to be around just in case someone decides they want some revenge,” Monica said.

  “Okay. So where are we going?”

  The right side of Monica’s mouth tipped up into a sly grin. “Wherever you want, sweet girl,” she said.

  Kierra recognized the utter absurdity of her life. She truly did. In the past few months she’d seen more guns and knives being used to maim or kill more people than she would have imagined as a very normal aspiring poet. But she’d also rarely felt safer than when she was with the two people standing in front of her.

  “Paris,” Kierra said, smiling brightly. “I’ve always wanted to go to Paris.”

  “Then let’s get the hell out of here,” Lane laughed.

  “On one condition,” Kierra said.

  “Another damn condition?” Lane breathed, bringing his hands to his hips.