by Amity Cross
“What is it?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
He shook his head and began pulling papers from the bag and stacking them between us like a barrier.
“X?”
He stopped his movements, his gaze locked on the bag. “You’re changing.”
I wasn’t sure I got his meaning, but I said, “So are you.”
“I’ve—” He stopped himself short and rubbed his eyes. “We need to go through this intel.”
In all the time X had been teaching me to become like him, one thing he’d told me time and time again was that he had no soul, that he was already lost. I didn’t believe that, but what if he believed that by going through with this, I was going to lose mine as well? Was that what he was so worried about? Saving me from some kind of eternal damnation?
I took a pot shot, hoping I wasn’t hitting some unpredictable exposed nerve. “You didn't make me like this, X. I was on this path long before I met you.”
His head shot up, his gaze fixing on mine. His green eyes were blazing with emotion and I knew I was right.
“I came into this of my own free will. I was already fixed on revenge.”
His eyes narrow slightly. “And I fucked you up even more.”
“What you need to understand, X, is that you have done nothing to me. Nothing that I didn’t want you to do.” He frowned, but didn’t move to stop me. “I want you. I want this.” I placed my palm on top of the papers. “This is who I want to be.”
X studied me, his expression returning to its usual impassiveness. I held his gaze, imploring him to respect my decision.
“Is this who you want to be with me?” he asked after a moment.
I hadn’t thought much about the future, but I always saw him in it. I nodded.
“Tell me about before,” he said.
“Before…” I trailed off with a sigh. He knew what happened from when he was searching for me under Sykes and Royal Blood’s orders, but he’d never heard it from my own lips. It was my secret shame, he knew that, but I’d never told him exactly what had happened that night…or the night I found my murdered family.
“Before,” X said, sensing my hesitation. “Before, I remember nothing. But I remember the day I first opened my eyes.”
I stiffened beside him, too afraid to move. He was opening up. In order to coax my story out of me, he was revealing something about himself in turn.
“There was a man,” he went on, his voice tight. “I’ll never forget his face for as long as I am on this earth.”
He didn’t have to say it. The man he remembered was his torturer. The man who’d conditioned him.
“He—”
I placed my hand over his and he stilled. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
It frightened the absolute crap out of me, revealing my weaknesses and failure to him, but everything had to be put out there for this to work. For me to actually function without losing my wits in this fucked up plan.
“The night I found them…” I trailed off and sighed, remembering the lackluster orgasm that I'd used to delay my arrival home. “My parents never wanted me to study art. They wanted me to go into business or law, something drab and boring. They wanted me to be a lady, follow their rules and marry a rich titled man of their choosing.” I rolled my eyes. “Very archaic. My brother...he was all for rebelling. He was always getting mixed up in things out of his depth. He got mixed up with Sykes, owed him a debt and couldn’t settle it.”
X remained silent, just listening.
“I wasn’t on good terms with any of them when they died. I was resentful. I rebelled. I wasn’t in a hurry to get home that night.” I glanced up at X, but he was a closed book.
“Go on,” he said.
“I picked up a random guy…” He didn’t move, or react. “I let him fuck me in the back of his car to kill some time.” Suddenly, I felt dirty and I began to rub my palms up and down my arms. “The police told me if I’d been fifteen minutes earlier…”
Why wasn’t X saying anything? He wanted to know, he wanted to hear it...
“I was meant to die in that house,” I whispered. “The only thing that saved me was being a selfish whore.”
X shifted beside me, his hand curling into the sheets.
“The police weren’t doing anything, so I disappeared. I planned to kill Sykes in his sleep. I changed my appearance, prepared a false identity and moved to the city. I cased his house by posing as a cleaning lady and I learned how many guards were stationed there and what their rotation was. I studied how to disable the alarm system and I planned my getaway. I ran over the plan a dozen times, timing it down to the last second.” I shivered, pulling the sheets around my shoulders. “It all went to plan until the moment I stood over his bed. There was a secondary alarm system. I didn’t know… I hesitated a second too long and I must’ve tripped it. Then he woke and I couldn’t do it. I barely got out of there.”
X finally turned to look at me. I tried to find some clue as to what he was thinking in his eyes, but there was nothing there. Of all the times I wanted his reaction, to see his emotions and he was keeping everything inside.
“X…” I hesitated, my skin prickling with more than the cold. “Please say something.”
After a sickening moment of silence, his expression slightly softened.
“It was a good plan,” he whispered. “You would’ve completed it…”
“But I choked.”
He shook his head. “No. You were something none of us are.”
I frowned. “What’s that?”
“You were human.”
Chapter 20
X
Mercy had a life before me, just like I had one before her.
I’d done things that were unforgivable and she had as well. Who was I to hold a casual fuck over her? That 'casual fuck' had saved her life. Besides, her plan had been good. Solid. All she’d done was make a rookie mistake.
I glanced at her in bed beside me, hugging the sparse blankets around her naked body and I sighed. Standing, I retrieved my T-shirt from the floor and pulled it over her head. Another fucking tender moment.
I slid back into bed, pulled the duffle over and began emptying the rest of the intel. I flipped through photographs, handing each to Mercy, before moving onto the next. There were pictures of Sykes meeting with an unknown man. On the back was scrawled a name that I didn’t recognize, but sense and training told me that it was one of Lafayette’s associates. Mercy handled the pictures like they were contaminated with something foul and she wasn’t far from the mark.
All of these men were unsavory. Fuck it, I was unsavory, but they were the worst of the bunch. Human traffickers. Rapists. Men who delighted in prolonged human suffering. If my conditioning hadn’t of broke when it did, I’m sure I would be one of them. If Royal Blood hadn’t tagged me for execution and I remained a loyal soldier to the cause, then I’d be even more twisted than I already was. Grimacing, I shoved the thought into the darkest corner of my mind and locked it away.
Handing Mercy the rest of the photographs I said, “Memorize these faces.”
Picking up the blueprints, I rolled them out across my lap and saw it was of the building where Lafayette had his posh wine bar. I ran my fingers over the plans, trying to make sense of the lines and markings. This place was old…a few hundred years perhaps. There was shit everywhere. A fucking electrician’s nightmare.
“Do you still think we should go?” Mercy asked as she flipped through the photos. “Won’t it be a trap? They know we’re here.”
She was right. There was a very high possibility that we’d be walking right into their hands. Sykes wanted us dead. I’m pretty sure that list also included Royal Blood, but that was a problem for another day.
“It will be a trap,” I said. “We’ll still go.”
“And do what?”
I shrugged. I wasn’t sure about that until we saw what was lying in wait for us.
Mercy snorted, but didn’t
try and argue like she usually would. Something had changed inside of her. She was on task, completely and utterly.
“Here.” I tossed her a stack of paper, deciding it was best to get on with her education, not to argue about ifs and if nots. “Tell me what you see.”
She flipped through the pages. “It’s an alarm system.”
“And?”
“It’s motion sensor.” She skimmed through another page. “Controlled from a junction box and a central computer housed off-site.” She glance at me. “Private security?”
“Or a hired firm. Most likely mercenaries in Lafayette’s employ.”
“So, we find the off-site computer?”
“That will take too much time.”
“The junction box?” She glanced at the blueprints in my lap.
I nodded, pointing to the basement level.
“But that’s inside…” She frowned, realizing what I’d already known before we began. “We can’t disable it.”
“Not unless we can get into the basement. These buildings don’t have street access. The only way in is through the front or the back.” I pointed to the corresponding places on the plans.
“So, what then? We just have to be quick about it?”
“Speed and accuracy,” I said. “Confirm the target is inside, then eliminate and extract in one minute.”
Mercy raised her eyebrows, her lips parting slightly. “One minute?”
“Or run fucking fast. Take your pick.”
She shivered. “I can run.”
“This line here,” I said, pointing to the edges of the building plan, “marks out the air-conditioning ducts. They look like they have been a recent addition as not many structures like these have them. The building is old, so there will be a lot of hidden nuances.”
Mercy nodded. “They used to just build over things. Patch them up. Like in London.”
My lip curled into a smile and she shrugged.
“I did a course in French Architecture,” she said. “I needed the credit for my degree.”
I raised my eyebrows. Of all the random things in the world...
“What?” She smiled at me. “Renaissance Sculpture was full.”
I shook my head. Sometimes I forgot who she was before. She’d assumed her new life with such ease, Alison Crawford the artist seemed like a ghost. “The roof has access to the air-conditioning. It won’t be watched.”
“So…”
“You tell me the plan, Mercy.”
She sucked in a deep breath, her eyes sparkling. “We find a vantage point where we can watch the building. Then we find a way to get onto the roof and into the air-conditioning system. Gain access to the basement and disable the alarm. Take out any guards with stealth. Shoot Sykes and Lafayette in the head.” She smiled. “Once we have confirmation the target is inside the building, we execute the plan.”
I grinned. Fucking master assassin.
“You’re missing one step.”
“Oh?” she asked, smiling in return.
“We go in together.”
Chapter 21
Mercy
My first foray into Paris wasn’t a romantic dinner at a fancy restaurant, or a cruise down the Seine or even a kiss at the top of the Eiffel Tower… It was in my best incognito street wear, under an alias with a hitman by my side.
I leaned against the front of a shop, watching the street around me. My gaze ran over every face, every vehicle and every window. I’d spent the night memorizing the intel with X, learning the faces in the photographs. This was the reason why.
The shop door opened and a moment later, X handed me a tiny mobile phone. I frowned. It seemed like a burden, something that could be tracked.
“It’s a burner purchased under a false name,” he said, reading my expression. “They can’t trace it.”
We stood on a quiet street out the front of a shop that had a red ‘Tabac’ sign over it. It was the French equivalent of an Off-license. Groceries, liquor, tobacco, newspapers… and mobile phones apparently.
“What do I need it for?”
“In case we get separated.”
My lips curved into an ‘oh’ shape. I hoped that didn’t happen, but like he’d been telling me for three weeks now, it was better to be prepared for everything.
The meeting was scheduled for the following evening…if it was still going ahead, that was. Which I knew it wasn’t, but X was adamant that we had to be prepared. If it was a training exercise or he had something cooking in that brain of his, I didn’t know. I’d decided to trust him a long time ago and he hadn’t led me astray yet. He wouldn’t do it now.
“We need to watch the wine bar,” X said, his gaze flickering around the street. “Figure out if there’s any surveillance that wasn’t in the intel and find an access point to the roof.”
“So, not all car chases and explosions then.”
X smiled wryly at my joke. “Not today.”
He slid his hand into mine and we moved off down the street, looking like any French couple. It was just a pretense of course, but I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like being ‘normal’ with X, if we could ever have that, but the notion was so far-fetched, I let it slip away.
Lafayette’s wine bar was in a lane blocked to traffic, numerous cafés dotted here and there, with various trendy boutiques in between. It looked like it was high value real estate being so close to the river and in the hot tourist area of the city. I knew from looking at the map that Notre Dame was just over the next block and a short walk across a bridge. That’s why I wasn’t surprised to find it packed with slow walking tourists, all kinds of languages and accents on the air.
X grasped my hand tightly and led me though the fray. We kept our heads down, ignoring the sales pitches from the waiters hanging out the front of their respective establishments. We walked quickly and I tried to take everything in, my gaze flickering here and there, watching for faces I recognized, taking stock of the surrounding buildings and their entry points.
When we passed the wine bar, a mere five meters from the door, I was shocked at X’s bravado. It was much too close for my liking. Fortunately, it had a sign on the darkened windows that read ‘closed for renovation’ along with the same again in French. Nothing moved inside and we passed by quickly.
Further down the street, X stopped at a café and led me through the tables, selecting one that was in a secluded corner, hidden somewhat by a large red and white umbrella and a hanging plant.
A waiter instantly pounced and I stared open mouthed as X ordered for us in fluent French. I think he ordered coffee, but he could’ve ordered cyanide and it still would've sounded just as sexy.
“I didn’t know you spoke French,” I said when we were alone again.
He shrugged. When the waiter came back with our coffees, X motioned at him with a wave of his hand and asked a question. The guy shook his head and replied, before moving off to serve another table.
X curled his hands around his coffee cup. “He says the bar was open two days ago and nobody has been there since.”
“About the time we arrived…”
“Yes. All it does it confirm our suspicions.”
I glanced over my shoulder, scanning the faces that passed before taking in the closed doors and windows of Lafayette’s posh wine bar.
“So, we wait and watch,” I said, turning back to X.
“For the moment we go ahead with the plan.”
We sat for a few minutes, nursing our coffee. I lifted the cup and inhaled the scent, but screwed up my nose.
“Not to your taste?” X asked.
I shook my head. “Have you been to Paris before?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I suppose I have. The city looks familiar to me. I don’t easily forget a place I’ve been to.”
Unless his conditioning commanded him to. I didn’t say it, but it hung heavily in the air, unspoken and uneasy. I wondered how they did it. If it was a word or an action that was hardcoded in his subconscious
that triggered his memory loss. I guess that was next on our agenda.
“I always wanted to come here,” I went on. “For the art.”
X drew in a deep breath, his gaze flickering back to mine. I knew he got it. My past life would never leave me, at least not completely.
I smiled, knowing that right now my revenge was more important than visiting the Louvre. “Another time.”
X’s eyes narrowed and he nodded his head slightly. “At my eleven,” he said.
Thankful for the distraction, I glanced casually over my shoulder and caught sight of a man in a black suit exiting the bar. He wore dark sunglasses, his hair slicked back, no tie.
“He doesn’t look like a tradesperson,” I said, turning back to my coffee. He looked like a highbrow thug with a human trafficking cartel.
“No, he does not.” X's glaze flickered to the street as he picked up his cup and sipped at the coffee inside.
I saw recognition flash across his face. “You know him?”
He frowned and ducked his head low, putting his coffee back onto the table. “I don’t know.”
“It’s the same feeling, right?” I asked, trying to help him work through it. “When Vaughn mentioned Lafayette.”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s possible you’ve crossed paths before. Do you think he saw us?” I glanced over my shoulder and peered at the wine bar, where the man was lighting up a cigarette.
“No. He didn't.”
I didn’t ask if he was sure, because X was always sure about those kinds of things.
“He’s on the move,” I said, when he began to walk down the street towards us. “Are we following?”
X nodded. “Crash course in tailing, Mercy. You game?”
“Anytime.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, throwing a couple of euros on the table. “Wait a moment, then we’ll go.”
We waited until the man had passed and was in the distance before we vacated the table. X explained to me that we had to look casual, just two people going about their business. Distance was key. Follow too closely and be too alert and our cover would be blown. We had the added bonus of having our identities known by half of the bloody Paris underworld. If the guy recognized us, we were done.
