“Of course,” I said, leaning in to kiss him. “Drive safe.”
“Always do,” he said, and he waited until I was standing in the doorway of our room before driving away.
I tried not to think about Charlie’s sister, but my mind kept going back to the suspicion on Frank’s face, and being ordered indoors. The news of her death had been enough to quarantine me. That scared me so much I sat with a loaded gun pointed at the door until he returned.
Frank was gone for the longest hour of my life. When he came home, he brought lunch. I nearly had an anxiety attack when I saw that it was from McDonald’s. I hadn’t been able to concentrate on a suitable hiding place for the ring while I was imagining someone mowing through Charlie’s relatives in an attempt to find him.
He sat down and pulled me onto his lap. His hands instinctually searched my pockets, but the ring was no longer there. “Charlie doesn’t think anyone would stand to gain from her death, but he won’t know for sure until he sees the will. I put a call in to an associate just in case. He’ll do some research.”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know. To be honest, I was a bit thrown off by that hit.”
I nestled my head against his shoulder. “What if they’re connected?”
“That’s highly doubtful, V. Charlie got a good read off this client. Besides, the funeral’s in fucking Idaho. I don’t think the people who live in this town realize Idaho exists. Do you feel anything?”
I shrugged. I’d never gotten vibes, bad or otherwise, off our hits. I just got nervous, and recently they’d been so easy I hadn’t felt anything. But now I was so keyed up that I couldn’t sit still. “Should we go through with the job?”
“Until we hear otherwise. If something is up, we might be able to find out about it while we watch them.”
“Okay, but it’s my hit until you learn how to swim,” I said, playing tough in the hopes of convincing myself I wasn’t scared. It seemed to be working, though it could’ve just been the feeling of protecting him. That always made me feel strong. “You’re backup.”
He scoffed at me.
“It’s not a big deal, Frank. I can do the job.”
“You think I’m going to let my boyfriend do my job because I can’t handle it?”
“You’re upset, so I’m not gonna take that as an insult,” I said, but smacked him upside the head anyway. “Partner, remember? We take care of each other.”
He turned away broodingly.
“Why didn’t you decline the job, then? You know you can’t swim!”
“I have never declined a job, Vincent.”
God, he was being such a baby about this. “Are you having a midlife crisis?”
“You’ll be having an end of life crisis if you say that again,” he threatened. I kissed his cheek. I loved that we could fight while I was on his lap. Hell, we could fight while he was fucking me. “What was in your pocket?”
I sighed. He was right, I couldn’t keep a secret. What was the point of knowing something if you kept it to yourself? “Just sit there. And close your eyes,” I said, grabbing the silk scarf he used on me during sexual asphyxiation and wrapping it around his head a couple times.
He held it in place for me while I reached under the dresser where I’d hidden the ring. My heart was pounding, and I was suddenly close to tears. This wasn’t exactly the romantic moment I’d wanted, but in all actuality I felt like this would be my last opportunity. That thought scared me so badly my hands started shaking. Whatever had happened with Charlie’s sister, whatever might happen with this hit, it had brought darkness over everything.
I took a deep breath and knelt before him. “Okay, you can look.”
He pulled the scarf off his head, messing up his hair and looking down at me, his eyebrows raised.
I grabbed his hand harder than I’d meant to and used my other hand to pop open the box with my thumb, holding it out to him clumsily. “Veux-tu m’épouser?
Frank let out a sound like I’d hit him in the stomach.
Panic set in immediately, like diving into ice water. I thought I was going to puke. “Did I say it right?”
He swallowed, opened his mouth to speak, and closed it to swallow again.
“Say something, Frank,” I pleaded.
“You said it perfectly,” he sighed.
I stayed where I was, frozen on one knee. Frank wasn’t smiling. Why wouldn’t he smile? He was tearing up for fuck’s sakes. I’d never seen him cry.
He put his hand over mine, the velvet box of doom still open in my other palm. “Vincent, I—”
I’d expected surprise. I’d expected speechlessness. I’d even considered tears. But I’d never imagined he’d say no. This was the ultimate rejection. I could feel it looming between us, tearing us apart until there no longer was an us to destroy. What the fuck was I supposed to do now, return it?
“Say yes or I’ll kill you,” I said, and aimed my gun at his heart to prove it.
Frank took the gun from me and tossed it on the bed. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“But I asked,” I whined. “In French even.”
“You ask for a lot of things.”
“And I always get them.”
He considered that for a moment. “I want more than anything to give you my name,
Vincen, I do. But it isn’t mine anymore. It’s…ruined.
“I can never have legal documents,” he heatedly grabbed his driver’s license, the state matching the current plates on his car, and threw it across the room. “You deserve better than Mr. fucking Smith.”
“We kill people, Frank. You think I care about legal documents? I’m not asking to go to city hall. I want to be your husband. I don’t care who knows it. I don’t even care if we have cake.”
Frank laughed, and the tears nearly got the better of him. “You always care about cake,” he said, wiping his eyes roughly with the back of his hand, like they’d started a fight he’d be the one to finish.
“You know what I mean,” I said, sitting back on my heels.
“Will you ask me again if I promise to say yes?” he asked. I shoved the ring on his finger so hard he winced. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
“Fucking jerk.”
He smiled proudly the way he always did when I caused him pain. Frank liked when I showed strength. He liked when I was able to defend myself.
“Who are we hiding from?” I asked. He wouldn’t dare deny me the answer now, after it had nearly caused him to decline my proposal.
Not when they might have been close to finding us.
“We,” he said, like he’d heard the word for the first time and had officially declared it his favorite. “We are hiding from an inheritance.”
I raised my eyebrows. “An inheritance?” Someone wanted to give him money and he was acting like a monster was under the bed? “You’re serious?”
“When my father died, he left me everything he’d married into. He hated those people, people with money, so much that he wanted nothing more than to spit in their faces. He didn’t merely write out a will, he published it. He had it sent to every newspaper in the country, naming me, his bastard son, as the heir to their fortunes. There was a photograph and everything. He’d hired lawyers. He had them set up for a fucking commission, and whoever saw to it that I was paid would get a percentage. The more I got, the more they did. He wanted them to fight the family for it, and he knew every step of the way they would. My name was everywhere. My mother’s name.”
“That’s why you hate him,” I said.
“He put me in the middle of a battle that wasn’t mine. He took away my anonymity. I understand why he did it, and with everything, all the good that’s come from me being forced away from the media circus, forced here, I can almost forgive him. But they’re still looking for me. Even after all these years. Lawyers. And others, sent by the family. I have an outstanding hit out on my life.”
“Do you know who it is?” I asked fretfully
. That was far more serious than hiding from a little money. What if this person had killed Charlie’s sister, trying to lure him to the funeral the way I lured our victims to dark alleys?
Frank laughed. “They would only hire the best, V. They went through my boss. He gave Bella the job. She tries to kill me every time I see her. But I always get away.”
“That isn’t funny.”
“Yes, it is,” he said, and he kissed me. “My boss, Silva, keeps watch. He lets me know whenever someone starts poking around looking for information. It doesn’t happen very often anymore, but I don’t like to take chances. My fingerprints are still on file. Maybe my DNA. I don’t know.”
“That’s why you came here? To hide?”
“After what my father did, Silva had no choice but to fire me or send me away. He couldn’t have that kind of attention. Even the chance of someone finding out who I was would be too much of a risk.
“Americans don’t care about what happens in the rest of the world. It’s gotten better with the Internet, but they’re still very separate. Silva knew that I could go unnoticed here. And it was Charlie’s home. That made for an easy transition.”
I’d never actually thought of Frank as being forced to live here. Even when he spoke so fondly of France, I never considered that he wasn’t allowed to go home. “Do you hate it here?”
“No. I actually quite like it. Parts of it.”
“But you’d rather be there.”
“Growing up, my mother always spoke to me of Paris. I wanted to be a bouquiniste when I was little. They’re booksellers on the Seine. They have little stalls and they sit out there, watching the world. She was good friends with a man who was a bouquiniste. He taught her English. I met him before he died. I used to send him money every Christmas. He asked me to come to work with him.”
“You can’t stand water.”
“I know. That changed it for me. But I still think about it. Maybe owning a shop, something not too close to the riverbank.”
I smiled. He’d never told me that. I didn’t think he had aspirations to be anything, much less something so normal. It was sweet. “I bet Charlie had a fit when you walked away from all that money.”
“He’d turn me in for the reward if he could, but Silva would have him killed. He knows that he’s only alive because of me.”
“That bastard,” I said. I’d kill him before he turned Frank in.
“Say what you will about Charlie, but the fact remains that we never would’ve met if it hadn’t been for him. I will love him until the day I die for bringing you into my life.”
“I guess that is pretty redeeming.”
Frank pulled me close to him, holding me against his chest while he admired his ring like a soon-to-be bride. If either of us would wear a dress, it was him. “Shall we invite him to the wedding?”
I laughed. “Yeah, that’ll be the day.”
He sighed and kissed my hair, then set his chin on my head. He always did that when he didn’t want me to look at him. It meant story time. “I was six when we ran away from my father. For awhile we stayed in hotels, but the money dried up pretty quickly, and she was afraid that if she went back to work he’d find us. We were sleeping on the street. We were starving. Then she met a man who lived on a fishing boat. He offered to make us dinner.
“She told me to steal whatever I could while she worked off our meal, but he had a partner. He found me pocketing things, and he started yelling. I didn’t even understand what he’d said. They raped her. They held me there and they both raped her in front of me and then they threw us overboard.
“It wasn’t that deep, we were still close to the shore, but I was small, and I couldn’t swim, and my head kept going under. She helped me as much as she could, but she was hurt, and…I smelled like the fucking Thames for a week.”
I blinked back tears. No wonder talking about sex had made him so uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, Frank.”
“I know,” he sighed.
“I can’t teach you how to swim. You have every reason to stay away from water.” I turned toward him, still secure in his arms. “Let me do the job. I can handle it.”
“You’ve never done a double. You’ve never really worked alone.”
“I don’t want you on that yacht, Frank Moreaux. I’m your fiancé now, I’m allowed to tell you what to do.”
“You told me what to do before,” he said, though he couldn’t help but smile at the word fiancé. Neither could I. “I have a ring for you, too. It was my grandmother’s. Your hands are so thin it should fit. The little finger at least.”
“Really?” I sniffled. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I just wanted to get a ring on his finger to mark my territory.
“But it’s not here. It’s in Paris, safe, with some other things. We’ll get it. Soon. I promise.”
“Okay.”
“The thing with Charlie’s sister is probably nothing, V. I don’t have a bad feeling about this job. I think it’ll be fine. It was just…the boat.”
“You sure?”
He nodded. And I believed him, even as I saw the doubt in his eyes.
Diane and Lawrence Wright were in an arranged marriage, a smart match to everyone they knew though there was no love between them. They had two children and drove cars that fit seven, suburban assault vehicles that would never see so much as a dirt road, with GPS and DVD players for every passenger. Their kids were spoiled rotten replicas of the parents, a girl and boy named appropriately Diane and Lawrence.
My dad used to joke that the name Vincent had been handed down to each generation because our family was so poor we couldn’t afford a new one. The Wright’s could afford not only names, but also people. They had multiple maids for each of their three homes, nannies by the dozen, and a lawyer on retainer who’d soon be suing the entire family of Mr. Wright’s mistress for his wrongful death.
The mistress was a recent Harvard graduate, taking a year off to find herself before joining her father’s successful law firm in Boston. Rachel Fields had grown up even more spoiled than the Wright children, coasting through college as she had through life, and doing whatever she pleased along the way. She was a big fan of cocaine, and had spent as much time powdering her nose as she’d spent in rehab.
Watching these people was better than any soap opera; they all did such terrible things. The children would scream at their nanny for an hour if she was a second late picking them up, Diane Wright wore coats made of endangered species even in summer and chomped down prescription horse tranquilizers like they were breath mints, and Mr. Wright entertained himself by lighting Cuban cigars with hundred dollar bills in front of homeless shelters. They were trust-fund babies who’d never worked a day in their lives. The mistress wasn’t much better but at least she gave to charity, if only for the tax credit.
Frank was right. They wouldn’t know where Idaho was.
Charlie’s sister had next to nothing when she’d died, and had not surprisingly written her eldest brother out of her will. Although he had still somehow managed to get the lion’s share, which included a very strange lamp shaped like an ear of corn and a couple of self-help books about being addicted to fattening desserts. He gave the books to Frank, because he knew how much he liked reading. Frank set them on fire with a butane torch designed for crème brulee, taking the deceased woman’s insecurity as an insult to his people.
His associate hadn’t found anything unusual either, apart from how wholesome and well adjusted the rest of Charlie’s family was, so we could concentrate on the job at hand without worry.
Charlie had somehow convinced Diane Wright not only to have her husband killed, but to pay him to be head of her security while the hit was carried out. For the low, low price of fifty thousand dollars, the Wright’s security system was upgraded to be absolutely useless.
It wasn’t every day we got to visit our victim’s homes, but Frank liked to, whenever possible. He really was a voyeur at heart, and having me at his side helped to make it e
ducational as well as insightful.
“They have a really big television,” he said, standing before the massive black screen, mounted on the wall like an oversized picture frame. The thing was taller than me, and I was seriously tempted to turn it on, just to gauge the color and clarity. The TV at our hotel had a strange green streak down the left hand side, turning every image in the area a sickening olive color. “Where’s the rest of it?”
“They make them flat now, Frank,” I said, smiling to myself. It was cute how he managed to remain in the dark about technology. He hadn’t even known what cruise control was.
“What for?”
I shrugged, leaving him to the living room and heading down the hall toward the first of four full sized bathrooms. Seeing their bathtub was love at first sight; large enough for a block party, with flat gold faucets to trickle silently while filling the deep white marble basin and massaging jets that could turn it into a Jacuzzi with the servant’s press of a button. It smelled like a rose garden in there and the monogrammed towels were so fluffy and white that they looked like snow hanging on their golden hooks. The towels in our hotel had holes big enough to fit my head through.
“Do you think we could stay somewhere nice for my birthday?” I called out, knowing we were completely alone. Their house was the size of my home town, and my voice echoed. He didn’t answer, so I went looking for him.
Frank was standing in the living room, looking perfectly natural under a crystal chandelier even as the abundant light transformed him into a living shadow. He may not have been raised around wealth, but it suited him. His stance was one of sophistication, pure elegance throughout.
“You okay?” I asked, moving to his side and becoming increasingly aware of how I must’ve looked in my baggy clothes. They may have been designer, but I’d never be more than white trash to the people who lived here.
I followed his gaze to the seashell colored wall, to an oil painting so realistic that at first I thought it was a blown-up photograph. “Is that freaking you out?” I asked.
Chance Assassin: A Story of Love, Luck, and Murder Page 27
