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4 Jay
I watched her sleeping.
She was like the most delicate of angels, lying on the couch. Vulnerable. Unconscious.
I could hardly believe that a man as vile and as heartless Marlon Hilliard could be even remotely connected to a being as perfect as Keisha. Much less that he'd fathered her.
Something strange was eating at me in the pit of my stomach. Something I tried my best to ignore, but to very little avail. Part of it was guilt, at having done this to her, and gotten her in the middle of all this. Part of it was dread, imagining the limits Marlon would go to in order to get his only daughter back. And part of it was that familiar voice, which had started the moment I'd left Marlon's office, and never let up ever since:
This is the dumbest fucking idea you've ever had in your life!
Still in my reverie, I noticed as Keisha began to stir. I stepped back, suddenly on edge. I held my breath, and watched as she looked around, still bleary, still trying to get a handle on her surroundings.
Then it all seemed to come flooding back to her.
She turned her head toward me, and screamed, scrambling to climb back away from me, despite being pressed back as far against the wall as she could possibly go.
“Hey! Hey! You're okay Keisha, you're okay! I'm not going to hurt you!”
“You keep saying that!” she shot back, and I realized she was right. My words probably weren't much consolation to her.
I held up my hands in the air, to show her I really meant her no harm, and I stayed where I was, thinking it was best to give her some space.
She looked around more, studying the empty, windowless walls of the room, then finally turning her head back to the place where I stood.
“Where am I? What the fuck is going on? What the fuck do you want from me?!”
“Easy... Easy,” I said, pushing my hands forward in what I hoped was a placating motion. “One thing at a time. First things first. You know who I am, don't you?”
She looked at me, her eyes brimming with tears, and finally managed to shake her head, very, very slowly.
“I'm Jay,” I said anyway. “Jay Sampson. I um... I work for your father.”
“I know,” she said, and it was kind of a blink and you'll miss it sort of thing, but I thought I saw some of the tenderness in her eyes that was sometimes there whenever she would look at me in Marlon's office. But then it was gone again, and I tried not to dwell too much on it.
“Okay. Good. I'm very, very sorry for this. All of this. Believe me, I am. But he's the reason you're here. Do you know what I do for your father, Keisha?”
She looked at me for a long time, like she couldn't believe I was asking her to come right out and say it.
“I'm guessing you're not from the accounting department,” she said dryly, and I smiled, even though I really probably shouldn't have. I could be wrong, but I thought I could see her almost starting to smile too. She didn't, though.
“No,” I said. “No, I'm not.”
“You're a hitman,” she said, and then shivered. Like it was the first time in her life she'd ever confronted her father's criminality aloud.
I felt my face getting red at the word. Like she'd just seen me naked. Knew me for what I really what I was underneath.
I would have enjoyed it a hell of a lot more if she had seen me naked, instead...
“I was a hitman,” I corrected her. “But as of yesterday, I'm retired from that particular line of work.”
“Oh, that's good to know,” she said. “So what you're into kidnapping now?”
I shook my head.
“No. Keisha, the night before last, I- I killed someone. Someone your father asked me to kill. A very bad man. And a very high priority on your father's- list.”
“Oh, congratulations,” she said dryly. “Very bad you say? Worse than my father?” She was starting to seem less afraid she was about to die, and developing a bit of an attitude about her situation. Not that I blamed her for that one bit. Actually, I kind of liked it...
“Eh. About neck and neck,” I said. “I've never been proud of what I do for a living, Keisha. What I did. But it's the only thing I've ever known. I did my best to make sure that I was doing it right, as right as you can do that kind of thing. That the only people who got hurt were the ones who deserved it. Killers. Criminals. The worst of the worst...”
“Other killers, you mean?” she asked and it stung worse than I would have imagined it to. I think she saw it in my eyes and, surprisingly, her expression softened. She looked apologetic, like somehow she was actually the one in the wrong here, and not me. She looked down at the floor. “Sorry,” she said.
I almost laughed. “Don't be. You're right. But that's exactly why I decided to walk out on that life. That last job was supposed to be the one to give me my freedom. It was going to earn me enough money that I would never have to worry about money again. That I would never have to end another life, or make another human being suffer just to get by. I know by now, that there's really nothing I can ever do to make up for what I've done. You can't unend a life. And I guess I've come to terms with that, as much as such a thing is possible. But I decided enough was enough. I could live with what I'd done, but I couldn't live with the thought of keeping on doing what I was doing. And so, I told your father, that was it. That I was done. I wasn't going to kill for him anymore.”
“And that's why I'm here?” Keisha asked, piecing it together before I'd even finished speaking. I nodded at her.
“That's why you're here. As you can guess, your father wasn't going to let me go that easily. He refused to give me what he owed me for that last job. He tried to force me to keep working for him, and basically threatened me for trying to take what was mine, and throwing in the towel. There was no possible way I could think of to get the money he owed me. He's too well-guarded, all the time, for me to try and coerce him physically.”
“You needed a bargaining chip,” said Keisha, her eyes glinting with a coldness that gave her fathers' a run for their money. I suddenly felt very guilty, barely able to hold her gaze.
“I'm sorry,” I said again, like all the apologizing I was capable of really changed anything. “But yes. I did. I need that money, and to get out of this life once and for all, and you were the only way I could think of I could get through to your father. He took something that was mine, and I needed to show him that he'd fucked with the wrong man. So I took something that was his.”
“My father doesn't own me!” Keisha snapped, the implication making her angrier than even the fact of my kidnapping seemed to do.
“No. You're right. I know,” I said, a tone of apology to my voice. “But you matter to him. More than most people. And if I was ever going to see that money, short of killing his entire hit list of enemies and rivals until he was satisfied, I had to have something that he cared about. I know this is kind of pointless for me to say, but don't worry. You're in a safe house. A place your father doesn't know about, that I bought in case of an emergency.”
“My father knows,” she said, fixing me with another cold stare. “My father knows everything about everyone he hires. If its yours, he knows about it.”
I smiled at her, feeling like this was a challenge somehow. “Sorry to disappoint you,” I said. “But he doesn't know about this place. I bought it off the record. Paid cash. No paper trail. Not even the seller knows my name. I'm the only one in the world who has any clue as to where we are right now. Your father knows I have you, though. I gave hi
m ten days to agree to pay me what he owes me if he wants to see you back. I'm not sure what he thinks I'll do to you after that. Hopefully something awful. But I swear to God, I'm not. As far as you're concerned, you can look at all of this like a weeklong getaway. A vacation from everything. Look. This place has a bathroom, two bedrooms, a kitchen. Even a TV. No phones and no wifi, obviously, sorry about that. But anything else you can think of that you want, I'm happy to go and get it. And I mean anything. You're safe here, Keisha. I promise you that.”
“You're not,” she said, when I finally finished, and the way she looked at me sent a chill along my spine. It was coldness, and pity, and a look that seemed to say, “you have no idea how stupid you are,” all rolled into one. “You're making the biggest fucking mistake of your life...”
Her tone wasn't threatening. Or bitter. It was a warning. A warning I was far too familiar with her father not to heed.
“Probably,” I said with a shrug. “But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Now, you want anything to eat? I cook a mean bacon and eggs if you're hungry. You should go and get cleaned up if you want to, take a warm shower. I know I've put you through a lot, and again I'm very sorry about that. But just try to relax, and take your mind off of the situation, and I promise I'll do my best to-”
I trailed off. Keisha was looking straight past me.
Her eyes trailed from the padlocked door to the safe house, up to the key around my neck.
Then she just sighed. She got up from the couch, and started taking off her clothes as she walked to the bathroom, like I wasn't even there. By the time she got inside, and I heard the water of the shower starting to pulse, I'd been treated to a tantalizing view of her naked torso walking away, and it got me far harder and more turned on than I should have been, given my situation.
I took a very deep breath, and exhaled it slowly, more certain than ever that this was going to be the longest week of my life.
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Dedication
I want to dedicate this book to my beloved readers. Thank you for your support. Thank you to the entire indie author community who supported me, especially via Twitter during the self-publishing fiasco of May 2018. I really appreciate all your thoughtful words and your kindness. You all are an inspiration to me to fight through the imposter syndrome and keep working hard to bring my works of fiction to a large audience.
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Jamila Jasper Romance
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Jay
One more job, and then I was out.
Isn't that what they always say in movies, right before the shit hits the fan?
I guess maybe it was only too appropriate, then. Because things were about to go down for me like they'd never gone down before.
As I would soon find, I'd gotten far too big to try and pull out now...
I sat across the street from a towering skyscraper in the middle of downtown, outside a small cafe. In another lifetime, I would have been sitting with a newspaper pressed against my nose, trying to look inconspicuous in order to hide what I was really up to. These days, though, a guy like me reading a newspaper would have stuck out like a sore thumb- six foot one, jacked and rugged, occupying his time with a relic of the previous century.
So instead I sat stooped over an iPad, blending in a lot better that way, a set of shades concealing my persistent glances toward the building on the opposite side of the street. I kept pressing my earpiece closer and closer like there might be something going on that I was missing. I'd bugged my target's car, then watched as he and his bodyguards made their way out into the building in question. I knew there was nothing that I should be listening for, but I guess I was just a little bit on edge.
This was the job to end all jobs. The payday that was going to get me out of this shit once and for all. And I was going to do everything in my power to ensure that it went off without a hitch. That any one of a million different things didn't manage to fuck it up for me.
I'd been following my target around for weeks, hoping to gain some insight into his schedule. A mister Ray Philips, one of the most contemptible sons of bitches I'd ever been assigned to take out. Day trader. Arms dealer. A major player in the pharmaceutical industry, who'd made a fortune jacking up drug prices for those who were most vulnerable, and most unable to afford them.
I'd never been proud of how I made my living. It wasn't that I'd chosen the life of the assassin, so much as it had chosen me. Having enlisted as a soldier and seen things that no man should see, and doing things that man should ever do in good conscience, I found myself unable to reshape myself into the mold of a healthy, everyday life. The violence was in my blood. My soul craved peace, and a reprieve from all the horrors I'd witnessed and been a part of. But I still needed to make money, and at the end of the day, I realized there was really only one thing I'd ever been good at.
I worked for a man called Hillary. Marlon Hillary. A rich jackass in his own right, he'd kept me around as his gun for hire for the past five years. I took care of his enemies for him. The business rivals who posed too much of a threat. Those who were willing to get their hands even dirtier than he was, and who seemed as though they might serve as a problem for him in the long term.
I harbored no delusions about what I did. I was a murderer, pure and simple. But at least in this position, I had some say over who bit the bullet. I could say no to a job if I had to if my conscience started objecting too loud, unlike in my previous line of work.
I did have a moral code, even if it wasn't much of one. I'd always refused to take out the innocent. To hurt anyone who didn't have it coming, and then some. I'd turned down a few high profile clients who'd requested such services of me- asking me to kill men and women who, obnoxiously wealthy and corrupt or not, had done nothing worthy of the death sentence that had been asked of me to impose upon them.
I'd lost a pretty penny that way over the years, believe you me. I could have been done and out of this game by now if I hadn't shown such restraint, but here I was, still in the game, and only just now on the threshold of getting out of it.
I didn't even want to think about how much of my soul I would still have left by the time I finally did get things wrapped up...
Thankfully, this Ray Philips was like the best of both worlds to me. He was both rotten to the core and worth a fortune in my pocket- easily the largest bounty I had ever made an effort to claim.
Then, at last, the moment I'd put the bullet through his temple and washed the blood from my hands, I had plans to pack up my fortune, buy a first class ticket to Belize, and leave this life forever, spending my remaining time on earth making my best effort to forget that any of it had ever happened.
Not that I would forget.
I could never forget all that I'd done. The sins these hands were responsible for. The lives they'd taken. But at least, for once, I could try to rest. I could lay my head down in contemplation, and try to figure things out for myself. What I was meant for. What I was put on this earth to do. If, indeed, I really had any business being on this forsaken rock at all.
The only probl
em right now with my ingenious plan was that Ray Philips didn't seem to stick to any kind of reliable schedule that I could make out. All the days I'd been following him, I had hoped to take note of a recognizable pattern of some kind. Something that would make it easy for me to catch him when his guard was down, and when I stood the lowest possible risk of getting caught.
But of course, I really should have learned by now, nothing was ever really that easy for me...
Apparently, having his fingers in so many pies at once kept Philips as busy as a bee, flitting from one flower to the next, his movements erratic, unpredictable. He must have done enough coke to never have to spend ten consecutive minutes asleep at a time.
And so, I decided, I was just going to have to take the plunge one way or another.
I made up my mind that today would be the day. I was ending this, tonight, as soon as he was at home and, with any luck, asleep.
And then I was out of this, at long, long last.
I'd lapsed into a reverie in the heat of the early evening sun, and let my vision fall out of focus without meaning to. I jerked awake at the sound of static in my earbuds, then footsteps clacking across the sidewalk toward the Mercedes in which Philips had been driven here.
Mr. Too Big: BWWM Hitman Romance Novella Page 1
