by Andi Madden
“My time is valuable,” he said, holding up a hand, “so I make it a habit to find out as much information about my possible suppliers in advance.”
“Well, I wouldn’t call my situation dire—”
“There is no shame in having trouble finding financiers. Traditional banks can be unreasonable at times.”
Damn right they could. Thinking about her last bank appointment and the still unopened letters on her desk, she didn’t even want to know what they were threatening her with.
“Why don’t we make a turn about the hotel, Liz? I want to show you what I am all about.”
He rose from his seat, shuffling papers in front of him, and tucked a document folder under his arm.
“Will you need my assistance, sir?”
Her heart stopped short as someone stepped out of seemingly nowhere. She stared at the man who towered a head over Mr. Fuentes.
It was Brickwall.
Where the hell had he come from?
“Why would I need your assistance?” he answered. “Because you’ve been so useful today?”
The guy let his head hang like a scolded dog. “It was an unfortunate incident and I’m sure we’ll get—”
“Go and report to Drake. He needs as many resources he can get.”
“But you’ll be without—”
“One should think that I’m safe inside my own hotel,” he replied, a hard edge in his voice.
“I won’t disappoint you again and—”
“You’d better not.”
She glanced over her shoulder while walking out of the room. He hadn’t recognized her, but she know knew that he was not from the DEA.
Angelo led her through the foyer and into an elevator, unlocked it with a keycard. “I’m sorry, Liz. There was a minor disturbance today and my men are still trying to fix that.”
She nodded, an uneasy feeling rising in her stomach, and she doubted it came from the fast-rising elevator. Why was the man who’d chased Ben working for Mr. Fuentes?
At the top floor, they stepped into a narrow hallway with only two doors at each end.
“My guests expect to be treated royally,” he said, heading toward the door to his left.
When he opened the door, she sucked in her breath. The room was cavernous. She ran her hand over the dark wooden furniture and admired the high ceilings. “I happen to think your baked goods might be a great addition to the usual champagne and fruit basket. I want an extra treat, as so many of my guests expect.”
She cocked her head, listening to his near silent laugh as if he’d made a joke only he understood.
“If you want success, you’ll have to make big plans.” He sat down at a round table in the middle of the room, opening his folder. “Let me show you the contract.”
He had the contract already drawn up? “I am not sure I can move this fast—”
“You’ll be an independent supplier of all my twenty-two hotels in the States. You’ll get a low rate loan to expand. You’ll be in total control over your business, I’ll have no hand in it. Please understand that this isn’t a big deal for me, but I like to take care of the small stuff as well. And helping promising startup entrepreneurs is one of my passions.”
“What about the—”
“Money?” he said, smiling. “That’s the easy part. I have accepted the terms you outlined in your business plan.” He leaned back in his chair and placed a pen next to the contract. “Take a few minutes to read through it, but I’d like to hear your answer tonight.” He checked his wristwatch.
She settled down at the table, taking the contract with shaking fingers. It was only two pages, the language simple, no fine print. She’d be supplying her goods and get paid accordingly. As hard as she looked for it, she couldn’t spot a caveat.
“I’m a bit overwhelmed by the chance you offer me,” she said, the pen poised over the contract. “And it might sound over melodramatic, but she’d like to thank you for the trust you’re placing in me and my business.”
He held out his hand and she shook it. “To a successful partnership.”
Hands embarrassingly sweaty, she shook his, wondering why she still felt like a mouse caught in a trap.
Heart racing, she lowered the pen to the paper to sign her name on the dotted line when she paused, to consider what she was about to do. Should she really just sign on the spot?
She glanced up to see if Angelo caught her distress. He hadn’t because he was writing and drawing something on the front cover of his paper folder.
She leaned closer, breath caught in her throat. Elegant flowers wound its way up on the side of the white folder. Angelo’s face was relaxed as if he’d forgotten that she was present.
She cleared her throat. “You have quite a knack at drawing.”
“There’s something relaxing in such a mindless activity such as drawing, don’t you think?”
Her throat was too tight to answer. There was no way in hell this was a coincidence. If she was wrong, no harm done. If she was right, she’d know in a few seconds. She opened her bag, deciding to put it to the test.
As soon as she pulled out the black book, she almost felt how the static changed in the room. When she glanced up, Angelo’s dark gaze was glued to the notebook.
“How did you get that?”
“I found it lying on the street while I headed toward our meeting.”
“Is that so?” he said quietly, retrieved a slim cell phone from his jacket and punched numbers. “Drake, I want you to abort. Return immediately.”
When he hung up, he held out his hand. “Thank you for your help, Liz. If I may have my book back.”
“Of course,” she said, but curled her hand around the book’s spine, fighting the feeling that she made a mistake. She hadn’t ratted Ben out and wasn’t planning to. But surely it was the right thing to return something to its rightful owner.
* * * * *
Ben approached the hotel in long strides, still clutching the part of the letter of invitation he’d wrestled from the laser printer. At least he knew where to find her; how he was going to retrieve the book without causing too much fuss was the problem.
He snapped open his cell phone and hit speed dial.
“What now, man?” Drake bellowed into the phone.
“How well-stocked is the hotel?”
“Badly,” Drake answered quietly. “Everyone is looking on the streets for you. So don’t hang about tonight and stay clear of the airport, rail and bus stations. And don’t fucking call me.”
He hung up.
Ben stored the cell phone away, crossed the street to the hotel’s lit entrance, and kept his head down. He ducked away when one of Angelo’s guys all but stormed outside. Great. He briefly touched the gun hidden in its ankle holster and entered the hotel.
He scanned the lobby as he entered. Business as usual apart from the buzz around the hotel bar. About to advance, he took another step back, hiding behind an oversized flower arrangement. Liz walked next to the Writer, apparently deep in conversation, and vanished behind elevator doors with him.
He gritted his teeth, followed on their footsteps, watched how the elevator stopped at the top floor. Greeting a couple waiting next to him, he called the elevator down again and stepped inside, hoping against hope the couple would travel up to the top floor. They did not.
When the couple exited, he pressed the twenty-eighth-floor button and was prompted for an access code.
Pondering his options, he took out his cell phone.
“Drake,” he said as the other man picked up, “elevator code.”
“This is the last time, Ben,” he said. “You know I risk my ass by helping you.”
“Your ass would be pushing up daisies if not for me,” Ben reminded him quietly. “Besides, do you really mind if you need to look for a new employer?”
Drake swore and gave him the combination.
Ben punched in the numbers and the elevator whisked up. Unbidden, Gabrielle’s ashen face turned up in
his mind, how she had clutched at the gun wound in her stomach. He had come too late that night, but not too late to call an emergency ambulance.
The same night he first met Liz.
The phone call had reached him too late to prevent the hit on his brother-in-law—and then they had shot his sister instead. Inside sources—not worth a damn most of the time.
When Simon arrived just a few minutes after him, he had found his bleeding and passed out wife on the kitchen floor. With Ben at her side, gun in hand. Of course Simon had drawn the wrong conclusions…as always.
And Ben had known if he wanted justice, he couldn’t rely on Simon and his straight-laced ways. So, he had run from Simon and his useless procedures and questions, and sworn he would bring down whoever ordered the hit.
That was almost a month ago.
The elevator stopped, and when he stepped out on the top floor, his steps quieted by the deep carpet, he immediately heard Liz’s voice. He advanced to the ajar door and paused to listen while he fitted the silencer to his gun.
“Thank you for your help, Liz. If I may have my book back.”
“Of course,” Liz answered with a rasp in her voice.
Ben curled his lip, pushing away the loving feelings he had for her. If she worked for the Writer, she wasn’t a woman he’d ever touch again. But did she work for him? It just didn’t seem to add up.
He quietly nudged the door wider with his knee, creeping inside the suite, and his gaze fell on them sitting at a table, paperwork scattered across the polished wood.
Lifting the gun, he aimed.
Chapter Six
Next to her, Angelo let out a surprised yell.
She glanced over her shoulder.
For the second time that day, she stared at him holding a gun. And she knew that in her next intake of breath, he would shoot her last chance at a secure future.
“This is for Gabrielle,” Ben said.
She jumped up. A scream shot from her mouth, ringing in her ears, and then a black nothingness erupted before her eyes.
Ben gripped her chin and turned up her head. He stared with hard eyes down at her, his face ghostly white. “Can you get up?” he asked, and then his gaze shifted on something behind her.
Great, she’d fainted.
She turned, the movement making her catch her breath. she found Mr. Fuentes lying on the thick carpet, a hole punctured in his shoulder. Blood bloomed like a flower on his white dress shirt. Yet, she thought she saw his chest rising and falling, ever so slowly.
Not dead.
A phone rang in the silence, and then she heard Ben saying, “Thanks, Drake.”
“Who is Drake?”
Strong fingers dug into the flesh of her forearm, making her wince.
“Did you work for the Writer?”
“Who is the Writer?”
He yanked her to her feet, grabbing the book from the table with his other hand, and dragged her after him. “Move, we can’t stay here.”
Anger crawled its way to the surface of her mind, numbing the throbbing pain in her head. “You shot him! He needs an ambulance,” she said, grounding her heels into the floor.
“Don’t care,” he replied. “Walk.”
She did, didn’t know how not to obey him. When they left the room and entered the hall, she jabbed her elbow into the glass of the fire alarm enclosure and pulled the lever. A siren broke the silence, making her want to cover her ears.
“That was stupid,” he pressed through his teeth, pulling her close to his face, and for the first time since she met him he scared her. “Do you want to get us killed?”
“He needs an ambulance!”
“He’s fine.”
“He’s not!”
He swore. “It wasn’t a shot to kill, just to take him out for now.”
“I want an explanation.” She wouldn’t let him drag her off as if she had done something wrong.
“Later.” He wound his fingers into her hair, the expression in his eyes changing, when he leaned closer still and brushed his mouth over her lips.
“In a few moments, this place will be swarming with his thugs. What do you think they’ll do to you when they find you here?”
She bit her lip, feeling every hard ridge of him pressing into her while her head was throbbing, and remembered Mr. Fuentes cold-eyed bodyguard. What would he do if he found her next to the shot hotel owner?
Ben gave her a small shake. “I don’t want anything happening to you. So, honey, I’m going to get your sweet ass safely out of this hotel now, understood?”
He accepted her silence as agreement and wound his fingers through hers. He pulled her toward the fire exit and through two heavy steel doors.
Above the sound of the siren, she heard voices and footsteps as hotel guests, mindful not to use the elevator, filed into the concrete staircase leading out of the hotel.
She was shaking, her nerves getting the better of her. Ben shrugged out of his leather jacket and cloaked her in it as a lover would. By the time they reached the first floor, she was in a group of morose-looking people who clearly thought they were caught up in an unexpected fire drill.
Taking a deep breath as she stepped into the alley behind the main entrance of the hotel, she heard fire trucks liven up the night with their horns.
Ben wrapped his arm around her, and led her away, making slow steps that nevertheless ate a lot of ground.
The back alley grew narrow and deserted, dumpsters lining the house walls to our left and right, the perfect playground for rats and drug dealers. When he stopped, she realized that he wasn’t looking out for an attack, but for a fire escape ladder.
“Up,” he said, letting her lead the way onto the first metal mesh landing.
“What are we doing here?” she followed him up two more flights, wondering if he lived here.
“We need to get off the street tonight.”
When he pulled open a half-closed window and disappeared inside, curiosity won and she followed. As soon as she stepped inside, lavender wallpaper greeted her gaze. Clothes littered the floor around the bed and the kitchen was well-stocked with cereal boxes. A faint smell of perfume lay in the air. He took a chair from a desk and crammed it under the door handle.
Not his apartment.
“In case the woman returns, we have enough time to leave,” he said with a nod to the open window. “But I need to stay put, at least for a few hours.” He walked up and down the small apartment, five long strides and he’d covered the expanse. He looked just like he had in her store a couple of hours earlier. It was as if he was checking for booby traps.
She leaned against the wall closest to the open window, trying to make sense of what had happened and came up short. His jacket emitted his earthy scent, making her too hot for comfort.
Shrugging out of it, the pale face of Mr. Fuentes floated up in her mind, the scent of his blood. Her stomach heaved and she clasped her hands to prevent them from shaking. Ben’s heavy jacket hit the floor with a dull thud.
He’d killed her future, tried to take a life.
She glanced up, trying to see the cold-blooded killer in him, but then again, how did a killer look? Fearing he’d see the look of despair on her face, she rubbed her eyes.
Slowly, he came closer and braced his hand against the wall next to her head. “How are you?”
“Great, just great.” she crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Who helped you take off the ropes?”
He snorted softly and leaned into her. “What where you doing there? Why where you with him?”
“Why shoot him?” Hands clenched to fists, she gave him a hard shove.
He wouldn’t move an inch away from her.
He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, which hit her face when he exhaled. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry for all of this, I hope you know that.”
She raised her eyebrows at his lousy excuse. He’d shot someone—feeling sorry was the least she could expect from hi
m.
“I’m fine,” she said. “But I’d like to hear your explanation now.”
Again, a frown rippled over his forehead. “Do you work for him?”
“Who’s him?”
“The Writer.”
“If you mean Mr. Fuentes, I only just met him today.”
He gave her a long, hard stare that seemed to go straight into her heart.
After another second, he said, “Why give him the book?”
“Why fucking shoot him?”
“Mr. Fuentes is called the Writer,” he said. “The DEA has been watching him for months, compiling evidence. This little black book is like the inside of his mind.” He bent and picked up his jacket. He took the book from the pocket and flipped through it.
“Recently, an agent took pictures of the pages and, after weeks, they were able to decipher the code. Fuentes is the head of a large drug cartel and once the DEA has the book, they’ll be able to nail him.”
She ran his words over in her head a couple of time to stomach his tale. “You’re DEA?” she finally asked, the disbelief in her voice audible even to her ears.
“No, I’m a hitman.” He paused for a moment. “Retired.”
“Ha!” she said, thrown off balance for a second, and then caught herself. “This is quite a story.”
He was messing with her head. If what he said was true, then she had no hope left to save her broke ass. And she couldn’t give up the hope, she just couldn’t.
If she had to choose between a well-respected and world-renowned hotel owner and a self-proclaimed hitman, the choice was an easy one.
“I don’t trust your little tale.” She had to get the book back. If only to find out if he spoke the truth. If the DEA was really looking for it, one inquiring phone call was all it took. And then she could return the book to Mr. Fuentes and hopefully he wouldn’t hold the incident against her.
She poked her finger against his chest. “I don’t trust you. It was stupid that I came here.”
“You’d probably be dead by now if you hadn’t.”
“I want to leave.”
“I won’t let you.”
