Unfortunate Miss Fortunes, The
Page 36
Shane reached inside their coats and retrieved their pistols. He placed one in his waistband in his back, and kept the other one out, safety off. He stepped over them as Carpenter reached down and grabbed the back of each man’s jacket and dragged them to a small janitor’s closet and tumbled them in. Then he turned and faced the stairway to make sure no one else came up. He wasn’t wearing leather.
Shane walked down the hallway to the bright red doorway with a prominent NO TRESPASSING sign hung on it. He kicked right at the lock, the wood splintered, and he stepped in and to one side, eyes taking in the dimly lit scene, pistol up, sweeping the room, gun in concert with his eyes.
Movement. Two people. A man. Seated behind a desk. A redhead standing on the other side, leaning forward, palms down on the desktop, her skimpy halter top hanging loose, exposing her breasts. Great, Shane thought. I had to hit at playtime.
He strode across the room as the man jumped up and the woman turned, looking surprised. The man was reaching for a jacket when Shane hit him with a cat paw fist strike to the solar plexus, making him thump back into his chair, gasping in pain and floundering, out of commission for a couple of minutes at least.
The redhead lunged at Shane, who sidestepped her claws, grabbed her from behind, and used her momentum to slam her against the desk, pinning her to it. He got one arm in a half-nelson around her neck and pressed the barrel of the gun against the back of her head. He could feel her tight ass pushing back against his groin, and she began to grind as she struggled against him, putting her arms flat out on the desktop and looking over her shoulder angrily. He shoved her shoulders down on the desk and saw a small tattoo of a compass on the small of her back, just above her jeans. Like somebody needs directions there, he thought.
She pressed back harder against him with her ass.
“Stop it,” he said.
“Oh, come on,” she whispered. “You like it. Come on, we can work this out, you and me. I can—”
Shane pulled the gun back and tapped the barrel against the back of her skull.
The girl rubbed her head. “What the fuck?”
“This is business and you are not part of it. Stay there.” Shane backed away, keeping the barrel aimed at her, and when she didn’t move, he glanced at the man who was still gasping for air. Not a problem.
Then Shane reached inside his jacket and pulled out an airline ticket. He tossed the plane ticket on the desk in front of the woman. “You’ve got a problem, here’s the solution. A voucher you can use at the airport tonight. Enough for a one-way ticket anywhere in the world.”
The redhead stared at him.
“You don’t ever want to come back to Savannah again,” he told her. “This man hangs with bad men, and they’re going to remember you were here and come looking for you.”
The girl was nodding, reaching for the ticket at the same time as she tried to put her jacket on.
“You can go, but if you say anything to anyone on the way out, you will die.”
The girl was still nodding like a bimbo bobble-head doll, one arm in her jacket, the other with the ticket in hand. Shane kept one eye on her struggles as he focused his attention back on the man. When she was ready and holding the ticket in one hand and her purse in the other, Shane pulled out his phone and hit the speed-dial for Carpenter, knowing he’d have stopped jamming the cellphone frequencies by now. “You got one civilian coming out. Redhead. Let her go.”
There was a telling moment of silence. “A witness.”
“A civilian coming out,” Shane repeated.
“Roger,” Carpenter said.
Shane nodded to the redhead, and she scuttled to the door and was gone.
Shane turned his attention back to the man. “Same deal for you, my friend.” He slapped another ticket voucher on the desk.
“Who—” the man coughed and tried again as he managed to sit up straighter. “Who—are—you?”
“Doesn’t matter who I am,” Shane said. “I’m gonna ask you some questions. Answer honestly, you take this ticket and go. Lie and die.”
The man’s face was shiny with pain and exertion, but he wasn’t giving up. “What—do—you—want?”
“You were hired by the mob to kill someone the U.S. government would prefer stay alive.”
“Listen, we can make a deal—”
“I am making you a deal.” Christ, this was like talking to some jackass from Keyes.
“Well, I’d like to deal,” the man said. “But you got the wrong—”
Shane hit him, an open-handed slap that was more insult than injury. “You’re wasting my time, Casey Dean,” he said, and the man flinched when he heard the name. “The people I work for do not make mistakes. Unlike you.”
“Really—”
Shane reached out and jabbed his thumb into Dean’s shoulder, hitting a nerve junction, and the guy jumped as if struck by an electric shock. “Now here’s the deal. You tell me what I want to know and forget about the hit, fly away, and never come back, and it’s the same to me as if you were dead.”
Dean rubbed his shoulder, eyes darting about the room. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.” Shane slid the ticket voucher across the desk.
Dean looked at Shane. “You’re really gonna let me go if I tell you what you want and forget about the contract?”
“No. I’m gonna let you go if you forget about the hit and give me the names and contact information of whoever hired you and the name of the target.”
Dean shook his head. “I can’t give the contractor up. He’ll kill me.”
Shane brought the gun level with the point right between the man’s eyes. “Which is worse? The possibility he might kill you in the future or the certainty I will kill you in the next ten seconds?”
“Shit.” Dean slumped, suddenly looking very old. “Listen, I’m just a business manager. I’m—”
Shane pressed the muzzle of the gun hard against the man’s skin just above his nose.
Dean’s eyes turned inward, mesmerized by the barrel. “I’m telling you, I don’t know the contractor’s name. I just got a call that services were needed.”
“Who’s the target?”
“Didn’t get it yet. I swear.”
Great. Dean was an idiot, but there was a ring of truth in that.
“Listen, I’m cold. Can I get my jacket?”
Shane looked at him, almost pitying him in his stupidity. The dumb fuck has a plan. He pulled the gun back. “Sure.” His assignment was to take out Casey Dean, world-class hitman, but if this guy was a world-class hitman, Shane was Princess’s date to the prom. Some guys were all PR, no game, and Casey Dean was sure as hell turning out to be one of them.
When Dean had put on his jacket, he looked downright confident, his eyes sly as they went to the desk. “So I really don’t know anything, but I’m definitely leaving town, just like you said. Okay if I get my passport from my desk drawer?”
Shane nodded. You bet. Commit suicide with my gun. That’s what I’m here for, pal.
The man turned his back and opened a desk drawer, and Shane brought his gun up.
Dean swung around, a small gun in his hand, and Shane fired two quick shots, hitting him in the chest. Dean fell back, disappearing behind the desk.
Below, the music pounded, drowning out everything. Shane walked forward, gun at the ready and rolled the man over, surprised to find there was still a spark of life in his eyes. Not surprised to see his two shots were so tightly grouped they appeared to be one hole, but not happy to see them an inch off target.
Fucking Joey, making him lose focus. Fucking Keyes. Fucking little Agnes, too, whoever she was.
A funny look came over the man’s face as Shane aimed the gun at his forehead. His eyes blinked rapidly. “Wait,” he gasped. “We can make a deal.”
“Oh, come on,” Shane said. “You know who and what you are. You lied. You’d have completed the contract because otherwise you’d never get another job.”
“No�
��” Dean said, and Shane fired, the round making a perfect black hole in the center of his forehead.
He pulled out his cell phone and hit number 3 on the speed dial.
It was answered on the first ring: “Carpenter.”
“Painting’s done. You’ll have to help him on to the next world on your own, Reverend. I won’t be at debrief.”
There was a brief moment of silence. “Wilson won’t like that.”
“The target had no information on contractor or his target.”
“Roger.”
Shane put the phone away.
Then he strode across the room toward the window, reached under his shirt, retrieved the heavy-duty snap link attached to the rear of his body armor, clipped it to a bolt holding a drain pipe, turned outward and jumped, the carefully coiled bungee cord snapping out until it jerked him to a halt three feet from the street and bounced him back up half the distance. As he went down the second time, Shane pulled the quick release and landed on all fours. Right next to his Defender SUV.
Keyes again.
Fuck.
Agnes clutched her frying pan tighter as she felt her way through the dim moonlight in the narrow housekeeper’s room toward the bedside table and the lamp there, really hating the kid who’d made her feel afraid in her own home, even if he was dead now, hating even more that Joey thought she was in trouble.
“I told you nothing happened in here,” she called out, looking around for the cop. “It was all out in the kitchen.” Not that I’m upset with you, sir. Please don’t arrest me.
The wind blew the curtains away from the window by the bed, and she saw that the little bedside table was tipped over, and then somebody clamped a hand over her mouth and said, “Shhhh,” and her heart lurched sideways, and she swung the pan up over her head hard and connected with a smack that reverberated into her shoulders.
He wrenched the pan out of her hand. “Stop it. Joey sent me.”
She yanked away from him, and he let her go so that she stumbled, falling against the bed as she fumbled on the floor for the light and then clicked it on, breathing hard.
He loomed up over her as her heart pounded, a big guy, dressed in black—black pants, black T, black denim jacket—looking like he’d been hacked out of a block of wood: strong weathered face; black flat eyes—shark eyes, she thought, if this guy had come for me, I’d be dead; cropped dark hair going gray at the temples, now a little bloody on the right; tense, hard, squared-off body, all of it alert and concentrated on her. But the thing she noticed most as she tried to keep from having a heart attack was that he looked like Joey. Younger than Joey, bigger than Joey, but he looked like Joey.
She swallowed. “Who are you and what the hell are you doing in here?”
“I’m Shane. Joey sent me.” He jerked his head toward the kitchen, no wasted movement. “Who’s out there?”
Agnes got to her feet, wishing she had her frying pan back. “Shane. Okay, Shane, thank you for scaring the hell out of me, but this is my house, so I’ll ask the questions.” She took a deep breath. “Joey sent you. Why?”
“I’m here to protect some kid. Little Agnes?”
“That’s me,” Agnes said.
There was a silence long enough to hear crickets in, and Agnes thought, If he makes some crack about me being not little, I’m gonna hit him again, and then he spoke.
“I’m here to protect you,” he said, sounding resigned. “Unless you hit me again, in which case, whoever I’m supposed to save you from can have your ass.”
“Protect me.” That wasn’t good. She’d been worried about the police finding out about her record, but Joey thought she needed protection from something else, something only somebody like this guy could stave off. Which meant something was seriously wrong. Not that the guy who was now a corpse in her basement hadn’t been a tip-off, but if Joey thought something was so bad that she needed this guy, it must be really bad because a guy like this could protect her from …
Anything.
Out in the front hall, the ugly black grandfather clock left behind by the house’s previous owner began to chime the hour in big gongs that sounded like Death’s oven timer, and Agnes looked at Shane again.
Big. Broad. Dark. Strong. Handsome if you liked thugs. Looked like Joey. And he was here to keep her safe.
How are you feeling right now, Agnes?
Could be worse.
“Okay, Shane,” Agnes said as the clock gonged twelve. “I got Joey in my kitchen, a cop in my front hall, a dead body in my basement, and you in my bedroom. Where do you want to start?”
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE UNFORTUNATE MISS FORTUNES
Copyright © 2007 by Jennifer Crusie Smith, Eileen Dreyer, and Anne Stuart.
Excerpt from Agnes and the Hitman © copyright 2007 by Argh Ink and Robert J. Mayer.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
eISBN 9781429995917
First eBook Edition : April 2011
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / July 2007