Plain Jane and the Hitman

by Tmonique Stephens

  The agency may be able to track him, but letting them know Hank was in the wind like Rogers would plant a target on the remaining members of which there weren’t many left. One of them on the run, out of contact and possibly off the rails was enough.

  Emmet loved traveling the world, but not as much as he loved his own soil in the USA. If the agency turned their backs on them, life on the run would be permanent. That's not what he wanted for Bailey. She deserved better, and he would be the one to give it to her.

  Find Rogers. Find Hank. That’s what he had to do. Both had priority, but only one wanted Bailey dead. If Hank had gone to ground, that left him alone to protect her and find Rogers. He couldn't leave her on her own, and he couldn't take her into the field with him. Also, he trusted no one except himself to do either job. Not even Whiskey, who was looking like Emmet's only option for either job.

  A message popped up on the screen.

  In the conference room. NOW.

  Only one person spoke to him like that.

  Emmet kissed Bailey’s forehead. “I’m gonna get us something to snack on. Want anything in particular?”

  She stretched that body he’d loved several times in the last few hours and tilted her face for another kiss, which he obliged. “Some fruit would be nice.”

  He tossed the iPad aside, climbed out of bed and pulled on a pair of sweats, bottom, and top, and made his way through the suite to the private conference room. He heard the low, angry rumble of Hank's voice first and wondered who'd pissed him off now?

  Sliding open the conference door, Emmet found the man seated in a black leather chair, a squat glass in his hand full of a clear liquid, most likely vodka, his go-to liquor.

  He’d looked better than he did after the explosion. Running back into the house had been a colossal act of stupidity, not bravery by any hallucination. His left hand remained bandaged, but he shot with his right. He’d taken the time to shave the singed hair off the back of his head. Now bald, Hank took menacing to a whole other level, especially as he cursed into the phone pressed to his ear.

  “It’s your call if that’s how you want to play it.” He paused, listening to whoever was on the other end of the conversation, his expression darkening by the second. “I will not stand down and let someone else kill him or play forgive and forget. He dies, or I do. The when and where are the only things negotiable."

  Emmet didn't like where this was headed. Their dealings had always been straightforward and orderly. They provided the target information and the payment, and occasionally a time frame. Nothing else. There were no meetings, no time cards to punch, and no Christmas parties. Categorized as contract employees, they answered to no one.

  Until now.

  The war had brought unwanted attention. Not good in this line of work. Attention brought the authorities. Journalists tagged along with the authorities, which with time and persistence could lead to congressional hearings and jail time.

  “You do what you have to do.” Hank ended the conversation and tossed his phone onto the table in front of him.

  “How bad is it?” Emmet remained on his feet. He preferred to take bad news standing.

  “They want me to stand down. I told them to fuck off. They told me to fuck off and now they’re pulling out until the dust settles.”

  Which meant no more toys, no more bombs. Got it. Emmet could tell Hank wasn’t pleased. Fuck, neither was he. “All of this could’ve been shared over the phone. Why are you here?”

  “I’ve been summoned by your patron, Mr. Julius Morgan.”

  Another surprise. “For?”

  Hank shrugged. “Seemed important enough for me to come since my daughter is here. He arrives in a few hours. The boat will be docking at—”

  “Julius said he wasn’t using the yacht for the next month, so why is he coming?” Emmet asked.

  “I suspect he’s gonna tell us what we owe him in return for this little cruise.”

  Again, something that could be shared over a conference call. “How long have you been on board?”

  “Long enough for a shower and some food.”

  Long enough to find out that Emmet and Bailey shared the same room, the same bed. “Whiskey thinks you’re missing.”

  “I am missing,” Hank snapped, then added, “Where is he?”

  "Tracking a lead in the Philippines. He checked in yesterday since you weren't answering your phone or emails."

  No comment from Hank. Not shocking. He had a habit of cutting ties and hunkering down when shit went bad. They couldn’t do that anymore.

  “He wants out, you know.”

  That was news. “When?” Emmet asked.

  “Not up to me.”

  Getting out? Was such a thing possible? Emmet filed that thought away for another time and plopped into a chair. “You missing may not be a bad thing. It’ll give us time to regroup. Come up with a new plan. Bring in fresh blood. Blood that’s off the books.” Blood Rogers isn’t privy to. Their community was an intimate gathering of people with similar skills and few outliers, though with a cast of second-string players waiting in the wings for an invitation to the big league. All Hank had to do was send the invites.

  “Fresh blood,” Hank said as if he rolled the two words on his tongue and didn’t like the taste. “Fresh blood leaves us vulnerable. People we don’t know leaves us vulnerable. I have enough vulnerabilities.”

  Emmet didn’t miss the not-so-subtle hint and ignored it. “Consider them cannon fodder. We distract him with extra bodies thrown his way. He’ll slip, and we’ll slip in and kill him.”

  Hank drummed the table, his fingers tapping a familiar tune. “Cannon fodder, huh. When did you become so jaded?”

  “A father who starved me and a killer who raised me, that’s when.”

  “Ah.” Hank nodded. “Seems like you’ve been with me from the beginning. Sometimes I forget how we met.”

  It wasn’t the first time Hank had uttered that statement, and the words never failed to stir Emmet’s heart. His life began when Hank took him out of that hovel. He owed Hank everything.

  “It has been a long seven months, Emmet. I’ve seen all I’ve built teeter.”

  Voice low, pained, Emmet had never seen his mentor like this. Hank wasn’t known for deep reflection. A man of action, he didn’t do stalled. “Teeter, but not topple.”

  “Doesn’t feel like it, my man.”

  They were silent, each man in his own world. Hank’s full of regret. Emmet rethinking the plan and coming up with nothing new. “My plan is good. Workable. I’ll call it in and get more men.”

  “Admit we need help? Weakness is weeded out, not praised.” His tone graveyard quiet. “It’s too late for that, anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The agency has removed their support. Rogers is no longer rogue. Now they’re waiting to see who is the victor, and guess where that leaves us.”

  Emmet sat back in the leather chair. “That leaves us screwed.”

  “With no foreplay and no KY.”

  “Damn.”

  A heavy beat of silence stretched out. Then, “Where is she?”

  The she, Emmet didn’t have to question as to who Hank could possibly be referring to. The fact that “Where is she?” followed Hank’s no foreplay and no KY, well, that was a bit disturbing. “She’s in bed, asleep.” The only reason he didn’t tag on my bed was because he didn’t own the boat.

  Hank sighed and nodded slowly. “So, this is happening, huh?”

  Emmet mimicked Hank’s head bobbing up and down. “Yes.”

  “You and my daughter.”

  Emmet nodded.

  Hank planted his elbows on the table, folded one hand over the other and stared Emmet down. “And afterwards? If we survive?”

  If we survive. Emmet didn’t like those odds. “When we survive.” He corrected.

  Hank conceded the point with a careless shrug.

  Emmet had already thought this far ahead. The past few days as th
ey’d drawn closer in mind and spirit. They moved together as a unit, inside and out of the bedroom. They clicked, two puzzle pieces that fit. She calmed him while making him crazy. Satisfied him, yet he still hungered. Made him consider the future when he’d lived second to second for so long it was his default setting.

  Hitmen didn’t retire, Hank reminded him. The thing is, Emmet had more than enough cash squirreled away to start anew. After Rogers was in several thousand pieces, he’d see what his options were with his life—the agency—and with Bailey.

  And none of this was Hank’s business.

  “She and I will decide.”

  “Is that right?” Hank grunted.

  “I told you before, Hank, she’s not your little girl anymore.”

  “Wrong. She’s my daughter. Mine. And I won’t have her hurt.”

  Emmet took exception. “Who says I’m going to hurt her?”

  "I say." Hank pushed his thumb into his chest. "Because that's who we are. We hurt people for a living. Many of them permanently. We place a target on people and do what's necessary until, one day, a target is placed on our backs and the backs of those we love."

  Emmet didn’t have to be a psychic to know where Hank was headed, and he didn’t fucking like it, not one bit. “Don’t compare me to you.” A vision of Hank burying his pregnant wife popped into Emmet’s head. He closed that train of thought, hard. “I’m not you, Hank.”

  Hank shook his head. “Wrong, Streets. You could be my twin. Never told you how I met Constance.”

  He hadn’t and right now, that’s the last thing Emmet wanted cluttering his mind. “I don’t want to know.”

  “She worked for the Defense Department. I met her by accident, then I met her on purpose.”

  Damn it, I said I didn’t want to know.

  “She was a secretary in Human Resources and pretty clueless to what I did. And I never told her the truth. She thought she married a run of the mill Marine. Maybe if I had fessed up, she could’ve protected herself better, that’s what chewed me up inside for half a decade. Took that long to catch all the bastards involved.”

  “Bailey isn’t Constance,” Emmet barked.

  Hank pounded the desk. “She is. Not only in image. Constance was an innocent. She was clean, full of life. She had no part of our world until I dragged her inside. And she left bloodied and dead. I’m the best in the business and couldn’t protect my woman. But I’ve protected my child.”

  “By throwing her away?”

  Hank slammed both fists onto the table. “She’s alive, ain’t she?”

  “And she hates you.”

  Hank drained his glass and crossed to the bar in the corner of the room and poured another. "It's a price I accepted and was willing to pay; otherwise I wouldn't have done it."

  And what a steep price it was. Could Emmet have been that strong? He prayed he’d never have to find out. “But it’s a price you didn’t have to pay. You said you found her in Nebraska. A couple had adopted her. You could’ve left her there. Made sure the couple was nice. You didn’t. Why?”

  Hank tossed himself back into his chair as if the weight he carried was suddenly too much to bear. "She was a piece of my Constance. I couldn't let her go. Still can't, truth be told."

  Yet he kept her at arm’s length.

  “Do you love her?” Hank spat as if the word had left a bad taste in his mouth.

  Emmet knew what lay in his heart. Yet to say the words, words he'd never uttered to another person, words he hadn't spoken to Bailey, to say them to Hank?

  “Don’t answer that. I don’t need the answer when it’s written all over your damn face. And that’s why you will do the right thing and walk away. Right, Streets?”

  The right thing. What exactly was, “The right thing”? The right thing for Hank? The right thing for Bailey? The right thing for him? Doing the right thing wouldn’t make everyone happy, definitely wouldn’t make him happy if the right thing was to walk away from Bailey.

  An image of him holding her charred body in his arms exploded in his brain. That's what Hank went through. What he could possibly go through if he stayed with Bailey. They had enemies, and that fact would never change. She'd be in danger, doubly so because of the man who sired her and the man who loved her.

  Damn, he didn’t think he’d ever understand how Hank walked away. Now he did because to save the one you loved, nothing was impossible. Not even leaving and never looking back. If it kept Bailey safe from men like himself, Rogers, and Hank, then he'd be as ruthless as his mentor. He had no other choice. Emmet looked at his mentor and matched the grim countenance and fierce determination in his blue eyes. Eyes the exact color of Bailey's.

  He nodded once, in silent agreement. Then he affirmed his decision by saying aloud, “Yeah. When the time comes, I’ll do the right thing… And walk away.” But it wouldn’t come to that. He wouldn’t let it.

  Hank’s gaze cut to a spot above Emmet’s head and his face went neutral, even though the hand reaching for the glass of liquor trembled.

  Ah, fuck!

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Did he have to go to Mexico and pick the fruit?” Bailey shoved the blanket away and scooted out of bed. She didn’t have to go find him, but her bladder demanded attention. That taken care of, she freshened up and couldn’t help noticing the circles under her eyes had faded. She’d also added a few pounds to her lean frame. There was a jiggle to her boobs that weren’t there before and a hickey to the underside of the right one. It was close in size to the hickey he placed on her left boob, right in her cleavage. The memory of him doing it had her pulse quickening.

  She ran a hand through her hair, touched the area where her stitches were slowly dissolving, and her hair had started to regrow. Time for a new haircut, maybe even a new color. What would Emmet like? Funny thing, she’d hacked off her long hair without a care of what Richard thought.

  There were bruises on her inner thighs, she remembered how that happened too and bit her lip at the throb that kicked off in her core. Addiction, that’s what this was, and she wasn't at all upset about it.

  Yet her mind kept going to the day when all the running was over. Nothing was promised. How could he promise anything when the situation was fluid? They may be dead tomorrow. She’d finally found the person she wanted to be with and could lose him before they’d begun.

  What did she have to do to prevent that from happening? From what she understood, Rogers wanted Hank dead, not Emmet. She hadn’t cared for the reason before. Now, she wondered why. She didn’t buy Emmet’s procedural differences bullshit explanation. The feud went deeper than that. Bone deep. Protecting Hank was bad for Emmet’s health, and hers. They had to leave, disappear into the ether. She had enough money to make that happen, at least for a few years, until Hank was dead, and Rogers was appeased.

  The thought knocked the air from her lungs. Doubled over, she had to catch her breath and to keep from screaming. Her father had to die to save her lover and herself.

  She and Emmet had to talk, make a decision other than blindly following Hank onto Plan C because Plan B had been all about hiding, which couldn’t last. Eventually, Julius Morgan would want his yacht back. Eventually, they’d be kicked off the Love Boat at the nearest port.

  Ugh! Her brain kept churning, and she wanted it to stop, get Emmet and go back to bed. And talk. In the morning. Talk and make plans for the future. Make plans for him to leave this life. Would he do that? Leave the life of a hitman behind. For her? And how do you ask a man to leave the only thing he’s known behind? For her.

  A walk through the walk-in closet for a silk robe then she went to find Emmet. There was no sign he’d been in the private kitchen, which was fully stocked with fresh watermelon, grapes, mango, papaya, coconut, and pineapple. The menu icon on the tablet mounted on a counter linking all the all the ship’s systems for easy customer usage, blinked. It was a message from the head chef about tomorrow’s options. Surf and turf was never a bad choice.

&nbs
p; “Do you love her?”

  Bailey heard the sentence and thought, Who the fuck is he talking to? She exited the kitchen and paused in the entrance to the private dining room. The room was empty. Her attention switched to the slight opening in the double doors of the adjacent conference room.

  “Don’t answer that. I don’t need the answer when it’s written all over your damn face.”

  The voice, that voice, struck a chord within her and she knew, without a doubt, knew he was here. Her father was here, on the boat. How long? How long had he been here? Did he just arrive? Or was he here the whole time and didn’t care enough to even see her? And was Emmet a part of it?

  Her knees jellied, and she took a step back, prepared to flee to the bedroom and never leave. No, a voice whispered in her head, and she marched forward, determined to have the confrontation that was long overdue.

  She crossed the dining room, careful to stay in the shadows of the room. Carefully, she peered through the part in the double doors for a view of the back of Emmet’s head, and locked eyes on the man sitting across the table from him.

  He’d changed a lot in seven years. Bald now, though by his pale dome, that seemed recent. A bit heavier around the jowls, gray in his eyebrows, all new. The intensity in his eyes, the grim set of his face, the same.

  His appearances always terrified her. Truth be told, her racing heart wasn't from excitement. He still frightened her.

  “And that’s why you will do the right thing and walk away. Right, Streets?” Hank said.

  The right thing? Streets? Emmet Streeter. Streets had to be his nickname. She glanced at Emmet, his back still to her as he sat in front of Hank.

  “Yeah. When the time comes, I’ll do the right thing and walk away.”

  Acid poured over her at the sound of Emmet's voice dumping her at the behest of her father. Up in a puff of smoke went any plans for a future with the man who’d stolen her heart. She could admit that now as her heart turned to ash in her chest and she bit back a sob.

  Hank shows up, and she gets dumped. Once again, he pulled the rug out from under her, seemed to take pleasure in doing so. But Emmet… That pain she'd have to deal with later because right now, she had a few choice words to share with her sperm donor.