“We heard the explosions, I thought maybe you could use some help!” Damiano Ledo yelled to them. Lily just snorted and waved him away. Kingsley started laughing uncontrollably. Marc grabbed her arm and forced her to lay down.
“I'm thinking Pemba Island would be lovely this time of year,” he said, leaning over her.
“Oh, fuck that noise. I've been down that road. Take Kingsley. I'll go ahead and catch that ride with Damiano,” she laughed, playfully shoving at his shoulder. He ignored her and leaned closer, moving to kiss her throat.
“Ah, too late for that, sweetheart. This job was six months long, and now that I've got my payment, I'm not letting go,” he whispered, his lips working their way to her ear.
“What are you talking about, what payment?” she demanded. His hand pressed down against her chest, sliding over her throat.
“You.”
Well, gee.
“I'd go anywhere with you,” she whispered back.
“Oi!” Kingsley barked. “Get a room, you two. This public display of affection is ruining my digestion.”
“Shut up, Law.”
“Did you want a ride, or not!?” Damiano shouted, but they all ignored him.
“You're very lovely, darling, and I suppose De Sant is right, getting you in the end is a more than generous payment for a job well done,” Kingsley started, and he began digging his hand in his other pocket.
“Damn straight,” she said, nodding her head at him.
“I guess I'll just have to settle for these,” he sighed, pulling a flattened canvas bag out of his pocket.
Well, it wasn't entirely flat.
“I don't believe it!” Lily gasped, sitting up and grabbing the bag out of his hand. The diamonds had been spread out flat, so the bag hadn't really been noticeable in his loose black pants.
“You don't just leave something like that on the floor, darling. I scooped it up before I even went into that bedroom. I'm a professional,” he informed her.
It was Marc who started laughing first. So hard, he fell back into the snow. Lily caught the giggle bug next, and before long, Kingsley was laughing as well, around the fresh cigarette in his mouth. Lily glanced at him, then glanced down at Marc, and then looked back at the bag in her hand.
At the start of their journey.
We're alright. I think we're going to be alright.
DAY FIVE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SEVEN
~Epilogue~
Lily gritted her teeth and struggled to sit upright. The car was bouncing all over the pace, throwing her around the seat. It was hard to keep her balance with her wrists tied together.
And then there was the whole-bag-over-her-head issue she had going on.
How do I always end up in situations like this!?
The vehicle finally skidded to a stop, sending her crashing into the seat back that was apparently in front of her. She let loose with a stream of swear words and managed to work herself back onto her own seat.
She listened as the driver's side door open and closed. Footsteps made their way around the car and she tracked them as they approached the back door. She scooted to the very edge of her seat, towards the door she'd been shoved through some hours before, and she leaned back, bracing herself against the back of her seat.
Click.
She heard the door swing open and she immediately struck out, kicking her leg hard and fast. She caught her captor in the stomach and was rewarded with a grunting sound. She kicked again, but wasn't as lucky. A hand grabbed her ankle and she shrieked as she was yanked out of the car. She fell to ground, landing on her ass.
“Jesus, what the fuck is your problem!?”
“You are my problem!” Lily yelled back, wiggling around on the ground like a worm, trying to get onto her knees.
“I thought we'd established that a long time ago, sweetheart.”
Strong arms hooked underneath her own and she was hauled to her feet. Her wrists were killing her, but it was the bag that was removed first. The black material slid over her head and she blinked in the bright sunlight.
“Was all this really necessary?”
“Yes. You would've peeked.”
Marc was smiling as he rolled up the bag and tossed it back into the car. Lily couldn't help but smile back. A year later, and he was still impossible to resist. He moved her around so he could reach her wrist restraints and she took the opportunity to look around the landscape.
“Where are we?” she asked. It looked like the middle of nowhere. A lot of brush and sand. Nothing to indicate where they were, really.
They'd been in Barcelona, though Lily hadn't been quite sure why. Even more so than Kingsley, Marc preferred big jobs. If he was going to risk getting arrested or worse, he wanted to make it worth it, so why he'd signed them up to do a simple vandalism job, Lily couldn't figure out. But she'd never been to Barcelona, and once upon a time they'd spent a week fighting their way across Africa in order to get to it, so she was kind of excited to finally spend time in the city.
After the job had been done, she'd figured they would just move onto the next one, but Marc had other plans in place. He had a surprise for her, he'd said. One that involved a little journey. So they'd loaded up onto a chartered plane, and an hour into the flight, he'd put the bag over her head. Very much against her will, hence why her wrists wound up tied together.
Then she'd been carried to a car and shoved into a back seat, and hours were spent in silence while Marc drove them to god knew where. She didn't even know what country they were in; they'd only been in the air for two hours, they could still be in Spain for all she knew. Or possibly France. Maybe Portugal. How far away was Italy?
“Okay,” Marc ignored her question about where they were as he turned her to face him. The ropes fell away from her and she rubbed at her wrists. “I made a lot of guesses here – you're a hard bitch to read, so if you don't like something, we can change it.”
“Did you just call me a bitch!?” she exclaimed, then stumbled when he grabbed her arm and jerked her forward.
“Please. It's practically your middle name.”
She went to argue, but her voice got caught in her throat when they came around the front of the car. The large SUV had been blocking her view of anything behind them, but she'd just assumed it was more desert and scrub.
In almost every direction, as far as the horizon, there pretty much was just that – a lot of sand and scrub and a barely-there dirt road. But sitting at the end of the road, and directly across from them, was a house.
It looked simple enough – a wooden one level structure, kind of boxy, with one huge reflective window placed right next to the door. She narrowed her eyes and looked it over, trying to see if she could see anything else around the house. Anything that would indicate where they were, or why they were there.
“Are we here for a job?” she questioned, leaning to the side, trying to see around the building.
“No. No job, sweetheart. C'mon,” Marc replied, and he grabbed her hand before he strode off towards the house.
They didn't go in the front door. He led her around the side and she saw that the home was bigger than she'd first thought. It went back for a while, then ended in a huge cement patio which held a large zero edge pool. Several white cushioned lounge chairs sat back by a set of glass doors. More like glass wall, really. The doors were made to slide over each other, turning the living room and patio into one big open space.
Lily was still suspicious and she tensed up as she made her way across the patio, ready in case someone or something popped up. She wondered if maybe they were at one of Kingsley's houses – the place he called home was in Phuket, but he had apartments and little hideaways all over the globe. Had Marc organized a surprise trip to visit the British mercenary? It would be nice, they hadn't seen the other man in over five months.
“What's going on here?” she finally asked, peering through the glass into the house. It was open plan, with the kitchen off to the side of the living room. The
bedrooms – there looked to be two of them – were situated at the front of the house, with a small hallway separating them and ending in the front door.
“You told me something once,” Marc started, and the glass in front of her began to slide. She stepped out of the way as he opened all the doors.
“I tell you lots of things, you just never listen,” she laughed. He rolled his eyes and stepped into the house. She followed, shrugging out of her jacket. She was wearing all black and the sun was killing her.
“Hardly anything you say is worth listening to.”
She was standing next to an end table that had a book on it, and she picked it up and launched it at his head. He was walking out the front door, though, and he quickly shut it behind him. The book bounced off it and landed on the floor with a thud.
While he was gone, Lily wandered around the house, wondering who lived there. There were no pictures, no mementos, nothing to indicate who owned the place. She poked around in the kitchen and found that it was well stocked with non-perishables. A peek through a window showed a shed standing near the house, and she was willing to bet a sizable generator was housed inside it. In fact, she wouldn't be surprised to find out the property was entirely self-sustaining.
Someone has excellent taste. Beautiful and functional. My kind of place.
Though really, Lily wasn't entirely sure what her “kind of place” was anymore. She'd been mobile for so long. Over six years.
After they'd blown up Stankovski's country home – and Stankovski himself – they'd caught a ride into the city with Damiano Ledo, the powerful Colombian drug lord turned ally.
Kingsley had spent a lot of time in New York and he knew some back alley doctors. Though really, they could've been veterinarians. Lily didn't really care. She wound up passing out long before they got to the city. She woke up hours later to find Marc sitting next to her, his right arm in a sling and an IV in his other arm. He was giving her a blood transfusion.
For two very unlucky people, it was shocking to find out they had matching blood types.
They laid low in the city for a couple weeks. Stankovski was all over the news. It was hard to stay out of it, what with seventy-two children magically appearing at a fire station over night. It was reported that while most of the kids didn't speak English, a few of the older ones had been given letters to turn over to the police. Letters that detailed Stankovski's illegal diamond trade, a theft ring, and most shocking of all – a child sex slave operation. Within an hour of the letters being read, the children were escorted to beds all over the city and federal agents were on their way to Stankovski's farm.
It was believed that after his little child sex ring operation had been discovered and the kids taken, Stankovski had killed himself by blowing up his own home. Who had exposed his operation, though, was still unknown. The children had wild tales of a redheaded woman, a tall man with a “funny” accent, and a quiet man who “looked mean”; no suspects were found matching those descriptions.
Lily laughed a lot during the broadcasts.
The trio flew back to Phuket, to Kingsley's estate. Once there, they took time to fully rest and recover. Lily and Kingsley's injuries, easily the worst of the three, healed up nicely. Marc had only been shot in the shoulder, but multiple times. The ligaments and bones were all messed up, he wound up undergoing several surgeries. One not long before their trip to Spain.
It made Lily worry about him. They spent a month in Phuket, but Marc was a mover by nature and sitting still had driven him crazy, which in turn drove everyone else crazy. He finally announced one day that he had to leave, then he'd looked at her and simply said, “we've got a job.”
We.
Such a simple word.
It was hard, at first. Lily was accustomed to working with Kingsley. Marc was an entirely different beast. There was an entire re-training process that needed to happen, for both of them. More than once, they'd fought. More than once, Lily wondered what the fuck she'd gotten herself into and if it was all worth it.
Most definitely, yes.
They traveled the globe together, could do anything together. Got to know each other as real people, not just as two people in a series of desperate situations. She quickly learned that not only did she love Marcelle De Sant, the famed mercenary, but she also liked him. She loved knowing he had her back in any situation. Loved knowing that when she was off on her own job, that she would be going back to him at night. Loved talking with him and laughing with him. Touching him whenever she wanted, and never once being afraid that it wasn't for the right reasons.
They weren't the people they'd been in Africa, and they definitely weren't the people they'd been in South America and the U.S.
They were something better. Something unified. Something unbreakable.
Who would've thought that in the seedy underworld of drug lords and mercenaries and mob bosses, two people could find each other, fight each other, and then fall in love.
“You were so quiet, I thought you left,” Marc's voice interrupted her thoughts. She turned around to watch him walk into the living room. He was carrying her suitcase and he winced as he dropped it to the floor.
“You're going to screw up that shoulder again,” she warned him, moving to stand at his side.
“Worry about yourself, sweetheart.”
“Are you kidding? Who is the person who takes care of you after every surgery? You're such a baby, I can't handle that again.”
“Look who's talking! Your motherly instincts aren't exactly stellar.”
“I made you soup!”
“One time. All the other times, the moment we got down time, you took off to play Florence Nightingale,” he accused her. Her jaw dropped.
“Okay, first of all, she was a nurse, and I'm not nursing anyone. Second of all, I'm sorry if I still feel kind of responsible for those kids Stankovski stole! If I can help at least a few of them get home, then I'm going to! You were there last time, remember the parents? The mom was sobbing. I can't not help,” Lily explained, glaring at him.
“Bleeding heart, kill me now.”
“Just stop carrying heavy shit, okay? Please? As a favor to me?” she sighed, too tired and too curious about their surroundings to argue with him.
“Well, when you ask so sweetly,” he chuckled. She glanced past him, down the hallway, and saw that his own suitcase was sitting just inside the door.
“What are we doing here?” she asked. He moved back out onto the patio, motioning for her to follow him.
“You told me once,” he repeated himself from earlier, “that you don't have a home anymore. That home didn't exist.”
“I remember,” she nodded.
“And then another time, you said home was with me,” he kept going, and he gently grabbed her arm, pulling her to the edge of the pool.
“Yes, because it is.”
“And I feel the same way about you. Before you, I didn't have a home. Didn't care that I didn't. Now … you're everything.”
She smiled big at him.
“See? Being sweet doesn't kill you,” she teased, though really, the sentiment was so touching she felt a little like crying. Marc wasn't prone to flowery prose or romantic gestures, so hearing him talk that way made her heart swell.
“Shut up and don't ruin this,” he grumbled. “I'm trying to say … I want more. I want us to have a home together. I haven't rented an apartment in a long time, and I've never owned property. Never wanted to put down roots. I was always moving. But for you, sweetheart, I'd stop everything.”
Okay, now she was definitely going to cry. She stared up at him and struggled to keep the tears at bay.
“Or we could move together,” she said softly. He nodded and wrapped an arm around her waist, hugging her to his side as he turned them to face the house.
“Yeah, we can keep doing that. But you were right – my shoulder needs time to properly heal. I thought about renting us some fancy vacation spot in Greece, or maybe crashing at Law's place,
but then I had another idea. Why not crash at our own place? So I built us this house.”
Lily gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.
“You didn't! Why!? I mean, not why … how!? How much did this cost? You shouldn't have done this!” she exclaimed, babbling. He laughed loudly.
“Are you kidding? Cost isn't exactly an issue for us, princess,” he reminded her.
He was right – after they'd left New York, they'd split up the diamonds that Kingsley had thoughtfully grabbed from the Stankovski's apartment. All those stones that had been haunting Lily for so many months, they finally came in handy. They divided them up evenly between the three of them. Kingsley had more than earned his share, and he took it gladly, wrapping the stones in a small velvet bag. She never saw them again.
Most of Lily's share sat in a safe deposit box in a bank in Hong Kong. She'd only sold a couple, enough to build a small nest egg for herself, which was then put into several different savings accounts under several different aliases, in multiple banks.
Marc had his own methods and ways of dealing with his money. When they took a job together, they split the payout, right down the middle. Marc usually invested most of his shares right back into his work, upgrading weapons or paying for medical work. She'd never asked him what he'd done with his handful of diamonds, because it didn't matter to her. She'd figured he'd buried them somewhere.
Apparently, he'd buried them in a house in the middle of the desert.
“I can't believe you did this,” she whispered, her eyes wandering over everything.
“Yup,” he finally pulled away and headed back towards the doors. “Took a long time, was hard keeping it a secret and coordinating everything. We have our own power source, as well as solar panels, and a well. We're completely off the grid – I had to have this road put in, it's not on any maps. We've got 1,000 acres, and we're smack dab in the center of it.”
Lily turned in a slow circle, scanning the horizon. She couldn't see anything in the distance. The sand went on for miles. It reminded her of the time they'd driven through the desert, before breaking into the empty home and spending the night. So long ago, when they'd first gotten together.
Out of Plans (The Mercenaries #2) Page 30
