by S. M. Butler
“And what did you tell him?” Not that Afonso knew many of my secrets. I was good at lying. A sad talent to be proud of, for sure, but it was true.
“I told him truth. I had not seen you in years at that point.”
Which by the timing, Jack would infer that I had survived. That was what I wanted, right? For Jack to know I was alive, to know I was coming after him? Somehow, it was disconcerting to realize that he’d checked up on me. There was something else though.
“Forgive me for saying so, senhorita, but he seemed… pleased to know of your recovery.”
“Yeah, I’m going to keep on believing that’s a load of shit, Afonso. He shot me.” I sighed, holding my chin in thought for a moment. I was winging this stupid plan of mine, no real thought was going into this. I was motivated completely by revenge, by the idea of finally finding Jack. “You still have my box?”
“Of course,” Afonso said. “This way…” He gestured to the back room. I followed him back, glancing around at the rest of the silent store. It wasn’t until the door shut behind me that I realized my mistake. The only warning I had was the blur of a piece of wood that impacted with the back of my head. I cursed myself for trusting a man, yet again, and crumpled into blackness.
~*~*~
I’ve been hit before. Hell, I’ve been shot before. Everything hurts when you wake up, even if it’s just a blow to the head. My skull felt like it was a million pounds heavy. My neck cramped as I tried to lift my head. My shoulders ached from their current position.
As I opened my eyes in the dimly lit room, I found Afonso going through my computer. My computer. Or trying to. He kept emitting curses whenever my computer blocked him. I tried my hands, and found them bound to the chair I was in. You know, I always wondered how a person could get tied to a chair without trouble. When a person was unconscious, they were pretty much dead weight, which was hard to sit up. So, kudos to Afonso for being able to do it.
I gathered my senses, looking around the room for a moment. It was exactly how I remembered it years ago. No windows. No other avenues of escape except out the door I’d come in. Which meant I would have to do something violent to Afonso.
A moment later, I managed to speak, after the sixth time my computer beeped at him. “You have to know the passkey into the system before it will do anything.”
Afonso gasped and jumped back from my computer like it was going to bite him. This wasn’t the Afonso I knew. He’d always been calm and collected. Now, he was nervous, and sweating, not to mention jumpy as hell. A string of very racy Portuguese left his mouth.
“That’s pretty dirty, Afonso. Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” I felt around the rope holding my wrists together. The knots weren’t super tight. I could work them loose.
“My mother died years ago. You know that.”
“Do I? Do I really know anything about you?” My head pounded, throbbing with pain. My vision was swimming and I’d already bitten into my lip enough to make it bleed, trying to make the spinning stop. But I wanted out of there, and I had to get the stupid rope loose to do it. “You lied to me.”
“Know that I take no pleasure in killing you.” A hint of silver flashed in the dim room. My eyes were drawn to the knife in his hand. “I’d prefer you to not fight me.”
“I’ve heard that before,” I replied, deadpan. Jack had said almost the same thing. “Let’s get it done with then.” The knife was double-edged, well taken care of. It meant something to him. Or he’d stolen it off someone else that had cared for the thing.
“I don’t want to,” he said. He shook his head adamantly. “You need to go home. Forget all this mess. Move on.”
“No,” I told him. “Jack is still out there.”
“He will kill you.”
“Don’t count me out yet. I’m not the same person I was five years ago, Afonso. Jack will not so easily take me this time.”
“No,” he agreed with a wistful sigh. “You are not the same. Is sad-making, that. You were such nice girl.”
“People change,” I replied. I finally got one knot undone. Afonso was amazingly bad at knots. Maybe it was the stiff rope he was using. And the idiot hadn’t tied my feet. Was it really going to be this easy?
“Yes, they do.” He sighed and turned back toward my computer. “What is on this machine?”
“Why?”
“Because Jack wants it. I need to know what the right price is,” he replied.
Oh, Afonso. It was bad enough that he’d betrayed me, knocked me unconscious and made my neck hurt. But he was also on Jack’s payroll? I shrugged. “There’s nothing on that machine he would interested in.”
“He seems to think he would be.”
“And that’s his mistake.”
Afonso turned thoughtful and faced the computer again. Slowly, I glanced around the room again. My gun and my jacket were over by the computer. Afonso was not a small man. If I wanted those back—and I did—I would have to knock him senseless too. This was one of the problems with my size. I wasn’t nearly big enough to stop a man like Afonso. I could do it, but it wouldn’t be as instant as I wanted it to be. Reality was that not every female agent in the world was Melinda Mae or the Black Widow. We had physical limits.
Slowly, I cased the room for something to use. The block of wood he’d used on me was over on the floor, only a couple feet away. The question was… could I get to it before he knew what I was doing?
The bell in the outer store rang, signaling the entrance of someone. Afonso cursed and walked toward the door. He frowned at me, but said nothing else as he went to go see his newest customer. As soon as he left the room, I let the loosened ropes fall and instead grabbed my gun. I checked it quickly to make sure he hadn’t taken out the bullets. I glanced at my computer’s screen, thankful to only see my primary passkey input. Afonso hadn’t even gotten past the first screen. What was he expecting to do?
I pushed the lid down and went to stand by the door. I didn’t want to have to shoot Afonso. He was making the best of a crap situation. But I wasn’t about to let him kill me either. My head still throbbed, but I could rest later, when I wasn’t about to be killed.
I stayed out of sight, but I did peek around to see who he was talking to. I didn’t recognize the man, but I couldn’t really see him either. He was tall, fit, wearing a black hoodie over his head, so I couldn’t even see his profile. I plastered myself back against the door when the man started to leave. Afonso would return soon.
I waited, not hearing the bell announcing anyone leaving. What was going on out there?
~*~*~
Dylan
I should have just gone home. Cadence drugged me. Me! And I’d fallen for it. I’d trusted her, and she reminded me why that was the biggest mistake I’d ever made. Maybe she was right. Trust only got you killed. Yet, I couldn’t manage to let it go
Instead of going home, I hunted her down, yet again. At least she hadn’t lost the shoulder holster. It still had my little tracker on it. I’d never seen a woman so damn stubborn about these things.
She had several hours on me when I woke up. We’d been docked at Funchal for at least a good two hours. I wasn’t sure if she’d snuck off the boat somehow before it docked or if she’d managed to wait until it stopped and disappear into the crowd. It was another hour before the cleaning crew came in. Thank goodness I’d taken that damn privacy tag off the door before, though the looks on that poor maid’s face when she saw I was cuffed to the bed was priceless. Nevertheless, she did hand me the key on the table.
And there I was, chasing a woman who didn’t want to be chased, tracking her down so I could keep her safe. I should have left her to her own devices. But I couldn’t. Damn it.
I tracked her to a small building across from the museum, but the man inside the store on the corner hadn’t seen anyone like her. The problem was that the tracker was still showing inside that store. So I left and sat next door at the small cafe. I called Brody in San Diego to do the check-in a
nd studied my locator.
Cady had been stationary too long. I knew her. If she was trying to stay off the grid, she wouldn’t stay still that long. It was possible that she’d found and ditched the tracker, but I didn’t get that vibe from it. Why here of all places?
I paid for my coffee and went back into the store, the bell ringing over my head as I stepped into the store. The man appeared from his back room, shutting the door behind him as he came back to the counter.
He looked irritated, grumbling in Portuguese under his breath. It made me wish I’d learned Portuguese at some point. When he saw me, his frown deepened. “I tell you already… no girl here.”
“Oh, no, I got that.” I leaned on the counter. “I just don’t believe you. Reddish blonde hair. More red than blonde. Very athletic build. Leather jacket. Seen her?”
The man shook his head. “No.”
“Okay. So here’s the deal. You can take me to where you got her, or I can kill you with my pinky and hide your body in the nearest trash bin.” I didn’t know where I got that whole “kill you with my pinky” thing, but it seemed to have the right effect.
“No girl!”
I leaned over the counter, giving off my most menacing stance and growled, “I have this really awesome kitchen cutlery set I just bought from this little store around the corner. Slices meat as thin as paper.”
The man’s eyes widened. “She is in the back.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
“Will you take her back home with you?”
“Don’t see how that’s your business, old man.”
“If she stays on this trail, she will die.”
“That’s not your business,” I replied. The man didn’t say anything else. He turned and started for the back door.
When he pushed it open, I saw the barrel of a gun and heard the familiar voice through clenched teeth. “Now what were you saying about killing me, Afonso?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cadence
I wasn’t sure if my gun was staying steady at his left temple or not. I was still woozy from him smacking me with that wooden block. For that alone, I wanted to put a bullet in his head. But I needed to know just why he hadn’t killed me when he certainly could have. It would have been easier to kill me while I was unconscious.
“It’s just business, sweet pea.”
My heart stopped, for just a split second. Afonso had never called me that. That was Jack’s name for me. I wasn’t even aware of how he knew about that name. I’d never told him anything. Was he signaling me about something? But regardless, it made me do something I never did. I hesitated. And he saw it.
He swung his hand backward, knocking the gun from me, and then his other one slammed into the side of my face. My jaw snapped shut painfully, vibrating through my skull as I fell to the floor. My world dove in and out of existence. My world was spinning. I bit my cheek, trying to give myself a focal point so I could straighten myself out.
I heard scuffling, bottles hitting the floor and shattering. Some was close. Some was farther away. I couldn’t tell which was which at this point. I hadn’t even realized there was someone else there. The stranger that hadn’t left. Who was it? Why were they here? Were they with Jack, too?
I pushed myself up to my knees, but my entire body was shaking so much I collapsed. My cheek hit the cool cement floor. Everything throbbed. It was funny how that worked. A hit to the head made every part of a body hurt. It stunned the nervous system, temporarily causing a cease and desist to all movement for a split second. The recovery, though, that was slow.
Soon the surrounding noise and the fight stopped. Footsteps receded. My whole world was alternating between light and dark, like a slow strobe. My breathing was deafening to me, slow and uneven. I was losing the fight. I had to get up. I pushed up to my elbows and tried to get myself to my feet. Afonso was going to get away. I had to stop him and find out why Jack wanted me dead. I just needed a second to get my bearings and then I could go after him.
My arms gave out and I kissed the cement floor again. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even sit up. When I saw the black boots in front of my eyes, my mind was still registering a need to run, but the fog had stalled any movement. At that point, I was encased in ice, conscious but unable to move. Like Han Solo. The dark won over the strobing light and slowly, dark blooms just took over my vision and then I was alone.
~*~*~
Dylan
I wasn’t sure how I got from that stupid little store to the nearest hotel without drawing all the attention to Cady and me. She wasn’t bleeding anymore, which was good, but I didn’t like how long she’d been out.
In the hotel room, I set her on the bed, and got a cool compress to put over her swelling cheek. The man had clocked her hard that last moment, and I’d seen red then. The dude hadn’t really been interested in fighting. He’d just grabbed the laptop on the desk and ran. I’d gone after him, but he’d vanished into the crowd before I could catch him.
I knew Cady kept her shit locked down in that laptop, but there were some very smart individuals out there, and if she had anything sensitive on it… it could prove to be a bigger problem than we anticipated. I’d have to let Master Chief know about that breach, if in fact it was a breach.
Right then, she was still sleeping off the hit, and I wanted to make sure she didn’t need to get to a doctor before we continued. I checked her vitals while she slept, made sure she was in a comfortable position and stepped outside of the hotel room to the balcony with my phone.
It only rang once before someone answered. “Yeah?” It sounded like Master Chief had just woken up.
“It’s me.”
“How’s it going?” A yawn. Yeah, I’d definitely woken him up. I cringed a little, because Master Chief before coffee was a little scary.
“We had some complications.”
“Enough for friends to visit?”
“There was a flight I missed, but I think I got it under control now.”
“Keep me updated. We’ll all come to the dinner party.”
“Roger that.”
I powered down the phone and went back into the hotel room. Cady was lightly snoring in the bed, which I took as a good sign. I set the phone down on the table and pulled the armchair over to the bed. I must have sat there for hours, watching her, making sure her pulse stayed strong, and her breathing stayed normal. They said that you shouldn’t let concussed people sleep, but what did you do with people that were knocked unconscious? Did you wake them up? Leave them alone to wake up on their own? I was half afraid that she wasn’t going to wake up at all.
While she slept, I cleaned up my face. That guy had not pulled his punches in any way. He wasn’t a small man, and he hit hard. My entire left side of my jaw throbbed, and my cheekbone was raw with pain to the touch. No wonder he had knocked Cady out. Not that she couldn’t handle a hit like that, because on a good day, she was three times tougher than I was, but she didn’t have nearly the weight to support it as I did. I had a good seventy-five pounds on her.
Finally, she started stirring. I poured a glass of water for her and set it down on the nightstand. Her sleepy face had a perpetual frown on it. I wondered if that had something to do with her swelling cheek. Was it bothering her as she slept?
She moaned, a quiet, high pitched sound that was cute as a button. I’d never tell her that, though. She’d have punched me in the face for it. I smiled. It might be worth it. I filed that away as a “to be used” joke I’d pull out on her later.
I brushed her hair from her face. “Cady?” A soft moan escaped her full lips again. I wasn’t about to kiss her again, not when I wasn’t sure if she had that stuff on her lips or not. I brushed her cheek with my fingertips. “Come on, honey. Time to wake up.”
This time she groaned louder, and grumpier. Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused.
“You in there?” I asked.
She blinked, twice, and then a real loud groan came from her. “F
uck me.”
“Oh, honey, now’s not the time.”
“Damn it, you’re not supposed to be here,” she croaked out and rolled to her side.
“Why? Because you drugged me and left me cuffed to the bed?” I was a little indignant with that, but come on. She cuffed me to the bed and left me there. It was only fair that I got to harbor some kind of grudge.
“Yes,” she snapped. She turned to her side, her eyes slowly focusing on the nightstand. “Is that water for me?”
I nodded. “Yes.” I picked up the glass as she struggled to her elbows. Her head was obviously hurting, from the frown across her brows. She took the glass from me and drank about half the glass down before she handed it back to me.
“What are you doing here?” She seemed more perplexed than angry.
“Taking care of you at the moment,” I replied. I set the glass back on the nightstand. “You took a good blow to the head.”
“Fucker sucker punched me.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Where are we now?”
“Hotel. You’ve been sleeping for hours.”
She sat up the rest of the way, fighting against the pain she was feeling. She glanced around. “My bag? Where’s my bag?”
“Over in the corner, with your gun and your jacket.”
“Good… and my laptop? Did you get my laptop?”
I shook my head. “Gone. The dude at the shop grabbed it.”
“And you let him leave with it?” She sat up quickly, wavering like she was going to fall, but she didn’t stop. She stumbled out of the bed and over to her backpack.
“He grabbed it and ran, Cady. Bulldozed right over me. I went outside after him, but he disappeared into the crowd.”
“Shit!” She grabbed her backpack, wrenching it open, and rummaging through the contents. “Why didn’t he take anything else? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“What’s on the laptop, Cadence?” I asked, still sitting on the bed. She swayed a little, but when I started to get up, she shot me the I-Will-Kill-You-Look, so I sat back on the bed. I wasn’t entirely sure that she wouldn’t.
