Smoke: A Bad Boy Romance

by Paula Cox

  Then he falls away, lowering me to the floor, looking down at me with a shaky expression.

  “Felicity,” he says, staring at me. “I love you. I want you to know that. No matter what, I love you.”

  I walk across the cell to him. I mean to reach out and merely touch his face, but at the last second something grips me. I slap him, hard. Thwack! And his face twists to the side.

  “I love you, too, you silly man,” I say. I slap him again, across the other cheek. Thwack! His head twists the other way. “But you hurt me.”

  “I know.” His skin is red from where I slapped him.

  I reach up and touch the skin, rubbing it softly with my fingers. “But I love you,” I say. “God help me, I love you, Roma. I never knew how much a person could love, how quickly, until I met you.”

  “You love me so much you want to slap me until my neck breaks?” He winks, and it’s like we’re transported someplace else for a moment. No, we’re not in this dark dingy cell, in this dark dingy complex, deep under the earth. We’re standing in our garage on a Sunday morning and later on today we’re hosting a barbeque. We’re married, or engaged; our lives stretch wondrously ahead of us.

  “Something like that,” I say.

  I manage a smile.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Felicity

  Roma turns toward the exit.

  “Wait,” I say, still half-stunned by what we just did. It all happened so fast. I’m still processing it. But the last thing I imagined was that Roma would leave me. “Where are you going?”

  “To orchestrate your escape,” he says.

  “Shouldn’t I come with you, then?” I nod in the direction of the storage cupboard where Daniel is knocked out. “There’s a guard down there, out cold.”

  A smile touches his lips. “I guessed as much. You’re amazing, Felicity, you know that?”

  I roll my eyes. “This isn’t the time for compliments. This is the time for explanations.”

  He sighs, and then launches into a quick explanation.

  “Bear?” I gasp, when he’s done. “I thought he died in the fire!”

  “So did I.” Roma shrugs. “It seems the old bastard is harder to kill than we guessed. Must’ve nearly choked to death in that little cubby hole of his, but he’s been through worse.”

  “So, what . . . he’ll come and get me?”

  Roma nods. “Just wait. This is the best way, I promise.”

  I grit my teeth. “Then go,” I say. “And get me the hell out of here.”

  He makes for the door, hesitates, and then comes back to me. He touches my face, running his finger along my jawline. “You’re the best woman I’ve ever known,” he says.

  Before I can reply, he darts to the door and jogs up the hallway. I watch the empty doorway, mouth falling open. What the hell just happened? I think. The sex . . . no, the making love . . . it was like I was powerless to resist. I remember friends from college sleeping with men they shouldn’t—cheaters and drug addicts and assholes—and complaining about it afterwards. I always thought they had no right to complain. If you didn’t want to sleep with someone, surely you should just not sleep with them. But now, standing here, I take it all back. There was very little I could do to stop my body responding to Roma’s.

  I shake the thoughts away, kneel down, and pick up the gun. I stick it in my waistband and then go into the hallway to the storage cupboard. I peek inside and see Daniel, still knocked out, breathing softly. Assured that he’ll be no trouble, I return to my cell.

  What if this is all a trick? a voice hisses in my mind, after around ten minutes of waiting. What if he isn’t coming back? What if he just wanted to fuck you again?

  I swallow, wondering if it could be true. I meant what I said to Roma. I love him. But you don’t always trust the people you love.

  My body feels exhausted. I want nothing more than to curl up in a ball and let sleep take me. But I won’t leave myself vulnerable.

  I hold the gun in my hands, stroking the trigger, waiting.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Felicity

  Around twenty minutes after Roma leaves me, an explosion vibrates the walls of my cell. At first, I think it’s an earthquake. I scream and throw myself to the floor on instinct, drawing in desperate breaths, covering my head with my hands. Then, when the walls don’t collapse, I climb to my feet with a grim laugh. He did warn me, I think. A moment after the explosion, a screaming alarm resounds throughout the facility. I poke my head out of my cell door and see red, a flashing light from an alarm set high in the wall.

  I look toward the elevator. The indicator beside it glows yellow. Somebody is coming down.

  I point my gun at the elevator, praying it’s Bear but unable to take the risk. Perhaps it’s one of Mr. Black’s men rushing down here to make sure I don’t get away. Perhaps Bear has been taken out. He’s tough, sure, but is any man so tough he can fight off a whole army of paid henchmen?

  The elevator takes an age to descend, the indicator flashing every few seconds. The trigger is cold against my finger, clammy with sweat. Sweat from fear and sweat from Roma, the confusion and lust of it all, the explosive medley. I’ll shoot if it’s one of Mr. Black’s men, I tell myself. But I’m not so sure. I saw Roma kill Barinov like it was nothing, no big deal at all, but I don’t know if I have that same killer’s instinct. I’m sure it has to be bred or beaten into you, trained into you over long years of hardening.

  Come on!

  The elevator judders down, the doors slide open.

  One of Mr. Black’s men stands in the center of the elevator. His face is as scarred and messed-up as the rest of them. His arms are bulky. But his rifle hangs from a lanyard around his neck, waving loosely around his midriff. He stands oddly, as though something is poking him in the back, pushing his chest out at an odd angle. But no matter how strange he looks, it doesn’t change the fact that one of Mr. Black’s men is here, and not Bear. I tense up, aim the gun, and will myself to fire. He’ll be on you soon! I think. But he doesn’t move. He just stands there in that bizarre stance.

  Shoot him! I will myself. Shoot him before he gets to you!

  But he makes no movements.

  That’s when I notice the blooming circle of crimson in his belly, a wide patch of blood which soaks into his clothes and grows wider by the minute. After a moment, I look behind him and see Bear.

  Bear withdraws the machete and the man drops. The big white-haired—no, black-haired now—man wipes the machete clean on the man’s jacket. Then he leans down and places the man’s body between the elevator doors, stopping them from closing.

  “Girl!” he calls, voice booming above the sound of the alarm. “Come with me! Now!”

  He was telling the truth, I think with an immense sense of relief. At least he wasn’t lying to me about something.

  Glad I don’t have to shoot the gun, I stuff it into my waistband and jog down the hallway. The dead man throws up a metallic smell, potent and off-putting, and I step over him as carefully as I can. When I’m inside the elevator, Bear pushes the corpse into the hallway and smashes his fist down on the button for the first floor.

  The doors close and the elevator begins to rise.

  The man standing beside me is nothing like the man I met at the cottage. His face is set in a grimace and his single eye flits around without pause. He looks at me briefly. “You know how to use that toy in your waistband?” he grunts.

  I shake my head. “Not very well,” I admit.

  He nods shortly. The elevator moves upward in a series of stops and starts.

  “Well, let’s hope you don’t have to. But I won’t lie to you, girl. It might come to a fight. And if it comes to a fight, a bad shot is better than no shot at all. Just make sure you don’t shoot me, aye?”

  I swallow, and then nod. “Okay,” I say, voice weak.

  “Roma came to the rescue then, aye?” He smiles weakly. I notice that his chest rises and falls in big gasps and I guess he mu
st be tired. After all, he’s retired. But he doesn’t look as though he’s going to collapse. I guess a man like Bear could go for hours.

  “How did he cause the explosion?” I say.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Bear says. He reaches behind him and takes out a large rifle, the kind you see in movies about SWAT teams. “All that matters is the results. That’s all that ever matters.”

  He points the rifle at the door to the elevator.

  “You ever seen Star Wars?” he says.

  “Uh, I think so,” I reply, caught off guard.

  “You remember that scene when all the rebels are pointing their guns at the door and Darth Vader comes in? I remember when Roma saw that when he was a kid. I was so proud of him when he said to me, ‘Bear, what if they come into a different door?’”

  “Okay . . .”

  He shakes his head. “Rambling. Haven’t been around people for a long time. What I’m saying is, there are no other exits for us. Chances are, when this door opens, we’re going to have more guns on us than Clint Eastwood in a town full of bandits.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I say, seeing that we’re almost at the first floor.

  “Take out your gun and press yourself flat against the wall to make yourself a smaller target. Then . . . shoot.”

  Shoot, I think, terrified.

  But there’s no time to be terrified.

  The doors slide open.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Felicity

  I want to be brave, but the truth is fear is stabbing me like a knife. It stabs into my head, causing it to pulse, and into my heart, causing it to beat furiously. It stabs into my arms, causing them to feel heavy, weighed down. It stabs into my finger, causing it to grip the trigger weakly.

  The door slides open and I see sunlight for the first time in days. I imagined I was being held in some evil villain’s lair, the kind of thing you see in a James Bond movie, but when the door opens, I am met with a hallway with flakes of paint chipping away. Off to one side sits disused equipment, half-covered with tarpaulin, and out of the window which sits opposite the elevator, I see a grey car park.

  But I only have half a moment to observe this.

  Ten or so men crowd in the hallway, Mr. Black’s men, all of them holding rifles, all of their sights trained on us. No, not us. Just at Bear. I’m too valuable to them, I realize.

  Bear aims his gun and is about to fire when—bang!

  The room is filled with blinding white light and a ringing so loud it drowns out the sound of the alarm. I cover my ears. I want to sink into the wall and disappear. My ears feel like they’re bleeding. I try to open my eyes but they’re hazy. I can’t see a thing.

  Then the sound of bullets tears through the air and all thoughts of bravery leave me. I throw myself to the floor and cover my head with my hands, squeezing my palms against my ears against the noise. Bang-bang-bang, as bullets pepper the air around me, pinging off metal and smashing into wood and drywall.

  It lasts what seems like forever, but then a firm hand grips me on the shoulder and hauls me to my feet.

  “Open your eyes, girl.”

  Slowly, I open my eyes. Bear looks down at me, his single eye blood-red from the explosion.

  “What the . . . what the hell was that?” I wheeze.

  I look down the hallway as I ask the question. All of Mr. Black’s men are laid out flat, dead. I turn away. I can’t bear to look at them. Smoke drifts up from Bear’s gun.

  “It was a flashbang grenade,” he says.

  “Wait, did you . . .”

  He nods. “Aye.”

  “I didn’t even see it,” I say in disbelief.

  “I’ve been doing this a long time, girl,” he says. “They didn’t see it either. And by the time they knew what was happening . . .”

  “Yeah,” I say weakly. “I see that. I . . . uh . . . you’re a good shot.”

  My head still rings and speaking is difficult.

  Bear nods. “Aye, that I am. Seems this old bear still has some fight in him, eh?” He nudges me gently in the shoulder. “Prop open the door. I need to move these men, keep the doors open.” He tilts his head, listening. “Dammit, there are more up here. Quickly.”

  I hold open the elevator door as it beeps continuously at the obstruction. Bear goes to the closest dead man, grabs him by the arm, and drags him toward me. He drags him all the way to the elevator doors and drops him there. Then he nods at me, and I step from outside the doors. A moment later, the doors try to close, somebody downstairs pressing the button. But they close on the dead man’s torso, blocking it off, beeping over and over.

  “Right,” Bear says. He heaves a sigh and waves a hand at me in a follow-me gesture. “Time to get you out of here.”

  “What about Roma?”

  Bear’s face goes tight. “He’ll catch us up later,” he says.

  I’m about to respond when two men run into the hallway. They both hold the big, chunky rifles of Mr. Black’s men and have the same tough faces, scarred and battered through years of fighting and bloodshed. If I saw one of these men on the street, I’d never dream that anybody could take one of them, let alone both. Bear drops to one knee, aims, and fires twice. Two clean shots take the men right in the head; they drop.

  He stands up and begins jogging toward the end of the hallway. I have no choice but to follow. I keep thinking of Roma. Where is he? I ask myself. Where the hell is he? Bear rounds the corner and I follow. We crash through an old rickety door, squeaking as it’s forced on its hinges, and out into a wide open factory area. The stairs are like the stairs of a fire-escape, metal railings but not contained within walls; I can see the entire factory. Disused equipment sits pressed against the walls and the floor is covered in a layer of dust so thick I spot it from up here.

  Bear jogs down the stairs and I jog after him. I feel as though I am outside of my body, watching myself. Watching this inexperienced woman follow this hardened killer. This kind-hearted killer, but hardened nonetheless. We reach the floor, our footprints marking the dust like snow, and make for the exit.

  Bear lifts his massive leg up, aims, and kicks the double doors. They swing open with a sound like tearing and sunlight attacks my face. It’s so bright after days of the black bag and the cell that I have to cover my eyes and squint through my fingers. Then, slowly, I part my fingers and look up at the stark blue sky. I almost cry at the sight of it. I think: I’m free. That’s immediately followed up with: But there is Roma?

  Bear takes me softly by the arm and leads me to the car park. “Have a pick-up stashed here,” he says. “They thought I was one of them, one of the guards. That’s the mistake Mr. Black made when he hired mercenaries. They’re good in a fight, but they’re not observant. A hitman should be a killer and a detective.”

  I’m shocked by how calm Bear is talking, by how gently he grips my arm. He’s just killed a dozen men. I think of the bloodbath in the hallway and wonder how it’s possible somebody could cause carnage of that magnitude and then speak calmly afterwards.

  He leads me around the corner of a small outhouse—I glance inside and see a broken-down toilet—and to a red pick-up truck. He opens the passenger side door. “Okay, let’s get to it.”

  “But . . . Roma.”

  “I know him well,” Bear says. “If he’s not here by now, it’s because he can’t be.”

  “But—”

  Suddenly, there’s a loud crash followed by the tat-tat-tat of gunfire from the direction of the factory. Without thinking, I jump into the car. Bear jumps in after me, starts it, and pulls away. The tires screech and we reverse into the car park.

  Roma stands at the doors. Beyond him, seen only as a mass of moving heads from where I sit, are around ten men.

  I press my hand against the glass, screaming: “Roma!”

  Roma shakes his head, lifts his weapon, and fires at us. I flinch. The bullet whizzes overhead.

  “It’s a signal,” Bear grunts, putting the car into gear. �
�It means he wants us to get the hell out of here.”

  Before I can protest, Bear screeches out of the car park.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Felicity

  Three days, I think, standing in front of the mirror of my childhood home.

  It’s the mirror I stood in front of for prom and the mirror I stood in front of before I went off to college. It’s pink-framed with stickers all around it, stickers charting my growth to maturity. First boybands, and then metal bands, and then quotes from books, and then fitness and motivational quotes. I never pealed a single sticker off. I guess some part of me knew that one day I’d return a changed woman and need a reminder of who I was before the change occurred. I think of the innocent, hopeful girl who stood before this mirror so many times. I think of her and I miss her.