He put the car in gear, and made it nearly to the gate before the petrol Bella hadn’t bothered stopping for was completely out. Frank laughed very, very hard, his whole body shaking with it. Looking in the rearview mirror, he could see that the flames had found the garage. Even if another car had been drivable, it was too late now. Frank got out of the car. He opened the doors and the trunk, and lit every stitch of Bella’s clothing on fire. Then he lit a cigarette and started walking. At least it was downhill.
Chapter Sixty-Six
They kept coming, one after the other, ringing the doorbell and politely entering the house, wearing funny old hats and monocles, smoking pipes. I knew they were the in-laws of Frank’s father, bringing gold and silver and ugly antiques like all that junk Alan collected, saying they were there to complete the payment. Frank was dead. The hit they put out on his life was finished.
I woke up gasping for air, Hugo growling at my feet. I switched on the lamp and rubbed my face. Charlie and Kiki were curled up together on the floor staring at me. The fire was out and I was freezing.
“Everything’s fine,” I sighed, but even the dogs were smart enough to know that wasn’t true. I’d never seen the Alcotts, but I imagined that my dream wasn’t far off. Bluebloods like Alan Barker, people who never worked a day in their lives, country clubs and Rolls Royce’s and the kind of money to put a hit out on a nineteen-year-old kid through Silva himself.
Frank’s name was in both sides of Silva’s book. Underlined to make translation possible even for someone who barely started high school, much less finished it. It helped to have a healthy obsession with my husband, to be interested in everything related to Frank even when all I had to go by was a name and a list of hits.
Gideon’s name was not in the book. But Alan’s was, albeit in slightly different handwriting…
Casey knocked quietly on the wall as he entered the library, his face still a little bruised. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Sounded like a bad one.”
I nodded with my head down. Telling him that I was having visions of Frank’s death was sure to upset Casey, and that would’ve only made me feel worse. Seeing him frown could ruin my whole week. “I’m fine. Go back to bed.”
He flashed me an encouraging smile and left me alone. He and his mother were very different in that respect. She would’ve hugged me and comforted me and made me tell her all about it. I was almost glad she was gone, except that part of her comfort involved food, and all we had left in the kitchen was stale bread.
I wasn’t really sure how time zones worked here, or if Joe was even still in Europe, but I had my phone in hand and it was already ringing through before I actually considered that I might be inconveniencing him. “I need your help.”
“Already?” Joe asked.
“Please find him,” I said desperately. “He was supposed to be home already and he’s not answering his phone and if something happened—”
“Calm d—”
“You can be our handler.”
“Vince—”
“We’re getting back to work. I’ve got a list.”
“A list?”
“Silva’s book. Take care of Frank. That’s what handlers do. Please.”
“You got it, kid,” he told me, and hung up.
I took a deep, shuddering breath of relief. One phone call, and all my worries faded away. I had a feeling I didn’t even need to call.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
The pills went around and around in the toilet, flushed away and safe wee bairn. Casey was checking on Vincent, out of bed and into the fucking cold. Casey would be a good dad. She’d be a shite mom. She didn’t care if Vincent had another nightmare. She wanted to slit his fucking throat for waking her again. But it wasn’t seeing Casey’s paternal instincts that cemented her decision. It was the painting. Her painting. The woman that Casey painted could do anything. She was beautiful. She was Bella. She could have this child, she could have Casey, and she could survive without Silva. Bella wanted a little girl. And she would fucking have one.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
There was a flash of headlights between the trees seconds before Frank heard the car approaching. He remembered the final code for safe entry that Bella had given him: Headlights off all the way. Then flash them bright at the gate. Twice. Whoever this was didn’t know the code. Or didn’t care.
He’d been walking in the tire tracks left hours ago by Joe and the doctor, but now he was forced to hobble to the side of the road, trying his best not to slip while preventing his cast from getting any wetter with the slush. He raised his gun, knowing that the intruder would be driving slowly enough to notice the disturbance Frank had left in the snow.
The car rolled to a stop just before Frank’s footprints, and the headlights were switched off. Joe opened the door. “You look like shit.”
Frank made a show of putting his gun away and gave Joe his most sociable smile. “May I have a ride?” he asked, not bothering to come closer until Joe answered. He very well may have turned him down after Frank had threatened to shoot him.
“I see that the house is on fire.”
He glanced back, as if he hadn’t realized. The house was glowing with flames, heavy black smoke rising above the trees. He could imagine the warmth, although he certainly did not feel it as the snow began falling again.
Joe shook his head. “Get in.”
Frank headed to the driver’s side door and waited for Joe to get out. He would have preferred an automatic transmission considering the state of his foot, but if he was willing to drive the doctor’s Saab he could settle for a stick shift. “I’ll drop you off at your hotel.”
“No, I’ll drop you off at the train station.”
Frank blinked, not accustomed to having his handler, much less his former substitute handler, refuse a reasonable request. “Joe, I need a car.”
“You’re not in any condition to be driving.”
“Are you?”
“That’s beside the point,” he laughed. “Where’s your car?”
No, not his car. Vincent’s car. He looked back to the house, as if there were any possibility of remedying the situation now. He sighed heavily and slumped into the passenger’s seat. Vincent would not be pleased.
Joe handed him a cup of coffee and slowly reversed down the road until he reached the turnaround. “What happened to all your stuff?”
He shrugged and sipped his coffee in silence. It was Bella’s stuff. He still had his bookends.
“Do you want to take a night off? I can check you into a hotel if you’d like to try to get some sleep.”
“No.”
“If you insist,” Joe said, and he pulled into the parking lot of the train station. “Here.” He grabbed a book from the backseat. “For the train ride.”
He glowered contemptuously at the cover of some repugnant trash novel, clearly written about snipers if the crosshair on the front was any indication. He shifted his glare upon Joe, debating whether it was worth upsetting Vincent to beat the man to death with a paperback. Likely not, considering that Frank had already lit Vincent’s car on fire. “You must be joking.”
“Don’t like trains, huh?”
Frank turned his face away with disdain, having refused to even touch the book. He’d been referring to Joe’s choice of reading material as much as the unacceptable mode of transportation, and he would honestly cause Joe irreparable harm if he had looked at him or the novel a moment longer.
“There you go!” Joe exclaimed, and pointed across the parking lot. “A BMW. You like those, don’t you? At this hour, it probably belongs to an employee. I’m sure you’ll have some time before it’s reported missing.”
Frank got out of the car, prepared to walk back to France just to have Joe out of his sight.
Joe called after him, “Do you want me to hotwire it for you?”
“No.”
“Okay, then. Call me when you want to get to work. Sooner rather tha
n later would be preferable, considering...”
He paused, turning around with his fists clenched. “Excuse me?”
“Talk to your husband.” Joe flashed him a shit-eating grin. “And you may want to put some air in that back tire. It looks pretty low.” Then he drove away, leaving Frank standing in two feet of snow just like he’d found him.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Waiting on Charlie had always been just that. It had taken him ages to fulfill Frank’s demands. Even though Frank was a bit high maintenance, it really shouldn’t have taken two days to get a security code, or the six days it once took Charlie to get blueprints to a building that Frank didn’t even need anymore by the time he got them.
Joe called me back in three hours. It was a good thing I was waiting by the phone, or really, the phone was waiting by me. I nearly dropped it in the bathtub I was so eager to answer it. “Safe and basically sound. He’s on his way home.”
“Thanks, Joe,” I said, thoroughly impressed and a little emotionally overcome. Frank was okay! He was coming home. He was basically—“Wait, is basically sound good or bad?”
“He’ll be fine,” Joe chuckled. “He’s just having a bad day.”
I smiled to myself and pulled the plug with my toes. I should probably tidy things up a bit if Frank was on his way. Or at least start thinking of how to explain away the messes I’d made. “Having a handler is awesome!”
“It does have its advantages.”
I stopped the plug. “Does this mean I owe you money?” I asked. Frank was always giving Charlie money.
“I get paid when you get paid.”
“Cool.” We’d be getting paid plenty with the contents of that book. “So you’re basically just supposed to give me whatever I ask for?”
“Don’t get carried away.”
“What if I need it for a job?”
“Well then you’ll get it,” he said.
I thought for a moment about Frank’s fleet of cars. Then I thought bigger. “A jet?”
“No.”
“Rocket launcher?”
He paused. “Maybe.” Silva was definitely on to something with that journal business. I’d have to start keeping a list. “Listen, you’re an adult so I’m going to talk to you like one.”
“Finally!” I shouted. “Sorry.”
Joe cleared his throat, as if he was testing that he could still hear himself properly after my outburst. “I know that Frank doesn’t trust me completely. He probably never will. And I wouldn’t presume that you trust me yet either—”
“A rocket launcher would help,” I interrupted.
He laughed. “I’m being serious, Vincent.”
“And I’m not?”
“All right, child,” he teased.
“Hey!”
“I’m going to need that journal. We can meet somewhere neutral, you don’t have to give me your address, but I need to see what we’re up against timing wise. Silva had a very good reputation, and if you want to keep working beyond that list, we have to do everything we can to maintain that reputation.”
I couldn’t imagine Charlie having anywhere near a good reputation, but he’d had no problems keeping Frank busy. “Okay,” I said hesitantly. For all I knew I was doing everything completely wrong with the assassin/handler relationship. “I’ll have Frank arrange it. I never dealt with Charlie, apart from the whole break in gone bad thing and then the whole forced prostitution thing, so I’m not sure how it's all supposed to work.”
Joe didn’t miss a beat despite the questionable activities in my rant. “You’re doing fine,” he said kindly. “Frank can pick the place. We know he likes things to be just so.”
Now it was my turn to laugh.
“There’s something else. Malkolm will be looking for you. All of you. I’m going to talk to some contacts I have, other handlers and whatnot, and get whatever information I can. But I think Frank will agree with me on this, nothing is going to be done until Malkolm is taken care of.”
“What if we can’t find him?” I asked.
“You won’t have to find him, Vincent. He’ll find you.”
Chapter Seventy
Frank refused to admit that Joe had been right. He wouldn’t even acknowledge the truth of the matter when the car suddenly pulled to the left and he smelled the unmistakable odor of burning rubber after that low back tire blew out. He was so close. Just a little longer. But right as the unpaved turnoff that led to their property was in sight, the metal of the wheel started to spark and Frank knew it would get him no farther. It was a mile to the house. He did not have the energy to push the car away from the turnoff, but he removed the plates and hid the pathway with some bushes, leaving the car there.
He could have called Vincent, had him send Bella out to get him in her car. He would have even settled for V to come out himself and drag him back to the house. But no, he had left his cell phone charger at home, and his phone had been dead since he and Bella entered the Czech Republic a week ago.
Frank limped through the darkness over the rutted ground, the distance never seeming so far. He was cold and bone weary, barely able to stand, his foot swollen inside the makeshift cast. He leaned against a tree to steady himself and closed his eyes, attempting to convince his body that the brief rest was sufficient to regain his strength. When Frank opened his eyes, Hugo was sitting at his feet with his tail wagging, having never made a sound. The rustling in the distance was Charlie, and a more welcome sight as she came running toward him: Vincent. With a rifle.
Vincent had always had a terrible habit of pointing guns at Frank. The first time Frank gave him a gun it was almost immediately pointed his way, and he had a scar on his arm from teaching Vincent to shoot. Rather than receive further injuries at the hands of his protégé, or spend the majority of V’s lesson time punishing him, they decided as a precaution that Vincent’s first round should always be blank. He would not be in danger because Frank would be at his side, and hopefully some day V would learn to stop pointing his weapon where it ought not to be pointed. Little did they know that blank round would come to save Vincent’s life, when Frank’s brother fired it at Vincent’s head. Had it been a live round, neither of them would be there today.
“Give me one good reason not to shoot you where you stand,” V said.
Frank assumed correctly that the gun was quite loaded this time. “I have none.”
“Then I’ll aim for your heart.”
“You always have.” It utterly destroyed Frank to look at him. It hurt to breathe the same air. From the moment he set eyes on Vincent, he had known there would never be anyone else. There couldn’t possibly be.
Vincent lowered the rifle. Slowly.
“How is everyone?” Frank asked, although he was not certain that he could handle the answer in his current state.
“I beat Alan up. Gideon says he’s gonna sue us.”
Frank sighed, knowing that Vincent tended to start with good news. “Where did this happen?”
“Here. He came to give Casey his sketchbook. He found it under the counter at his gallery.”
Where the sketchbook wound up was of little consequence; it was where it had been, and in whose hands that concerned Frank. “I told Alan to stay away from the gallery. And Paris altogether.”
“Does that mean I’m forgiven,” Vincent suggested more than asked. Frank considered it for a moment and nodded, but Vincent was nowhere near finished. “Gideon and Maggie went home.”
Frank opened his mouth to speak, but instead simply closed his eyes again and held his head for several minutes. “You told them?”
“It slipped,” Vincent said nonchalantly. “Casey and Deaglan got into a fight.”
He would have felt something if Casey were hurt. He was not so far gone that something like this could have got by him. Even when the kid got his wisdom teeth removed Frank had sensed that something was amiss. “Physically?”
“If you could call it that.”
For once Vincent was no
t being forthcoming with information. “Is he okay?” Frank practically pleaded. Casey was not a fighter. He rarely even raised his voice, which was one of the things Frank liked best about him.
“He has a black eye. Or an ebony, cobalt, mauve and magenta eye. He thinks it’s pretty.”
“And Deaglan?” If he were smart, he would be back in Ireland. Hiding. But nobody ever accused Deaglan of being intelligent.
“Oh, he’s still here.” Vincent smiled at the first positive news he’d delivered that evening, and finally came to him, allowing himself to be embraced.
Frank shuddered at his touch, nearly collapsed into his arms and holding him tightly to keep from falling to Vincent’s feet. He didn’t even mind when Vincent placed his bitterly cold hands under his shirt, chilling him to the bone. He refused to let go of him, and they stood in silence in each other’s arms until they were both shivering with the cold. “Mon Dieu, I’ve missed you.”
“What are you doing out here? Where’s my car?”
“Ran out of gas,” he said, which was technically the truth.
“Head back to the house. I can take care of it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Coffee’s on the counter.” Vincent stood on his toes to kiss him and headed into the woods. Frank could not help but watch him walk away. The glorious splendor of Vincent’s ass gave him just enough energy to make it back to the house with Hugo at his side. Charlie went with V. She was a good dog.
The house was unsettlingly quiet, the silence made all the more disturbing with Kiki’s mysterious absence. Frank checked the refrigerator. It was mostly empty, but not quite so empty that Vincent would have sacrificed Frank’s dog for food. Deaglan would’ve been the first to go at any rate, and although Vincent hadn’t specified in what context the ill-fated Irishman was still there, it was unlikely that he would’ve resorted to cannibalism quite so early.
Les Recidivists (Chance Assassin Book 2) Page 35
