The Assistant's Secret

by Emerald O'Brien

It looked like she broke up with him the day the glass shattered in the kitchen. He ran after her, but she’s been coming after him ever since with all the phone calls.

  She won’t let him go.

  “She hung up on me,” Tackman says, and I turn around, facing the kitchen sliding door, ready to start walking.

  “Maybe that’s better,” Danes says, “and thanks for telling her to stop. It’s getting too much, you know? She’s harassing me.”

  “It’s not going to stop,” Tackman says. “Not until it’s done.”

  “And when will that be? When are we finally done with them?”

  A long pause hangs in the air.

  “Tonight,” Tackman says. “We’ll take them out tonight.”

  Take them out?

  A phone rings in the study. “It’s her again,” Danes says.

  “Don’t answer.” Tackman’s voice gets quieter, further away.

  “You want me to do it?” Danes asks. “You got the gun?”

  “No. I started all this. I kept them here. I’m done with him. She needs to stop asking about him, and this is the only way. I’ll finish it myself.”

  Finish it… the hostage.

  He’s going to kill the hostage.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The Hostage

  She needs to stop asking about him?

  Cami knows about the hostage too.

  I step away from the sliding metal study door and turn to the hidden white one.

  I have the key. I can set him free, but if I get caught, it’s over for me.

  Can I walk away knowing I left a man to die here? Is that what Cami’s been so upset about?

  Does she know Tackman better than me, so well she knows what he’s capable of? Does she see him for the wolf he is, and has she been trying to free the hostage all along?

  A bad business dealing is how he described it to me, but what justifies this? What justifies their murders?

  I can’t get the picture of Alexander’s brother’s arm out of my mind, and if I leave now, I’ll never forget Alexander, begging me for help, to see his family again.

  I step up to the door and flash the card in front of it. It clicks open, and I step inside, shoving the card in my purse. The smell hits me, fear and sweat, overpowering. Alexander’s still tied to the chair and gagged. I take the gag off his mouth and pick at the knots. “You’ll turn left, go straight out the sliding door, stay close to the pool, and disappear in the woods.”

  “Thank you,” he huffs. “I’m so weak. I don’t know if I can get far.”

  I finish untying one side of him as he works toward the other. If they come in right now, we’re both dead.

  “You have to run. You’ll have to run; there’s no other choice.”

  He works with me to untie one leg, and I leave him to do the rest as I turn back to the door.

  “Thank you,” he wheezes. “Bless you.”

  “This is it, your only shot.” I peek through the door, and a light shines from the study onto the tile foyer floor. They’ve left the study. Where are they? I close the door again and turn back to Alexander.

  “I won’t make it. I’m so weak.”

  I dig through my purse and find my keys. I need my car, but he might need it more.

  “You can use my car,” I tell him. As he struggles to stand using the back of the chair, I hold out the keys. “Small black car out front. I’ll—I’ll say you took them from me.”

  “My brother,” he wheezes, standing on his own and taking the key. “Do you know where Christopher is?”

  “I don’t think he’s here. You have to go now.”

  “I can’t leave my brother.” He frowns and rubs his eyes. “I can’t.”

  “You’re going to get caught.” I turn back to the door.

  Tackman and Danes are arguing about something, walking out into the foyer from the sitting room. I shut the door and take a step back. “They’re out there now. We’ll have to do this differently. You’ll have to pretend I’m your hostage to get out. We’ll just get to the car, and then you go on your own, okay?”

  “I won’t leave my brother.”

  He’s gripping the keys tight. “Your brother,” my voice shakes, “he might not have made it.”

  Fear sears through his eyes. No anger. Rage.

  “You have to get out, or they’ll do the same to you,” I hiss. “You understand the plan?”

  He nods and grabs my arm. “I don’t have a weapon.”

  The gun.

  No. I can’t. He could hurt them—hurt Tackman.

  I don’t want anybody hurt.

  I dig through my purse, and my metal nail file shines in the overhead light. I grab it and present it to him.

  “This will have to work,” I tell him, and he pulls me close in front of him and presses it against my neck. “Not too hard.”

  He eases up and limps to the door with me. “Open it,” he whispers. “Let’s do this.”

  I open the door, and he pushes me through, hobbling toward the front door. I can’t see Tackman and Danes anywhere. We might have a shot at escaping.

  “What the hell?” Danes shouts from the kitchen.

  The man swivels around, holding me between him and Danes as Danes barrels down the hallway, reaching for something in his back pocket with Tackman behind him.

  “Stop, or I’ll stab her neck,” he says, shouting in my ear.

  “Please,” I whimper, more to them than him, but they don’t need to know that.

  Danes slows down as Tackman pushes past him into the foyer where he stops, his eyes open wide, taking in the scene.

  We’re several steps from the door, and I keep backing up into him toward it. Danes pulls his gun, and the man pushes the pointed end of the metal nail file into my neck too hard. He’s doing whatever he must do to get out, like a caged animal.

  “Ahh,” I yell, “stop!”

  “Stop!” Tackman shouts at Danes.

  “Drop your weapon,” Alexander says, and Danes shakes his head, only stopping as he squints at me.

  Something warm trickles down my neck. He made me bleed.

  “Where’s my brother?” he shouts. “Go get my brother.”

  Tackman and Danes turn to each other and stare back at him, still wide-eyed. When they tell him, he’s going to hurt me again.

  “Please stop,” I whisper to him. “You’re hurting me.”

  “Get his brother,” Tackman shouts. “Get him now.”

  It’s a trick. A way to stall.

  Danes slides past us, down the hallway the man’s brother originally came from. Maybe where they both originally were.

  “Josie, you’re going to be okay.” Tackman finally seems to relax and regain the control he’s always had over a room. “Just relax.”

  I whistle out a quick breath and repeat, nodding.

  “I told you you’d never get away with this,” Alexander tells him. “When Ari finds out about this, about what you did to us…” He laughs. “You better still have the guns and coke, or he’ll kill you and every person you love.”

  “I don’t think so.” Tackman widens his gait. “In fact, there’s not a worry in my mind about it.”

  “You’re crazy, Tackman.”

  A shadow creeps along the floor from the hallway, and the man I saw try to escape walks out, Danes following, holding his hands by the rope behind his back, his arm of black and white tattoos clear in the light of the foyer.

  “Chris,” Alexander shouts.

  “Awwll,” his brother lets out a muffled shout.

  How? How is he still alive? Wasn’t he dead in that tarp?

  Yes.

  Tackman admitted he killed him.

  “Untie him,” Alexander says.

  Danes shakes his head. “You let her go, and then you can have him.”

  There’s not a cut on the other man that I can see. There was so much blood on his arms. On his black and white tattoos. This makes no sense.

  Unless it was another man—one
with similar tattoos.

  “I call the shots here.” Alexander jabs the nail file into my cut.

  I shriek in pain and fear.

  How far will he go?

  “This is my house.” Tackman jabs his finger into his puffed-out chest. “And as guests, you’ll go by my rules. We’ll do a tradeoff.”

  He shakes his head behind me. “No trade off. You’ve got guns. We don’t. You give me my brother, and I let her live.” He scoffs. “If you don’t have Ari’s drugs and guns, he’ll just come back and kill her anyway.”

  Tackman took someone else's stuff?

  Why? Who’s Ari?

  “You’re going to let her go.” Tackman glares at him. “And then you’re going to go crawl back into whatever hole you came from, and I’ll never see your face again. I’m giving you the chance to leave with your brother. Give her over, and you can go. I won’t offer it again.”

  “Now why would we be scared of you? You never met Ari?”

  “Sure I have.” Tackman lifts his bottom lip, and a glimmer shines from his eyes. “I killed him.”

  The man behind me goes still, and the other brother shouts from behind his gag.

  Is Ari the man who left in a tarp? Their boss?

  “You couldn’t,” Alexander spits.

  “You want to threaten me with a man who’s a drug-dealing prick, wife-beating coward, ghost long gone? How could I be afraid of a dead man? How about you’ll come back yourself to get revenge on me? Wanna try that one on for size?”

  Alexander pulls me toward the door, and I take a step back with him as Tackman’s lip twitches.

  “Didn’t think so. Let her go, and we’ll send you on your way with your brother.”

  He saws at the cut on my neck, and I scream in pain, scratching my nails into his arms as hot tears pour from my eyes. The searing pain burns through me.

  What have I done?

  “Let him go!” Tackman shouts and turns to Danes.

  I stifle my cries as Tackman and Danes shout “yes” and “no” back and forth at each other.

  Why did I set him free? Why didn’t Tackman tell me they weren’t his drugs and guns? But he did. I didn’t believe him. Why did he let me think it was the hostage who died?

  This is my fault. I brought this on myself.

  Danes pushes Christopher toward us, his hands still tied, mouth still gagged.

  “Untie him,” Alexander huffs in my ear, his hot breath on my cut, burning it again.

  Every small movement burns as I reach out for his brothers’ hands and untie the rope.

  “You have him.” Danes steps forward. “Let her go.”

  Christopher steps past us and mutters to Alexander, “Get their gun.” He opens the door behind us, and I remember the gun in my purse again.

  “Give me your guns,” Alexander says. “Your guns and we let her go and leave.”

  “No way,” Danes says, but Tackman nods. “They’ll kill us.”

  Tackman stares Alexander down. “I don’t have one on me, but Danes is going to give you his gun now.” He shoots Danes a piercing stare, and his eyes dart from me back to him.

  From my neck back to him.

  It’s bad. The pain has kept my mind off the constant trickle of blood.

  Danes grabs his gun from the floor and turns it around, holding the barrel as he extends his arm toward Alexander. Christopher steps back in, sliding by us, and reaches for the gun.

  “No,” I whisper.

  They could shoot both Tackman and Danes dead. Then me.

  “It’s okay.” Tackman catches my eye and glances at my purse and back.

  I need to get him the gun. My fingers fumble on the top flap of my purse, shaking from adrenaline and exhaustion as the blood drains from my neck.

  Christopher takes a step toward Danes again as my fingers find the cold metal of the gun, and Alexander pokes the file into a fresh patch of my skin until I cry out. “Don’t try anything,” he sneers.

  “Okay,” Danes whispers, and I realize he was talking to him.

  Danes takes a step closer to Christopher, and I can’t tell if he’s watching me pull the gun from my purse, but Tackman is. He keeps his eyes on mine and gives a little nod.

  I take it out and toss it to him. He catches it, and I exhale as jagged metal slices into my neck.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Hear No Evil

  I release an anguished scream as Tackman clicks the safety off and Danes twirls the gun in his hand around against his palm and pulls the trigger right beside me.

  The burst of noise and pain overcomes me, the sounds vibrating internally as the echo from the gunshot rings in my ears and a throbbing pain surges through my body. I reach for my neck and fall forward, opening my eyes in sheer panic as Tackman steps forward and catches me with one arm, then squeezes the trigger of the gun in his other hand.

  A muffled thump follows, and he pulls me tight as I wrap my arms around him and push my neck against his arm until I feel my blood soaking into his shirt as I cry into his chest from the pain and terror.

  Tackman’s saying something. Talking to me?

  I can only hear through muffled vibrations, and I pull away, looking up at him.

  “...here,” he says, grabbing my hand and pressing it against my neck. “Keep it here.”

  I press both hands against my neck as he lets me go, brushing past me, and I spin around. Christopher is slumped against the open door, his eyes open and blood running from the bullet wound in the middle of his head. Danes stands over Alexander, who’s lying on the floor, clutching his chest and wheezing.

  Tackman walks over to Alexander, stopping a step away, and both men stare down at him. He lifts his arm, aims his gun at Alexander, and shoots him. I squeeze my eyes shut too late, the image of his head bouncing against the floor stuck in my mind.

  The pain edges back into focus, and so do their voices.

  “Call Carver,” Tackman says, “...clean up.”

  Danes nods and steps toward the door.

  “No,” I scream and reach out, “stop!”

  When they both turn to me, I press both hands against my neck again. “The video camera outside,” I say, my own voice unfamiliar. “It covers the front door.”

  Tackman nods to Danes. “Drag him in by his feet. Don’t let the cameras see you.” He turns back to me as a cell phone rings. My cell phone.

  “Will security be on their way?” he asks me.

  “That’s probably them calling.” I point to my purse behind him, by Alexander’s knee. “I’m still the contact on the file. Cathrine hasn’t had time to change it. Grab it for me.”

  “We should take her to the hospital.” Danes stares at my neck as his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat.

  Tackman ignores my cell phone and walks over to me, gliding his finger across my jaw and tipping it back ever so lightly. I take my hands off my wound, exposing it to him, offering myself to the wolf. He studies my neck as I close my eyes.

  I don’t want to know how bad it is. I don’t want to see him frightened ever again like he was when he was coming down that hallway behind Danes when Alexander had me.

  I caused all of this, and he doesn’t even know.

  Something soft presses into my neck, and I open my eyes as Tackman tucks his dress shirt in a ball against it.

  “You’re going to be okay.” He presses his shirt against me as my cell phone rings again. “I’m so sorry, Josie,” he whispers in my ear.

  I shake my head, tears in my eyes, and whisper, “My phone. I have to stop them from coming.”

  He steps back and turns around, picking up my purse as Danes presses his cell phone to his ear.

  “Carver,” he says, “get here now... Yeah, the brothers.” He walks into the sitting room. “Yeah, we need a clean-up.”

  Tackman hands me my purse and turns back around, evaluating the bodies as I grab my phone and answer it.

  “Josephine Oliver,” I say with such control, I scare myself.


  Tackman and Danes protected me. I’ll protect them.

  “This is Locke Industries dispatch. We’re contacting the case manager of the Tackman residence. We’ve got a potential security breach—”

  “False alarm.” I clear my throat and wince. “No need to dispatch security.”

  “Are you sure, Ms. Oliver? We always advise a visit from our security team, and the client usually appreciates when we go that extra mile. Even for a false alarm.”

  Tackman turns around, left with just his tank top as I press his dress shirt against my neck, a comfort through the pain, and gives me a nod.

  He’s everything I thought he was, all at once, good and bad, killer and hero.

  A wolf through and through, but he wants to be my wolf.

  I nod back. “I’m sure. No cause for concern. I’ve confirmed with the client.”

  “Okay, Ms. Oliver. Have yourself a good night.”

  I end the call and my neck throbs as I scroll through seven missed texts, all from Maggie.

  We’re leaving now.

  Be careful.

  I wish you could tell me what’s going on.

  We’re stopping for gas, and I’m worried about you. If you could just call me, please?

  Jo?

  We need you.

  We’re here. CALL ME.

  “I have to call my sister,” I whisper. “She’s worried about me.”

  Tackman nods and joins Danes in the sitting room as I tap Maggie’s name and clear my throat, wincing as it rings in my ear.

  “Jo,” she hisses. “What’s happening? Tell me you’re on your way.”

  “I’m glad you got there safe,” I say in a whisper, hoping it’ll help hide the pain in my voice. “Everything’s going to be okay. I’ll be joining you guys, but not for another day or two, okay?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I promise, I’ll tell you.” Tackman walks back into the room, stops before the puddle of blood on the floor, and catches my eye. “I’m safe now. We’re really going to be okay.”

  “Just come as soon as you can.”

  “I will,” I whisper as Tackman joins my side. “I have to go. Just a day or two. I promise.”

  I end the call, toss the phone back in my purse and let it drop to the floor where I feel like I might go as my legs wobble and my energy escapes me. Danes’ voice is soft in the background somewhere, still on the phone.