by Helena Maeve
Arthur tried to force out a quip, but somewhere along the way he’d lost track of how words worked. He rolled onto his back, battered knee bent halfway to his chest.
The man regarded him with indifference.
Scuffed soles scraping cement, Jules stepped into his field of vision. “Yeah,” she drawled. “You’re looking at it.”
Her pistol flashed into view, but Arthur didn’t get his hopes up. It was aimed all wrong, the butt of the gun descending too fast on his temple to mean more than good night.
Chapter Two
The man introduced himself as Klaus.
Pistol-whipped and dizzy with hunger, Arthur didn’t care to hear it at first. He didn’t bother asking him to repeat it. He was far more preoccupied with asking—or rather, shouting—for the spook to turn off the icy shower spray.
He did, if a touch sluggishly.
“Was that necessary?” Arthur snarled, shivering in his wet shirt and wet jeans, water dripping from his hair into his eyes.
“You were unconscious for a long time. I was concerned.”
“So you decided to give me a bath?” Arthur caught a glimpse of himself in the grimy bathroom mirror.
He looked like a hobo caught in a storm. The dark circles under his bloodshot eyes might have made him seem brooding and intense if it wasn’t for the split lip or the goose egg blooming high on his brow.
The starburst scar on the back of his useless, crippled hand flashed into view as he made to grip the sides of the mildewed tub and haul himself out.
“Here’s hoping I come out of this with pneumonia. Save us both the trouble of a trip to Cairo.”
“There is a change of clothes.”
“Why bother?” Arthur sneered, determined to avoid his reflection’s sullen puppy eyes. He’d always looked too young, too fragile for this job. Too pretty to be taken seriously. “Jules’ll just get blood on those, too.”
Klaus shook his head. “Jules has done her part.”
“She left without saying goodbye?” Clothes drenched, ears water-logged, Arthur couldn’t resist affecting a moue of regret. “But we were getting on so well.”
Jules had been easy to rile up. True, she only ever used violence when provoked, but she could always starve or gag Arthur when he got on her nerves—which was often. Klaus was carved of far less responsive material, his face as blank as a block of marble.
He didn’t rise to the bait.
“Can I at least have some privacy?” Arthur asked.
“No.”
“Kinky.”
Klaus blew out a breath through his nose. “Does your head hurt?”
Why, so you can hit me again until it does? Arthur peeled off his sodden shirt. “No.”
“I have ibuprofen. If you change your mind.”
Arthur smirked, the mirror reporting a less than handsome quirk of the mouth and the narrowing of blue eyes.
“Oh, I see… You’re gonna make me work for it. That what gets you off? Playing jailer? I can work with that.” Arthur lowered the zipper on his sodden jeans one metal tooth at the time. “How’s that? Like what you see?”
“You prefer women,” Klaus said with the certitude of a man who knew his métier.
“What?”
“Improbably, your GCHQ file suggests that you’re a one on the Kinsey scale. You prefer women,” Klaus repeated.
“You looked me up,” Arthur temporized, neither a yes nor a no. What kind of transporter rooted through Section personnel files before he picked up a package?
The kind that’s more than he appears?
A hollow opened in the pit of Arthur’s stomach. “What did you say your name was?”
“Klaus.”
“Klaus what?”
His new handler smiled thinly. “Tressing.”
Arthur balked. He nearly retreated a step before recalling that he was trapped in this loft, that he hadn’t seen outside once in four months. He wouldn’t know where to go even if he somehow made it out of his current prison, to say nothing of outrunning a man like Klaus.
No wonder he hadn’t offered his full name from the get-go.
“You have quite the reputation,” Arthur quipped in a last ditch attempt at chiseling alarm out of his voice. It didn’t do much good.
“What I have,” Klaus said, rising, “is a high body count. If you don’t wish to become part of that legend, I would suggest that you do not prevaricate.” He towered over Arthur, a colossus of a man tucked into a painfully tight tweed jacket and corduroy beige pants.
Arthur held his gaze and nudged his jeans past his hips. See? Cooperating. The denim was far too stiff with damp to slide all the way down his thighs. It took a little kicking and wriggling before he was nude under Klaus’ strangely vacant eyes, but Arthur didn’t shy from the task at hand.
Look if you want to. Creep.
Naked or not, Arthur was still at his mercy, still trapped.
For now.
He plucked at the change of clothes he’d been offered without hurrying. “You couldn’t find anything more conspicuous?”
“Put them on,” Klaus told him curtly.
“You’ll have to help. I’m disabled, see?” Arthur held up his injured hand, the fingers bent into a claw, the flesh curled and shiny like a wax tattoo. It looked worse than it felt. Ironically, his mangled hand was by far easier to cope with than his supposedly healing knee.
“There are no buttons.”
Arthur sighed. “Please?”
He’d spent the better part of the last six months before his capture pretending to be nice and wholesome to gain trust at Section, and he could still tap that well at a moment’s notice. But his supply of niceness was somewhat more finite these days. Wholesome hadn’t earned him much in the way of mercy when he’d woken up in hospital, his cyanide tooth gone.
He could already tell that Klaus was cut from the same as the blank-faced interrogators he used to let into the Cottage. The prisoners there didn’t know how good they had it, living on the English coast, breathing in clean air and enjoying locally sourced produce.
So they got a few electroshocks, a little waterboarding with their farm-raised chicken. So what? That didn’t justify all their moping.
Arthur would have liked to see them cope with sleeping in a chair, just three hours at a time, for months on end, with swallowing whatever junk their handler allowed them. Manuel Sosa, the man he’d been sent to kill, the turncoat for whom Arthur had infiltrated Section in the first place, had grumbled when Arthur wouldn’t let him into the garden with an ankle monitor.
He’d die out here. Just lie down and expire. He’s weak.
They all were—even Jules, who took her orders from some self-styled Messiah. Even Klaus, who looked over his shoulder while Arthur shaved with a blade so blunt he doubted it could cut skin if he tried to use it for such a nefarious purpose. It was a slow process shearing off his stubble. Arthur didn’t quite understand why he bothered.
“Did this mysterious songbird tell you to have me washed and shaved, and brought to his tent? Is that why we’re headed to Cairo?”
“You missed a spot,” was all the answer Klaus would give him.
Arthur sighed. Standing didn’t work so well for him. He tired easily, even if his knee was technically able to hold him upright.
It pained him to reveal weakness, but with one perfunctory last effort, he surrendered the razor and sat heavily on the closed toilet lid. He rubbed his knee, wincing.
Klaus’ shadow slanted over the floor.
“Just give me a sec. I’m not prevari—”
“Tilt your chin up.”
“What?” Arthur snapped up his head before he could think better of it. Panic gripped him by the throat when Klaus sunk fingers into his too-long hair and held him still. It wasn’t a brutal grip, but there was strength in those fingers.
A killer’s hand. No surprise there.
The disposable razor gleamed in the yellow lamplight, a few wispy blond hairs still clinging t
o the blade.
“All this work just to slit my throat?”
“Quiet.” Klaus didn’t need to raise his voice. He was a big guy. He could probably get away with whispering and the world itself would lower the volume to accommodate him.
He scraped the razor gingerly along the curve of Arthur’s chin, deftly shaving off the rest of his stubble, then wiped the blade clean. “All done.”
“Don’t tell me you moonlight as a barber,” Arthur taunted.
His pulse thumped violently in his ears. He could have done without the reminder that his life was in a stranger’s hands—a taciturn, tight-lipped stranger, at that, who flicked a hand to gesture Arthur out of the bathroom when he could have asked him to get a move on.
The loft seemed strangely empty without Jules watching Sturm der Liebe at all hours, the vast, austere space void of the usual chatter.
Arthur cast one last glance over the mismatched furniture and bare floors, the futon tucked in the corner where Jules used to sleep—even the chair he’d sat in day in, day out for weeks. The gag lay on the floor beside it, dislodged in the struggle that had earned him his latest array of bruises.
You should see the other guy. Gal.
Jules herself was nowhere to be found. She must have taken off as soon as Klaus had arrived, her duty finished at long last, if not quite as therapeutically as she might have liked.
The metal sliding door groaned open at Klaus’ tug. Arthur glanced to the darkened stairwell beyond. His heart hammered somewhere in the region of his throat.
“Ready?” Klaus asked.
Would you care if I wasn’t? Arthur thrust out his chin and sucked up the angry throbbing in his leg.
After the first step, it was almost easy to walk out of his prison.
Chapter Three
Halfway down the hall, the back of Klaus’ hand struck the center of his chest.
“What?”
“Lift’s moving.”
The grinding of gears and pulleys reached Arthur as though from far away. Sound didn’t easily penetrate the metal sliding door of the loft and when Jules wanted him ignorant of her calls, she used noise-canceling headphones to deafen him to her chatter.
Shards of lights spilled over the hallway as the cabin ascended.
“Any chance Robin sent reinforcements?” he guessed.
“Not likely. Back inside.”
“What—?” But there was no time for arguments.
Klaus was already pushing him, his footsteps silent on the uncarpeted cement floors. Every muscle in his body tensing, Arthur hobbled back into his cage and strained his ears. If MI6 had his number, then there would be no getting out of here.
If Klaus had turned him in, his best bet was to make for the window and take the quick way down.
“No fire escape,” he bit out as Klaus stalked away from him. The slow crawl of the elevator cut off with a sudden lurching heave. An echo traveled into the loft as the grille was gently nudged upward.
Klaus turned on his heel and pressed a fingertip to his lips.
Helpful. Perhaps he thought Arthur would shout for his non-existent neighbors.
A soft tread advanced into the room. Arthur had his back to the door. Perspiration slicked his nape as he resisted the urge to spin around. Section operatives paying house-calls would want him alive, wouldn’t they?
If only Jules had left her pistol behind, at least he’d have a chance at going out swinging.
“Arthur.”
He recognized the gravelly consonants in that sweetly accented voice almost at once. Months spent undercover in Dorset couldn’t familiarize him with Section field agents when most of his company was made up of their Section prisoners or the odd no-name underling with zero hope of promotion.
“Tomaso,” he acknowledged, digging his knuckles into the wooden table. “Been a long time.”
Fifty-eight weeks, to be utterly precise. But Arthur wasn’t supposed to be counting. He was a lone wolf—self-sufficient, independent, loyal only to his own interests.
He didn’t do remorse.
“You stole my client in Taipei,” Tomaso observed.
“Oh, please. I was just your arm candy.”
Nineteen and floating on a cloud of champagne and hors d’oeuvres, serenaded by the sound of a live jazz band, dizzy with the glitz and glamor of a party teeming with billionaires. It had been only too easy to get close to the UK ambassador. Two bullets and Britain had a new pretender in line for the PM’s seat.
Tomaso snorted with disbelief. “More like Cinderella at the ball. Never did find your glass slipper, though.”
“All’s fair in love and wet-work…isn’t that what you used to say?” At the very least, there was little in the way of honor among hit men. Arthur had always known as much.
“That was before I knew you were such a little shit.”
A touch of fondness in Tomaso’s voice nearly crippled Arthur where he stood. He wondered dimly if Klaus had fled.
Tomaso gave a low sigh. “Sorry it had to be me, man.”
“It’s the job.”
“Yeah…”
The soft click of the safety told Arthur that his hourglass had only a few grains of sand left. He’d been a fool to think there was some way out.
“What’re you using?” he wondered, trying to mask the tremor in his voice. Conversation could buy him time. He scanned the table, the corners of the room as of yet not lost to shadow.
Jules had left chopsticks in her takeout carton. One might make for a decent projectile, if he could reach it before Tomaso squeezed the trigger. Doubtful.
“Beretta A1.”
“Laser sight?
“And all the trimmings.”
Arthur snickered. “Damn. I must be important if you brought the whole arsenal… How much?” Contracts ran the gamut from a few thousand to six or seven digits. The more experienced the mercenary, the higher the fee.
Tomaso was only a couple of years older than Arthur. They’d come into the business around the same time and knew each other well. Arthur’s former employers had evidently done their homework.
“Don’t be morbid.” Tomaso sighed.
“Hey, it’s not every day you get to find out how much your head’s worth. At least tell me if it’s enough to retire on,” Arthur wheedled.
“More than enough.”
“Damn…”
Silence stretched between them. Klaus, if he was still in the loft, might as well have been a ghost surveying the affairs of the living. It occurred to Arthur that he wasn’t going to intervene.
It was one thing to be tasked with transporting a troublesome, slightly dented package, and another to engage in a skirmish on his behalf. Like Tomaso, Klaus had paid his dues. He didn’t need this hassle.
Arthur pressed his palms into the table. He wasn’t afraid.
He wasn’t.
“You know how this goes,” Tomaso said. “I need visual confirmation before I can take you out.”
“I know. Just…give me a second.”
“I’ll make it quick.”
Arthur smothered a chuckle. “Right between the eyes, huh?”
“I promise you won’t feel a thing.”
“You said that before.” Flirting was useless. Tomaso was a true professional. He wouldn’t choose Arthur over six or seven zeroes in his bank account out of fondness for him.
“Different days.”
“Yeah…” Arthur cracked his knuckles against the wood grain and spun slowly on his heel. He saw the silver barrel of the pistol before he saw the hand that held it, the man to whom it belonged.
Tomaso was blond and tall, his blue-green eyes slanting down at the corners where crow’s feet had deepened since the last time they stood face to face. A grimace twisted his beautiful mouth.
“It’s nothing personal, man.”
Arthur sucked in a breath. Nothing personal. Just business.
Black hands emerged from the shadows on either side of Tomaso. Arthur saw them first, bu
t even so he had no chance to do more than widen his eyes. Open his mouth. Think look out, as though Tomaso’s survival didn’t mean his was forfeit.
His neck snapped like a twig. One moment Tomaso was on his feet, leveling his Beretta at Arthur’s skull, and the next, gone. He would’ve tumbled to the floor in a lifeless heap without Klaus to ease him down.
“Fuck!” Arthur bellowed, eloquent in his shock.
Without paying him any heed, Klaus methodically pried the gun from Tomaso’s fingers and extracted the magazine. He wiped both down, then replaced the weapon into Tomaso’s holster and adjusted his leather jacket over it to cover the weapon. Staging complete. “We need to move.”
“Move…move where?” Arthur’s mind still tripped over details as irrelevant as, I’m alive. Tomaso’s dead. Air pumped in and out of his lungs. “Thought you were done.”
Klaus looked up. “Why?”
“You vanished. You—where did you go?” Practical details were more important than the jouncing in his chest or the sight of Tomaso’s corpse improbably splayed on the ground.
“I had to be sure he came alone.”
“Of course he did. I could’ve told you that.” If you stuck around and backed me up. Arthur clamped down on the childish urge to stomp his feet or crouch down and hug himself. Or weep. He definitely felt like weeping—for himself, for Tomaso—but once he started there would be no stopping.
Klaus canted his head. “Are you about to be sick?”
“What? No.” Arthur swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Fuck off.”
This time, he didn’t drag his feet leaving the loft. He didn’t look back.
Chapter Four
“You know, I actually had no idea we were in Berlin.”
Klaus’ silence was a compact, sturdy thing, built from the same heavy-duty cement as the apartment blocks they’d left in their wake. It didn’t give way before Arthur’s pestering.
“I mean I had some idea that we were in Germany. Mostly thanks to the TV. God, Jules really loves her soap operas… Did you know that?” He glanced at Klaus’ profile.
