by S. Massery
After Zach inadvertently jumpstarted my career—medic for hire, with a knack for dealing with mobsters and mafia—I moved to Italy. It gave me a clarity I didn’t expect. There were no ties to people, no loved ones to worry about—just the job in front of me. Plus, news travels fast in the Italian mafia circuit. Once I got in their good graces, nothing could stop me.
I put my hand on Hadley’s back, taking her bag from her in one smooth movement. She lets me lead her toward the gate. Beyond that, my car awaits. I do my best to remember that, although I knew her, she’s not the same girl. She’s grown up and been shaped by experiences that I haven’t been privy to in the last five years. After all, the same could be said of me.
She pauses as we approach the car—a little 1994 Miata, cherry red—then shakes her head. It only takes a quick second to fold down the soft top, and I exhale.
I got this car a year ago, once I decided that I didn’t have to live my whole life in the shadows. Just the dark parts. We get into the car and I tap the steering wheel. “There are some fast cars that you drive slow,” I tell her, “and some slow cars you drive fast.”
“Which is this?”
I hit the gas and we speed out of the airport. “The latter,” I say with a grin.
5
HADLEY
The scenery races by us, so fast that I almost want to tell him to slow down. I want to enjoy the view. At the same time, though, the feel of the wind blasting through my hair, the music thrumming through me… why would I want that to stop?
I haven’t felt this alive in ages.
We get into the heart of the city, and I can’t peel my eyes away from the houses. The architecture. It’s beautiful and old and I have no idea where we are or where we’re going, but I don’t care. I’ve been thirsty for this kind of beauty.
We pass the same house twice, and it’s then that I look over at Griffin. He’s not easy going anymore. His hands periodically flex on the wheel, and I don’t think his eyes have stopped moving, from the road to the rearview mirror and back again. When the muscle in his jaw jumps, my heart skips.
“What’s wrong?”
He spares me a glance. “I think we’re being followed.”
I go to crane around, but he puts his hand on my thigh. “Don’t look back,” he says. “It’s just two guys in a grey car. They’ve followed us as we circled around this neighborhood, so unless they’re lost…”
My mouth dries out. “Is it the same people?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “I don’t know.”
Liar.
“Will they hurt us?”
His hand is still on my leg, and he squeezes. I think he means it to be reassuring, but it isn’t. “I won’t let them.”
Part of me is still suspended in disbelief. Griffin puts his hand back on the wheel. The only warning I get is a brief grunt to hold on as he slams on the brakes, and then we’re spinning. Tires squeal as he manages to whip us around, and our little car accelerates in the opposite direction.
I glance at the grey car as we pass, and I slink down in my seat. “Gun!” I yell.
Griffin pushes me down, his hand hot on my spine, but there are no shots. No bullets embedding themselves into our skin or the car.
We get onto a main road, a sign wishing us farewell from Amsterdam. Woods reach up and surround us, and the road flattens. Straightens.
“Brace,” Griffin grunts, just before something slams into us from behind. This car is tiny—another hit like that, and we’ll be scrap metal on the side of the road.
“What the hell, Griffin? How’d they find us?”
“I don’t know,” he says again. The car shudders when they make contact again. “But unless I do something drastic, they’re going to run us off this road.”
“Griffin,” I say, but he ignores me. I finally give in and swing around in the seat. “I saw a gun,” I say. The grey car has fallen back, but they are still close enough to make me flinch. The front of their car has a brush guard on it, which seems to have protected them from most of the damage they would’ve inflicted on themselves.
“You may have,” he allows. He grabs my arm as the car skids to the right, onto a side street. I nearly topple into him, since I’m half-kneeling on my seat like an idiot. “But the fact that they’re not shooting? It’s telling.” More to himself, he mutters, “It would’ve been better if they had started shooting.”
“What?” I screech. I twist back around, facing front, and hold onto my seatbelt. This road is gravel, pothole ridden, and completely jarring.
There’s a driveway. And then another one.
We’ve entered a residential area, apparently.
Griffin pulls into one, the tires skidding on loose stones. Dust kicks up in our wake. This driveway is long, snaking around trees, and the forest finally opens up into a clearing. There’s a log cabin toward the back, framed by a barn on one side and a garage on the other. He presses a button, and the garage door starts to slide open.
“How—”
“Listen to me, Hadley,” he says as he pulls the car into the garage. The doors close behind us. “Go into the house. There’s a safe room in the basement. The passkey is 1-0-3-0.”
I stare at him. “That’s my birthday.” October 30. My parents always joked that I sure did give my mother a fright right before Halloween.
In other circumstances, I think he might’ve winked at me. As it is, he leaps out of the car and goes to the far wall. Behind a metal mesh gate, there are…
“Holy shit,” I whisper. Guns. So many fucking guns, of different shapes and sizes and—
“Hadley,” Griffin snaps. “Safe room.”
I make it out of the car and around the front of it when something bangs on the garage door. I drop to my hands and knees.
“We know you’re in there,” a man calls. “Come out, and we’ll leave the girl alive.”
Griffin looks over at me, and I can tell he’s freaking contemplating it. “No,” I whisper-yell. “Don’t you dare.”
“You think I’d let them hurt me?” he asks me, shaking his head. “Get to the fucking safe room, Hadley.”
He comes over and grabs my arm, hauling me up and nudging me into the house.
“First door on the left is to the basement,” he says. “Go.”
I creep into the house as he closes the door behind him. This fear is new—I don’t totally feel it for myself, for my own life, but something constricts my lungs at the thought of Griffin being hurt.
The sound of the garage door opening makes me jump. I hurry down the hallway, and as my fingertips land on the door to the basement, I exhale.
Someone grabs me from behind and yanks me backwards. I start to scream, but a thick palm smothers my mouth. “Shut up, girlie,” the voice says.
The man pulls me backward, down the hallway, and I catch sight of Griffin talking to the other guy through the window. Both of them hold guns, although Griffin’s is noticeably smaller. I have a feeling size makes a difference.
My breath comes shorter and faster, in and out through my nose, until the guy releases his hold on my mouth and pushes me against the wall. “Don’t try to make yourself pass out, darlin’. It ain’t going to end well for you two.”
“What do you want?” I choke out. The man is bald, with a thick beard and straight, white teeth. He wears a white t-shirt and a leather vest, looking straight out of a mobster movie.
“Revenge, plain and simple.” He takes my arm and leads me outside, down the wide front porch. Griffin’s attention—and his gun—swings toward us. The man steps behind me, holding me against him. “Hey there, Angel.”
Griffin tilts his head. “I’m curious how you found me.”
“You’ll never be able to go anywhere,” the man behind me says. “Finally, retribution.” Something cold touches my temple, and I let out a whimper. This couldn’t be Griffin’s payback, could it?
Me. Dead.
“It’s okay,” Griffin says to me.
“It ai
n’t,” the man says. “We were hired to do a job, and I am damn well going to complete my mission.”
Griffin straightens, shooting a quick glance at the other man, before he lowers the gun. “Don’t hurt her,” he says.
I start laughing, tipping my head back to look at the man holding the gun to my head.
Everyone looks at me like I’m crazy, but—aren’t I? I just travelled halfway across the world on a whim, with a man I haven’t seen in five years. After I saw him kill someone.
“Just shoot me, already,” I say on a sigh, my giggles subsiding. “You’re dead as soon as I am, anyway.”
“Hey,” the other guy calls. “Where—?”
I look back toward Griffin, except he’s not there.
A gunshot rips open the silence, and the man holding me yells, buckling. Two more shots. He keeps ahold of me, but I wrench free before he can hurt me. He hits the ground and I stumble forward, turning to stare down at him. Blood blooms through the fabric of his jeans on his upper thigh. His hand presses against his throat. Thick, bright-red blood flows over his hands.
I jerk around, suddenly remembering the other man, but he’s down, too.
“Hadley,” Griffin says, materializing behind me. “Are you okay?”
I run and leap into his arms, tucking my face in his neck. “Oh my god,” I babble, “we almost died. You almost died. You almost shot me!”
“I wasn’t going to shoot you.”
His hands slide down my back, over my hips, and he lifts me by the backs of my thighs. I wrap my legs around his hips. Once I’m secure, one of his hands goes up to my shoulder blades, the back of my neck. It’s comforting, but it’s also making my heart skip beats, like a stone across water.
“You’re okay,” he says. “This place… It was my friend’s house, but he passed away. He left it to me. I haven’t been back to it since he died.”
I pull back and look at him, cupping his jaw. “You just killed two people, and you’re comforting me?”
He exhales and starts walking us back toward the house. “I’ll tell you about it if you want to know, but I don’t want to freak you out.”
I have a view of the bodies. I don’t want to tell him that, but I can’t stop staring at them. The one who was shot in the throat is dead. The other man is dead, too, his body on his side. Horror mixes with numbness, and I can’t tell which emotion is going to win.
“Are we staying here?” I ask him. I look down at my pants. There are blood droplets scattered across my thigh, just another reminder of what we just went through.
“We need to get somewhere safe. Whoever those guys work for is planning on sharing the information he knows about me. That will include you, too.”
My eyes narrow. “How would they know about me?”
He looks at me.
“The judge?” I shake my head. “You’ve got to be kidding me. He was attacked because of you?”
“I organized a protection detail for him and your parents,” Griffin says. “But you—“
“What about me?”
He stands up from the table and goes to the sink. “It’s always been you."
I bite my lip. Sometimes I think we’re the same, coasting along. Other times, he says something that completely rattles me.
“I need to make a phone call, and then we’re going.”
I pale. “Oh, shit—my mother.”
His eyes widen. “You better call her before she has a nation-wide alert out for you.”
I shake my head. “I think my phone’s in my bag. I’ll go grab it and talk to her in the garage…”
He nods and lets me go. Just before I go outside, I hear him say, “Hey, Zach.”
While I’m tempted to eavesdrop, I leave the house and dig my phone out. It takes a minute to power up, and then my messages start coming in:
Where are you?
Hadley?
I swung by your apartment and you weren’t home. It looked like there had been a break in.
The sheriff is here. What’s going on?
I stop scrolling. There are sixteen voicemails. Twenty-eight missed calls from my parents.
I hit the call button and then close my eyes.
“Hadley?” my dad answers.
“I’m okay,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“Honey, where are you? Your mother has been worried sick. There’s a cruiser outside of our house for our protection, but they won’t explain anything.”
“I just—” I shake my head. Still can’t say it.
The worst day of my life has been approaching like a slow-moving wave, and it crashed over my whole family only two days ago. Three, now, if we’re taking into account the time difference.
He grunts. “You can fight this, Hadley Quinn. You’re going to be okay.”
I don’t even feel sick, beyond the nosebleeds and weight loss… and my nonexistent appetite, the easy bruising, the on-again off-again fever…
Diagnosed three years ago with chronic leukemia, it suddenly spiked in intensity in the last few months.
None of that feels detrimental enough to my life to stop living it.
“Just tell Mom that I’m safe, and I’m celebrating life before it’s too late.”
He scoffs. I imagine he would react much the same to one of his students threatening mutiny. “Calling me was the coward’s way out, sweetheart.”
I shrug and look out the garage window. I catch sight of something black flashing through the trees.
“I know,” I say, “I have to go. Love you both.”
I toss my phone into the backseat of the car and bolt into the house.
“Griffin!” I yell.
The basement door swings open beside me. “What?” he asks. He pulls the phone away from his ear.
“I saw someone in the woods,” I barely keep myself from tripping over my words.
His eyebrows raise, and he pulls me a step closer. “How many?”
“One. I think.”
He starts tugging me toward the basement, and practically carries me down the stairs. “Safe room. Right now.”
“You’re going to leave me there?” I ask, clawing at his arm. Irrational claustrophobia rears its head. “Are you kidding me?”
“The room is bombproof. Bullet proof. Fire proof. It’s the safest place for you if we’re being fucking ambushed.” He shakes his head and types in the code—which I still can’t believe is set to my birthday—and gestures for me to go inside. “There’s a computer with the cameras, you can toggle around. Keep an eye out.”
I bite my lip as he heads back for the door. “Griffin?”
He stops and looks back at me.
“What if they make you give them the code?”
“I won’t,” he says. “And I’ll come back for you.”
The door swings closed, and I stand, completely shocked, for about fifteen seconds before lights power on above me. The room is the size of the living room in my parents’ house, but it’s completely industrial. There’s a row of shelving with jugs of water, cans of fruit and beans, paper toiletries, blankets.
I eye the desk in the corner of the room. There’s a huge monitor mounted to the wall above it, and the keyboard and mouse are just waiting for someone to use it. I force myself forward, to the chair, and sit down. It takes me another few seconds to reach forward and touch the mouse.
A wave of fatigue slams into me. I blink, trying to focus, and put my hand on my churning stomach. It’s like my body has finally realized that I can slow down. My adrenaline is tapering off.
The computer comes to life, flashing a welcome message, before it automatically switches to a grid of cameras. There are three images of the interior: one of the garage and two wide views of the first floor of the house. The other six are outside angles: the driveway and perimeter.
I don’t see Griffin.
I don’t see anyone.
There’s a distant booming noise, and all of the pictures on the screen tremble. One by one, they go dark.
Blood.
6
GRIFFIN
“Dude,” Zach says in my ear for the hundredth time. “If you’re about to die, say Echo.”
I shake my head. He can be so freaking weird sometimes. Still, I say, “Echo.”
“What the fuck?”
“Can you shut up for two seconds?”
He grunts in my ear as I pull out an old-school Bluetooth earpiece from the drawer in Wyatt’s old office. This place has been a safe house for the six of us for years. He told us that this cabin has been in his family for years, made us memorize the location, and we all visited it a few times between missions. After the Scorpion Industries contract ended, I was the only one who came back here.
I kept coming back, in much the same way I kept going back to Hadley. When Wyatt died, instead of going to New York City for the funeral, I came here to say goodbye to him. No one was more surprised than me when I got the deed to this place in the mail.
At that point, I had already made Paris my home base. Wyatt’s home became a true safe house, the way he intended it to be.
He probably knew that, of all of us, I’d need it the most.
“Okay,” I say, once Zach’s breathing starts coming through the earpiece. I tuck my phone into my pocket and start lifting the floorboards. “Hadley said she saw someone. Could be a tactical team—”
“Or a guy walking his fucking dog through the woods,” he cuts in.
I grunt. “I trust her intuition. Someone is gunning for us.”
“Who the hell would be trying to kill you?”
I find the right board and uncover a long box. Right about now, I’d like to kiss Wyatt for hiding weapons in every nook and cranny of this place. I yank the box out and replace the floorboard, setting the box on the desk next to a huge computer monitor.
