The Hitman Next Door: A Texas Bounty Novel

by Jackie Ashenden

  Coming to full wakefulness now, irritable and a cold feeling that she refused to call panic slowly solidifying inside her, Vivi decided that now was a good time for him to tell her exactly what the hell was going on. So she twisted in his arms, letting him know that he needed to put her down.

  He didn’t, merely kept on walking.

  Vivi looked up at him and scowled. But his attention was on scanning the area. His strong jaw looked tight, a muscle jumping in the side of it.

  What on earth?

  She struggled again, harder this time, but again his hold on her didn’t loosen one bit. “Rhys, for God’s sake,” she said, exasperated. “Put me the hell down.”

  He didn’t even glance at her. “Keep still,” he said in that cold, flat voice. As if he was giving orders. Orders he expected to be obeyed without question.

  Which would have been fine if she hadn’t been asleep one minute only to find herself being carried out of her apartment the next. By the best friend who’d been acting weird and was now acting even weirder.

  “Rhys,” Viv said, for the fourth time. “If you don’t put me down right now I’m going to scream my head off.”

  Finally Rhys looked down at her. And there was something in his dark eyes, something hard, dangerous and completely unfamiliar that made her breath catch. “Don’t do that,” he said quietly. Another order from a man who expected nothing less than complete obedience.

  Vivi blinked, an odd sensation yawning wide in the pit of her stomach. It felt like fear, though she didn’t know why because she’d never thought of Rhys as scary. He was her friend. She’d known him for years and in all that time, he’d never made her feel even the slightest bit uncertain. Not once.

  Until now. Until his weird behavior earlier and now this picking-her-up-out-of-bed-and-carrying-her-out-of-her-building-without-any-explanation thing. And then there was that gleam in his eyes. That hard, dangerous edge, making him look like someone she didn’t know at all. A stranger.

  An inexplicable shiver coursed through her. It was almost as if….she liked it.

  Are you insane?

  She swallowed, ignoring the thought. “You’re scaring me. Stop it.”

  He didn’t answer immediately, looking both ways before crossing the street. Once they were on the other side, he kept walking, glancing down at her again. The tension around his mouth eased - Rhys’s version of a smile - which was reassuring, but that hard gleam remained in his eyes, which wasn’t. “Don’t be afraid.” Again, it was another order. “Nothing bad is going to happen.”

  Vivi let out a breath. “Put me down.”

  “No.”

  Okay then. “Why not?”

  “Because we’re going for a ride.” He lifted his gaze from hers, glancing around again as if he was looking for someone. “I want to show you something.”

  “Fine, I’ll walk. You don’t need to carry me.”

  “Okay,” he said. “We’re here anyway.”

  Then he was putting her down onto the sidewalk next to the nondescript black Camry he drove everywhere, and digging around in his pocket, bringing out his keys.

  Vivi clutched the blanket, her heartbeat weirdly accelerated. One side of her was all hot from where it had been resting against his body, and she could still feel the imprint of his arms beneath her knees and across her back from the way he’d been holding her. Could still hear his heartbeat, steady and slow in her ear, and smell the earthy, pine scent of him.

  And his hands, touching you.

  Had he actually touched her? Or had that only been a dream? Perhaps it wasn’t, perhaps those had really been his hands…

  No, oh God, she couldn’t be thinking about that, not now, not here, and certainly not when her usually safe and reassuring friend suddenly seemed not so safe and reassuring after all.

  Now he was moving to open the passenger’s door, holding it for her and waiting for her to get in, and she had no idea what he was doing or where he was taking her or why.

  She met his gaze, the scared feeling welling up inside her. She didn’t like not knowing what was happening. She didn’t like him being strange. And she especially didn’t like that he wasn’t telling her what was going on, because she didn’t think he had something to show her, not at all.

  Rhys stared back at her without a flicker. “Get in the car, Vivi.”

  “No,” she said shakily. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

  He took another glance around the street. “Get in the car and I will.”

  “Tell me first.”

  His gaze came back to hers and for a second, a metallic kind of glitter like the bright edge of a knife shone there. Then it was gone. “Why are you afraid?”

  Vivi swallowed. She knew that sometimes Rhys could be a bit dim in the emotions department, but this was obtuse even for him. “Oh, might have a little something to do with the fact that you picked me up out of bed - while I was still asleep, for God’s sake - and then carried me out of my apartment without waking me up first and asking me whether I wanted to go or not.” She clutched her blanket tighter. “And now you won’t tell me where we’re going, and I’m still in my pajamas, and you’re being weird. And it’s still my goddamn birthday!” Her voice was getting shrill, but she didn’t care. This was edging into freak-out territory - no, scratch that, she wasn’t ‘edging’. She was fully freaking-out.

  Rhys stared her. “Do you trust me, Vivi?”

  The sudden question took her by surprise. “Well…Of course I do.”

  He didn’t look away, his gaze dark and deep and completely unreadable. “Then get in the car.”

  Her heartbeat thumped in her head uncomfortably loud and a chill swept over her.

  You say you trust him, but do you? Do you even really know him?

  A foreboding curled inside her, which was stupid. Because this wasn’t some stranger kidnapping her. This was Rhys, her best friend, and he was taking her on a drive. Okay, he wasn’t explaining himself at all and he was behaving strangely, but still. She’d known him since she was fifteen years old. Not once in all that time had he ever made her feel scared. She might feel unsettled and uncomfortable about her physical feelings toward him, but he’d never scared her. Not one single time.

  Vivi shook herself. She was being ridiculous. Rhys could be irritating when he went ahead and did stuff without asking her, but it had never put her on edge like this. So she had no idea what her problem was. It wasn’t like he was going to hurt her or do anything to her.

  She gave him a narrow look. “So is this some kind of birthday surprise?”

  He didn’t answer for a second, his gaze dipping to her throat. “You’re still wearing my necklace.”

  “Yeah.” Instinctively she put her hand up to touch it. “Must have forgotten to take it off.”

  “Yes,” he said, staring at the necklace. “It’s a birthday surprise.”

  She knew a lot about Rhys Fox. That his mother had struggled with an addiction to bad drugs and even worse men. That one of those men had beaten Rhys’s little brother so hard that he’d died. That afterwards Rhys had been taken from his mother and put in the foster system. Vivi’d been a foster kid herself and that had given them a connection at high school, but he didn’t like talking about it. So she never pushed him or pressed him to talk about himself, the knowledge she did have freely given to her at various points during their friendship.

  But right now, she wanted to push him to tell her just what the fuck was going on, because she was pretty sure it had nothing whatsoever to do with a birthday surprise.

  Then something hot whizzed beside her ear and she thought at first it was an insect, except no insect she’d ever heard of went that fast or made that kind of high pitched whine. She frowned. “Did you hear—”

  But she never got to finish the sentence, because several things happened all at once. An expression of open fury crossed Rhys's face, and then he reached for her, pulling her hard up against his powerful body and turning, angling h
er so he was shielding her, his gaze locking onto something across the street. At the same time, he reached for something at the small of his back. She was craning around, trying to work out what was going on when his arm extended, so fast it was almost a blur, something black and lethal looking held his hand. A gun. Without any hesitation at all, he pulled the trigger twice in rapid succession, the shots sounding strangely muffled. Then as Vivi watched in shock, something fell from a window in the building across the street. Something that looked horribly like a body.

  Her mouth opened, a cry of shock ready to escape, but then Rhys’s long, hard fingers were closing around her upper arm, and he was forcing her inside the car before the cry could escape.

  Vivi blinked as the door slammed behind her and Rhys rounded the car, getting in the driver’s side. Then he jammed the keys into the ignition, gunned the engine, and pulled out into the street, tires screeching as they took off like the devil himself was chasing them.

  4

  Rhys was so fucking angry he couldn’t speak. So he stared hard out the front windshield and concentrated on driving instead, dividing his attention between the street ahead of him and what was happening in his rearview mirror.

  First of all there had been the shot. The shot he hadn’t seen. It had come out of nowhere and had only missed Vivi by inches. Whether it had been a deliberate miss or whether it had been meant for him, he didn’t much care. What he greatly fucking cared about was that she’d been shot at in the first place. Christ, he’d checked everything in the area so many times, yet he hadn’t anticipated that Cruz – and it was Cruz, he’d seen that stupid Knicks cap the asshole wore all the time fall off when the guy had toppled through the window – would have found his way into someone’s apartment across the street.

  Second of all, there had been his response to the shot. Which had been completely automatic, an instinct honed by eight years of living as a gun for hire. Vivi had been shot at so he’d reached for his Sig and taken out that motherfucker without even a thought.

  There would be a cost to that. Not so much to his soul, that thing was already blacker than pitch, but to the decision he’d made earlier in the evening. About her, about trying for the kind of future he never thought he could have with her.

  Because there was no way, no way in hell, she’d want anything to do with a man who’d just killed someone in front of her, let alone date him. Sure, there was a chance Cruz wasn’t dead, but he didn’t think that was the case. He always shot to kill and he never missed.

  But that future he’d wanted? The whole family, white-picket fence deal with her at his side? That was deader than Cruz.

  Somewhere inside of him there was an ache, a kind of painful grief. But he locked down the feeling, shoved it away.

  He couldn’t afford to think about that now. Vivi’s safety was of prime importance and even though Cruz might be out of the picture, there was still Jason Lee. Who was definitely out for revenge, no question. The pair of them probably had a plan all set out and if that involved Vivi then Rhys had to get her somewhere secure. Now.

  He should have just bundled her up in the car and not stood around caring about the fact that he’d scared her, wondering what he could say that would make her get in the car without too many more questions. No, he wasn’t doing that again. It was his way or the highway from now on and if she didn’t like it, that was too fucking bad.

  Maybe if he’d done that first he wouldn’t have had to shoot Cruz right in front of her, revealing the stone cold, vicious killer he was inside. Christ, how was he going to explain that to her? There was no way to fix it, not this time.

  It’s over, you know that, don’t you? You’ve lost her.

  Rhys slammed down a wall between himself and that relentless, aching grief, pouring all his concentration into driving instead.

  He drove fast, hurtling around a corner with another screech of tires, and then putting his foot down through a long straight. Vivi was saying something, but he paid no attention, too busy alternately looking in the rearview mirror to see if anyone was tailing them and keeping his eye on the police radio detector on the dash. The last thing he needed was the cops up his butt, so he was going to have to drive intelligently while they were around, but like a fucking madman when they weren’t.

  No one was going to follow them, no fucking way. He was also going to have to get his old clean-up crew onto dealing with the mess he’d left behind, too. In fact, he probably better get on that ASAP.

  He made a few turns, then drove down a narrow alley that led out onto another street, before backtracking, keeping his route as random as possible.

  Vivi was yelling at him now and with good reason, fear sharp in her voice. But driving was taking up all his concentration so he kept his attention on the street ahead, heading for the freeway, running a few stoplights to see if anyone mimicked him. And sure enough, someone did.

  Had to be a tail. Fuck. That better not be Jason.

  Vivi had stopped yelling by the time he roared onto the freeway, gunning the engine again and changing lanes. But it took him another fifteen minutes and a random turnoff before he finally lost the tail and was able to get back onto the freeway once more. And by that stage, Vivi was ominously silent.

  He shot her a glance.

  She was sitting in her seat still wrapped in the blanket he’d folded around her when he’d picked her up out of bed, her hands clutching her seatbelt for dear life. She’d gone absolutely white, her expression tight and set. It was a look he was very familiar with.

  No doubt about it, she was terrified and was doing her best not to show it.

  She has reason to be terrified.

  A small, sharp feeling like a sliver of glass slid under his skin at the memory of the suspicion in her eyes when he’d told her to get into the car. Looking at him as if he was a stranger, as if she didn’t know him.

  Imagine how she’s going to look at you now.

  Rhys shifted his attention back to the freeway ahead of them. He knew already how she would look at him. It would be with fear and disgust and horror, so he’d better ignore the fucking ache in his heart and get himself prepared for that right now. And she was going to require explanations, too, though maybe it would be better to leave those until they got to Big Bend, when he wasn’t driving and could concentrate better.

  Until then though, he wasn’t going to stop for anything but gas and maybe some food. Everything else, he had in the trunk of his car, including a clean burner phone. Speaking of…

  Shifting in his seat, he hauled out his phone and put it in Vivi’s lap. “Call up a contact called ‘Cleaner’, dial in 859 then turn my phone off, please.”

  She didn’t move and she didn’t say a word.

  He glanced over at her again, watching her set profile. “Vivi. It’s important.”

  “You shot someone.” Her voice sounded unsteady, her knuckles white where they clutched her seatbelt. “You shot someone, didn’t you?”

  Grief ached inside him, the small, sharp sliver of glass cutting deeper. But he didn’t let himself feel it. He couldn’t afford to let himself feel anything, not now. “Yes, I did.”

  “Is he…” She faltered. “I mean….he’s…”

  “Dead?” He made the word hard and cold so there could be no doubt. “Yes, he is.”

  “But, he might not—”

  “He is. I never miss.”

  There was a terrible silence.

  She turned to look at him, the shock and fear stark on her face. Staring at him as if she’d never seen him before in her life. As if he was a complete and utter stranger. “Rhys?” She sounded very small. “What’s going on?”

  And despite the wall he’d put between him and his feelings, something lurched inside him. As if there was a crack running straight through the foundations of the life he’d been building for himself, undermining the entire structure.

  A crack he couldn’t repair. Because he could explain away his gun and possibly even the fact that som
eone had shot at her. But he couldn’t explain away how he’d pointed, shot, and killed. There was no reasonable explanation for that, none at all.

  Maybe it’s time to show her the man you really are, rather than the man you’re trying to be for her.

  There was a certain logic to that. Going back to being friends wasn’t going to happen, not now. He’d destroyed that the moment he’d pulled out his Sig and blown Cruz away. Then again, she couldn’t keep viewing him as the friend she could blithely argue with or ignore with impunity, not when he was the only thing standing between her and another contract killer hell bent on using her. She had to do what he said for her own safety, and if she was afraid of him, then she’d be less likely to argue. With any luck.

  “Vivi,” he said coldly and very firmly, ignoring her question. “Pick up my phone and text that code like I told you to. Then turn off the phone.”

  “But what about—”

  “Do it.”

  “Rhys—”

  “Now.”

  Another ripple of shock crossed her face. Then her mouth hardened and she picked up the phone, her fingers moving over the screen as she texted the code he’d given her to the clean-up crew, before pressing a button and holding it to turn it off. “There. Happy now?” Her skin under the passing streetlights was a dead white, the dark circles under her eyes even more pronounced.

  His chest tightened. He didn’t like it when she was unhappy, and most especially not when he was the cause, but that couldn’t be helped. Wasn’t like he could grab that bullet out of Cruz’s chest and return it to his own gun. At least the clean-up was handled though, which would hopefully mean Cruz’s body disappearing without a trace.

  Turning his attention back to the freeway, he said, “My phone signal can be tracked. If it’s off, they can’t track us.”

  “Track us?”

  She sounded bewildered, which he didn’t like either.