Forced Assassin (16 page)

“Can’t it wait until tonight? Usually after a job I have downtime. This is it.”

“But you can’t have downtime when the job isn’t complete. To complete it you need to take Miss Jones home.”

Fuck.
“I need time to prepare her. Need to let her know she has to keep her mouth shut. Make her understand.”

“I rather think she understands already, Bishop, don’t you?”

Bishop sighed. Of course she did. Him killing had seen to that. “I want to wait until tonight. I don’t ask for much, never go against your wishes, but I will now. I’d prefer to do so with your consent, though. A few more hours, that’s all I want.”

“My, my, the little woman really has affected you, hasn’t she?”

“If you say so. I’m more concerned that she returns to her life with her mental health intact. She’s been through a lot. We can’t just dump her after what’s happened and expect her to carry on as normal. She isn’t like the other women on this scam. They weren’t aware of things Fallan now knows. They have no idea about the government involvement. At present, I’d say Fallan poses a risk.”

“In what way?”

“She’s vulnerable. What if she needs someone to talk to?”

“Like the other women?”

“What do you mean?”

“They returned home last night to find their money in their homes—courtesy of us, of course—then went on to telephone, despite Frankie Lash’s warnings not to, every friend they have with news of their windfall and how they got it.”

“Shit.”

“Indeed.”

“What’s the next step regarding them?”

“The next step has already been taken by the agent you saw outside Lash’s flat. While you slept, he was rather busy.”

Bishop’s stomach rolled. “What have you done?”

“They’re all dead, Bishop.”

“What?” His head lightened and his knees buckled. Bile surged into his throat, and he swallowed, wincing at the burn. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“When am I ever not? They were a threat. They knew the information in those bags was important enough that they had to remain silent, yet they chose not to heed Lash’s warning. Excitement at receiving the money had obviously addled their minds.”

Bishop latched on to that. “All the more reason for me to make sure Fa—Miss Jones doesn’t fall into the same trap. I don’t want her killed, Huntington.”

“I’m sure you don’t. But your dick is currently doing the talking here, Bishop. Do not lose sight of the job and what you’re employed to do.”

“So I get to keep her until tonight?”

“Yes, but that’s it. Tell her the score—make sure she understands fully. Tell her about the other women if you have to, but she needs to be returned home before someone misses her.”

“As opposed to someone missing her after you’ve had her killed? What’s the fucking difference?”

Huntington sighed. “The difference is quite simple. Her not being at home or work when she should be, and no one knowing where she is, brings the police into the equation—questions will need to be answered, trails followed… You get the idea. Worried people tend to call the police when someone doesn’t show up for an extended period. Her being at home, dead, found by someone who called on her to see why she wasn’t at work, or called the police after her phone went unanswered, solves any problems. She’s in sight, albeit murdered—or maybe we’ll make it look like a suicide, who knows?—and it’s the better option. Questions answered, T’s crossed, I’s dotted.”

“Christ, you’re so…so fucking blasé about this shit.”

“I have to be. It’s my job. Just like it should be yours. You should never have got involved with her.”

I know, but I couldn’t fucking help myself…

“Tonight, Bishop. After eleven p.m. No later, understand?”

“Yes.”

“And make sure she’s aware of the consequences. No soft-soaping. If you care for her as much as I suspect, you’ll need to be cruel to be kind. Scare her and scare her well.”

“I will.”

“Right, well, make sure you do, otherwise, if she calls someone and explains what she’s been doing, her blood is on your hands.”

Bishop slammed the phone into the cradle. It was just like Huntington to shift the damn blame. Maybe that was how the man coped with what he had to do, but Bishop wanted none of this bollocks anymore. If he had the balls he’d leave, take all his fake passports and disappear, but what was the point? The government had issued those passports, would be looking for him within a second of him not reporting in when he should. Would even be watching him as he prepared to scarper. He was stuck. A rock and a fucking hard place had never been so true.

He braced himself on the desk, hanging his head and closing his eyes. After a few deep breaths, he sat in the chair and leant back, preparing to sort through the muddle his mind had become. He’d have to let her go for her own good. There was no way Huntington would allow him to continue seeing her. The web they weaved would grow more intricate, each tendril stretching to the next, a seemingly faultless vision that was far from the illusion it gave. It might be pretty to look at, but those perfectly formed rectangles each held hidden dangers for Fallan. She’d be walking their delicate strands like a tightrope, trying not to fall through the spaces into oblivion below—Huntington, the hulking spider in the centre, watching her fall and not mourning her as a lost meal.

She was expendable, and Bishop hated that fact.

He rose and returned to the bedroom, standing against the doorjamb and watching her sleep. Although she was beautiful to look at, he sensed that beauty extended inside her, a woman who, despite her brash exterior, had a soft centre and so much to give the right man. Much as he wished that right man were him, he had to face the truth. In another time, another place, another damn world, he
was
that man, but in this one? No. She deserved better than he could give. What woman deserved a life like the one she’d have if he dragged her along with him? How could he live knowing she knew he did horrendous things and expect her to keep those secrets? He’d be giving her a heavy burden to carry, and, because he’d begun to care about her, that wasn’t something he was prepared to do. If you loved someone, you didn’t cause them pain. Yes, he’d be giving her a massive dose of it when it came time for them to part, but time would erase him, and, if it didn’t, it would at least dull the edges of her memories so he wasn’t as stark in her mind and heart. This was how it had to be. She could move on and meet someone else, have a new man to keep her from remembering Bishop.

The thought of that hurt more than he’d believed possible. Another man touching her, seeing her smile, being with her every day…

Fuck, it should be me. I want it to be me.

He readied himself for the last hours in her company by inhaling deeply then exhaling with force. Today had to count. Memories had to be made.

Ones that would last a lifetime for both of them.

* * * *

They spent the day as any other new couple, laughing, talking, telling one another a little of their pasts. Bishop soaked up every word she said, filing it away for later down the line when he had time on his hands between jobs and needed to remember. He wouldn’t be with any other woman, not like this. Yes, he was a realist and knew he’d fuck, but that’s all it would be. No emotions, no sentiment, just a release of sexual tension.

He studied everything about her. The way she moved. How she raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes before laughter took hold of her. The tilt of her head and narrowing of her eyes when they discussed something painful from their pasts. How she took his hand and everything bad melted away at her touch. Remaining in the basement with her forever was an appealing concept—and, by God, he wished they could do that—but life had other ideas,
people
had other ideas, and in the end life was governed not by what one wanted but by outside influences.

Fate was a cruel bitch sometimes.

By dinnertime, he kept glancing at the clock, torturing himself by counting how many minutes they had left. Minutes looked more plentiful as opposed to hours—gave the illusion that extra time was available. For a few seconds he kidded himself, as she had him stirring the tagliatelle in the pan, that this was how it would always be—they’d cook together after a long day at work, eat at a table with several candles, then snuggle on the sofa watching, but not really watching, some boring crap on TV. Talking, sharing experiences. Being.

She glanced up at him while stirring her own pot—the carbonara she’d miraculously created out of nowhere—and, shit, his heart literally ached. A void grew in his chest, one hell of a gaping hole that left him breathless and with the urge to lash out. He stifled it, pushed it the fuck away—there was plenty of time ahead to investigate that hole when she was no longer around.

They ate as though on a first date, him holding out her chair before she sat, serving the food, treating her like the princess she’d become throughout the day. She was hurting too, he could see it, but she was a good actress. Anyone watching—and they weren’t, he’d kept those bastard cameras turned off—would naturally assume she was a happy woman.

After they’d cleared up, he led her to the sofa and put the TV on, wanting what he’d thought of earlier—a semblance of them being a couple. It worked for a while, the pretending, the make-believe scenario they both wanted but hadn’t voiced, but, after an hour of the TV being on and them ignoring it, talking and holding hands, kissing and losing themselves in one another, the time had come for Bishop to give Fallan a lesson he’d been putting off all day.

Reality 101.

If she listened attentively and fully understood everything he had to say, he could give her a pass—an A plus.

“Fallan, I—”

“I don’t want to hear it.” She bit her lower lip.

“I know, and I don’t want to say it but I have to.”

“Fuck.” She traced circles on the back of his hand with her thumb.

“There are some things you have to know before I take you home.”

“I don’t want to go home.”

She pouted, mirroring his feelings exactly.

“I don’t want to take you home. I want… I wish…” He couldn’t do this to her. Couldn’t say what he really wanted.

“You wish what? Please, tell me. If you’ve got feelings for me I want to know. It’ll make this easier.”

Would it, though? He wasn’t so sure about that. Still, if that was what she wanted. He’d discovered today he couldn’t deny her a goddamn thing. “I wish we could stay here. I wish I didn’t have the job I have, even though me having it meant I met you. I wish I could rewind time and change it so you’d just taken a normal weekend break and so had I. That we’d met in the dining room and… But we didn’t. No point in wishing otherwise. Even if we had met like that it would still be a risk having you in my life. Even though you know what my job entails, if we’d met another way I wouldn’t have been able to tell you much. You’d always have wondered what I did that had to be such a secret. It’d have created tension. You’d have been left worrying what I was up to, whether I was really seeing other women when I worked odd hours and fucked off at a moment’s notice. Maybe we wouldn’t have worked…”

She squeezed his hand and rested her head on his shoulder. “But I
do
know. And it doesn’t bother me. It should, I realise that, and I know maybe I’m mad or blinded by you enough that what you do doesn’t matter, but, if being with you means knowing you kill people, I’ll deal with it.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.” He kissed the top of her head.

“You wouldn’t be asking. I want to.”

“But I can’t be with you, don’t you understand?”

She lifted her head and stared at him. “Yes, I understand that Huntington pulls the damn strings, that he’s the one determining what the fuck I do with my life, what you do with yours. Yes, I understand, and it fucking stinks, all right? I’m an adult, I should be able to do whatever the hell I want, and having some government arsehole dictating how I live and stopping me being with the man I lo—like a lot—pisses me the hell off. Why can’t he see I won’t say anything? Why can’t you tell him I’ll keep my mouth shut? I swear to God I will.”

“Because people always say that until things go wrong.”

“But we wouldn’t
go
wrong! I
know
we wouldn’t.”

“I know what you’re saying. I feel the same right now, but we’re at the start of something, so of course everything seems all right, of course we’d swear we were going to last forever, but shit happens, life happens, and, if we ever had to part ways, you’d be a massive liability to the government. You could open your mouth, tell the wrong people all the information you know, and—”

“But I wouldn’t. I’m not like that!”

“I have a feeling you’re telling the truth, but Huntington doesn’t see it that way. He has to cover all bases, you see? This is the government we’re talking about, a massive organisation where one wrong word can cause shitloads of trouble. You might not even mean to say anything, but words have a habit of slipping out and—”

“So you’re saying I can’t be trusted because I might blab something by accident, is that it?”

The pain in her eyes tore at him. Yes, that’s exactly what he’d said, no getting away from it. “It happens, Fallan. I’m a realist. Much as I’d love to be a dreamer with you, I can’t be.”

“What if I sign something? Get that Huntington fucker here right now and have me sign for silence. I just want to be with you.” She gripped him tight around the waist and squeezed. “I sound like a bloody whiny female, needy and all that crap, but this is my life, my
feelings
here. I don’t know how this happened between us, how I feel like this, but I do, and trying to turn it off… It’s going to
hurt,
damn it!” She jumped up and paced, fists bunched. “Fuck this shit! Where’s the phone? I want to speak to that bastard.”

“That isn’t a good idea, Fallan.”

“Neither is us being parted when we don’t want to be.”

He eyed her, noting her determination to get what she wanted. “You might not hear what you want to hear.”