Young Love Murder (60 page)

As I start to sit up, his hand smacks against my forehead, pushing my head back down into his lap. “Uh-huh, sure you were. Down girl. I liked you where you were at.” Since his hand is pressing me down by the forehead, I guess I’ll just sit tight. That’s the only reason I still have my head lying in his lap,
really
. It’s not like I like it or anything.

“Hey Jackson,” I say to get my brother’s attention.

“Hey Annabelle,” he answers from where he’s driving up front.

“Are we there yet?” By ‘there’ I mean Bari, a town we’ve been driving to in Southern Italy where you can catch a ferry to Greece. Why Greece? Well, Simon has a place in Athens where we can hole up and wait for Porky to send us some fake ids and passports for Gabriel. While there we’ll try to figure out who the hell put the hit on my ex-boyfriend.
Forcing
me to spend time with him.

“Almost,” Jackson answers my question. “About twenty more minutes and we can get out of this death trap Europeans call a car.”

“I think it’s cute. And I think you look cute driving it, Jacks,” I taunt him. “It’s like a Smurf car.”

From where my head’s laying on Gabriel, I can see Jackson’s profile and the mock-horror expression on one side of his face. “Anna, you really need to get away from loverboy back there. You’re turning soft. Like a
girl
.” I see one of his eyebrows raise. “I’ve got an idea. How about we off him ourselves? We’ll get paid for the kill and get rid of him at the same time. Like a two-for-one deal.”

“I can shoot you in the head from where I’m sitting. Won’t even miss given that there’s only two feet between me and you right now in this puny car,” Gabriel says in all seriousness. Well, I could have guns pointed at both of their big heads before Jackson even pulls this car over.

“If you shot me,
loverboy
, we’d crash and all die,” Jackson says matter-of-factly. “And none of us would get paid for it.”

The hand on my head moves to stroke my cheek. I turn to look up at Gabriel again. He’s smiling and looking quite satisfied with himself. My narrowed eyes say what I’m thinking without me having to verbalize it,
Quit petting me, I’m not a dog
. 

His pleading look tells me,
But, I love you
.

My disbelieving look tells him,
I don’t believe you
.

The determination in his eyes says,
I’ll do anything to prove it to you
.

I hope my eyes are saying in response to that,
You can’t
, and not,
Please do
.

“Why are you two so quiet back there?” Jackson asks suspiciously. 

“We’re making out,” Gabriel answers without pulling his green eyes away from my brown ones. Why do his eyes have to be so beautiful?

“I’ll expect fifty percent of whatever Anna’s charging you.”

“Did you just call me a hooker?” I yell at Jackson, giving the side of his face a dirty look. 

He shrugs. “Hey, if the thong fits.”

“That reminds me. Jacks, remember the time-”

He cuts me off before I can finish with a succinct, “No.”

“Well I do,” I tease him.

“No you don’t.”

“You were a pretty little girl,” I sweetly say.

“What is this all about?” Gabriel asks with curious glee.

“I still haven’t forgiven you for that,” Jackson sulks. “I still wear the emotional scars.”

“And I still don’t care! It was so worth it! The look on Simon’s face when he came home!” I bust up laughing, not able to catch my breath long enough to tell Gabriel the story. Finally, after a good laugh at Jackson’s expense, I settle down when Gabriel starts tapping his fingers on my forehead. Impatient jerk. 

“Oh my god, Gabriel. I have to tell you!”  I let out another giggle. “When Jackson was eleven and I was nine, Simon was gone on an assignment and left us alone. So, I wrote a fake note, supposedly from Simon, instructing Jackson to make himself look like my twin. You know, practice his disguise skills.”

“And,” Gabriel prompts, laughing, already knowing where this story is going.

“Simon came home and found Jackson wearing a brown wig, like my hair color when I was younger, and one of my dresses. It was so funny. Simon sat him down and had a talk about gender orientation with him.” I can see Jackson scowling behind the wheel, glaring at the road ahead of him. “Jackson, I accept you just the way you are. You were the cutest little drag queen ever!”

“I got you back good for that,” he mutters.

“You did?” Memory is fuzzy on that one.

“Yeah,” he replies confidently. 

“What’d you do to me?”

“I can’t really remember, but I know I did.”

“Then it must not have been as good as what I did to you, if you can’t even remember your revenge.” In a sing-song voice, I add, “
Lame
.”

Changing the subject, he crisply says, “We’re almost to Bari.”

With another stroke of Gabriel’s fingers on my cheek, he effectively brings my attention back to him. He’s giving me that god damn loving look again. His eyes are saying,
Give us another chance
.

I force mine to show him a decisive,
No
.

Gabriel says aloud, “I’m not giving up.”

“Oh man!” Jackson’s voice rises with each word. “Give it up! Please!”

Gabriel ignores him, bends down and kisses me lightly on the lips. Instinctively, I deepen the kiss. My lips just aren’t as disciplined as my eyes.
This
was never the problem. The spark has always been there, since we first laid eyes on each other at club
Cameo
. The problem is the pain we cause each other. That’s what I don’t trust, that the hurt is over. 

Almost three years ago, I started it all by lying to him and killing his father. He retaliated by hunting me down and threatening to kill me. After a whirlwind of fighting and what I thought was forgiveness, he shot me when his mom committed suicide. Jackson retaliated for me after that by faking my death. So the guy mourned me for a couple years? He deserved it. And maybe I deserved to be shot, but when I finally shot Gabriel back, I have to admit that it purged some of the past negativity out of me. It was a cleansing of bitterness. But what’s next? Would a future relationship between us be nothing but a perpetual cycle of hurting each other?

As if he’s reading my thoughts, Gabriel says softly, “It’ll be different this time, baby.”

Brushing his hand off me and sitting up, I tell him, “Right now let’s just concentrate on keeping you alive.”

“
My heroine
!
” Jackson says from up front, mocking Gabriel and probably me too. I lean forward only two inches, because this car really is puny, and flick him in the back of the head. It doesn’t faze him. He has a hard head.

Thank god the car has GPS because it allows us to jet straight to the docks of Bari and barely make it in time to buy three tickets for the next ferry. We’re able to book a private cabin for the three of us to share. The trip, with stops at two other ports in Greece before we reach Patras, will take a total of about sixteen hours. 

After boarding, an English speaking ferry worker directs us to our cabin. Gabriel asks, “Don’t you guys speak Greek?”

Shaking my head, I tell him, “Nope. It really is Greek to me.” I’m such a comedian.

The ship is huge, one of the largest ferries I’ve been on. Since we never know when more of the bad guys are going to jump out of the shadows, we keep our bags containing our weapons with us while we eat at the ferry’s restaurant. We have nine hours until the first stop at Corfu, Greece, so we’ll pretty much just be chilling out and napping until then. We were one of the last groups of passengers to board, so I highly doubt anyone is lying in wait on this ship. The first two stops at Greek cities, and especially the final stop for us in Patras, are another story. By the time we get there, it’ll be tomorrow late morning or early afternoon. 

Jackson pulls a tablet PC out of his bag and stares down at the screen for a long time. I’m watching the clear blue ocean out the window when he says, “Got an email from Simon.”

That gets my attention. “What does he say?”

“He’s working on finding out who took the hit out on Gabriel. Doesn’t have any info yet, but does have a couple good leads. He says for us to sit tight and he’ll get back to us when he knows more.” After a short pause, Jackson adds, “He also suggests that we off Gabriel ourselves and collect the mula.”

I roll my eyes at that. “You just made that up.”

He raises one eyebrow. “Did I?”

“Yes.” I give him a knowing look. Simon’s ruthless, but not
that
ruthless. 

After a mini staring contest, he finally looks back down at the screen. “I can see that you still haven’t come to your senses, so I’ll just email him back a quick okey-dokey.” 

“Okey-dokey,” I playfully tell Jackson. 

“They’re going to bring my food right now.” Gabriel mutters, not the least disturbed about the conversation he just heard. “Okay, right now. Right about now.”

Barely missing a beat in his typing on the touch screen, Jackson grabs a roll out of the basket on the table and chucks it at Gabriel, hitting him in the eye. “I’m also going to email Porky requesting some fake ids for boy toy, asking him to send them to Simon’s Athens residence.” Jackson suddenly grunts and Gabriel grins. A kick under the table?

“Whatever. I suppose the big boys will be coming out of the woodwork now, huh? The money’s good enough.” Our food comes and we start digging in. Not bad, but I’m so hungry at this point that raw meat would probably taste good. 

In between bites, Jackson asks Gabriel, “So, what have you been up to since you’ve been in New York to make someone want you dead?”

Gabriel looks up from the food he’s been concentrating on, glancing from Jackson to me. “To answer your question, absolutely nothing, unless someone didn’t like the way I slouched in class.”

“It could have nothing to do with your unlikable personally. Could be that someone is out to hurt Anna and plans on using your death to do it,” Jackson suggests. 

I open my mouth to protest, but Jackson raises his eyebrows, so I shut it. No point in denying it to Jackson since he witnessed my heartbreak two years ago. I’ll admit it at least to myself. A dead Gabriel would result in a rampaging Anna. If anyone is going to kill him, I think I’m the only one who’s earned the right. If Jackson’s correct, and Gabriel is being targeted to get to me, then that really sucks, because there are a lot of people in the world who would want to get a little revenge against me. I get around.

That makes me lose my appetite. I push my half-eaten food away, taking a drink of water. Gabriel grabs onto my hand and squeezes it. Nice, but it doesn’t reassure me of anything but his affection for me. 

Back in the cabin, we all fall asleep in the clothes we’re wearing. There are only two seats to lie down on, so Gabriel makes a bed on the floor next to where I’m sleeping on the padded bench. Other than reaching up to pinch me on the butt once, he behaves himself.

When we wake up hours later, we’re at to the first stop. Passengers get off and others get on. From here on out, we’ll have to be more alert. The next stop is only an hour and a half away and then the ship is on its way to the final destination of Patras. After the second stop of the morning, we make our way back to the restaurant for some breakfast. We still have six more hours on this boat and kill most of the time out on the deck, checking out the passing scenery. 

It really is beautiful here. I tell myself that in no way am I to think of this as romantic in any way. The ferry is taking a route between some of the Greek islands and the view of the rocky shores in the distance is amazing.