Hell Bent

Osborne’s reach extends beyond the boundaries of the city. You’ll have to leave the country.”

Virginia’s eyes widened. “But my store-”

“Will have to be closed due to an unexpected family emergency,” he told her, before she could even finish voicing her objection.

“It’s not as hard as you would think,” Craig told her, turning to face her once more. But, her brow furrowed and she opened her mouth to object again.

Jack caught this one too. “Or, you can stay here and get tortured and killed,” he told her flatly, stealing another agitated glance toward his daughter.

Annabelle bit her lip.

It really wasn’t funny.

“I’ll ‘elp you pack,” Beatrice said, coming around the chair to take a seat on the couch, sandwiching Virginia Meredith in between her and Craig. “It won’t take us long at all, luv. I’ve done it lots of times.”

That got Jack’s attention once more. He turned to look at Beatrice, who had her hand on Meredith’s shoulder, just as Clara had with Dylan. His expression became troubled.

He blinked and looked down at the floor.

And then he stood. “An hour. No more,” he instructed. Then he turned to Sam, who was watching him carefully. Annabelle saw the look they exchanged. Then Sam stepped aside and Jack left the apartment. Sam closed and locked the door behind him.

Annabelle sat there in the chair as Virginia, Craig, and Beatrice stood and made their way down the hall to one of the rooms beyond.

Behind her, Clara excused herself to go to the restroom and Dylan stepped out onto the balcony “to get some air”.

Annabelle shook her head. Well, well, she thought. ‘Love is a many splendored thing.’

A storm of massive proportions was raging in Jack Thane’s mind. He could not believe how stupid he’d been over the last twelve hours. Ever since he’d slept with Annabelle…

Craig Brandt had been keeping an eye on Virginia Meredith. That meant that he’d seen Annabelle and Dylan talking to her at Meredith’s store. The simple fact that Jack had failed to notice another man monitoring the goings-on at The Lavender Garden lent credence to the fact that he was way, way off his game. Never had he screwed up this badly before. It was just embarrassing. Worse, it was deadly.

He’d made some incredibly impressive mistakes. He’d dragged every single person he cared about into a toxic, lethal situation. And then, just to make sure that everything was as bad as it could possibly get, he’d done something that had managed to royally fuck up any hope he had of keeping them safe.

He’d fulfilled a desire he’d had for ten years. But it hadn’t had the effect it should have had. It was pure hell to find that when you scratched an itch, that itch only got worse.

She was all he could think about now and it was going to get them all killed.

“Bugger and hell,” he muttered under his breath. He moved through the alleys, making good time, his boots pounding out the pavement as fast as his thoughts spun in his head. “Fuck,” he added. “Shit and piss and bugger fuck,” he finished, running his hand through his hair for good measure.

Okay, he was starting to feel better.

He continued through the back streets and alleys of Manhattan. Jack had made sure that the meeting place he and his handler had decided upon was not far from Meredith’s apartment. He needed to pick up the profile on his mark and he didn’t want to waste too much time doing it. For the first time in a long while, he didn’t have access to the transportation he really wanted. He just hadn’t had the time or opportunity to pick up a bike and didn’t feel like being locked in a cage right now.

He needed air. He needed wind.

But it would have to wait. He turned the corner, exiting onto a busy city sidewalk, and then crossed the street with a throng of pedestrians. He made it to another corner and ducked back into the alley.

Since his childhood, he’d been moving through the shadowy labyrinth of the alleyways of the world. In Sheffield, there were a plethora of them. He’d had more than his fair share of time to traverse them. Over the years, he’d learned which alleys would let him through, and which turns would dead end, blocking him off and sending him back the way he’d come.

Now, as he moved through them, avoiding beggars and drug dealers and getting closer to his destination, his conscious mind was on anything but the human refuse of the city. That, he circumvented on auto-pilot.

His mind was now on Beatrice and the fact that, as she’d mentioned in Meredith’s apartment, she’d had to pack quite often during their marriage. It was true. He’d dragged her all across Great Britain, and even Europe. It had been par for the course of wedding an assassin who hadn’t yet made a large enough footprint to allow him to bed down in relative safety, protected by the multitude of employees he now hosted to keep himself and the ones he loved secure.

He regretted that.

But, then, he wondered why he should regret it. After all, she’d known what she was getting into. And, come to think of it, he wasn’t sure she regretted it all that much.

Still… There were the children to consider. Ian was still too young to notice it much. But what had it done to Clara?

The teenager knew how to break and enter undetected, pack for a week in five minutes, get out of a pair of handcuffs unaided, and aim and fire a handgun, for Christ’s sake. Was that especially healthy for a girl her age?

Dylan has been through worse.

That thought brought him up short in the alley. He stopped in his tracks as the image of Clara and Dylan floated before his mind’s eye.

It’s innocent, he told himself.

Is it?

Of course, it is. She’s a good girl. She hates to see people in pain.

But, would it even be so bad if it wasn’t all that innocent? He wondered about that.

She’s not a toddler, he reasoned. She could do worse. He’s a bright boy. And he’s involved now…

It’s innocent!

Fine. Whatever you say.

Christ…

He was bloody talking to himself. Without even speaking. This was all enough to make him want to put his head in a cannon and light the bloody fuse. It would save him the pain of fighting with Annabelle over flying to England, at the very least.

Because he was really looking forward to that. It was bound to be a boat load of bloody fun.

He swore under his breath once more and began moving again. He arrived at his destination with another turn around a corner. An Indian restaurant waited half-way down the street. He ducked in, sparing a glance around to make sure no one really noticed.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Annabelle glanced in to the room as she passed by in the hallway. Craig and Virginia were still sitting on the edge of Sam’s bed, talking. They’d been conversing for the last hour and a half, and she wasn’t surprised at it. They had a lot to discuss. He’d been gone for a long time. Virginia had lived a separate life for just as long.

And they loved each other. That, alone, was a conversation piece.

The group of them – Annabelle, Beatrice, Clara, Cassie, Dylan, Craig, Virginia, and Sam – had been in Sam’s apartment for a few hours now. Jack had been gone for three. Annabelle guessed that Jack had basically left them to Sam’s charge, trusting him to keep them safe while he went off and…