Hell Bent

Klonapin. At least, quickly.” She paused. “But the medical records were fixed, and whoever took care of that did a really good job.”

“Godrick Osborne hired more than one man to clean up his mess,” Sam told them, his tone even, his voice soft.

“The Colonel said as much when we were at his warehouse,” Annabelle offered, deciding to join the conversation. She distinctly recalled the Colonel’s troubled expression when he’d mumbled that he hadn’t been the only one hired to solve Osborne’s problems.

Jack spoke up then. “Osborne has pulled out all the stops, I can assure you.”

Sam glanced at him and their gazes met.

Annabelle’s own gaze narrowed. “Okay, so who was the man outside the mansion, Jack? The one whose voice you so obviously recognized?”

Jack turned to look at her, his brows raised in slight surprise. She rolled her eyes. “Oh come on – there may as well have been a text box above your head with scene directions that said, ‘character recognizes a voice from the past’.”

Jack blinked and then smiled. Sam whistled low. Craig came out of the bathroom and Beatrice and Clara chose that moment to head back in through the glass opening that led to the stern of the boat.

Jack glanced at them and then looked back at Annabelle, who was waiting expectantly. “Very well, luv, you’re right. I know him.”

This had everyone’s attention. Even Dylan came out of his own personal hell long enough to listen in.

“Know ‘oo?” Beatrice asked.

“The guys who were shooting at us at the mansion,” Virginia filled her in. Beatrice nodded, her eyes widening.

Jack sighed. “His name is Adam Night.”

Annabelle gave him a disbelieving look. “You’ve got to be kidding me. No one is named ‘Adam Night’.”

Jack shrugged.

Sam cut in. “No one knows his real name,” he told them. “He’s probably forgotten it, himself.”

“He’s been Adam Night since we were kids,” Jack explained.

“Since you were kids?” Annabelle asked. “You mean, together?”

“More or less. We were at the same orphanage together.”

“I’d say ‘more’, not ‘less’,” Sam said.

Jack cut him a glance and sighed. “Fine. ‘More’.”

The people in the cabin who were not all that familiar with Jack looked at him with a mixture of sadness and surprise. Annabelle, Beatrice, Jack’s daughter, and Sam, however, had already known the truth of Jack’s past. He’d been an orphan in Yorkshire. And, apparently, he’d had a friend.

“Adam was brought in as an infant, just as I was, and roughly at the same time. He was a few years younger, or that’s what they estimated. But there was no accompanying information on him. So, they called him Adam because he seemed to be missing one of his ribs.”

“What?” Dylan blinked. His eyes narrowed. “He was missing a rib?”

“You couldn’t really tell, but as always, a physician was brought in to examine the new child. The doctor said it was a birth defect of some sort.” Jack took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “They gave him the surname of Night because of his hair.”

Annabelle thought about this for a moment and then asked, “What is the deal between you two?”

Jack went on. “Adam was younger, but a great deal more… fearless than I,” he began. “He was always the first of our group to wind up or mess someone about-”

“What?” They all asked, at the same time. Except for Beatrice and Clara, who were surprised by their question.

Jack blinked. “Sorry.” He’d slipped into the past to tell this story, and it had come through in his language. He cleared his throat. “He was always the one who caused trouble. He’d be the first to pull a prank, assuring us we could do it. Then he’d be the only one who wouldn’t get caught.”

There was a lot he wasn’t telling them. Adam had been Jack’s brother, in so much as two unrelated people could be brothers. Adam had always confided in Jack about what he was thinking and what he wanted to do. When he stole liquor, it was to share with Jack, no one else. And when he smoked, he and Jack smoked together as they sat on the roof of their orphanage and made fun of the people who mulled around below them.

But they didn’t need to know any of that. When it came down to it, the important thing that they understood was that Adam was crazy dangerous.

While Jack had fallen into the Business more or less by accident, Adam Night had out-and-out decided it was what he wanted to do. And so he had.

And he was very, very good at it.

“Night is an assassin with no barriers,” Jack told them. He was called in on only the most insane assignments. The ones that no one else would take. And he only sometimes finished the job. However, it never remained incomplete because Adam couldn’t do it. It was always because Adam had simply decided the target was too easy. Or too boring.

The higher-ups and their handlers had a very difficult time getting a hold of Adam Night. The enigmatic, frightening hired gun had been in more than a few manila folders, himself.

No one could kill him, though. Hell, no one could ever find him.

But when he did accept a job that he chose to complete, rumors of what he did to his marks infiltrated the circle of handlers and piece men until Adam Night had become a bad word in the households of assassins across the globe.

And he’d once been Jack’s best friend.

“So, basically, he’s a really bad guy,” Annabelle mumbled, turning away to gaze out the window.

“Aye, luv. A really bad guy.” Jack replied softly.

From where he was seated atop his trunk, the quiet and watchful Reese finally spoke up. Everyone had almost forgotten he was there. “You have no idea,” he said softly. He wasn’t trying to be a smart ass, and his tone wasn’t overtly cruel. It was a simple affirmation. His expression was almost sad. “I’ve come across the bodies he leaves behind. He doesn’t just kill them.”

Everyone was a little paler after that comment. Jack stared at Reese for a moment and then let the comment go, turning to Craig. If Craig looked a little sick, it was nothing compared to how he looked after Jack said, “He’s been hired to kill you.”

“You’re not… You’re not going to let him, right?” Craig asked, stumbling over his speech as his tongue had most likely gone numb with fear.

The truth was, if Adam Night wanted Craig Brandt dead, Craig Brandt was probably going to die. There would be little Jack could do to stop it. And the fact of the matter was that if Adam had really wanted Craig badly enough, the little game he’d played at the Middlesex mansion wouldn’t have occurred. Virginia Meredith simply would have woken up one morning to find her lover scalped or some other such grisly nonsense and cold as stone, lying next to her in bed.

Adam was having fun. He was letting his brother know he was in town; he was saying “hi.” Jack wondered how long the little reunion would go on before Adam got serious. Or bored.

Jack was hoping for bored.

When he didn’t answer, Craig swallowed audibly. “Then we need to get out of here, don’t we? Go somewhere else? Like, far away?” Virginia took his hand and squeezed it tight. She turned entreating eyes upon Jack, who ran a hand through his hair.

Here it was. What he’d been dreading.

“Yes, we need to get out.” He said. “We’re taking you to a researcher in Essex who should be able to get you set up to reproduce your cure.”

Beside him, he could almost feel Annabelle tense up. He reluctantly turned to face her.

Annabelle stared at him a few silent moments and then cocked her head to one side. “What?” she asked, very softly.