“Do me a favor and take off your clothes, Annabelle. This has to look a certain way. Better you do it. There’re only so many ways I can bring myself to violate Jack’s trust.”
Annabelle’s eyes flew open.
She looked up at Sam. He was holding the gun down at his side. A silencer had been screwed onto the barrel. A bullet had been chambered. It was ready to go, but he was waiting for something.
“Take off your clothes,” he repeated. “No mugger in his right mind would kill a woman like you without raping her first. Underneath it all, this is a job, like any other,” he continued. “It’s gotta look right.”
“Like hell,” Annabelle hissed at him, suddenly furious. A red film spread before her eyes, tainting everything slightly pink.
“Get up, then,” he ordered.
She didn’t move.
He swore under his breath and came forward, grabbing her injured arm and yanking her to her feet in one hard tug. She cried out in pain, echoing her muscles’ scream, and automatically began struggling in his grip. She couldn’t help it. It was a natural reaction to what he threatened.
And then Sam grunted as something hard and flat slammed into the side of his head. He spun away from Annabelle, releasing her suddenly so that she fell, off-balance, against the wall.
Annabelle steadied herself in the corner between the wall and the ground and used her good hand to shove her hair out of her eyes so that she could see what was happening.
Both figures were dressed in black from head to toe and the darkness in the alley lent them the airs of twisted, writhing shadows. Still, Annabelle knew one of the figures too well not to recognize him.
Relief flooded her system, but she didn’t have much time to contemplate her changing luck, as Sam’s gun suddenly went spinning out of his grasp, hit the wall just above Annabelle’s head, and then fired off a round. A loud laser-like whisper accompanied the sound of cracking brick and shattering stone. Pieces of the broken wall went sailing across the alley. The shards were wickedly sharp, as Annabelle learned when one of them sliced across the left side of her neck, etching a red and ragged line before it disappeared.
She felt it slice her but barely noticed any pain, her attention was so fixed on the two struggling men and the now disowned gun. Without giving it second thought, she began to crawl forward on her hands and knees, scraping the ground with her palms in search of the weapon.
Jack’s rage boiled just beneath the surface of his focused exterior. Sam had thus far managed to block every one of his blows except the very first. The gun was gone, but only because Sam had chosen to let it go so that he could fight without its encumbrance. And everything that Jack knew, Sam knew better.
“Settle down, Jack, and we’ll talk-” Sam began to say, but was cut off as one of Jack’s fists again made its way all too close to his jaw. He ducked and blocked and dove to the side, countering with his own assault.
Jack, for his part, didn’t waste energy speaking. And anything he could have said at that point would only have made things worse. If you can’t say something nice…
He couldn’t believe this was happening. He just couldn’t believe it. A part of him, deep down inside, was being ripped into shreds. It echoed the physical pain in his body, sore and damaged from the Colonel’s assault and the shots he’d taken from his men. Only, this was worse. Much worse.
It affected his ability to fight. Any battle required a certain amount of concentration. Combat against someone who knew what he was doing required intense focus. A battle against Samuel Price demanded nothing short of perfection. At the moment, that was something Jack couldn’t give.
Sam was older than he was, but he was still young enough. His mentor had kept in shape. It was a given in their line of work. To anyone watching, their struggle would have seemed almost choreographed. Things didn’t normally look the way they did in Hollywood, but Sam and Jack had been sparring for more than two decades. And neither of them had forgotten a single thing.
Except that Jack was wounded and he was tired. Real fear for his, and Annabelle’s lives kept his body moving fast and hard. How long he could keep it up was uncertain.
“God damn it, Jack, just hear me out!” Sam managed to get in a good shove, square against Jack’s rock-hard chest, and it knocked the younger man temporarily off balance. He slammed back against the alley wall.
“I wasn’t gonna kill her!” Sam yelled, his hands up at his sides, in a gesture of peace. “You know me better than this, Jack! If I was gonna do it, do you really think I’d have wasted any time?”
Jack’s fevered brain processed Sam’s words even as he pushed back from the wall and dove for Sam once more. This time, Sam easily side-stepped Jack’s attack, using his leg to trip the younger man, who caught himself in a roll and was up and on his feet again in a split second.
They faced one another in the dark alley and Sam shook his head, his dimly lit expression one of supplication. “Come on now, Jack. Think about it, will ya?” Sam was out of breath as he entreated his old friend. Jack stood stock still, watching his mentor carefully.
Annabelle’s fingers brushed against something that slid forward as she moved. Her breath caught and she reached for it, knowing, instinctively, that it was the gun. She grasped the grip firmly and raised the weapon. Then she slid back against the wall again and glanced up at the two men facing off.
She could see Jack’s blonde hair shining in the dim light from the street lamp several yards away. She waited, unsure of what to do.
“How could you do this, you son of a bitch?”
“I’m not as picky as you are, Jack. Never have been,” Sam said, softly, keeping his hands up in that placating gesture. “Handler came to me with an envelope and I took it – like I always do. I didn’t know it was Annabelle’s.”
“You could have turned it down,” Jack said.
“I didn’t know who she was, Jack, until you introduced us at the air strip last week. What was I supposed to do?”
“Nothing, God damn it!
“I can’t do that, Jack!” Sam yelled back, his ire obviously up, even as he just as obviously fought to control his temper and reason with Jack. “I can’t do that and you know it. Once you’re in, you’re in. I’ve never turned down an assignment before. If I started now,
Jack stared at his old friend for a long, quiet time. And then, in a tone as low and deadly as a cougar’s warning growl, he asked, “What were you going to do to her?”
Sam drew in a deep breath, closing his eyes momentarily as he did so. He ran a hand through his hair. “I was just trying to scare her. I need the intel. That’s all. If she’d have spilled, I could have turned the rest over. You could take her underground.”
“For the rest of her
“Jack, think about this, will ya? If not me, then someone else. Her life’s as good as forfeit now and that’s the black and white of it.”
Annabelle listened, her heart pounding too hard against her rib cage. It sort of hurt. She felt very dizzy. Whatever Sam had given her was having an unpleasant effect. It made her angry. A part of her wanted to shoot him right now and be done with it.
With that thought, she leveled the gun and aimed down the barrel.
“What exactly was the assignment, Sam?” Jack asked.
“At the time, they wanted the message that Max had left behind. But a lot’s happened since then. Now they want the vial. And I have to kill Brandt.”
At that, Jack laughed. It was a humorless, hard laugh and it gave Annabelle a chill.
“And what about you, Sam? What excuse are you going to give them for the delay?”
“No excuses, Jack. Never any excuses. They’ll have to take it or leave it.”
“And you’re the best,” Jack said, his expression both hard and poignant at once. “So, why not take it?” His Sheffield accent had turned mocking and his tone held no kindness. “Better, by far, than losing their best hit man.”
At this, Sam said nothing. He just pulled his gaze away from Jack’s and stared at the ground. And then, as if
