Skewed (The Mercenary Series Book 1) Read online

  But as I turned the lock, cautious, my mouth running dry and my heart palpitating, nothing happened. This did nothing to ease my anxiety, and instead conjured up all the other possibilities that might be waiting for me.

  I’d left the light on, and so entered with my arms outstretched, pointing the weapon. I wasn’t inexperienced with a gun. The attack still didn’t come, and instead of warding it off, I found myself looking for him. The chair wasn’t in the same place as I’d left it, and my stomach lurched once more as I’d thought it had suddenly vanished, but then my eyes alighted on a mound near the old dresser on one side, the chair legs sticking up into the air, and it dawned on me what had happened.

  He’d fallen over.

  Feeling cocky again, I gave a laugh and started down the stairs toward him.

  His growl came from beneath the chair. “Laughing at me is a bit cruel, don’t you think?”

  I came to a stop beside him. “You came into my house to kill me, I’ve stabbed you, and you think the laughing is the cruel part?”

  “Kicking a man when he’s down,” he grumbled.

  “Are you requesting that I kick you now?”

  “No. I need help up. My ankles twisted at funny angles when I fell. I think if I try to move like this, I’ll break them.”

  I pursed my lips. “Maybe I should let you. It would prevent any ideas of you wanting to escape.”

  “If that should happen, I’ll be a lot less inclined to want to help you.”

  I laughed again. “Help me? At what point have you helped me?”

  “When I killed the two men who were out to murder you and snatch your sister. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I would have thought that counted.”

  He seemed genuinely annoyed I didn’t consider that help. Perhaps he even thought I should be thanking him—I didn’t know, maybe I should—but that didn’t change the fact that he had been here to kill me, too.

  Even so, I reached down to help him.

  He wasn’t a massive man—I guessed about five feet eleven—but he was lean and compact with muscle. I was strong, too, but even so, it took all of my strength to try to haul him up with one hand and pull the back of the chair up with the other. He was able to help by pushing up with his bound hands, but only a little. I noticed he’d managed to get his wrists free from where they’d been bound to his thighs.

  “You could untie me,” he grunted, as I tried to get him upright and failed. “That would make things a lot easier.”

  “Nice try,” I replied, not considering it for a second.

  I shifted my position slightly and tried again. This time I was able to get his ass into the seat of the chair, and then I used his momentum to pull the back of the chair up and slam the rear two legs onto the floor.

  He was upright again.

  I spotted the knife on the floor and bent to snatch it up. “I assume this was what you were going for?”

  “You’d assume right.”

  “And if you’d gotten free, what then?”

  “I’d have escaped.”

  “And would you have killed me if you’d had the chance?”

  He didn’t answer me, just stared at me with those blue eyes. I suddenly wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.

  “I had a cop upstairs with me, you know,” I said, perhaps recklessly. “He was armed. If you’d come through that door, he’d have shot you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “A cop came to see you the morning after you were supposed to have been killed. Doesn’t that strike you as suspicious?”

  I shrugged. “He comes around every so often to check up on us. He knows we’re in Witness Protection.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “My point exactly.”

  I didn’t want to admit to him that he was echoing my suspicions.

  “Are you suggesting he’s the one who leaked our location?” I asked.

  “Just because he’s a cop, doesn’t mean he should be trusted.”

  “I already told you, I don’t trust anyone.”

  “I figured that, or you would have asked him for help rather than keeping me hidden down here. You could easily have handed me over to him, you know?”

  “And if he’s in cahoots with my father, what would have happened then? He’d have released you, and I’d have ended up dead, just like you wanted.”

  “I didn’t want it, Vee,” he said, locking me with those blue eyes. “That was your father’s wish, not mine.”

  “But you were happy to be his hand.”

  We stared at each other, not speaking. Finally, I sighed and looked away.

  “So what now?” he said. “How much longer are we going to stay like this? Won’t your sister be home soon?”

  “Not for another couple of hours.”

  “Someone might come looking for those two before then.” He jerked his head toward the bodies. I noticed he had a graze across his forehead, which I assumed he must have gotten when he’d fallen. “You haven’t even searched their bodies yet.”

  I knew I needed to.

  Could I smell the two bodies now? The slightly sweet tang to the air, like over-ripe fruit about to spoil. The idea of touching them again turned my stomach, but I needed to get hold of myself and deal with it.

  “Fine,” I said, “but first, I can’t have you bleeding all over the place again.”

  Perhaps I was just delaying the inevitable, but I took a moment to patch up the wounds I’d give him, laying another folded piece of gauze on top of the cut and sticking it down with a fresh strip of tape.

  “Thanks,” he said, but I only gave him a scowl in return.

  Then I left him to stride over to the pile under the dust sheets.

  Taking a shallow breath, hoping I wouldn’t be able to taste death across the back of my throat, I yanked back the sheet.

  The men were exactly as I’d found them, sprawled across each other like dolls discarded and forgotten by children who had been playing with them and been called for dinner. The smell I’d hoped I’d imagined flooded over me, making me turn my head away.

  “Check their pockets,” X called out, making me jump, “and also look for any straps around their upper arms or ankles which might be holding a cell phone.”

  “I know,” I shot back.

  I didn’t like being told what to do, especially not by him.

  Gritting my teeth and holding my breath, I stepped forward and quickly rifled through the pockets of the guy on top. I didn’t find anything, so I patted down the tops of his arms and then his legs, and checked inside the boots he wore. I didn’t find anything, and I didn’t know if I should be relieved or disappointed. At least if I’d found something, I wouldn’t need to check the next body.

  Turning my face to take a gulp of moderately fresher air, I caught sight of X watching me. I didn’t like the way he looked at me, or perhaps I didn’t like the way him looking at me made me feel. I had to keep reminding myself that he wanted me dead, even if he did constantly look at me as though I was already naked.

  What would he be like in bed? Rough and forceful, I’d bet, and knowing exactly what he was doing.

  A shiver ran through me and condensed deep between my thighs.

  I was a sick puppy. How could I be thinking about sex when I had two dead guys beside me? Although, admittedly, it had been a while. I guessed I was just desperate.

  I had to move the top man to get to the one underneath, rolling his body to one side. Holding my breath once more, I shoved my hands into his pockets, searching. My fingers closed around cool, slim metal and I grabbed it, quickly stepping away.

  In delight, I lifted the phone in the air to show X in a moment of triumph.

  He looked back at me, that same triumph reflected in his cool gaze. “What did I tell you?”

  I checked the screen. The phone still had battery charge, but wasn’t showing any texts or missed calls. Of course, there wasn’t any cell coverage down here, so someone might have been trying to get in touch, but had only been reaching voice mail.
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br />   “I need to take it upstairs,” I told X. “It’s the only way I’ll see if any missed calls or texts come through.”

  I didn’t know why I was telling him, as though I was asking for permission for some stupid reason.

  He nodded. “Okay, come straight back down. I want to know.”

  Again, he was telling me what to do, but I found myself wanting to tell him. I couldn’t remember the last time I had someone I could confide in or bounce ideas off of.

  Nope, don’t go there. He’s a killer. Don’t forget that!

  I had no idea why my mind kept trying to turn him into an ally. Was I so starved of friendship I would take someone who had only come here to murder me?

  Keeping the gun with me, and making sure there weren’t any sharp implements anywhere near where X sat, I hurried back up the stairs. I stood in the open doorway, so I could still keep an eye on my captive, and held the phone in the air. For a moment, nothing happened and a sense of relief flooded through me, but then the phone began to vibrate.

  Fuck.

  I didn’t like the tremor in my hand as I pulled the phone back down and checked the screen. There were three text messages waiting, all showing the number as unknown.

  I felt sick to my stomach, suddenly distant from myself, as though I were a bystander to my own body, as I opened the messages. With my heart racing, I read through them all.

  Is it done?

  Respond immediately.

  Plan B will be put into action.

  The third text was sent just after ten this morning. That was hours ago now. Whoever was behind this clearly knew something had gone wrong, and they had a backup plan put in place. Cold fear laced through my heart. What was their backup plan? I was still here, and I was armed and ready for them, but I’d stupidly sent Nickie to school, thinking I’d already contained the threat.

  X’s voice called from the cellar. “Well? What does it say?”

  On shaky legs, I walked back down. I flipped the phone around so he could see, and his eyes flicked down the screen.

  “Is it worth replying?” I asked. “I could just type, ‘done now.’ Or ask what plan B is.”

  “They’re not stupid. They’ll know it’s you.”

  I knew that, too, but I was grasping at straws.

  Panicked urgency surged through me. “I need to check Nicole is safe.”

  I ran back up the stairs and into my bedroom where I’d left my own cell phone on my bedside table. I checked it quickly for missed calls, though I didn’t know why I thought Nickie would suddenly start calling me—perhaps if she felt she was in danger. She never turned to me for anything else. The only other person who called me was Johnny from the bar, and that was only to get me to cover extra shifts or rearrange what was on the schedule.

  But I had no missed calls.

  Quickly, I pulled up Nickie’s number and called her.

  Pick up, pick up, I willed as it rang. It would be just like her not to answer, purely because she didn’t want to speak to me, but I hoped this one time she did.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Call me, now,” I said into her voicemail. “It’s urgent.”

  I hung up and then tried again. When she started to speak on the voicemail, I pressed end and called again.

  The ringing cut off, and I heard her voice, “What?”

  “Oh, thank God.” I dropped to the edge of my bed in relief. I didn’t care that she sounded snappish and put out—I was just happy to hear her voice, alive and well.

  “I’m busy, Vee. What do you want?”

  I pulled myself together, trying to focus. “I need you to come home. Something has happened and I think you might be in danger.”

  “I’m always in danger. You must remember the last seventeen years of my life?”

  “This is serious, Nickie. Someone came to the house. People know where we are.”

  She paused and then said, “Someone came to the house? What did they say?”

  I hesitated, unsure of what to say. I could hardly tell her that two of them were dead in the cellar, and another was taped to a chair.

  “Nothing,” I said in the end. “I just saw them, that’s all.”

  “And they’ve gone now?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  She exhaled a huff of air. “If that’s the case, I don’t see why I should have to drop everything and race home just because you’ve gotten spooked.”

  My temper snapped. “Nickie, if you don’t come home now, I will get in my car and come and find you, and drag you back here myself. Do you really want all your new friends to see your sister doing that? And you know I will, don’t you? I will grab you by the hair and throw you into the car. Do you understand me?”

  I heard her huffing a sigh down the phone.

  “God, you are such a fucking bitch,” she spat. “Why the hell couldn’t I have had a normal family?”

  “Don’t you think I wish the same thing?”

  “Oh, I know you wish you didn’t have me as a sister. I bet you wished you’d pulled the trigger when you had the chance.”

  Her words felt like a knife in my side, physically winding me, making me inhale before I could answer.

  I couldn’t argue with her; how could I? She always had this immense, unforgivable thing to hold over me, and there was nothing I could do or say because everything she was feeling and thinking about me was the same as I’d felt and thought about myself a million times over.

  I gritted my teeth. “Just come home, Nickie, please. Don’t make me have to come out there and find you.”

  The phone went dead and I let out a yell of frustration. I wanted to throw the phone against the wall, but I needed it in case something happened and she needed to call me.

  Was there anything worse than trying to protect a person who didn’t think they needed your protection?

  Now what the hell was I supposed to do?

  I put my head in my hands, trying to think. I imagined normal women would cry in this situation—tears of frustration and fear for their sibling. My eyes burned hot with unshed tears, and I knew they would be tears that wouldn’t come. It had been years since I’d last cried at something—I couldn’t even remember a time when crying was a normal reaction for me. Maybe I’d simply forgotten how.

  We needed to get out of here; that much was clear. Whoever was running the two dead men would be back for us, and my father would soon realize X hadn’t done his job either.

  I didn’t want to run. Doing so would mean I wouldn’t be testifying any time soon, and I had so badly wanted to look that man in the face and tell him what a fucking bastard he was and how much I hated him. I could go to the deputy and ask that we be relocated again, with new identities, but I didn’t trust him in the slightest. There were other U.S. Marshals, but how deep had the leak gone? How many of them were being run by my father’s gang?

  I knew Nickie wasn’t going to be happy about running, but I was left with no choice now.

  Unless I turned this around and became the hunter rather than the hunted.

  But my father was in prison—though obviously still able to communicate with the outside world in order to send X to find me.

  How was I supposed to stop a man who, by all accounts, had already been stopped?

  Chapter Fourteen

  X

  That Vee had disappeared upstairs again made me nervous.

  She knew people were after her, but what about the person who was after me? I was supposed to have been long gone from here by now, and out of the state—hell, even out of the country, if that was where my next job took me—but as time continued to trickle by, I knew my chance of my past catching up with me grew bigger.

  The problem with killing people for a living was that you ended up with a lot of people wanting you dead.

  I only had one option. I needed to convince Vee to untie me.

  If she got too close, I could loop my strapped together wrists over the back of her head and try to strangle her wi
th my forearms, but that would involve figuring out a way of getting her right into my personal space, and also getting her to put down the gun. If I tried anything while she still had hold of my weapon, she would kill me in an instant.

  Unless I was worth more to her alive than dead. If I could convince her I could get her and her sister to safety, and that I had information on who was behind the couple of dead men currently decomposing in the corner, she might think twice before she killed me, and that could buy me an advantage.

  Did I even still want her dead?

  I had never wanted her dead. It was her father who wanted that, and I was simply being paid to make it happen. Only now, as I spent more and more time in her company, I couldn’t help but feel like I wanted to protect her rather than harm her. Could she really have done the awful thing I’d been told about?

  Movement came from above, the creak of floorboards and thud of footsteps, and then she appeared in the open doorway of the cellar again. She was strikingly beautiful, and the sight of her made me catch my breath.

  No, I didn’t want to kill her. But if I didn’t, I would have her father, Mickey Five Fingers, writing my death warrant as well. Not that I was holding too much hope of getting out of this alive right now.

  “What happened?” I asked her.

  “I got hold of my sister and told her to come home. I guess we’re packing our bags and getting the hell out of here.”

  “What about the trial? If you don’t testify against your father, he’ll be out and he’ll come after you.”

  “He’s come after me anyway,” she said, “and he’s behind bars now. Will it really make any difference if he’s locked up or not?”

  “He won’t be able to continue with his work if he’s behind bars. You’ll have stopped that side of things.”

  She stared at me with her dark eyes—eyes that could have belonged to that old famous movie star, Audrey Hepburn. “What do you care? You want to see me dead.”

  “No, I don’t. Just because I was paid to make something happen doesn’t mean I want it to.”