Page 64 of Agency

My aunt, my own flesh and blood, had likely stabbed me in the back. My former employers were after me, and had sent an entire hit squad to get the job done. And, here I was, under lock and key by three former spec ops soldiers who also happened to be my lovers. Or, well,formerlovers.

Because, yeah… Yeah that was done with.

Oh, and that second part, about the whole hit squad coming after me? I didn’t know if I should feel threatened, or simply flattered. Not every day that four men try to murder you and fail miserably.

Then again, it’s not every day that three men try to save you, and mostly succeed.

But, already, a certain scar on my lower back was itching and reminding me of its unavoidable presence. I needed to get away from these guys. As much as they might have protected me from Joergensen, I didn’t need them having targets on their backs. I didn’t need that on my conscience, too.

“Hey,” Morgan again growled, “you awake?” Hands shaking me, then, but feeling not nearly as wonderful as they had in my dream…

“What?” I groaned, just wanting to get back to the much happier void that awaited behind my eyes. “Can’t you see I’m trying to get some sleep?” Sighing, I shrugged off his hand and snuggled into the windbreaker they’d used to cover my handcuffs, but which I hadn’t remembered draping over myself as a makeshift blanket.

“Just wake me up when we get there…”

“But we’re here,” he said.

“Already?” I asked, eyes widening in the darkness of the Lexus’ cab. I looked around as best I could, but all I could see beyond the windows were dark trees, trees, trees, in a seemingly never ending forest. I stretched my fingers, tried to roll my wrists. Luckily, the cuffs weren’t on super tight. But, still, they weren’t exactly what I’d called comfortable.

“You were out for a few hours,” Morgan said, sheepishly collecting the windbreaker from me.

I looked to the front, to Andrew leaned back in his seat. His sidearm was drawn and on his lap, and he rested one hand on top. On the dash in front of him was the manila folder containing the lying dossier. His eyes were closed, but I could tell he was drifting in and out. Jericho, for his part, looked stone-faced and unfazed as he sat at the steering wheel.

“Have I been?” I asked, going to sit upright. “What time is it?”

“Just before three.”

“Any plan on what we do next?”

“On what you get to do?” Jericho asked, eyes glancing to mine in the rearview mirror. “Sit handcuffed, I imagine, and tell us everything you can about the people after our client.”

“Dossier didn’t help any with that?”

“Dossier barely had shit in it,” he replied in a dry voice. “Just a bunch of fucking lies and more bullshit.”

“So you believe me, at least? That I was lied to?”

“Yeah. Sure. Whatever. Still doesn’t make you less of an assassin, or anything.”

“But at least I’m not someone who murders innocent people. There’s a difference, isn’t there?”

“It’s like the difference between Keystone Light and fucking in a boat,” Jericho said in a voice dry as the Gobi Desert. “One’s beer, and one’s having sex, but they’re still fucking close to water.” He paused as he turned us off the bumpy highway.

“The most important part, though?” he continued without looking back. “Neither of them murder people for money.”

I didn’t reply. Just sat there and rolled with the punches and the even bumpier road. After all, his words weren’t all that far off from what I’d imagined each of them, or any man I’d slept with, saying if they’d found out about the real me.

“Ignore him,” Morgan said after a moment.

“Why?” I muttered back. “He’s right, isn’t he?”

We all went quiet after that, and I returned to staring out the window, and thinking about what my next move would be.

A couple minutes later, we were pulling up in front of the cabin.

Of course “cabin” was very loosely used here. Because when people thought of a cabin in the woods, they tended to think of squat, ponderous, sagging structures built of logs. This cabin? Well, this cabin sure as hell wasn’t built of logs.

The two-story, A-frame home sat at the back of a half-acre yard, its red, peeked roof silhouetting against the purplish-blue of the dark, morning sky. Dense forest crowded at the back of the cabin, pressing in and around the edges as if the building had outstretched invisible arms to hold back the unruly wooden mob from lumbering towards its news inhabitants.