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Bishop

Drip … splash … drip … splash …

My eyes focused on the water as it formed small-tear-shaped beads on the ceiling. They stretched down, detached, and fell, hitting the floor with quiet slaps of water against cement. After each tiny ball exploded, my eyes lifted and sought out the next.

Drip … splash … drip … splash …

The noise was enough to drive a person insane, which I’m certain was the point.

The man seated on the other side of the table hadn’t said a word in thirty minutes. His head was bowed as he thumbed through the folder in front of him, occasionally grunting and glancing over at me.

I said nothing. I recognized what he was doing. It was a ploy, a means to get me to speak, to break the silence, and offer up the information he was looking for.

Drip … splash … drip … splash …

Beneath the table the fingers on my left hand twitched, the only outward show of irritation I allowed myself. My time was being wasted, purposely , and I didn’t like it.

I also didn’t like how the hair was standing to attention on the back of my neck.

Or the way my instincts whispered that I needed to be aware, be ready.

Something about this entire situation was a little … off .

I swallowed a laugh. Off? Had I become so immune to the hazards of my life that being dragged out of my hotel room at gunpoint in the middle of the night and locked in a room with someone claiming to be FBI was only a little off?

“Something funny?” The man seated opposite broke the silence and glared across the table at me.

I lifted my hand and held my thumb and finger an inch apart. “Little bit.”

“Care to enlighten me?” He dropped the papers he’d been reading to the table, and I caught a quick glimpse of a photograph before he tucked it away inside a folder. The face was unrecognizable to me. I had a photographic memory. If I’d met the woman in the image, I would have remembered her.

“Not really.” I checked the time on my watch. “I have somewhere to be. Can we speed this up?”

“I don’t think you understand how much trouble you’re in right now, Mr. Chambers.” He leaned back in his chair and looked at me.

“Enlighten me.” I threw his own words back at him.

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“I’d have to be a talented mind reader to answer that since I was on my way to bed when you broke into my room and insisted I come with you.”

“We know you were hired to make Eden Marshall disappear.”

“Is that so?”

He flipped open the folder, took out the photograph and slid it across to me. I glanced down at it but didn’t bother picking it up.

“Am I supposed to recognize that woman?” I feigned disinterest and boredom. “I hate to disappoint you, and I don’t know who’s been telling you otherwise, but I’ve never seen her before.”

“To be clear, you’re saying you’ve never met Eden Marshall or taken money to build her a new life.”

“Never met her, never spoken to her, never taken money from her.”

“Yet we have eyewitnesses who say they saw her outside your hotel room earlier this evening.”

I snorted. “I find that very unlikely.”

That wasn’t how I ran my business. I rarely met with my clients in hotels. It was usually in a public place in the middle of the day, far away from where I was staying or lived. This was a fishing expedition and one that was going to be unfruitful.

“If that’s all you’ve dragged me here for …” I stood.

He jumped to his feet. “This is a criminal investigation. Sit down, Mr. Chambers . I’m not done with you.”

My eyes dropped to the gun at his hip. It wasn’t a government issue, and I was pretty confident he didn’t work for the FBI or any other agency. I checked the time again. I needed to be at the airport in less than an hour.

“I don’t have time for this.” A quick look around the room accompanied my words.

There were no cameras. Nothing other than him and me . I placed my palms on the table and leaned across it.

“Do you really want to know where Ms. Marshall is?” I dropped my voice and cast another furtive look around.

He bought the action and stooped closer to listen to me. That was his mistake.

I grabbed his tie with one hand and yanked hard. As he staggered forward, I flattened my other hand on the back of his head and slammed his face into the table. Before he could react, I was across the table and had his gun out of the holster on his hip and pointed at his head.

“We could have kept this civil, but you called me a liar.” I thumbed the safety off the SIG P365, and he froze at the audible click it made. “I don’t like being called a liar.”

“If you kill me, you’ll have the entire FBI after you.”

I laughed. “You’re no more FBI than I am. My guess is someone has hired you to find Ms. Marshall. Did she steal something from your employer? Or maybe she’s related to them? It doesn’t matter.” My finger moved from the gun’s grip to the trigger. “I don’t know who she is, nor do I care. What I do care about is why someone is trying to involve me. But since you don’t have the answer to that question … Well, too bad, so sad for you.” I squeezed the trigger.

The gunshot was a muted sound, courtesy of the suppressor attached to the muzzle. Not silent, but not loud enough to draw outside attention. Blood and brain matter exploded outward, and I grimaced when some landed on my sleeve. Blood was such a bitch to get out of silk.

Pushing the body to the floor, I did a quick search of his pockets and came up with no I.D and no badge, but there was a set of keys. Whoever he was, he didn’t work for any government agency.

I checked the time. Fifty minutes until I needed to be at the private airstrip. If I was late, Wade would never let me forget it. I needed to leave.

I checked the gun’s magazine for ammunition, then opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.

The guard outside scrambled for his gun a second too late. His brain took a moment to catch up with his body, and his eyes widened as he fell to the floor, blood dripping down his face. I stepped over him. I was certain there should be at least one more. When they burst into my hotel room, I heard three distinct voices.

So where was the last one?

I moved along the hallway, gun held steady while I listened for movement or voices. Silence greeted me.

Where was he?

I stopped, head tilting when I heard the flush of a toilet. Moving to the side, I turned until my back was against the wall so I could see in both directions and waited.

Two minutes passed before a shadow heralded the arrival of the missing man. From the lack of urgency in his pace, he clearly hadn’t heard any of the gunshots or knew his partners were dead. He had his head bowed over his cell as he walked and didn’t see me step out to face him.

Lucky for him, I didn’t want him dead. I needed him to take a message back to whoever his employer was. I waited until he was less than a foot away, then cleared my throat. His head jerked up. He dropped his cell and reached for his gun.

“Touch it and I’ll kill you.”

He froze.

“Hand me your gun … slowly .” I held out one hand and kept my gun trained on him as he reached for the gun in its side holster. “That’s it. Nice and easy. You don’t want to die tonight. That won’t benefit either of us.”

“Where’s Henry?” His voice quivered, and I gave a mental headshake. He was clearly green, new to the business of kidnap and killing.

“Henry is meeting his maker.” I leaned forward and took the gun from his shaking hand. “Now listen carefully …” I cocked a brow in query.

“Tom.”

“Okay, Tom. Listen carefully now. I want you to go back to your boss and tell him that Bishop Chambers said if he tries this again, I’ll be paying him a visit.”

It wouldn’t be difficult to find out who was behind the order to grab me. A few well-placed questions and I’d have the answer within twenty-four hours.

“Whoever employed you to find the girl needs to understand that it has nothing to do with me, and I’d like to keep it that way. Think you can do that, Tom?”

“Y-yes sir.”

I nodded. “Good. Then I’ll head out. I have a flight to catch.” I stepped past him. “Oh … one more thing …”

As the young man turned, I hit him with the grip of the gun, and he dropped to the floor like a stone.

“I’d say I’m sorry about the headache you’ll wake up with, but it’s better than being dead.”