His Princess (A Royal Romance) (24 page)

I could, but I don’t hurt women. I have a code.

Instead I drag her wrists together and loop the rope around them, and tie it tight, enough that it starts to turn her hands purple. She’ll wriggle out of it, but it’ll buy me some time.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Tying you up.”

The rope is just long enough to pull her legs up and bind her ankles, too, and leave her hog tied. I lurch off of her and grab my pants, drag them on, shove my feet into my shoes, and pull on my shirt. Blood is already soaking through.

“You’re not going to kill me?”

“Nope.”

“Are you crazy? I’m going to come after you again. I took a contract.”

“I know.”

“You’ll have to kill me the next time.”

“Nope.”

She laughs. “No wonder Santiago is so disappointed in you. You should hear him talk about what a bitter disappointment the great Quentin Mulqueen turned out to be.”

“Tell him I said hi,” I pant, lurching into the bathroom. I grab a towel and press it against my side, and use my belt to hold it in place. The wounds on my arms aren’t bad, just scratches. I slip into my holster and pull my jacket on, and hope I can get out of the hotel without somebody asking why I’m bleeding all over the place. I stumble out of the bathroom, straighten up my clothes as best I can, and watch her wriggle on the floor a little bit.

“You’d better hurry up,” she says, smirking at me. “The longer you wait, the less of a head start you have.”

I stumble out of the room and let the door close behind me.

The fuck am I going to do now?

Okay, first, get the hell out of here. I head for the stairwell and lurch down, wincing at the pain in my leg. I’m not sure how deep that cut is. I didn’t get a good look and I’m not going to stop to get one now. Each step is a jolt of agony, until I finally reach the bottom and stop, panting. Fuck, I can’t go out through the lobby like this. I’ll attract too much attention. I turn away from the door and go down the next flight of stairs, into the ground level of the hotel. I just need to find my way to the parking garage, and I’m set.

Down here it’s all bare concrete and harsh florescent lighting. I blink a few times as I walk out into the hallway, and stop. I’m feeling pretty hazy, and my leg is damp with blood. I’m bleeding elsewhere, too. I keep forgetting. A touch to my coat sleeve and it comes away red, soaked through the fabric.

Fuck.

I swipe my hand down my side and start following the glowing red exit signs, hoping the exit will be in the garage. When I finally shove the door open and lurch out into the light, it’s like two hot pokers in my eyes. There are fucking cameras everywhere. No hiding this.

Stumbling, I leave bloodied handprints on my way down to the car, thankful I parked it on the ground floor, and slink behind the wheel. I have a first-aid kid in the glove box. I yank it out, sweep it open over the seat, and use the dull-tipped safety scissors to cut open my pant leg and peel away the blood-soaked towel.

It’s not a deep cut, but it’s a nice long gash and it needs stitches. For now all I can do is grit my teeth and put some field-dress bandages over it, to pinch the flesh closed. If that bitch had hit an artery there, I’d be dead already. Once that’s done I wrap it up tight and cut and tear away my jacket and sleeves, and shove my gun under the seat, and bandage up my arms in a hurry.

Goddamn, I’m a mess. I look like I’m a cow that got lost at a hamburger convention. She landed a cut on my face, and I didn’t even feel it until I saw the drying blood on my cheek. Not a bad cut, though.

Fuck me, what if she put poison on the blades?

There’s a ragged ligature mark around my neck, too. I look like death warmed over.

Once I get the car started I jab the call button on the steering wheel with my finger, and shout my way through the tedious commands to make a phone call through the car’s speakers.

“Dale,” I bellow.

“Dialing,” the cheery lady robot voice says back.

It rings five fucking times before he picks up.

“Quent?” he says. “I wasn’t expecting—”

“Me either. I’m hurt and shit’s gone south. I’m on my way to you.”

He swallows. “Yeah, alright.”

I drive. Slowly, carefully, methodically. I use my goddamn blinkers, I’m careful as hell of red-light cameras, and I keep it five under the speed limit, forcing my eyes open as I drive. The sun is too goddamn bright and my leg is on fire.

Not far now.

Traffic is on my side, which is great, because I would be dead if it wasn’t.

Dale’s place is in a seedier part of Philadelphia, on the edge of Chinatown where it blurs into a less savory place. Located in a triangular two-story block building topped with concertina wire, he’s got a garage in the back, facing a power substation. I wheel the car around the back and tap the horn, and the heavy garage door rumbles up, opening a great black mouth.

I let the car roll inside and remember at the last second what brakes are for, and manage to stop before crashing into the far wall. I manage to get the car in park and get the door open before I collapse rather heavily onto the concrete floor, and hear Dale calling my name.

Next thing I know I’m lying on his couch. There’s whole blood in a bag on an IV stand next to me and I’m too stiff to move. He’s got me down to my skivvies, and as I sit up I notice that he’s doing something interesting to my leg involving a really big, hooked needle.

“Don’t move.”

For a dumpy, five-foot-six guy who looks like the poster child for computer-science classes, Dale has something of an air of command about him. I flop back against the arm of the couch and wince every time I feel the needle slide into my flesh and the thread draw the wound tight. He takes his freaking time before finally wrapping a clean bandage around my leg.

We’re in his living room slash office, a utilitarian space with concrete walls, used couches, shelves and shelves of gear, computers, and enough firepower to overthrow the Bolivian government. Harsh lamps burn at my eyes when I lie back, so I drape my bandaged arm over my face.

“What the fuck happened, Quent?”

I wince at another stitch. “I met the contact at the hotel. The contact sucked my dick, then tried to kill me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Tried to strangle me with a bondage rope, then went Benihana special on me.”

“I’d say so. You’re a lucky man, Quent. So she sucked your dick.”

“She tried to kill me afterward.”

“Still counts, man.”

I start to sit up, only to fall back.

“Fuck,” I mutter.

“Yeah, so,” he says, rising. He presses his glasses up his nose. “They tried to kill you. What’s the story on that?”

“I don’t know,” I lie.

It was because the girl looked at me. She had green eyes, full of fear, and resignation. It’s come to this.
I’m next
.

“When they try to kill you, that usually means unsatisfied customer.”

“Yeah.”

“You have a reputation, man.”

“Yeah. She said she’d be coming after me again.”

Dale sputters. “Jesus, Quent. You didn’t finish her off?”

“No.”

Dale gives me that look and shrugs his round shoulders. “Fine, whatever. Even if you had it wouldn’t take them long to figure out something went wrong. You’ve just given yourself less time to get gone before they come after you.”

“Right,” I sigh. “It’s time, Dale. I need to disappear.”

“Got it. I’ll set you up,” he says.

Dale is one of the best forgers on the East Coast. In this era when everything is so heavily hooked into everything else and there are databases of government information detailing everything from your favorite porn sites to the last time you shaved your ass, it’s tough to create a fake identity. The main problem is that the identity will be clean, and that’s more suspicious than a lifetime of dirt.

If you just suddenly walk onto the world stage and say, “Here I am!” like you’ve been living off the grid your whole life, it raises more red flags than if you’d just gotten out of prison. Dale is the solution to that problem. He does more than work up a fake driver’s license and passport. He can fake a whole history behind a name given enough time. Besides identity papers he’s my major supplier for weapons, and so on, and so forth.

He doesn’t hand me a driver’s license. Instead, he hands me a key, drops it on my palm. Attached is a little tag with an address on one side and a pass code on the other.

“I knew this one was coming for a while,” he says sadly. “You’ve been lucky so far, but…”

“I know,” I say sharply.

This is something of a sore point between the two of us. I have scruples. Dale…doesn’t.

By the look of him you’d think, oh, what a dumpy little geek. Thing is, that dumpy little geek worked for some very shady people until a back injury took him out of the game. I’ve been trying to pry his story out of him for years, and succeeded at only chipping away at it. Sometimes he mentions El Salvador, or Saudi Arabia, offhandedly with the familiarity of someone who’s been intimate with a place.

Bloody intimate.

Deep sigh.

“I need a place to stay.”

“All taken care of. I took the liberty of charging your account and I’ve set up a transfer to your backup holdings. You can’t take it all. Did they pay you before they tried to kill you?”

“Yeah.”

He nods. “Insurance. If the one they sent after you failed her job, they can trace it if you try to move their payment into another account. It’s gone, Quent. Let it go.”

I nod. I’m going to miss that half a million dollars, but I have enough saved up to get by on in a pinch. You don’t do a job like mine without a lot of insurance policies, contingency plans, and a few Hail Marys to throw if shit really hits the fan.

“How long can I stay here?”

“It’s better if you go as soon as possible. Take a nap, see if you can walk okay when you wake up. I’ll be over in the other room.”

I let out a long sigh as he flicks off the lights and let my head fall back against the pillow. Sleep lands on me heavy and hard.

When Dale comes back I’m already sitting up, having removed the intravenous line he put in by myself. He kindly left me a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt and hoodie. I pull all that on and test my weight on my leg. I should stay off it, but it’s not gushing blood. That works for me.

“Get your weight off that when you can,” he says. “I’ve got some cash. Bus fare. There will be everything you need at the dead drop.”

“Yeah. Thanks, man.”

“It’s always been a pleasure working with you.”

“Yeah.”

Do I say goodbye? We just sort of stare at each other before I lurch back out. The sun is too low; my nap must have lasted all day. At Dale’s direction I walk two blocks south and flop on a rickety bench and wait for the bus to pull up, checking the route number to make sure I have the right one before I board and pay the fare in cash, fling myself into a seat, and sit back, fighting fatigue.

Karma, man. Karma is a bitch. As my head bobs with the motion of the bus I can’t escape the feeling that this is going to be it.

You know how they say old soldiers never die, they just fade away?

Old hitmen never retire, they get their brains blown out.

It’s not a long bus ride. The mini-storage place is in a slightly nicer part of town, richly appointed with barbed wire around the fence. I have to walk up and tap in the code, and trust that Dale isn’t screwing me.

There’s a half second when I think I’m really in trouble before the gate rumbles open and I walk inside, staring up at the numbers painted over the plain metal doors before I find the right one. The key unlocks the padlock and the door rolls up with a rumble.

Inside, there’s a metal wire utility shelf with the rudiments of a new life. A little metal box too small for a pair of shoes holds the keys to the car and a new driver’s license, passport, social security card, the works. An envelope holds several credit cards and bank information for my emergency funds.

There’s also an address and a set of house keys.

Oh, and my Impala. Hello, beautiful.

I sit in the front seat of the car and try to figure out where the hell I’m going.

I
hate teeth
.

I spend my days behind a counter, which sits at roughly eye level. Sitting on that counter is an oversized model of the human mouth, propped open to proudly display big fake pearly whites.

Something about that bothers me more than it should. I want to close the damn thing, or better yet pitch it across the waiting room and watch it fly apart when it hits the painting of the sailboat on the far wall.

I hate that painting, too. I hate the constant stink of antiseptic and that weird burning odor that accompanies the sound of the drill in the back rooms. It’s the smell of burning teeth. A very nasty smell, trust me.

Right now there’s a woman checking her kid in for an appointment standing in front of the counter, watching me type in her insurance info. The kid stands on his tiptoes to peer over the top and watches me with wild, frightened eyes. Going by his lack of records, this might be his first checkup. Welcome to the Pit of Despair, kid.

“Mom, can I have one?” he says, reaching for the candy dish.

“When you’re done, hon.”

I hand the card back with the clipboard of first-time forms and lean back in my chair, drawing in a long breath as I eye the clock. Four thirty is the last appointment today, and it’s 3:15. The sooner I can get out of here, the better. I don’t have a class tonight, so this is one of those rare evenings where I can actually rest, maybe get a few hours of sleep. Very soon I will be finishing my degree and I can finally quit this awful job, and get away from Burt.

Here he comes now.

Burt Simonson, DDS, is what a person who hates dentists pictures when you say
dentist
. Tall and lean with graying hair and oversized eyeglasses, he struts around the office like the king of his own little domain, and as soon as he sees me he openly rakes his eyes over my body.

It didn’t hit me until I started working here that the employees all have something in common. The dental assistants, the other receptionist, we’re all women and we’re all young. At thirty-four I’m the oldest. Laura, the other receptionist, is only nineteen.

He likes redheads, too. There’s me, Cassie the hygienist, and one of the assistants, though hers comes out of a bottle.

The implications of the pattern didn’t occur to me until I’d been working here six weeks and he started to get comfortable around me, and feel familiar enough to take an occasional look down the V-neck of my scrubs. I started wearing a t-shirt under them after that.

I slide the window in front of me closed, muffling whatever he’s going to say from the patients seated outside.

“There’s my favorite office milf,” he says, leaning against the counter next to me.

I flinch.

I know what that stands for. Every time he calls me that I want to punch him in the balls, but I need this job. I don’t even let myself scowl.

“Something I can help you with?” I say coolly.

“Yeah. I just got my new Benz. I thought maybe you could help me christen her.”

“You want me to smash a bottle on the trunk?”

He laughs.

I’d rather smash the bottle on his head.

“Nah, just let me give you a ride home.”

“No, thanks. I’ll take the bus.”

“Pretty young thing like you shouldn’t be riding the bus alone at night.”

First of all, it’s not night, I’m leaving at five o’clock. On the dot.

Second of all, I’m not that young anymore.

I suppose I am where he’s concerned. Burt is old enough to be my father. Hell, he could be the other receptionist’s grandfather, and he hits on her like this, too.

“I’ll be fine. I’ve never had any trouble.”

It’s not like we live in the kind of place where I need to worry about a bus ride. Castlebrook might be the safest small town on the planet. Mostly. I don’t even live in town, anyway.

It doesn’t matter. I could live in a demilitarized zone and I wouldn’t take a ride from this creep. I catch myself unconsciously plucking at the V-neck of my scrubs and stop myself, and turn to my computer. Hopefully if I look busy he’ll leave me alone and go, say, attend to one of his patients. You know, actually do his job.

“You’ve got a visitor.” He nods at the window before he rises to leave.

Sighing, I turn to slide the window open and take care of the next patient.

As the end of the day approaches, the appointments slow down and the waiting room empties out. I hop up, turn the lock on the front door so it can only be pushed open from the inside, and return to my desk to play Candy Crush until quittin’ time.

After the last patient leaves I gather up my tote bag, throw the strap over my shoulder, and head out.

I hear laughter in the back hallway and spot Burt chasing Stacy the hygienist out of one of the exam rooms, grabbing her ass. I turn away with a snap, push through the front door, and start walking for the bus stop.

It would be eighty-five fucking degrees outside. It’s almost October but the heat hasn’t broken yet. Beads of sweat slide on my face and neck and chest and itch between my shoulder blades by the time I get to the bench, and I have to tug the clingy, itchy fabric of my scrubs away from my skin to try to get some air.

The humidity makes it a futile gesture.

When Burt rolls up, it makes me wish I was wearing a turtleneck. He’s got Laura the jailbait receptionist sitting in the front seat of his new Benz. I can see he splurged. It’s one of those ones with the hardtop convertible roof.

“Want a ride?” he shouts.

“It’s a two seater?”

He nods at Laura. “Sit on her lap!”

“No, thanks,” I say in a voice that could freeze salt water.

I mean to say, “Fuck off and die, you disgusting pig,” but he signs my paychecks and this was the first and only job I could find while I work on my degree.

Burt laughs, and Laura joins him. They’re fucking laughing at me. Worst of all it’s a kind of “I’ll get you eventually” laugh, like he knows he’ll wear me down. He’s already asked me to join him for dinner.

Not a chance.

The Burtmobile rolls off into the sunset, leaving me sweltering in the heat until the bus rumbles up five minutes late at quarter after five, meaning my girls have been home alone for over an hour. I tromp up onto the bus and slide my card through the reader to pay for my seat.

Of course, it’s full. I walk to the back and stand, holding one of the posts, and brace myself for forty-five minutes of this. If I had my own car it would be a ten-minute drive.

Yawning, I sway with the motion of the bus as it rumbles off.

By the fourth stop I can finally sit down and collapse into a seat. I smell like ass, my feet hurt, I’ve been up for fourteen hours already, and I just want a nap. Oh, and some food. Real food.

By the time my stop rolls up I’m starting to nod off. Somehow I manage to scrape together the brains not to fall asleep and miss it, and jab the button on the side so the driver pulls over.

I lurch back down to the pavement and start walking. It’s another fifteen minutes to the house from here at a brisk pace, and I manage a brisk pace as long as I can.

My first thought on seeing my home is always the same. I hate this place. The entrance to Hunter’s Run is landscaped like the driveway to a grand mansion, rows of trees leading up to a guarded gatehouse.

When I walk up, the guard on duty, Todd, is kicked back in his chair, reading an issue of Popular Mechanics. I stop at the gate and clear my throat.

“Rose.” He sits up. “On your way home?”

“Yeah. Can I trouble you for a ride in the golf cart?”

He sighs. “Yeah, sure. Hold on.”

I stand there while he locks up the gatehouse and hangs one of those little moveable clock signs marked WILL RETURN, the time set ahead ten minutes. The golf cart is parked on the other side of the gate, which really only stops cars; I just walk around it. I settle in next to Todd and he starts it up, the little motor buzzing like a lawnmower as he drives me down Elm and then up Beech Tree Street, to my house.

I resent the goddamn thing more and more every time I see it. With five bedrooms, it’s practically a mansion. It was all Russel’s idea. Russel Hayes, my ex-husband. I “kept” the house, if you could call it that. Between alimony and child support and my salary I can barely afford the payments and food for my two daughters.

The house is a gaudy monstrosity, dominated in the front by an empty garage and a towering high-ceilinged foyer.

Todd stops and grunts.

I have neighbors. Behind me are the Lincolns. On the driveway side of my house are the Bartons. Across the street are the Moores.

I don’t know who lives on the other side. I’ve never met them and, as far as I know, the house is empty. I’d have assumed it was abandoned, except that it’s clearly furnished and somebody must be paying the bills, or else there’d be a notice from the sheriff tacked to the door.

Somebody has apparently moved in, though. There’s a car in the driveway. A big, obnoxious muscle car, a nineteen-sixty something, black with lots of shiny chrome.

“I’ll have to say something,” Todd says.

Of course. The home owner’s association. There are so many
rules
in this place. Don’t do this, don’t do that. You can’t actually
park
in your driveway, the car must be in the garage, unless it’s within three years of the current model year. We wouldn’t want Mrs. Campbell the block captain to be offended by the sight of a four-year-old car.

“Let me handle it,” I sigh.

I don’t know why I keep piling other people’s problems on myself. I should just let Todd handle it, stumble into my house, and flop on the floor for a nap.

Of course I can’t.

“What?”

“Yeah, I’ll say something. He must have just moved in. Seriously.”

“Right.” Todd shrugs. “If you insist.”

I step out of the cart. “Thanks for the ride.”

He gives me a curt nod. “Anytime.”

As the golf cart buzzes off toward the front gate, I trudge up to the door of my neighbor’s house and knock lightly. This is a bad idea. Maybe if he or she doesn’t notice me I can just go home and forget about this. I have enough trouble keeping my own place up to snuff.

I can’t afford a landscaper like everyone else on the block, and I’m constantly fighting my youngest, Kelly, over her fixation on getting a pool. We can’t get a pool. It’s in the rules.

No answer. I start to turn away from the door when I hear the lock rasp and it swings inward.

“What?” the man inside snaps.

I blink.

He’s, um. He’s wearing pants, I mean that’s a start. Nothing else. Barefoot, but I’m not paying much attention to his feet. I’ve never seen anyone so muscular in person, like an underwear model, but he’s covered in tattoos, almost to the point I’d think he was wearing a transparent shirt.

There’s a dragon on his chest and chains around his belly and figures tattooed down both arms, stopping where they’d be covered up by a dress shirt. I can’t make them all out, because he’s swathed in bandages. He towers over me and bores into me with startling blue eyes.

“What?” he says again.

“You can’t park your car there,” I say meekly.

He glares at me then at the car.
“What?”

“Is that the only word you know?” I snap, anger bubbling to the surface through a thick layer of fatigue.

“Lady, it’s my driveway. I’ll park my car in my fucking driveway if I damn well please.”

He slams the door in my face.

I clench my fists, and my teeth.

You asshole. I go through all this shit to live in this stupid neighborhood with these people that look down on me and call me a slut behind my back. I work for that perverted weasel and eat ramen noodles three times a week so my kids can have real food, and I try to do you a
courtesy
and keep the stupid block captain off your back for their stupid rule, and
this
is what I get?

I pound on the door with my fist.

It swings open again.

“
What?
”
he bellows, louder.

“Listen, asshole,” I snap at him, rising on my toes to stand a little taller. “It’s not my rule, okay? If you don’t move that jalopy, Postimia Campbell is going to file a complaint with the HOA board and tow the goddamn thing and give you a fine.”

“What the fuck is a HOA board? What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m trying to
help you
, you obnoxious jackass.”

“Did you call my car a jalopy?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“I live next door. I’m your neighbor.”

“Great. Go read the neighborhood watch meeting minutes or something.”

He rolls his eyes for emphasis.

“I told you—”

He slams the door in my face.

Then opens it.

“Get off my porch, lady.”

Slam.

I stand there fuming for a second and then stomp down the front walk, down to the driveway and then to the street. There are no sidewalks in Hunter’s Run. People aren’t supposed to walk here. If you own a house in this craphole you should have a fancy car to drive.

When I finally get back to my own house, my oldest daughter, Karen, opens the door before I even touch the knob.

“Hey, Mom,” she says brightly. “We made dinner.”

Oh come
on
.

I trudge wearily into the house, and I can smell burnt food. When I walk into the kitchen, Kelly is standing in front of the stove, stirring a pot of macaroni and cheese. Judging from the marks on the stovetop, it boiled over repeatedly while she was cooking the noodles. Karen has a full pack’s worth of hot dogs rolling around in butter in a frying pan.

They’re a little scorched, but they’re still good. I turn down the heat and roll them around a bit to make sure they’re actually hot in the middle and not just burned on the outside, while Karen lays out buns.

They didn’t do such a bad job. I need to stir the mac and cheese a bit. The cheese powder got a little lumpy. At least they didn’t burn the house down. I want to be home to meet them but I have to work to buy them food. They’re not the only latchkey kids at school. That’s what I tell myself.