The Fifth Avenue Series Boxed Set (144 page)

FROM MANHATTAN WITH LOVE

A Novella

By Christopher Smith

CHAPTER ONE

Carmen Gragera stabbed the heart of her steak with a knife and looked across the table at the man she was hired to assassinate.
 

They were having dinner at an out-of-the-way restaurant on the Upper East Side not far from the Park and as she watched him eat, she wasn’t thinking how she would kill him, but if she could kill him.
 

The contract she agreed upon was specific:
 
Kill Alex Williams by nine o’clock.
 
Make it quick but don’t make it clean.
 
The press tended to pay little attention to a clean murder.
 
What they wanted was something messy and salacious, particularly when they were dealing with a man as infamous to the FBI as Williams was.
 

When she was finished with him, she was to take a cab to LaGuardia and fly back to Paris on the red eye.
 
If she came through with the kill, the remaining half of her payment would be wired to her account by morning.

Nine o’clock was ninety minutes away.
 

Carmen looked down at her steak, which was so rare, a pool of brownish-red juices had formed around it.
 
She picked at it while weighing her options, of which there were two.

She could kill him.
  
Five million dollars was a lot to leave on the table simply because she’d broken her own rules and made the mistake of falling for him.

Or, she could let him go and say that when she went to take him down, he escaped.
 
They’d be furious with her, but since they knew what he was capable of, there was no reason for them to question her.

The trouble with this scenario is that she’d never work for them again, which would hurt her financially because they hired her often and they paid her well.
 
But even worse than this is what she knew they’d do.
 
They’d bypass her and hire someone else to kill him.
 
It was a no-win situation.
 
Either way, he’d die.

He reached for his glass of wine and looked up at her.
 
“What are you thinking about?” he said.
 
“You’ve barely touched your food.
 
Is it alright?”

“It’s fine.”

“So, why aren’t you eating?”

“I’m not as hungry as I thought I was.”

“Come on,” he said.
 
“It’s our last night together.
 
You’ve got to eat something.
 
The food they’re going to serve you on the plane will be shit compared to this.”

“I know.”

He screwed up his face at her.
 
“What’s wrong?
 
You look upset.”

“I don’t do upset.”

“Look, Carmen.
 
We’ll work together again.
 
It might be a few months or a few years, but it’ll happen.”

Could he read her mind?

“And what happened last night doesn’t have to be the last time.
 
In fact, I’d prefer if it wasn’t.”

Christ.

Alex Williams was thirty-eight, former Marine, stood six-foot-two, had a thick head of dark wavy hair and was as masculine as they came.
 
Like her, he was a stone killer, an international assassin she considered among the best and the brightest.

Over the years, they had joined forces on several jobs, but this last one was their best, most challenging collaboration because of the high degree of difficulty involved in pulling it off.

Against formidable odds, they’d taken out the head of a major corporation, which was tricky because the man was a paranoid billionaire who had round-the-clock security.
 
Getting through them and to their target had taken six weeks of patience and planning.
 
But last night they got him and today their work was national news.

Trouble is, yesterday they also did something else.
 
For the first time since they’d known each other, they made love, which Carmen now regretted.
 
She never crossed that line with her colleagues.
 
But when Alex came out of his bedroom with a bottle of wine to celebrate their kill, they drank it on empty stomachs and gave into the sexual tension that always had been between them.

“I think we made a mistake yesterday,” she said.

He cut off a piece of his own steak and popped it in his mouth while looking at her.
 
“I don’t.”

“Sex screws everything up.”

“It doesn’t have to.
 
We’re adults.
 
We’d be lying if we said there wasn’t a mutual attraction between us.
 
There always has been.
 
What happened happened.
 
I don’t regret it.”

“I never get involved with anyone I work with.”

“I guess you can’t say that anymore.”

“I prefer the occasional one-night stand.”
 
It sounded like a lie when she said it and he caught it.
 
The truth was that she rarely had sex.
 
She couldn’t remember how long it had been.

“That so?”

“Come on, Alex.
 
Our jobs take us everywhere.
 
There’s always the chance that we might not see each other again.”

“I don’t buy that.
 
We’re not always working.
 
There’s no reason why we can’t take a few days off to meet up wherever we’re closest, whether it’s here or in some other corner of the world.”

Her hands were in her lap.
 
She diverted her eyes from him and, while shaking her head at his comment, she casually glanced down at her watch.
 
She had seventy-five minutes to make a decision.
 
She wasn’t sure what she should do.

At the table beside them a couple was leaning into the candle light between them.
 
They were openly arguing in spite of the conversations surrounding them, the clatter of dinner and silverware being removed from tables, the sounds of orders being taken and wine bottles being opened.
 
They were oblivious to it all.

Carmen watched them for a moment.
 
They were good-looking, probably somewhere in their early thirties, either successful or deep in debt given the Birkin bag that was at her feet and the large nickel-plated watch that was on his wrist.
 
The woman was playing it cool.
 
Her arms were folded and she wore on her face the look of the disinterested.
 
He, on the other hand, looked weirdly demonic in the shadows being cast onto his face from the candle.
 
Carmen listened and heard talk of money—or misuse of it—while he picked up what likely was a two-hundred dollar bottle of wine and topped off his glass.

“You still with me?”

“Sorry.”
 
She nodded over at the table, where the woman now was yawning.
 
“I was with the Joneses.”
 

“Looking for reasons to stay single?”

“I think I’ll always be single.”

“Why?
 
We can’t stay in this game forever.
 
There’s a phase two for each of us.
 
What’s yours?”

“Me on a beach in Bora Bora.”

“Want company?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because I enjoyed last night.
 
I think of you when we’re not working together.
 
I think there’s something here worth exploring.”
 
He paused for a moment and seemed to make a decision.
 
“But it goes deeper.
 
There’s something I was asked to do tonight that I know I can’t do.”

Her eyes flashed up to meet his.

CHAPTER TWO

She sat unmoving in her chair, studying his face while instinct laced through her.
 
She looked for his hands and saw them on the table, one holding the stem of his wine glass, the other holding his steak knife.
 
She didn’t look away from the knife until he put it down.

“Let me guess,” she said.
 
“This was to be done at nine o’clock tonight?
 
A messy hit because the press likes a mess?
 
Is that how it was supposed to go down?”

He let a silence pass.

“You were to take a photograph of me and send it electronically to them, proving I was dead?
 
Is that right?”

There was no need for an answer.

“I’ve been struggling with this all evening,” she said.
 
“It’s why I couldn’t eat.
 
And you were right earlier.
 
I am upset.
 
I was asked to kill
you
, Alex.”

It was almost imperceptible, but she saw it.
 
His hand nudged closer to the knife.
 
“Were you going to go through with it?”

She pressed her back against the chair and felt her gun concealed behind her back.
 
He had the advantage with the knife, but she was fast.
 
She could dodge it.
 
If he made a move, she’d throw her glass of red wine into his face, blind him with its acids and then reach for her gun.

“Obviously not or I wouldn’t have told you.
 
And by the way, I told you first.
 
What if I hadn’t told you?”

“Then I’d probably still be sitting here weighing my options.”

“So, you were considering it?”

“It’s what we do, Alex.”

“It’s what we do to strangers.”

“Not all the time and you know it.”
 
She studied his face.
 
“Look, if it makes you feel better, it’s unlikely that I would have done it.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t need the money.
 
If I told them I screwed up, they’d just send someone in else to do the job.”

“And you wouldn’t have warned me?”

“I don’t know what I would have done.
 
But here’s what I do know.
 
They want each of us dead.
 
They were betting that in spite of our history together, one of us would go through with it for the five million.
 
Is that the amount they offered you?”