Okay but try not to murd.., p.19
Okay, But Try Not To Murder Anyone 7, page 19
“Is this okay?” I asked with a small smile.
“I-- uh, yes, of course,” Sloan said, and she squeezed my hand while she returned the smile.
“I know I’ve said it before, we all have, but really, we can’t thank you enough for that flash drive,” I said as we continued to stroll. “None of this would be happening if it weren’t for you.”
“It’s fine,” she said, and she waved her free hand in a dismissive gesture. “It was no trouble.”
“Except it was a lot of trouble to get all of that information, and you could have suffered serious consequences if you’d been caught,” I said in a serious tone.
“Yeah, but…” Sloan began before she trailed off and averted her eyes.
“What?” I prodded gently.
“Nothing, it’s just…” She blew out a long breath. “I didn’t gather that information with the intent of giving it to you, you know.”
“Oh?” I asked curiously, but I waited for her to continue.
“Nope.” Sloan shook her head. “I had intended to hire a hitman and hand it all over to him. I wanted Bannister dead, I didn’t give a fuck if the law caught him or not.”
“So, what changed your mind?” I asked.
“You,” Sloan said, and her dark eyes met mine again.
“Me? How so?”
“When you came to the warehouse to save me from Appius,” Sloan said, “I knew I could trust you. I felt…”
She trailed off again, and a couple passed us with a Jack Russel terrier on a leash. The Algonquin woman smiled at the dog, and the French couple smiled politely back. Once they were past, Sloan still didn’t speak, so I prodded a little.
“Felt what?”
“I don’t know exactly,” she said with a shy smile. “But as soon as you came through that warehouse door, I knew you were there to save me. And I felt, well, something I’ve never felt before. I can’t really describe it, I don’t know what it is, but it made me happy.”
“Well, I’m glad I could do that for you,” I said gently.
It sounded like she was describing love, but she seemed a little spooked at the concept, so I didn’t press her. I just gave her hand a squeeze, and she stepped in closer to me as we continued to patrol the area. We both still kept a keen eye on our surroundings though, but our patrol was uneventful.
Once our time was finished, we swapped with Elaine and Laura and returned to the van, and that’s how we spent the remainder of the day until it was time for me to meet Bannister.
Everyone else was already in place as I pushed the tiny earpiece as far into my ear as I could, and I triple-checked to make sure the fake artifacts were in my pocket. They were there, all three of them.
“Jonah, please, please, please be careful,” Mary said as I was about to exit the van, which was now parked in front of the public bathrooms for a quick getaway if needed.
“I’m always careful,” I said with a wink.
“No, you’re not, but at least you have the cuffs,” Mary retorted with a wry laugh.
“Exactly, so you don’t have anything to worry about,” I said.
“Umm, the cuffs don’t stop you from being kidnapped,” Elaine pointed out from my ear piece, since she was currently at the cafe with eyes on the meeting point.
“No, but I would stop me from being kidnapped,” I quipped in return. “I’ll be fine, now let’s go see if I can charm my way onto Bannister’s yacht.”
“Good luck,” Sammy said with a nod.
The women voiced their well-wishes and goodbyes in my ear, all except Sloan, who was currently shapeshifted into a bird. We’d tried the earpiece with her, but it just didn’t work when she shapeshifted. She had the closest vantage point, though, and could probably hear us from the treetops, so I wasn’t worried.
I hopped out of the van and finally headed to the meeting place. I walked slowly and deliberately, and I kept my head on a swivel. We’d been here all day, so I knew Bannister hadn’t turned up to set up a trap or anything. But for some reason, that didn’t ease my nerves, because now I really had no idea what to expect.
I got to the corner and waited. Then waited some more. And some more. At half past seven, I considered the possibility that I’d been stood up, but just as I was about to voice my concerns into the ear piece, someone else spoke.
“There he is,” Mary’s voice sounded out loud and clear. “Jonah, he’s approaching you from the west.”
I focused in the direction of the Eiffel Tower, and my eyes scanned the crowds until I spotted him.
Bannister.
I only recognized him because he’d been the focus of my work for months now, so I’d studied every wrinkle and crevice on his ugly face. But, if I didn’t know who he was, he wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. He totally just looked like a normal dude, and he was way shorter than I was expecting. Then he spotted me, and his face cracked into an ugly smile as he approached.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Bannister said as he came to a stop in front of me.
“Is it?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
Bannister went silent as a pair of women passed us, and then he met my eyes again.
“Thanks for meeting me all the way down here.” He kept his tone light, like we were old pals just meeting for a catch up. “My wife really appreciated you getting the jewelry cleaned and back to us so quickly.”
And he was talking in code. Lame.
“Yeah, not a problem,” I said, and I reached into my pocket to pull out the replicas, which were each in individual velvet pouches all placed inside one bigger velvet pouch. “I hope they’re up to her standard. You’re paying a pretty penny for my services.”
“Mind if I check?” Bannister asked, still speaking casually.
“Sure,” I said.
Bannister reached for the pouch, but I pulled it out of his reach and opened it myself instead. Then I fished out the three other pouches and tipped the contents into my palm.
I had to hand it to Miles. He was a weird dude, but the replicas were perfect.
Bannister’s face lit up with greed, and he was practically salivating as he leaned over my hand to get a closer look. He reached a hand up, but I started to pull them away, so he dropped his hand and settled for just looking.
Of course, if Bannister snatched the replicas and tried to use their power, nothing would happen. But he didn’t know that. And I had to make him believe they were the real ones, so I was pretty proud of my acting skills, truth be told.
“They all appear to be in order,” Bannister said with a satisfied nod as he stood upright again.
“Good,” I said, and I started to return the replicas to their pouches. “So, now it’s just a matter of payment.”
“Yes, payment,” Bannister said as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. “What sum did we settle on? Ten?”
“That’s right,” I replied as I placed the three smaller pouches back in the big one. I didn’t mind playing along with Bannister, since we were in such a public place, but I needed to find a segue past the payment. “I was thinking, though, I’d be willing to settle for five, with some conditions.”
Bannister froze, and he raised his eyes to meet mine.
“Oh?” He raised his eyebrows. “And what sort of conditions did you have in mind?”
“I like to sail,” I said nonchalantly.
“So, buy a boat,” Bannister retorted. “You should be able to afford it with the payment I’m sending you.”
“I heard you have a nice boat,” I continued. “I wouldn’t mind sailing with you sometime. Maybe get to know your friends and your business partners. I think we’d get along.”
“Do you now?” Bannister asked, but his casual, cool air had dissipated. Now, his eyes were hard, his voice was tight, and I could tell I was losing him. “And what makes you think my friends or associates would have any interest in a… jewelry cleaner like yourself?”
“Maybe they have jewelry they need cleaned,” I said with a shrug. “Or maybe I can get some more jewelry for you and your friends.”
“Interesting idea…” Bannister said slowly.
Then he shifted his weight on his feet and flicked his eyes over my shoulder, and my Spidey-Senses instantly started tingling.
Bannister met my eyes again and forced a tight smile. “Maybe this is something we can discuss.”
“Yeah,” I said carefully as I kept my eyes on his.
Then he glanced behind me again, and that confirmed my suspicions. Something was definitely going on.
“Well, let me see what I can do,” Bannister said, and he looked down at his phone, but I could tell his focus was elsewhere.
“What’s behind me, Bannister?” I asked in a clear voice.
I heard the other agents reacting through my earpiece, and I figured they’d be closing in around me now. Before anything else, though, Bannister jerked his head, and a few things happened at once.
The ugly criminal snatched the pouch full of replicas out of my hand and then lunged for a tourist who was passing us by. I instantly understood that this creep had faked me out with the “discreet” glances behind me, and now he was trying to turn this into a hostage situation so he could keep the artifacts and the money.
Bannister wrapped his arm around the small Asian woman’s neck, and he pulled her close to his body while he pulled a gun out from under his jacket and aimed it at her head. The poor woman shrieked with fear and tried to claw at Bannister’s arms, but he just pulled her tighter to him.
I started to raise my hands, but I knew I couldn’t risk hurting the hostage with my kinetic powers. And I didn’t want to tip Bannister off that the artifacts were actually replicas.
Before I could decide how to proceed, something large and brown came swooping down from above and catapulted itself at Bannister’s head.
“Fuck!” Bannister cried out, and he raised his arm to fend the bird off, but as he did, he must have squeezed the trigger.
A gunshot cracked through the air.
The hostage shrieked again, and Bannister released her and sprinted in the opposite direction as the bird fell from the air. While it fell, it shapeshifted back into Sloan’s natural form, and suddenly she hit the ground with a thud, and a pool of blood formed on the sidewalk below her.
My heart sank, and I fell to my knees next to her inert body.
“Sloan!
Chapter 13
I bent down to turn the Algonquin woman over onto her back, and I saw the blood seeping into her sleeve.
The crowds around us were screaming and running around like chickens with their heads cut off, and I had to kneel down to protect Sloan from being trampled on.
“Sloan, what were you thinking?” I demanded as I dragged her head onto my lap. “I have the cuffs! They protect me from any of that shit! I wasn’t going to let him hurt anyone.”
“Sorry,” Sloan said with a weak smile. Her eyelids fluttered, but she shook her head forcefully. “I wasn’t thinking. I just couldn’t stand to see you get hurt.”
“God, you silly, silly woman,” I hissed, and I ripped off my jacket and wrapped it around her bleeding arm. “What’s going on? Talk to me. Can you move your fingers.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Sloan said, and she cringed as she tried to raise herself up.
“Stop, just stay there,” I instructed.
I could hear the other agents shouting in my earpiece, but I was too concerned about Sloan to tune in.
Of course, the others were nearby, and Elaine appeared above me a moment later with a panicked expression.
“Shit,” Elaine said, and she leaned down to check out the wound. Then she peered into Sloan’s face. “Sloan, can you hear me? Do you know where you are?”
“Oh, will you guys relax?” Sloan groaned as she tried to push herself up again. “I have powers too, you know.”
“Not ones that prevent you from getting shot, clearly,” I said in an exasperated tone.
“No, and this hurts like a bitch,” Sloan hissed, and she let out a bark of laughter. “But I have healing powers, it’ll be gone in a couple hours.”
“Oh, thank fuck.” I breathed a sigh of relief, but then I shook my head angrily. “I still can’t believe you did that. You got super lucky with a flesh wound, it could have been so much worse.”
“I’ll remember that for next time,” Sloan said, and she gritted her teeth as sweat started to bead at her forehead.
“What the hell happened?” Laura appeared at our side suddenly, and she was breathless from fighting through the throngs of panicking tourists.
“We should get out of here before the police come,” Elaine said, and she looked up the road just as the van came screeching to a halt at the curb beside us.
“Get in!” Mary cried out as she flung the side door open.
Elaine grabbed Sloan’s feet while I grabbed her by the armpits, and we hoisted her into the van as Laura jumped into the passenger seat. Sammy didn’t even wait until the doors were closed to start zooming away from the crime scene.
“Well, that could have gone smoother,” Sammy said, and I met his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Is she okay?”
“I’m fine!” Sloan grumbled through gritted teeth.
“Oh, yeah, you look and sound just fucking peachy,” Mary huffed, and I could tell the curly-haired woman was fighting back tears. “What were you thinking? We just got you on the team, do you want off that bad?”
“Of course not,” Sloan said with a weak smile, and then she patted my chest with her uninjured arm. “But come on, you telling me you wouldn’t take a bullet for this cutie?”
“Uh, no, not when he’s impervious to bullets,” Mary said as she pulled a first aid kit down from a shelf and handed it to Elaine, who was trained in combat medicine.
“She says she has healing powers,” Elaine said as she pried open the green box and dug out some gauze.
“I do, it’ll be gone in a couple of hours, I just need to suffer through,” Sloan explained.
“That sounds like a shit power,” Mary scoffed.
“Imagine if I didn’t have it,” Sloan said with another weak smile.
“Don’t even,” Mary said and shivered.
“I’m sorry about Bannister,” Sloan said as she looked up at me with her dark, watery eyes.
“Don’t be,” I said, and I felt my jaw tighten. “That prick set me up from the beginning, and I’m not playing his games anymore.”
“Uh-oh, Jonah looks pissed,” Mary murmured.
“I am,” I growled, and I turned to Laura in the front seat. “Call the Director, tell him we’re going on the offensive. We’re going to Morocco.”
“But--” Laura began, but I cut her off.
“Tell him I’ll fly the plane myself if I have to, but we’re going,” I said firmly.
I was going to make Bannister regret the day he learned my name. And if Morocco was the place to go to hit him where it hurts, then that’s where I’d be. I wanted to tear his property down from top to bottom and take every valuable thing he owned. I wanted him to hurt and suffer like my team had at his hands, and I wanted to do it yesterday. I knew that toe ring was one of Bannister’s most prized artifacts, based on our research, and it was stored securely in his lair in a small Moroccan village.
But not for long.
“You got it, Jonah,” Laura said, and she pulled out her phone while I turned my attention back to Sloan and her injured arm.
“It looks like the bullet went clean through,” Elaine said as she examined the wound with gloved hands. “But even with your healing powers, I think we should clean and wrap it. Your powers don’t make you impervious to infection, do they?”
“No.” Sloan winced.
Elaine nodded. “Then I need to clean the wound, and it’s going to hurt. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine, just get it over with,” Sloan said. Her hair was plastered to her face with sweat, and she looked paler than normal, but she was handling this gunshot wound like a champ.
“Good girl,” I murmured as I reached out for her other hand. “Squeeze my hand if it hurts.”
Elaine poured some alcohol on the wound, and Sloan groaned deep in her chest as she ground her teeth. She squeezed my hand so tight, I thought my fingers were going to pop off, and I was grateful for the second time today that I couldn’t feel pain thanks to the power of the cuffs.
“Fuuuuuck,” Sloan moaned, and her body went limp.
“Almost there,” Elaine said as she started to wrap the wound with fresh gauze.
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Sloan repeated, even though it didn’t look fine at all. “It’ll be gone in a couple of hours.”
“I know you keep saying that,” I said in an impatient tone. “But we can also all see that it hurts a lot right now. Stop trying to act so damn tough and let us take care of you.”
“O-Okay,” Sloan stuttered, and she let out a long hiss of air as Elaine finished wrapping and securing the gauze.
“I didn’t think Bannister would be so bold as to bring a gun out in public like that,” Mary said with a shake of her head.
“I guess it helps having the police in your pocket,” I said in a tight voice. “And the judges, and the lawyers, and everyone else.”
“Fucking asshole,” Elaine hissed, and she shook her head as she finished treating Sloan’s wound. “But still brave of him. How did he know you didn’t have a sniper trained on him?”
“He probably used the power of an artifact,” I sighed. “Remember, whatever we think we know about him, we also know he has the resources to hide a lot more we don’t know about.”
“Well, just picture the look on his face when he realizes the artifacts are fakes,” Mary said with a wide grin.
“That does make me feel a little better,” I admitted.
“Makes one of us,” Sloan said, and she grimaced as she finally pushed herself to a seated position. Elaine handed her two painkillers and a bottle of water, which she took gratefully. “Thank you.”
I glanced at the front cab of the van and saw Laura was in an intense phone call in a low voice, presumably to the Director, and Sammy was driving like we didn’t have a gunshot wound victim in the back of the van. We couldn’t risk getting pulled over, after all.
