Chapter Six
Though this Jack, or AJ, or whoever the fuck he really was, certainly had the looks the movies had promised her.
And that look in his eye, the hunger when he stared at her naked body. That was the kind of hunger that, in another lifetime, would be enough to engulf her.
But Ava had the upper hand now, and she knew better than to eat any more damn chocolates and leave the wrappers (really, this was what she got for littering in the first place, even by accident. Even on a stressful day).
The back of the hostel was a thick tangle of trees planted too close together.
Ava ducked and wove between the trees, brushing glass from her shoulders as she did.
There was a bit of glass in her hair, too.
She could feel it, lodged there, ready to fall into her ear.
Would the shards work their way into her ear and make her go completely deaf?
How did you clean this much glass off yourself without bleeding in a bunch of places?
No more going through glass to escape hot hit men, that was the main takeaway here.
She rounded the corner toward the alley that ran alongside the hostel, craning her neck for signs of his stupid Volvo.
Sirens wailed in the distance as her feet pounded the hard pavement of the alley, crunching gravel and trash beneath her as she ran. For a city that seemed to pride itself on its eco-friendly status, there sure was a lot of shit in the alleys of Portland.
The sirens drew nearer, and Ava realized with a surge of horror that they were very likely coming for her.
Had Jack decided to call the police, then?
And if they picked her up and she told them a contract killer was also on Cale Jacobson’s tail, who would believe her over him, when he was the good-looking, even-keeled businessman who had stopped her from doing the unthinkable just this morning?
Tires squealed, and a black sedan pulled up in front of her, at the intersection where the alley ran into the road.
Jack had one hand on the top of the steering wheel, the other resting calmly on one muscular thigh. What was wrong with ten and two? Did he do this all the time, or was he just trying to show off his stupid muscles in his stupid forearms?
Fucking hit men.
“I hate you,” Ava told him, but she tugged on the door to the passenger side of the car.
It was locked.
Jack rolled down the window, his movements slow and calm as if he had all the time in the world.
“You’d be safer in the back,” Jack told her. “We could toss a blanket on you, and traffic cams won’t pick you up. They’re all looking for you, you know. You even made the news.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Ava said, but, infuriatingly, he was right.
So she hopped in the back of his car, like a lunatic, and let him throw a blanket over the top of her before they drove away.
If she’d paid attention at the true crime book club she’d facilitated in her library days, she would probably know better.
Then again, if she’d paid attention at true crime book club, she might’ve had a better plan for killing Cale Jacobson to begin with.
“By the way,” Jack said as he seamlessly pulled into traffic. “You dropped your wallet. So I gathered that, along with all the clothes you left strewn across the floor with your DNA all over them, and some of Cale’s, too.”
“Fuck you,” Ava said again, but her words were muffled beneath the fleece blanket he’d thrown over her.
“You’re welcome,” Jack said.
Ava popped her head up when the car lurched to a stop. “Don’t they teach you how to drive in hit man school?” she said.
“Hit man school? What do you think exists out there in professional development for hit men?” Jack asked, his tone threaded with disbelief.
She wanted to climb up there and wrap her hands around his throat and scream Take me seriously, you prick into his face. But so far, physically accosting this man had not gained her much, and Ava might learn slowly, but she did learn.
“I don’t know,” she snapped. “I kind of didn’t think hit men even existed.”
“Go back under your blanket,” Jack said.
It was a shame he kept his car so neat. She desperately needed something to throw at him.
But she did as she was told. Only because the wail of sirens was still perilously loud.
“That might be the first time you’ve ever done as you’re told,” Jack complained. “If I call you a good girl—”
“I’ll strangle you,” Ava told him.
“His security team was pulling up just as I left the hostel,” Jack told her. “Do you know how they found you?”
She could tell by the acceleration and the change in noise that they were on the highway now, and relief pumped through her, a welcome change from the adrenaline that felt as if it had been flooding her system for hours now. Who cared how Cale Jacobson’s team had found her?
“Oooh,” Ava said. “What would they have thought if they had seen you again? Once is a happy accident, but twice is no coincidence. They might start to think we’re working together.”
“We are working together,” Jack said evenly. “But you’re right. It would be a death knell for this project if they see us together. And I have too much riding on this one for you to fuck it up again.”
“Technically, if they had seen you, it would have been your fuckup, not mine,” Ava said. “And besides, I don’t know you. I don’t give a shit about your little paid operation. So it can’t be a fuckup if your project didn’t matter to me to begin with, can it?”
She could hear Jack’s frustrated sigh through the thick shield of her blanket.
“There’s water in the seat pocket,” he said after a moment of quiet. “Drink some and try to get some sleep. We’ll be about half an hour yet.”
“I don’t need a nap,” Ava insisted.
But she did take the water bottle, fuming the entire time.
Apparently attempted murder and making deals with contract killers made her both sleepy and dehydrated, but she hated that he’d been right about it all the same.
Also, if he was going to stock anything, he should have had the decency to have a Diet Coke, not some Costco-brand plastic water bottle.
Ava woke with a start when the car door slammed. Jack had shut his door, and now he opened her door next and then offered a hand to help her up. Her neck was cramped from how she had fallen asleep, and it cracked loudly when she tilted her head.
Fear caught up with her a moment later, the tightness in her chest growing until Ava couldn’t quite catch her breath.
She was with a hit man. She had gotten into his car on purpose, for fuck’s sake, and let her guard down enough to fall asleep.
Jack helped her up, his hands surprisingly gentle on hers.
He stopped there in the driveway, arms folded over his chest, considering her more carefully than she had been looked at since—
Well.
Ava couldn’t think about any of that, about how Ari had looked at her or how gentle Ari’s hands had always been with her. Not if Ava wanted to keep it together long enough to finish this.
“All right, Ava,” Jack said, one hand dropping to rest on his Glock. “It’s time to get to work.”