Hell Bent Read online

  It happened to frustrate the hell out of Jack, and Annabelle knew this, but that was just tough. Short of finding herself suddenly and inexplicably in a situation where she needed the money for survival, she wasn’t going to change her mind on the issue any time soon.

  It was blood money.

  And, what was more, it would leave Annabelle literally indebted to Jack. That was a iced pond that she seriously did not want to skate across.

  Annabelle had never come right out and asked Jack what kind of people he killed. She didn’t want to know. And he never offered the information, perhaps not wanting her to know. It was a side of him that she didn’t see and didn’t care to. As long as she didn’t know, she could pretend that he only took the jobs that he felt were warranted. Killed people who deserved to die. Rapists. Murderers. The like. She preferred the face that Jack Thane always showed her. And, who ever missed the dark side of the moon?

  Annabelle pulled the soy creamer out of her fridge. She was lactose intolerant, so all of her “milk” drinks were made with soy these days. She poured a bunch of the white liquid into the bottom of her mug, and then poured the dark, extra-caffeinated coffee on top. The brew steamed, blessed and inviting. Annabelle smiled and took a sip.

  Smooth, strong, perfect.

  Just like the man who made it.

  She smiled at her secret thought and tentatively swallowed the first few sips of the coffee. Then, growing more bold as her tongue adjusted to the temperature of the liquid, she took bigger swallows, downing the entire cup in forty seconds flat.

  Jack’s brow arched. “Better?”

  “Almost.” She concocted another cup and drank it down as well. “Yeah, getting there now.”

  “Speaking of getting there, there was an accident on 35W, so you’ll need to take 77. And, don’t forget the construction.”

  “Lovely.” Annabelle slowly sipped from her third cup of coffee and stared at the refrigerator, debating the merits of breakfast on an incredibly empty but rather unsettled stomach. She decided against it. She was just fortunate that coffee had never given her any problems. Most people would be sipping ginger ale right now.

  As she always did, no matter how she tried to turn herself off to such things, she wondered about the accident he’d mentioned. “Was anyone hurt?” she asked softly.

  “Hard to say.”

  Annabelle cut her gaze to him. He had looked away.

  So, there had been injuries. But, of course there had been, or he probably wouldn’t have heard of the accident. Most likely, he’d been listening to the morning traffic report while she slept. Or maybe watching the news. She looked down at the floor and gazed, unseeing, at a forgotten Cheerio between the fridge and the counter. Minnesota drivers were the safest she’d ever encountered. Lifetimes of harsh, dangerous winters had seen to that. But, the Twin Cities was vast and people had far to go. So, they went fast. When an accident occurred, it was often very bad.

  “Any kids?”

  Jack glanced at her and then sighed. “No,” he said simply. Annabelle believed him. She had no reason to believe he was lying. He was a hired killer. Why would he lie about people dying in a car accident?

  She looked away and nodded. No kids. Whether it was the truth or not, it was what she was going to accept as true. Life was too hard the other way.

  “The bike is downstairs,” Jack said suddenly and moved to her entryway closet. “I had a friend bring it over earlier this morning.” He opened the door and pulled out her jacket, helmet and gloves, then turned and held the riding gear out toward her.

  Jack was the one who had taught Annabelle to ride. They’d been friends for nearly a decade. She’d met him on her twenty-first birthday, at a bar she’d chosen for her very first legal drink. He’d purchased it for her, much to her friends’ envy, and she’d flirted unabashedly with him the entire night. It honestly wasn’t like her to do so. She was, by nature, an introvert and normally fairly shy. But there was something about Jack that she’d liked immediately. And she sensed that the same was for him.

  A year later, Jack taught her to ride. He’d started her out on a Kawasaki Vulcan 500, the perfect starter bike, and eventually she’d sort of adopted the bike as her own. He didn’t seem to mind. But the Vulcan was stolen and wrecked by a couple of teenage punks five months later, leaving Annabelle without a bike of her own. Since then, she’d borrowed Jack’s Soft Tails. Again, he didn’t seem to mind.

  Annabelle put down her mug and held a finger out to him to signal that he needed to wait a minute. Then she headed back down the hallway to her bathroom and brushed her teeth. Twice.

  Then she brushed her hair. She’d gone to sleep with it wet and, as a result, it had dried into a tangled mass of long reddish-blonde locks that literally fell to her mid-back. She looked like a druid who’d slept in a fairy ring all night. She smiled as she carefully combed through the last mass of knots.

  Once the tangles were gone, she pulled the hair back into a loose pony tail and called it good. There was no point in attempting anything fancier with it since the helmet would just squash it to her head anyway. She hated that. But Jack was a stickler with helmets. Or, he was with hers, anyway. He never wore one himself.

  “Bloody hypocrite,” she muttered, still smiling as she left the bathroom and re-entered the kitchen. Jack had set the helmet, gloves and jacket on the table. Annabelle took the bottle of pills out of her front jeans pocket and put it into her jacket pocket, zipping it shut. Then she slid the jacket on and followed up with the gloves.

  Jack was pulling on his own long black trench coat. Over a black t-shirt, tight black jeans and black riding boots, the trench made him look like nothing short of an older version of a Lost Boys vampire. Or a gang member. Or an immortal highlander. Could he hide a sword under that thing? Suddenly, she was wondering how he killed his marks…

  “Bella?”

  Annabelle blinked and took a deep breath. “Yes?”

  “You all right, luv?”

  She shook her head and once again shrugged away her thoughts. “I’m fine. Nice coat, by the way. London Fog?”

  “Stefano Genovese,” he said, his eyes twinkling with amusement.

  She shrugged. “Whatever.” Then she brushed past him, which was like brushing past a brick wall draped in wool, and headed out her front door, tucking her apartment key in her front pocket as she went. Without waiting for him to follow or catch up, she strode down the hallway and turned the corner, opting for the stairs instead of the elevator, which she never rode and never would, so long as she could walk.

  She flew down the stairs, her boots gripping the carpet tightly. As she neared the first floor, her heart beat sped up. There was little in life that getting in the saddle of a Harley couldn’t make well. A headache and a stressful job were easily cured, for a little while, any way.

  She shoved through the front glass doors of the apartment complex without slowing and then came to a halt on the front step. Dead ahead, in the middle space reserved for motorcycles and scooters, waited the shining Night Train. It was alone and it looked like a dream, sitting in an early morning sun beam, chrome sparkling like smoothed-out diamonds, handle bars begging to be gripped…

  Annabelle began to move forward once again, but a hand on her shoulder stopped her.

  “You forgot this.”

  Jack was behind her. In his right, gloved hand, he held out her helmet. Inside the helmet rested the key to the bike. She glanced at it and sighed, disappointed. The message was clear. No helmet, no key.

  “Just this once-”

  “No.” Jack gently shoved the helmet against her chest, and she grabbed it as he let it go. Then he moved around her toward a shining black Audi A8, an admittedly gorgeous luxury sedan that was not quite as conspicuous as a Bentley, BMW or Mercedes. Jack didn’t do conspicuous. It wasn’t good for work.

  He calmly strode toward the sedan, pressing a button on the black keypad in his hand. The car’s headlights blinked once, and Annabelle could he
ar the doors unlock. “Be safe, Bella. I’ll speak with you tonight.” He paused at the door to the large black car and shot her a killer smile.

  She smiled back. “Thanks, Jack,” she said, meaning it. “For everything.”

  He watched her for a long moment, then nodded once and gracefully took the driver’s seat of his car. Once he was behind the darkened windows, she could barely make out his form. So, she looked away as he started his engine and focused her attention on the Harley.

  It wasn’t hard.

  Chapter Two

  “How is the car?”

  Annabelle looked up as she entered the small private office, hoping that the blush she felt creeping up her neck didn’t give her away.

  Impounded, she thought. “There was never any break down. It was Jack saving my butt again. The car is actually impounded and has been since yesterday afternoon.”

  “No shit?” The middle-aged woman behind the desk stood up and opened up a cupboard door just as Annabelle pulled off her jacket and gloves and shoved them, along with the helmet, into the bottom of the cabinet.

  “Well, I guess the helmet’s a dead give away,” the woman said, shaking her head and shutting the door . She stood around five-foot-three, a few inches shorter than Annabelle, and had short wavy red-brown hair. Her eyes were brown, like Annabelle’s, but big and round instead of almond-shaped. She had a ruddy complexion and an impressive set of naturally large breasts that made her appear to be more heavy-set than she actually was. She turned back to Annabelle. “You’d better hope Max doesn’t need anything out of that drawer. He hates you on those bikes.”

  Annabelle shook her head. “I’ve given myself away just by riding up on it. You can hear the bike at the other end of the block.” She took a deep breath and sighed. “I’m sorry I’m late, Cass.” Annabelle always truncated her friend’s name to its shortest syllable when she spoke to her, not because it was easier, but because anyone who called her Cassiopeia, to her face, was sure to get clobbered by a woman who packed quite a bit of muscle beneath her deceptively docile exterior.

  “Doesn’t bother me, sweet heart. I know you’ve got your bad days, like everyone else.”

  “Bad night, actually.” She took a seat beside her co-worker and logged onto a Mac in front of her. A giant flat-screen monitor dominated most of the desk top and when the green screen popped up and asked her for her password, she logged it in, then turned back to the woman beside her. “Jack got married again, did you know that?”

  “You’re kidding me. Already? Didn’t he just get divorced?” Cassie set down an electronic pen that she’d been using to shade something on her own giant flat screen and turned to face Annabelle. “I know it hasn’t been that long.”

  “Two months. I guess he’s not a patient man.”

  “Co-dependent.”

  “You think so?” Annabelle smiled and mulled that over for a moment as she brought up the Photoshop program and loaded the project she’d been working on for the past week. “Maybe.” She laughed. “I’ll tell him you said so.”

  “Don’t you dare, honey. That man may be rich and fine but there’s something in his eyes that gives me the willies.”

  Annabelle cocked her head to one side and blinked. “Really?” She chewed on the inside of her cheek. This was dangerous territory that Cassie had suddenly stumbled into. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. He’s just… intense or something. And why the hell can’t he stay married? What’s he doing wrong?”

  “He’s out of town too often,” Annabelle answered quickly, steering the conversation in a safer direction. “If he were just old and ugly and rich, his wives wouldn’t mind all that much. But I think one or two of them here and there are actually marrying him for…” She paused, finding the right words. “Other reasons.”

  Cassie laughed. “Yeah. I guess I can see that. You marry a man with a body and an accent like that and you want him to warm your bed at night and whisper sweet nothings to you.”

  Annabelle laughed, shaking her head. “I didn’t know you liked his accent.” She’d thought she was the only one who turned to rubber when he spoke.

  “Honey, he sounds like Sean Bean. There’s nothing finer than Sean Bean. Nothing.”

  Okay, she had a point there. Sean Bean was, admittedly, one of the single-most sexy men on Earth. An actor out of Britain, he possessed a fan base more or less composed of Europeans. However, Annabelle had fallen for him years ago, when she’d seen him in an Acuvue commercial and she’d taken it upon herself to educate Cassie on him. They’d once taken one full weekend and dubbed it “Sharpe Marathon” weekend. They’d watched every Sharpe series episode they could get their American hands on, which wasn’t as many as Annabelle would have liked, considering how difficult it was to obtain BBC material in the US. But it was enough. And Cassie was hooked after the first few shows.

  Now that Cassie mentioned it, Sean Bean and Jack Thane did sound a lot alike. And now that Annabelle considered it, she could swear that Sean Bean was from Sheffield too.

  Damn! I have got to book a trip to Yorkshire!

  “You’re right. I couldn’t agree more,” she told Cassie, referring to Bean’s sexiness.

  “Agree about what, Annabelle?”

  Cassie and Annabelle turned to face the archway that led to a short hall beyond. A tall, well-built man dressed in a white button-down shirt and khaki slacks stood in the hallway, a pile of folders in his hands, a folded laptop tucked beneath one arm, and a red pen stuck behind his left ear. He had shoulder-length, wavy brown hair and wore wire-rimmed glasses. The eyes behind those glasses were a vivid light green that lent his face an almost supernatural appeal. They were the kind of intelligent, beautiful, powerful eyes that melted women’s hearts in libraries across the globe.

  Max Anderson held a PhD in Image Analysis, Graphics and Visualization. But, much to many school girls’ grand disappointment, instead of taking a job as a professor at a university and setting out on a tenure track, he’d gone the route of entrepreneurship. As a result, he was making twice the money. But he was also working more than twice as hard. He had such an intense need to prove that he could do better in the field than in academia, that he never refused a job. And all of that extra work – work he couldn’t really handle – ended up in Annabelle’s lap.

  She was the best graphic designer around. It was just a fact. She had the eye for minute detail that the best plastic surgeons wished they had, and the compulsive need for perfection that their patients wished they had.

  “Nothing, Max. How is Sam?”

  “He’s hanging in there,” Max answered, his voice softening a touch.

  Sam was Max’s dog. He was fifteen years old and not doing so hot. The truth was, he was dying and it was breaking Max’s heart. Every day, her boss looked a bit more tired. And every day, Annabelle wondered if that was going to be the day that Max’s son called to give him the bad news.

  As bad as it was for Max, who had adopted him from the shelter when he was a puppy, it was far worse for Max’s son, Dylan. The boy had been two when they’d gone to the pound together and Dylan had actually picked Sam out. They’d grown up together.

  When he was eleven, Dylan’s mother was murdered in a gas station parking lot. The act was investigated, but eventually labeled an armed robbery and Teresa’s file was closed.

  Suffice it to say, his mother’s death wreaked havoc on Dylan’s life. If his bond with his dog wasn’t tight before, it was then. They became inseparable.

  Annabelle knew, through stories Max had shared with her, that during the first few months after his mother’s murder, Dylan had been allowed to take Sam to school with him. He was non-communicative and barely eating but anytime anyone tried to take Sam from his side, he became enraged.

  In the six years since Teresa’s murder, Dylan had come a long way. He was lucky to have a father who more than stepped up to the plate, assumed duties and responsibilities of both parents, and helped his son through some incr
edibly difficult years.

  As a result, and despite his mother’s death, Dylan was on the Dean’s list at his high school and was determined to land a scholarship that would allow him to attend the same Ivy League University that his mother attended in her youth.

  Annabelle had a good relationship with Dylan. She figured she was one of the lucky few in the world who did. There was something about the kid’s personality that clicked with her own and when they were around each other, they naturally fell into an easy, comfortable companionship. He possessed one of the most imaginative minds she’d ever come across and her own love of fantasy and science fiction complimented that internal creativity. He loved to write. She’d read a few of his stories and had very little doubt that with just a little bit of direction from some of the creative writing professors at the University, his talents would make him a star in the literary world.

  Max cleared his throat and straightened. “How is your car? Jack said it died on its way out of the parking lot. You were lucky he just happened to be there.”

  Annabelle didn’t fail to notice the extremely slight note of jealousy in Max’s tone. No one else may have noticed such a thing, but Annabelle was, after all, a detail person. And she was good enough at reading people to know good and well what Max’s feelings were toward her. Matters in Annabelle’s life were complicated, indeed.

  “To be honest, it’s presently out of commission. Jack let me borrow his bike. I hope it doesn’t rain today,” she added wistfully, more to deflect any derogatory comments that mention of the bike might have brought on than anything else. Max wasn’t overly fond of the idea of Annabelle on what he termed a “powerful and heavy machine” that was, as far as he was concerned, “too much bike” for her. She could see where he was coming from. A lot of novice bikers went out and bought motorcycles that were too heavy for them and then quickly laid them down, bringing a bad rap to a lot of shorter, lighter bikers across the nation. However, she wasn’t one of those novice riders. She’d taken the safety course long ago and a refresher course just recently. She had a lot of miles under her belt, and she’d figured out long ago that it wasn’t your weight or strength, but your technique and skill that actually counted. But arguing the point with Max was moot. It wasn’t logic dictating his opinion. It was fear. He’d lost too much in life already. He wasn’t ready to lose another friend. Or, employee, for that matter.