London Dusk (A Dawn to Dusk Novella) (8 page)

H
is wallet was sticking partway out of his pocket, and I bent down to retrieve it. Opening it, I found a few thousand pounds enclosed. I knew I wasn't going to get paid for tonight, and I hesitated a little as I pulled the notes and shoved them into my handbag. Right now I was on the bones of my arse and I had to take what I could get. When I looked up, the guy was looking at me, eyebrows raised. "What?"

"
You're stealing off a dead man."

I shrugged
, pursing my lips as I looked down at Darren again. "I know."

I tried to remember what he looked like alive
, but weirdly, I couldn't seem to find the memories. Seeing him lying there, slack, brain matter all over the sumptuous carpet – it didn't quite gross me out, but I didn't particularly like it either. If I didn't know any better, I would almost say I was sickly curious about it.

My research mind kicked into gear. My client had just died and I was analysing it? What the hell was that about? I took a step back from the body
, disgusted with myself. I looked up at Darren's killer, a slither of fear running through me as I found him watching me.

"
Your actions tell me two things. One, you are no friend of his, and two, you're not really fazed that he's dead." He eyed me with curiosity as I stared back at him wordless. "If it's money you need, I can help you get that from him."

I pursed my lips
, watching him cautiously before answering. "Yeah? Are you going to let me go after that?"

He
gave a small shake of his head. "Not likely." He pulled the clip from his weapon, pocketing it, before he handed me the gun. "Hold this, and I'll find you something worth your while."

I stared at him
with complete and utter confusion, gun in my hand as he went to the bedroom and found a safe. I didn't see how he did it, but moments later, the safe was open. I didn't know if I was tangled up with some sort of master thief or not, but the whole situation was definitely bizarre. It made me wonder if there was something more in that rescue remedy than just bach flowers, because I was not acting like a normal person. In fact… based on my actions so far, I would almost bank on the fact that Jax had laced that rescue remedy. I looked down at the gun in my hand, and wondered if I could perhaps clock this guy over the head with it.

"
Come here," he instructed me. I jumped, the sound of his voice snapping me back to the moment, and swallowed my thoughts. Jax was definitely going to get a bollocking from me when I got out of this. If I got out of this.

As I approache
d, I saw him pocket an external hard drive and a couple of other things. He gestured at the open safe door. "Help yourself."

I looked in. There was a lot of money there. Not enough to pay Luke out
, but enough to make a good start. There were also a number of boring looking documents that I didn't bother touching. I grabbed some of the money, and quickly realised that it wasn't actually going to fit in my handbag. Silently, the man handed me an empty laptop bag, and helped me load the money inside.

This was crazy. I was stealing a boatload of cash off my dead client. Someone would find out. I knew someone would find out. Annalise was going to kill me when she discovered Darren was dead. This night was really not panning out as intended.
"I can't believe I'm doing this," I muttered.

The man zipped up the laptop bag
, and paused as he peered into the safe. There were a couple of slim-line black cases at the back. He paused, and slowly opened one of them. Something glittered from within, and I felt my breath catch. Before I even realised what I was doing, I had moved right up beside him to get a closer look. It was a stunning necklace. There were about ten rows of diamonds littering the choker. "Wow," I whispered.

He snapped the case closed
without looking at me, and pocketed them both without even opening the other one. "We need to go."

I paused
. "Go where?"

"
Well, we still haven't figured out who you are, and if you're not going to tell me – I have someone at my place who will."

"
Who?" I asked, bafflement filling me. "Who on earth would know who I am?"

He winked
, handing me the money-loaded laptop bag, "You'll find out soon enough." He closed the safe. "Come on, mystery girl. It's time for you to reveal all."

***

We left the room and rode the elevator down. There was an awkward silence
, but I refused to talk. I looked for potential exit strategies the entire time we walked through the hotel, but whenever there were people, he wrapped an arm around me so I wouldn't make a run for it or cause a disturbance. Instead of walking through the reception foyer, he led me down a long corridor, and out an emergency exit at the back of the building. He beeped a large brand new black Mercedes SUV in the alleyway unlocked, and instructed me to get in.

I did as I was told. I didn
't doubt that he would shoot me if I tried to run. There was something commanding about him. The worst thing was that I had no idea what was going to happen to me. After the shitty time I'd had recently with Luke, I was just too tired to even think about fighting this guy back. I was at the point of thinking that whatever happened… happened. It was out of my control. My entire life had been out of control recently, why should this be any different? And hey, at least if they killed me, Luke would never get a cent of his bloody money.

I rifled through my handbag
, and found a packet of Marlboro Lights, breathing a sigh of relief that they weren't wet from our brief shower escapade. "Thank god," I said lighting one, and inhaling the smoke. I wound down the window, letting the cool night air touch my face. My hands kept shaking. I knew I was well and truly pumped full of adrenaline. The man started the car, and gave me a sidelong look of disapproval as he watched me.

"
Smoking will kill you."

I shrugged
. "So will you if I don't watch out. May as well have a little enjoyment along the way." I was being flippant, but I no longer cared. If I lived, I would have a good chunk of money to pay Luke with – if this guy let me keep it. If not, I was probably going to be dead anyway.

He drove quickly and confidently. The London streets still had a few people on them
, more drunk than not, but for a Saturday night, it seemed relatively quiet. Every now and then we would pass a bobby car, and every time I saw one, my stomach turned. I didn't know if I should try and capture their attention or not. Giving my abductor a sidelong glance told me that he was more than assured that I would do anything that stupid.

I flicked the cigarette butt out the window
, and wound it up. We entered the more industrial part of London, and my nerves kicked in. I had heard a million stories about people being killed and buried in building sites and the like. I reached for my phone, to try and at least send out some sort of help signal, but I felt a hand clasp around my forearm.

"
What are you doing?" he asked.

I shook my head
. "Nothing. Just trying to… find my rescue remedy."

He looked at me in surprise
. "Rescue remedy? As in the homeopathic stuff?"

"
Yeah," I said quietly. He released my arm, and I found that I actually did want it. I pulled the bottle from my bag, unscrewed it, and lifted the dropper to my mouth.

"
I wouldn't have thought that a party girl like you would have a need for it." I ignored him, and recapped the bottle before dropping it into my bag.

A few moments later he pulled the vehicle down a long narrow alleyway between two old brick
factory buildings with enormous arched windows. They both looked abandoned, which didn't give me any hope. At least I was now mostly dry from the heating in the car. We pulled up to a garage, and he pressed a remote that opened the door wide. Lights flickered on as we pulled in, revealing a very clean, well maintained space. There was enough room for another three cars.

"
Where are we?" My words came out small. In fact, I sounded afraid. I sucked in a deep breath to calm myself down. I had to pull it together.

"
That's for me to know, and you to find out," he said gruffly. The garage door closed behind us. "Come on."

I grabbed the laptop case full of money and my handbag and got out of the car
, following him over to an old metal gated elevator that rattled to a close behind me. It slowly ascended through the building, revealing a few musty and unused floors, until we reached the third floor. We stood in an enclosed foyer. He switched the lights on, and my mouth fell open in surprise.

The floors were polished wood
, the walls painted a muted greyish green, and it actually had a beautiful hall table with a key bowl on it, of all things, and a huge abstract oil painting hanging above it. For a big tough guy, he seemed awfully domesticated.

I watched him throw the keys in the bowl
, and step through the door that led out of the room. He turned and looked at me. "You coming?"

"
Um…" I have him a quizzical look. This situation was becoming weirder and weirder by the second. First he had killed my client, then he'd let me live,
and
helped me rob Darren. Now I was out in some remote warehouse, which so far resembled something out of a design magazine. Everything felt completely out of context. "Yeah… I guess." I trailed after him, only to find that my suspicions were confirmed.

It looked as though an interior designer had been well and truly
over this place. High warehouse ceilings were littered with pendant halogen lighting. Enormous glass windows looked out at the night sky, and towards the roof line of the other buildings around us. To my left, I saw a kitchen with a huge stone island. And when I say huge, it was massive. I watched the man walk around and turn on more lights, revealing a very bachelor-like living area decked out in leather sofas and dark wooden furniture.

He looked up at me
, and pointed at one of the chairs. "Sit."

I crossed the expansive room and did as I was told
, watching him as he turned on heat pumps and emptied his pockets onto the coffee table between us. The case that held the diamond choker caught my eye, and I itched to pick it up. He put a smaller black case on top of it. There was also a hard drive, and a few USB drives that he'd also removed from the hotel suite. Finally, he sat down opposite me and pulled out a brand new iPhone from his pocket.

"
I'm back," he said into the phone once someone had picked up his call. "Yeah, fine. I've picked up a little extra something though… I think you should come and have a look." His eyes cut to mine, and I sucked in my breath. My heart raced.

There were more of them. I pursed my lips
, wondering if there was any way I could possibly get out of this place, and this mess that I was in. It seemed pretty damn unlikely.

M
y abductor finished up his phone call, and sat there watching me silently. I returned his gaze. He was very solidly built. He moved like someone from the military, but I couldn't be sure. No one from the military would just randomly kill someone in their hotel room, and then rob them. No… there was something else about him that I couldn't put my finger on.

His eyes carefully assessed me in the dim light.
"Am I going to have to ask you again who you are?"

"
Without a doubt," I retorted. "And again, I'm not going to tell you."

He shook his head with feigned annoyance.
"Look around. There is no place to run. I am not restraining you. So far I have been more than hospitable towards you. Now, the least you could do is doing me the courtesy of telling me your name."

I silently shook my head
, "I…" I didn't want to tell him my name. For all I knew, he could just kill me anyway. I looked around the apartment, refusing to meet his gaze. The more I looked, the more I realised that he probably hadn't bought me here to kill me. I swallowed and looked at the floor.

"
Okay then. How about you tell me what you were doing in that hotel suite tonight?"

I tapped my hand against my bare leg
, considering the question. "No…" I didn't really want to tell anyone about my new occupation. He looked at me so earnestly, I almost felt ashamed to admit what I was doing there. Instead of saying anything, I just shook my head again.

I watched him
, and he watched me. If he wasn't holding me captive, I would have thought he was extremely good looking, with his unusual colouring and eyes. But the mood I was in, the whole situation was just damn ugly.

We sat there in silence for about ten minutes before we heard a rattle at the back of the building.
Fear sliced through me. Knowing my luck, I had probably just stumbled into some sort of illegal operation, and here were the henchmen to sort me out, once and for all. I itched to ask this guy who was coming, and what they wanted with me. Stubbornness had kicked in though, and I wasn't quite ready to show my curiosity just yet. A few moments later, two men walked into the room behind us.

My breath slightly hitched as my eyes drank in the new comers.
My stomach lurched as I recognised them. One of them was the suave looking guy in glasses that had helped me out of Jax's car, and the younger surfer looking one was the barman. I swallowed. This whole thing felt like a set up. They didn't look particularly threatening, but then again, I had just had the realisation that my judge of character wasn't so great.

"
Well, well, what do we have here?" asked the concierge. He had high cheekbones, aqua-coloured eyes surrounded by designer frames, and dark messily styled hair. I immediately felt tongue tied and a moment of unsettled nervousness developed under his gaze. I recalled that I'd felt uneasy when he helped me from the car as well. He was one of the best looking men I had ever laid eyed on. I desperately wanted to reach for my rescue remedy, but I didn't move.

"
She was in the hotel room," my captive said. He shook his head. "I know I don't usually leave witnesses, but I saw something in her that could be potentially useful for us. So I bought her here. She could be a useful asset for that job we have coming up."

I gulped
. "Asset?"

They ignored me and continued talking
in hushed tones between them. I had absolutely no idea what their idea of ‘useful asset' was, and I didn't know if I wanted to find out. I could hear snippets of them murmuring things like ‘Tijuana', and ‘distractions' and ‘running interference'. None of it sounded good.

The
American surfer bar-tender guy eventually disengaged from the conversation and sat down in the leather chair beside me, his eyes sparkling with mirth while he tried to keep a straight face. He looked out of place. He had longish unruly blond hair that curled slightly at the ends. "Well I think she would be perfect for the Mexico job. We've been looking for someone, haven't we? She's got the right look about her. I think we're all in agreement with that."

The other two stopped and stared at me. My capt
or had a calculating and assessing look upon his features, while the suave glasses guy looked almost bored. I had to get out of here. I didn't exactly know where ‘here' was, but I had to try.

"
Right, well." I sat forward and picked up my handbag, with my other hand resting on the money-loaded laptop case. "If that's all, I think I'll go now."

My original captor firmly put his hand on my shoulder a
nd pushed me back into my seat, "We're not finished yet," he said quietly. He turned to the glasses guy. "Gabe's right. She would be perfect for Mexico, and that's precisely why I brought her back with me. Just look at her."

I sat deathly still as they watched me.
Mexico? What the fuck were they talking about bloody Mexico for?

"
She's a prostitute – Darren was her client."

I didn
't know what I was more outraged about – the fact that he knew what I was doing there, or the assumption that I was ‘just a prostitute'. "Hardly a fucking prostitute," I muttered.

My captive turned on me
. "Well if you weren't there to shag Darren, what were you doing?"

I shrugged. He kind of had me there
, but I still felt like I had to clarify the issue. "I have never, ever had sex with anyone for money. Darren was my first client, if you must know. And then you shot him. And I'm not a ‘prostitute'. Had I actually managed to do my job tonight, I would have been a ‘high class escort'."