Noble Intentions: Season Three (7 page)

“Well, come on inside, then. Ms.
Carlisle is upstairs getting ready for the day. She’ll be down in a few
minutes.”

“Hey, who was in the car that just
pulled away?” she asked.

Leon turned and walked away without
replying. Hannah followed him inside. Instead of turning left and following him
toward the living room, Hannah continued straight into the kitchen. The smell
of fresh cut melon and strawberries and coffee enveloped her. She glanced
toward the counter, saw three mugs next to the sink. Upon closer inspection,
they had all been used recently. Each had a thin layer of black sludge at the
bottom. One was stained around the top with red lipstick, the same shade that
Ms. Carlisle wore. Her gaze drifted across the granite countertop. The
coffeemaker was on and the twelve-cup pot less than half full, indicating that
at least one person had refilled their mug. If Ms. Carlisle was only now
getting ready for the day, then who had been drinking coffee? Did this mean
that Erin and Mia were home from vacation already? Or had Ms. Carlisle and Leon
been sitting with whoever left in the red car? Surely Ms. Carlisle would have
already prepared herself if a guest had been by.

“Hannah, what a treat.”

She jumped at the sound of the
voice. She hadn’t heard anyone enter the kitchen.

“Would you mind pouring me a cup
too?” Ms. Carlisle asked.

“Sure, ma’am. Which mug were you
using?” Hannah waited for her response without turning around.

“Those are from last night, dear.
Grab fresh mugs from the cabinet.”

The mugs could be explained away,
but not the half-filled pot of coffee. Hannah dismissed it, filled two mugs,
brought them both to the table where cream and sugar were already waiting. She
touched the pewter cream dish. It was cold, as was the cream inside of it. She
looked up and smiled at Ms. Carlisle. Why had the woman lied to her? What was
she hiding?

“What are you doing by today?” Ms.
Carlisle asked. “I didn’t expect you for at least a week.”

Hannah chewed on the inside of her
cheek for a moment while she pushed aside the coffee mug mystery and focused on
her real problems.

“Hannah? Is everything all right?”

“They took away my scholarship,
ma’am. I won’t be able to afford school.”

“Well, I’m sure I can help you out
with that.”

“I don’t want a handout, ma’am. If
I have to take this term off, that’s fine, I’ll do it. What I’d like to know is
if I can put in some extra hours. I’m willing to do things outside of being a
nanny for Mia. I can work here, or at one of the other houses. I’m willing to
do anything you need.”

Ms. Carlisle rose and walked toward
the window. “I don’t know if that is possible, Hannah. At least not right now.
I’ve—“ She paused, turned to face Hannah. “We’ve got to leave for a while.
Probably, that is. I don’t know for sure yet. But I might be gone for a month,
maybe two. Mia won’t be around, and the houses won’t need tending by anyone
other than the staff already at hand.”

“Please, ma’am,” Hannah said. “I’ll
have to go home, and you know I can’t spend that much time around my father. He
can’t handle it and he’ll—”

“OK, Hannah,” Ms. Carlisle placed a
comforting hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “You won’t be attending school this
term?”

“That’s correct. Without the
scholarship I can’t afford it. I’d hoped that I could work extra for you and
save the money and have my scholarship reinstated next semester.”

“What if you accompany us? You
could be Mia’s travel nanny. Since you’d effectively be working at least double
the hours, I’d increase your pay by two and a half times your current rate.
How’s that sound?”

Hannah rose and threw her arms
around the older woman. She inhaled the subdued aroma of her sweet perfume,
noting that it wasn’t as strong as it should be if she had recently put it on.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Ms.
Carlisle said.

Hannah pulled back. The lump in her
throat prevented her from talking. She nodded at the tear-blurred image of her
boss and then leaned in and hugged her some more.

“All right, that’s enough.” Ms.
Carlisle wrestled herself from Hannah’s grasp. “Why don’t you spend the next
few days helping out the maids? You can start in here with the kitchen.”

“Yes ma’am.” Hannah turned and
walked to the sink. She grabbed the three mugs, placed them under the faucet.
She soaped a rag then wiped the coffee sludge and lipstick and fingerprints
from them.

Jack sat in the Fiat across the
street from the building that bore the address Dottie had given him. Thornton’s
office. It was a three-story gray brick building that occupied half the block.
Three rows of evenly spaced mirrored floor-to-ceiling windows wrapped the
exterior. Behind one of those windows was Thornton’s office. Jack wondered if
the man was in there. Who else was in there? Did Thornton keep a security force
with him all the time, even at his corporate office? Did the man’s employees know
what else Thornton was into? Hell, were some of them into it as well?

Jack had a number of questions
eating away at him. Sitting outside the building and waiting left him with
little else to do other than question the situation. It had been obvious to Jack
when he’d laid eyes on Thornton in Monte Carlo that the guy was bad news.
Still, it was shocking to find out that the man was as heavily involved in
criminal activities as Dottie had said. He had no reason to doubt her, but he
still couldn’t get rid of the nagging in the back of his mind telling him that
she’d made some of it up just to harden Jack toward the man.

It didn’t matter, though. He
remembered how Thornton tried to kill him. He’d saw what Thornton had done to
Dottie. If he’d seen it before the police arrived and detained Thornton, Jack
would have killed the guy on the spot. But he hadn’t, and he didn’t. And now he
was in London to do what should have been done over six months ago.

He figured his image was burned
into Thornton’s memory. But would the guy notice him in bright daylight? The
casino bar had been dimly lit. The docks where they’d had their confrontation
were dark, with only an orange overhead light or two. Maybe Thornton held a
distorted image of Jack Noble, one that barely resembled reality.

The thought gave Jack the courage
to enter the building and finish the job right then and there. But he didn’t.
He knew that he couldn’t take that kind of chance so soon. There were too many
potentially innocent people inside, for one. And there was the possibility that
Thornton knew exactly who Jack was and, given the advent of security cameras
and systems, Thornton would know Jack was in the building the moment he stepped
foot on the property.

And so Jack’s mind wandered. He
began to think about the implications of doing the job, which led to him once
again questioning why him. He knew that Dottie trusted him. Always had. They’d
worked together in the past on both sanctioned and unsanctioned jobs. He’d
never let her down, and she’d never let him down. But in nearly all those
instances, Jack had the element of surprise working in his favor. His target
didn’t know his face. Except for two hits when he was contracted to take out
rogue agents. But those were sanctioned, and he had the freedom to do whatever
he deemed necessary without fear of the government or police or anybody, except
the rogue agents themselves, of course.

Now here he was, outside the
offices of his target. A target that knew his face and knew his name. Hell,
Thornton might even know Jack was outside.

What if Dottie had set him up? What
if she was working with someone like Frank and together they had arranged for
Jack’s life to end? He had thought it odd that the call from whom he presumed
had been Leon had come shortly after he told Frank that he was done with the
agency and the business. All he wanted was his freedom, to retire. Perhaps
Frank had a different idea.

Suddenly, every face he saw became
a threat. Not a possible threat, but a real bona fide threat. Every man, every
woman. Young, old, in between. Because in the world of espionage, it’s not the
one you expect to kill you who does. It happens when you let your guard down
around the innocent looking person who seems incapable of taking a life.

Jack slapped his cheeks, open-handed
then backhanded. Left, then right. He shook his head and dispelled the
paralyzing thoughts contained within. This was not the time to allow himself to
be overcome with fear and panicked thoughts. If Dottie had set him up then he’d
treat it like every other time he’d been set up.

Self-preservation, first and
foremost.

Then revenge.

So the only thing for Jack to do
was wait and watch. Watch the elderly couple pass by his car. Wait while the
funeral procession of someone not very well liked passed by in a matter of
seconds. He waited and watched as half the building emptied onto the sidewalks
at lunchtime. And again when they returned. Through it all, there was no sign
of Thornton Walloway.

So Jack waited even longer.

He paid particular attention to the
people who entered and exited the building at irregular times. He’d make a
quick assessment, then if he felt they fit his profile, he’d snap a picture
with the cell phone Dottie had left in the car. There were only a few who
deserved such attention. But he considered the fact that he didn’t know
Thornton’s criminal partners, and he figured it wouldn’t hurt to have the
pictures.

Through the scanning and profiling,
one thing filtered through Jack’s head without being properly processed. A car
had been parked behind him the entire day. Not too close. Not too far away. It
had arrived shortly after he did. He never saw anyone get out. That didn’t mean
nobody had. But if they had, he’d missed it. Which seemed unlikely considering
that he’d noticed every dog that stopped to piss on the fire hydrant visible in
the bottom right corner of his rear view mirror.

The sun reflected off the vehicle’s
windshield, making it impossible for Jack to see if someone was inside. He
contemplated getting out and walking over to the car. Decided against it. Not
here, not in front of Thornton’s office building.

Then Jack got the break he’d been
waiting for.

He shifted his focus from the car
positioned behind him to the building. His gaze drifted from the first to the
third floor, back down, and settled on the shadowy hole where vehicles had
disappeared into and emerged from throughout the day. His focus once again
started to drift, but before the entrance to the parking level had left his
field of view, a black Bentley emerged.

And it looked to be the same one
from the night before, outside the hotel.

The Bentley turned left out of the
garage, drove forward, stopped at the corner twenty yards behind Jack. It made
another left and approached his position from the rear.

Jack looked away. The windows of
the Bentley were tinted on all four sides. Staring at the car would only get
him noticed. The Bentley passed. Jack turned the key in the Fiat’s ignition. He
punched the clutch, eased his foot onto the gas, pulled away from the curb.
Shifted from first to second. He glanced up at his rear-view mirror and saw the
car that had been parked behind him all day pull away from the curb too.

Jack paced the Bentley, staying
about thirty yards behind. He took note of the names of each street he passed,
committed them to memory. The layout of London, and most major European cities
for that matter, did not mesh logically with his brain. They spread out from
one central point with no grid to make getting from point A to point B as
simple as requiring only the cardinal directions to navigate.

So he did his best to create a map
in his mind. If it came down to it, he knew he could switch on the cell phone’s
GPS. Although past experiences made him leery of doing so. He’d been tracked
through GPS once before and preferred not to relive the experience.

The Bentley’s brake lights lit up
like a pair of seductive eyes, and then the sleek black vehicle pulled off to a
stop in front of a custom tailor’s shop named
Federico’s
. The driver’s
door opened. A man stepped out. He looked a lot like one of the men Jack had
seen in front of the hotel. The guy left his door open, took two steps toward
the rear of the car, and opened the back door. The driver looked north, south,
east, west. He lifted his sunglasses and his eyes swept side to side in huge
arcs. He said something, then the man in the back of the Bentley stepped out.

The passenger was older. His silver
goatee was cropped as close to his face as his hair was to his head. His dark
suit told anyone within eyeshot that money would never be a hindrance. Without
a doubt, this was the man Jack had encountered in Monte Carlo. The man who’d
tried to kill Jack. This was the man who’d beaten Dottie within an inch of her
life.

Thornton Walloway.

Jack rolled by slowly. He used his
left hand to shield his face from view. Kept his sunglasses down to hide his
eyes. The seconds it took to pass felt like minutes. He pulled against the
opposite curb and let the Fiat idle. Using his side and rear view mirrors, he
watched Thornton step inside the tailor’s shop. The tinted glass door shut. The
driver disappeared inside the Bentley. Headlights cut into the dreary mist that
hovered over the street. The black luxury vehicle pulled away from the curb,
passed Jack, turned left at the intersection.

“Dumb luck,” Jack muttered.

He could end it right there. Best
case, he’d walk in and place a bullet in the center of Thornton’s forehead.
There was the possibility of accidental casualties, but Jack could live with
that. Worst case, he’d have to kill a few people in the store and then take on
the driver, who probably doubled as Thornton’s bodyguard. Either way, he liked
his odds.