“This is real news,” Hayden looked like she wanted to lean in and kiss Hudson. Alicia quickly perched herself on his knee. In another few seconds she had already started to wriggle suggestively.
Outside the windows, darkness was starting to fall.
Hayden hadn’t looked happier since Drake last saw her on a night out in York shooting chocolate vodkas in the Slug.
“Let’s leave the lovebirds alone,” the CIA agent said. “And go make some calls.”
CHAPTER TWNETY-NINE
Alicia Myles squirmed a little more before turning around to face Hudson. “Damn, Huddo, you’re good.”
With a practised movement she manoeuvred both legs so that she straddled him and began to grind her bottom into his crotch.
“I know that. Is there something else you want?”
“I don’t ask, Hudson. You should know that by now.”
Alicia nodded towards the bed. Hudson grabbed her by the waist and carried her over before falling unceremoniously among the covers, tangling them in a heap. Alicia laughed and fought her way on top.
“You did a good job today, lover.”
“It’s why you keep me around.”
“Well… you have other uses too.” Alicia pulled her tight T-shirt off over her head and flung it into the air. Hudson’s eyes glazed a little as she reached beneath herself and started to unbuckle his trousers. Within minutes they were both naked, sweat slicking their bodies. Alicia rode him wildly, letting the moment take her away.
It was in these moments that she felt free. Only in these moments.
When Hudson started to strain too much or got a bit too carried away she plucked another short hair from his beard to keep him in the game. Useful things — beards.
The nightmares she lived with, day to day, began to fade as the pleasure took hold. The release she craved from the things she’d done grew a little less important. With Hudson, maybe she had found someone with which to make a fresh start. Maybe.
With a fluid movement she flipped herself over and scrambled onto all fours. Hudson took up position behind her, his eyes ablaze with lust as they ran over her naked, waiting body.
“Get stuck in, Huddo,” she breathed. “Stop tossing it off.”
He thrust forward, making her gasp. She threw her head back, hair whipping her own spine. The feeling of pleasure and lust inside began to mount. There was the urge, the overwhelming feeling, the bliss and nothing else. At last.
Freedom.
The noise of the hotel-room door being barged in cut right through her cravings. It was harsh, sudden, shocking.
Then, as she twisted her body around, Hudson’s head exploded above her, showering her and the bed and the windows with blood and other matter. Her lover’s headless body slumped beside her before the sound of the gunshot entirely died away.
With his heat still inside her.
Alicia leapt off the bed to face her attackers. Three men stood there, guns in hand, pausing to stop and smirk now as they saw the fully naked woman defenceless before them.
“Look all you want,” Alicia Myles hissed. “It’s the last eyeful any of you will ever get.”
She bounded at the nearest, springing like a cat, and slamming her hard body into his chest. The man staggered back into the wall but kept hold of his weapon. Alicia was on her knees. Within seconds her stiffened palm slammed into his testicles, crushing them, making him double over and making him scream. Alicia spun across the floor, using her bare knees to pivot and gain speed, and crashed into the legs of the second man just as he fired his semi-automatic. Bullets stitched across the hotel-room’s ceiling, digging gouges out of the plaster and spraying dust everywhere.
Alicia wrenched the gun from his hand.
“Stare at this shitsack!” Spinning the weapon she fired before her adversary could even gasp. He shot backwards, dead already. From her kneeling position Alicia sent quick eyes at the third man. He was focused on her, gun raised, squeezing the trigger, a hair’s-breadth from firing… her shot destroyed his knees a millisecond before he fired. The man slammed to the floor in a bloody tangle, his bullet zinging harmlessly into the carpet.
Alicia turned, glimpsing the man she had de-balled desperately trying to bring his weapon around.
Sensing victory she stood up, unashamed. With a slow, deadly deliberation she glided to his side and twisted his wrist so that his own gun barrel stared him in the eyes.
“Eyes that have seen too much,” she whispered. “Need putting out.”
She squeezed the trigger and turned away. That left one man, the one with the mangled knees. “Who sent you?” she tried. “Was it the Blood King? Did he find us?” She squatted beside him. “Tell me, arsehole. Or I’ll start with your bollocks, and work my way up. You know I can do it.”
He knew alright. His eyes showed that he was aware of her reputation. And yet still all three of them had hesitated when they saw her naked. Behold the simplicity of men.
She dared not glance at the bed. Dared not think about her lover. The harsh reality might tear her to pieces.
“Boudreau. It was Boudreau. He sent us.”
“For me?” Alicia pressed.
“For all of you.”
The words sent a black wave crashing through her. For all of you. She smashed the man’s face until it bled. “How many? How many has that maniac sent?”
“So many… so many…” the words were punctuated with agonised gasps. “I couldn’t count.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Without looking back, Alicia Myles flung on trousers and a T-shirt and sprinted away from the only man she had ever contemplated a future with. The mellowness that had started to eat away at her bitter edges, the laughter that had started to soothe her soul, disintegrated like so much confetti in the rain, leaving nothing but the razor-edge mind of a stone-cold killer.
Mobile crammed against her forehead she ran like a maniac, gun waving, still coated in blood, and all who saw her shied away and started reaching for cell-phones of their own.
“Drake? Pineapple! We’re done. Hudson’s… dead,” the words tangled in her throat. “There’s a bloody army on its way. You hear me, fuckhead?”
Drake heard a hundred emotions in Alicia’s frantic tones. Chief among them was distress. And it was over the death of Tim Hudson. He felt a moment’s sorrow before the code-word pineapple! really struck home.
“Cover the lobby. We’ll be there in three minutes.”
Hayden was already frowning at him. The others were engaged in conversation.
“We’re compromised. The Blood King has found us.”
His words struck the room dead. “Don’t worry,” he spoke to them all. “We’ll get through this.”
“Leave it all!” Hayden shouted, already on the move. “We only need the controller.”
Kinimaka was at her side. Drake motioned Ben and Kennedy to follow and brought up the rear with Wells and Mai. As a group, they flew out of the room and down the corridor towards the stairs. The good thing was he heard no sound of fire coming from below. Perhaps the main force hadn’t arrived yet.
Which would allow them to fade away, slip down a few back alleys, steal a mini-van maybe, head for Fort Lauderdale.
They pounded down the stairs. Hayden banged through the door that led to the lobby and swung her CIA issue into a two-handed pose as she moved forward. Kinimaka fanned out to her right, brushing by the enormous fish tank. Drake pushed past Ben and Kennedy, eyes sweeping the three front entrances and trying to penetrate the darkened grounds outside.