The Hitman Next Door Read online

  After that he vanished again without a word, leaving her to sit on the couch alone with the pain in her heart and a deep sense of bewilderment.

  She didn’t know what had happened to him, but something had. The man who’d looked back at her with cold eyes, insisting that he was a killer, who hadn’t seemed to take any notice of the fact that she’d just told him she loved him, that wasn’t the Rhys she knew.

  That was someone else.

  And she didn’t know where the Rhys she knew had gone. Had it had been her fault? Had she driven him away? Had it been telling him that she loved him? Had it been coming face to face with his past in the form of Jason? Or was it something else?

  She didn’t understand and it hurt. It hurt a lot. He’d never shut her out, at least not to the extent of not being willing to even listen. Okay, so he had stuff to do and this wasn’t the right time to talk, she got that. And maybe when all this was over and done with, when they had more time, he’d sit down and tell her what was going on.

  Yet a couple of hours passed and he didn’t come back.

  The night turned black and thick outside, and she had nothing to do but sit, her heart heavy as a lump of lead. A couple of times she wondered if she should go after him, but then decided not to. Not pushing him had always been the way to deal with Rhys and maybe if she left him alone, he’d eventually come and explain.

  But another hour or so went by and there was still no sign of him.

  Eventually she went over to the bed and laid down, curling up and trying to forget about the pain. A pain that wouldn’t go away, no matter how many times she told herself she was being ridiculous, that he would come back to her in the end. That he would still be her friend if nothing else.

  She must have drifted off, because suddenly someone was shaking her gently. “Vivi, wake up. Your ride is here.”

  She opened her eyes blearily to find Rhys’s dark, expressionless gaze staring back at her. And her heart leapt. “Rhys? You’re back. Where did you go? What’s—”

  “Get up,” he interrupted. “And get those pajamas on. You’re leaving.” Before she could say anything else, he was turning away, moving back to the front door of the cabin and disappearing through it.

  Her throat tightened. She felt terrible. Like she hadn’t slept for days.

  Then she became aware of other things. That it must be very early in the morning, because there was faint sun coming through the windows, and there was a very loud thumping noise coming from outside. Something that sounded like….

  Holy shit, was that a helicopter?

  She blinked, hauling herself off the mattress, reaching for the pajamas that Rhys had obviously picked up from wherever she’d dropped them and laid across the end of the bed. She pulled them on and then went to the door of the cabin.

  Sure enough, sitting in the expansive driveway was an honest to God helicopter, the rotors moving lazily in the dawn air. It was battered looking, like it had seen a bit of action somewhere, and Rhys was standing beside the cockpit with his head ducked, talking to the pilot.

  Then he turned around and spotted her. Moving away from the cockpit, he came over to where she stood. The expression of his face was completely unreadable. “Get in. West is going to take you home.”

  Her chest constricted. “What? Who’s West? And what about you?”

  “He’s a colleague and I’m not coming. I have shit to sort out and besides, I need to drive my car home.”

  “No,” she said automatically. “I’m staying with you.”

  His gaze chilled. “No, you’re not. You’re going home now.”

  “No,” she repeated, staring straight back at him. “I’m not going—”

  “There’s nothing here for you,” he interrupted, low and fierce. “I have nothing for you. Nothing at all, do you understand? So there’s no point in staying. None.”

  Grief caught at her, like a hand around her throat. “Nothing? Not even friends?”

  “I can’t be friends with you anymore. Especially now.”

  It felt like he’d struck her. “I don’t want friends.” She tried to sound steady and firm. “I want we had yesterday.”

  But he only shook his head. “I can’t give you that, either.” His voice was flat. “Go home, Vivi. Now.”

  She didn't want to. She wanted to stay here and argue with him, get him to tell her what had changed. Why he was suddenly refusing her when it had seemed that more than friends was exactly what he’d wanted.

  There were tears in her eyes, her throat aching, her chest sore. And even though the helicopter pilot was right there and watching, she couldn’t leave it alone. “So that meant nothing? Is that what you’re saying? Everything we did together, everything we talked about, all of that meant nothing to you at all?”

  “Vivi—”

  “You told me I was yours, Rhys!” Her voice had risen, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t like the pilot could hear over the noise of his damn machine anyway. “ You told me you couldn’t ever let me go!”

  His face was like granite. “You were. But I can’t escape the past. I can’t escape what I’ve done. And there’s nothing that either of us can do to change that.”

  She tried to swallow past her tears, couldn’t. Because it was all there in that terrible, set expression on his face. “So, what? You give into the inevitable? Is that what you’re saying? You’re not even bothering to fight?”

  “What’s the point? You think merely saying that I’m not a killer somehow wipes the slate clean? It’s there, it’s always fucking there.”

  A tear slipped down her cheek, but she didn’t bother wiping it away. “The point, Rhys, is me. The point is us.” She took a step toward him, suddenly so angry she could barely speak. “But I guess that’s not worth fighting for is it?”

  “Christ, that’s not—”

  “Face it,” she cut him off, her voice shaking. “You can’t escape the past because you don’t want to.”

  Something flared in his eyes, bright and hot. Then it was gone, his expression shuttering completely. “Get into the chopper,” he said without any discernible emotion. “You’re wasting gas.”

  He wasn’t going to listen, that much was clear. And she wasn’t going to stand there arguing with him, not with her heart breaking into small pieces in her chest.

  So she swallowed, then reached up and undid the catch of her necklace, taking it off. Reaching for his hand, she pressed it into his palm and closed his unresisting fingers around it. “Keep it,” she said, not looking at him. “Remember what I was to you. Because that’s what you are to me.”

  Then without another word, she turned and, ducking her head, ran for the helicopter.

  Rhys held onto Vivi’s necklace as West took the chopper into the sky, the edges of the metal digging into his palm. He didn’t know why he’d let her give it to him, because he shouldn’t. It was hers. He didn’t want it back. Yet he found himself clutching it like a kid with a fucking security blanket.

  It was pathetic.

  Tearing his gaze away from the rapidly fading helicopter, he shoved the necklace into his jeans pocket and strode over to the stables where he’d parked his car. Pulling open the door, he hauled out the man sitting inside, his hands still tied, and dumped him onto the ground. Jason didn’t say anything, watching him with rage in his eyes.

  Rhys knelt and took the knife out of his boot. “How did you do it? How did you find us?”

  “I know a couple of shady cops and they were able to track your plate. At least until you got to Terlingua. Then I got a lucky break and saw you talking to a guy. I went after him and he told me where you were.” The other man’s eyes widened slightly as Rhys hefted the knife. “You don’t have to—”

  And cut the ropes around Jason’s wrists, freeing him.

  Then Jason’s eyes went even wider, staring as he sheathed the knife back in his boot and rose to his feet. “What the hell?” Jason demanded.

  Rhys got out his Sig and put it on the ground i
n front of him before straightening up. “You want your revenge? Then take it.”

  And he turned his back and walked out into the middle of the driveway, heading in the direction of the helicopter. If he squinted he could still see it in the hot blue sky, going back to Austin. Taking Vivi home.

  He’d thought about it a lot the night before, after he’d come back from making the necessary calls. Sitting outside in the darkness with the stars glittering above him, watching the car to make sure the asshole didn’t get free. Because he wasn’t sleeping while any threat remained to the woman who meant more to him than anyone ever had. Or would.

  He’d thought about his life and what he’d done with it. He’d thought about his anger and the choices he’d made. And whichever way he looked at it, there was no doubt that he was the villain in this particular story.

  No matter what she’d said, he was the bad guy and there was only one way the bad guy’s story ended. Live by the sword, die by the sword and all that shit.

  After that first contract, he’d thought that keeping it all about the mission would somehow make his decision to stay in the hitman business better. But he’d been naïve. Killing people who deserved it didn’t make it better. It was still killing, no two ways about it. And there was no escape from that, but one.

  Anyway, fundamentally it didn’t matter what happened to him. Vivi was safe now and that’s what mattered. That’s all that ever mattered. And at least his last act could be something she’d be proud of.

  He’d always wanted to be a good guy.

  Behind him, he heard scraping sounds and his neck prickled. He wasn’t used to having his back to an enemy and his instincts were screaming at him to take some kind of evasive action. But he didn’t move, concentrating on the space of sky where the helicopter had disappeared, his fingers tightening unconsciously around Vivi’s necklace.

  He wished it didn't have to be like this. He wished he hadn’t made the choices he had. But there was no changing the past.

  “Face it, Rhys. You can’t escape the past, because you don’t want to.”

  Ah, hell, she didn’t understand. He’d been trying to escape it for two years, and look where that had ended up? Vivi in the desert with a gun to her head.

  It was hard facing that fact.

  The only thing he could do now was fix the mess he’d made and make sure no one else got hurt because of him.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Rhys fought every instinct that raged at him to turn around and take out the threat. “You wanted revenge on your brother? So take it.” He kept his gaze on the sky. “It’s a limited time offer so I’d get in now, while you can.”

  The sound of footsteps on the rocky ground came from behind him.

  His muscles tightened as he braced himself for the impact, the edges of Vivi’s necklace digging into his palm. It was a good pain. Sweet. So he clenched it tighter, harder.

  “Are you fucking insane?” Jason sounded hoarse. “Why the fuck would you offer me a free shot?”

  “I’m not doing it for you.” Rhys stared at the blue, blue sky, wishing he could still see the helicopter. “I’m doing it for her.”

  Behind him Jason muttered something inaudible.

  The back of Rhys’s neck kept prickling. “Stop fucking around,” he growled. “Just do it.”

  There was a silence.

  Then the gun fired.

  Every muscle in his body went tight and he waited for the bullet to hit, for the pain to grab him and pummel him into oblivion. He’d been shot before a couple of times so he knew what to expect.

  But a stone right next to his foot suddenly exploded in a shower of dust.

  “Fuck.” Jason didn’t sound particularly upset it had to be said. “I missed.”

  Rhys blinked, his heartbeat, which had been completely steady this whole goddamn time, only now starting to race, the adrenaline pouring like a wave through him.

  Holy shit. He wasn’t dead. The stupid bastard hadn’t shot him.

  Spinning around, Rhys was in time to see the guy throw the Sig onto the ground.

  “You didn’t fucking miss.” Rhys stared at him. “You were supposed to shoot me!”

  “And you weren’t supposed to let me, asshole.” The other man’s blue eyes held something unreadable in them. “Shooting you doesn’t change anything. And it doesn’t bring Eddie back.”

  “What the actual fuck?” Rhys demanded, reaction beginning to bite deep. “So you changed your mind? Just like that? After two fucking years?”

  “Killing you was Eddie’s plan.” Jason turned toward the truck he’d stolen from Rhys’s contact. “Seems kind of pointless now.”

  “Som that’s it?” Rhys began to go after him, barely even conscious of what he was doing, knowing only that this was supposed to be the end and now it wasn’t. Which wasn’t how the story was supposed to finish. “You’re just walking away?”

  Jason didn’t reply. He merely climbed into the truck and started the engine. Then he spun the wheel and planted his foot. Rhys grabbed his Sig from the ground and made a grab for the truck’s door, but it was already moving and moving fast, roaring off down the driveway in a cloud of dust.

  So he began to run after it, his feet hitting the ground in long, loping strides, his Sig in one hand, Vivi’s necklace in the other. Running after the vehicle as it began to disappear into the distance. But even after it had long gone, he didn’t stop running.

  He didn’t know how long he ran for but eventually the sun brought him to a halt as the early morning began to give way to the heat of the day.

  The truck was long gone and he was standing in the middle of fucking nowhere, his heart thundering in his head and sweat pouring off him.

  Still a-fucking-live.

  His breath was coming in hoarse pants and there was a pain his chest that he didn’t know what to do with. A whole goddamn life he didn’t know what to do with.

  “So what? You give up? You stop fighting?”

  Vivi’s voice, thick with tears, was somehow in his head and her clear eyes bright with anger.

  “You can’t escape the past, because you don’t want to…”

  Rhys sucked in a breath, then another, the dry heat scouring his lungs.

  The pain in his chest was excoriating and there was something hard and sharp digging into his palm. He opened his fingers painfully and looked down.

  Vivi’s name glittered in his palm, the diamonds throwing light everywhere.

  “The point is me…The point is us…But I guess that’s not worth fighting for…”

  He couldn’t have said what hit him in that moment, but it felt like he’d been plunged headfirst into an icy lake.

  All this time, he’d wanted to be the good guy, he’d wanted to leave his past behind him, and giving Jason that gun had seemed the best way to do it, to kill two birds with one stone so to speak. But now that had been taken from him and all he was left with was the bitter truth: Vivi was right. She’d been right all along. He had given up. He had stopped fighting.

  Fighting was what he’d been doing all his goddamn life and he was tired, and it was easier to believe that he was bad through and through than it was to believe he was worth redemption. Worth her love.

  Easier to walk away from her completely than it was to fail her.

  “What I was to you…You are to me…”

  The Sig fell from his nerveless fingers and suddenly he was on his knees in the dust, holding the necklace in his palm, staring at the diamonds glittering in the sunlight.

  She loved him. She believed in him. In her eyes he saw the man he’d always wanted to be and how could he throw that away? How could he let that mean nothing?

  Rhys cupped the necklace in his palm, stroking the diamonds with his thumbs.

  She’d saved him. She’d always been saving him, right from the moment he’d found her sitting next to him the first day in the school cafeteria. Right from the first moment she’d smiled at him.

&nbs
p; He’d loved her that day, instantly, irrevocably, and at the same time he’d known that a girl like that, a woman like that, wouldn’t ever be destined for a guy like him.

  But that didn’t mean he had to stop fighting. That just because it was hard, he had to give up. No, he couldn’t change his past, but that didn’t mean he was without choices.

  It didn’t mean everything was inevitable.

  Shit, Jason had chosen not to shoot him, so why couldn’t he choose to put that past behind him? Why couldn’t he choose to believe that he was the man Vivi saw?

  Didn’t she deserve that? Didn’t she deserve everything?

  Rhys stared down at Vivi’s glittering name, feeling like someone had punched him in the chest. Feeling as if Jason’s bullet had actually hit him, passed straight through his heart and gone out the other side.

  Of course she did. She deserved the entire fucking world.

  She deserved someone who would choose her and keep on choosing her for the rest of her life.

  Which kind of made his decision, in the end, really, really simple.

  Slowly, painfully Rhys rose to his feet and, closing his fingers over the necklace, he turned around and began walking back the way he’d come.

  Leaving the gun lying in the dust behind him.

  The helicopter ride felt like it took forever. Luckily, because it was noisy, she had to wear headphones which made the conversation with the pilot a little difficult. He didn’t say anything apart from telling her to put her seatbelt on, though he kept glancing at her with speculative gray eyes.

  She kept her attention on the scenery, which would have been spectacular on any other day, but today Vivi barely took any notice of it.

  Hurt sat behind her breastbone, aching like an unhealed wound, and she was just…bewildered. Okay, so he’d been clear he hadn’t wanted to continue what they’d started at the cabin, but what about the years and years of friendship? Had he really ended it just like that?

  Not that she could have gone back to only friendship, either. No, she had to be honest with herself about that. She wanted more, now. She couldn’t even imagine going back to what they had, not without imagining what more it could be. What more it had actually been.