Lance: A Hitman Romance (Santa Espera #2) (10 page)

“Get me a Kleenex,” I spit, cutting him off. I’m still looking away and I feel him pause, perhaps about to say something. But then he walks over to the coffee table and picks up the box of Kleenex, bringing it back over. He takes one for himself before offering me the box, where I grab several in one hand. Turning away completely now, I put the wad of tissue down between my legs, cleaning myself. I can hear him taking the condom off behind me, doing the same.

When I ball the Kleenex up and put it on the book case, I start pulling my panties up, straightening my skirt, tucking my breasts away, and buttoning up my blouse. When my clothes look decent I take my wad of Kleenex from the bookshelf, snatch Lance’s out of his hand, and carry them over to my desk to drop them into the garbage bin. All this while I’ve felt completely empty inside.

“Katie,” Lance begins, but I lift my gaze and I look at him. He freezes in place.

“No,” I say to him. “You will never call me that. My name is Doctor Simmons to you.” I take in a deep breath and let it out. “But that’s not going to matter, because this is our last session. I’m going to refer you to another doctor.”

I see Lance open his mouth to protest. I feel myself reaching down to open my desk drawer. But it’s as these things are happening that I hear a raised voice coming from inside the foyer, and my mind skids to a halt as both Lance and I turn our heads.

It’s Amin, and a flashback to last week, when Lance showed up unannounced, flies through my head.
Another client?
I think. But Amin’s voice raises again, and I only have time to realize that his voice sounds scared before two sharp, softened noises come, one right after the other, and Amin’s voice drops silent, replaced by a heavy thud.

Terror drives into the heart of me. My eyes are wide and I realize I’m frozen in place, staring at the door. No sounds are coming through anymore.

“Lance?” I say, and he looks at me, holding up a hand for me to be silent. Reaching into his jacket, he pulls out a gun and I gasp.

“This could get messy,” he says, his voice low, his entire body tense. His eyes drop down to my desk before returning to mine. “So you might want to hide.”

Lance

When I felt Doctor Simmons —
Katie
— come hard with me, I was surprised afterwards to find my breath shaky. My cock was lodged deep inside her, my body curled against hers, my hands still on her mouth and tit.

Jesus Christ,
I thought.
What the fuck just happened?

I took my hand off her mouth and heard her breathing, panting almost. I realized that
I
was breathing hard too, and I quickly stepped back, pulling out of her, even though my cock practically cried out to stay inside.
It’s time for me to leave,
I told myself.
Just like I planned.

So then why didn’t I want to go? Why did I want to be here with her?

Katie turned around and looked like a mess. Her skirt was hiked up, her blouse was open, tits spilling out of her bra. Her hair was messy and she panted like she just ran a fucking marathon.

But beyond all that, I couldn’t stop staring at her eyes. And she had a look in them that made me think what just happened meant something. And for this strange and fleeting moment, I felt certain that it
did
mean something. Something it wasn’t supposed to mean. All I wanted was to prove to her that this is just a fucking sham. That I don’t need anybody to keep going in this world except myself.

I didn’t anticipate this connection. So something had to be done.

“Fuck, I knew you would be easy,” I said to her. “See? Two times, just like that.”

I put a smile on my face and watched her, but inside it felt like something had been torn. And when her expression turned from shocked to hurt to broken-hearted, I immediately regretted what I just did. My smile faltered. She turned away, but not before I saw tears shimmering just beyond her eyelids.
Fuck, what have I done?
I thought.
This isn’t how it was supposed to be.

“Hey,” I tried saying. “Don’t-”

But she cut me off.

“Get me a Kleenex,” she spat, and I was taken aback. Something inside of me was hurting, and I wanted to make it better. Kleenex. I went to get the Kleenex, grabbing the box off the coffee table, my cock still sticking out of my pants, wrapped in a cum-filled condom. When I brought them over, I grabbed one for myself before offering them to her.

She took half a dozen and turned away again, trying to hide herself as she cleaned up the mess down between her legs.
My
mess. I watched her a moment before pulling off the condom, wiping off my cock, wrapping the two things up together and putting myself away. Taking the box back to the coffee table, I wasn’t sure where to put the tissue so I just held onto it, not wanting to just leave it on her office floor.

She put her pile of Kleenexes on one of the bookshelves and she was straightening her clothes up. And during all of it I had no idea what to say to her. My silver tongue felt tarnished and useless in my mouth. When she was all clean, Katie took her wad of Kleenex — and mine, I didn’t even ask her — over to her desk and threw them out. I needed to say something.

“Katie,” I began, but she lifted her head and looked at me, and for the first time since I met her I saw a fire in her eyes.

“No,” she said, and I closed my mouth. “You will never call me that. My name is Doctor Simmons to you.”

I swallowed, watching her steady herself with a breath.
Okay,
I thought.
Doctor Simmons then. And from now on no more sex, just the therapy.

“But that’s not going to matter,” she went on, “because this is our last session. I’m going to refer you to another doctor.”

I blinked, watching as Ka- … as Doctor Simmons reached down with a shaking hand and opened her desk drawer.

No. No please, I’m sorry!
I wanted to scream.
I’m sorry, I overstepped my boundaries. Please just don’t leave me like all the others!

I opened my mouth to ask her, to beg her, to reconsider, when a raised voice from out in the foyer made me turn my head.

A man’s voice — the receptionist. My hackles raised.
Something’s not right,
I thought when I heard his voice again, sounding louder, more scared. And then two muffled gunshots made my eyes widen, followed by the unmistakable thud of a body hitting the ground.

“Lance?” came Doctor Simmons’ voice, and I whipped my head around, holding up a hand to quiet her. I saw how scared she looked.

“This could get messy,” I said in a low voice, my entire body tense. I dropped my eyes to her desk for a moment. “So you might want to hide.”

And that brings us to now, as I turn to look at the office door again.

“Fuck,” I say under my breath. My mind whirs inside my head. Whoever’s out there is obviously coming for me. What have I done? I’ve put Katie in danger, and gotten that receptionist killed! But whoever it is has obviously never heard of me. Because I’m going to get both Katie and me out of here alive, and I’m going to make sure this fucker does exactly the opposite.

I turn to look back again and Katie’s still standing. She’s staring at the door again, her chest rising and falling with quick breaths, and I can see something in her eye. It’s not fear. Is it hope? Excitement? There’s no time to think.

“I said hide,” I hiss as I reach into my jacket, pulling out my gun. Katie makes a noise and finally does what I say. I look back at the door, softly stepping to the side, and beyond the soft sounds of the music in the foyer I hear footsteps approaching the door. I keep moving around, getting to the side of it. The handle slowly turns and I’m holding my breath, waiting for them to come in.

Then, the latch gives a
click
and suddenly the door bangs open. I’m ready for them as I raise my gun and
BAM!
fire a shot right where they should be. But the bullet flies into nothing as it sails past and hits the far wall. I only just have time to see a rolling blur on the ground before my gun is down … but theirs is up.

The black hole of a silencer stares me down as I keep my gun right on them. And when I focus beyond the gun to see who’s carrying it, I can’t stop the sneer that forms on my face.

“Jackson.”

The grin that’s plastered on Jackson’s sweaty face could win a shit-eating contest. His eyes burn bright in his skull and his forehead is flushed red. I wonder for a moment if he’s been dipping into Gil’s booger sugar before he opens his mouth to speak.

“Well, well, well,” he says, and the slime in his voice makes me want to cringe. “Lookie what the cat just caught. A mouse and his favorite piece of cheese.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I snarl.

“I should ask you the same thing,” he replies. “When you didn’t come to the restaurant yesterday, Gil was so pissed off he cracked some guy over the head with a pool cue. Almost killed him.”

Yesterday.
I was supposed to go to the restaurant to give Gil those reports on that kid Nathan. But I burned them instead, and flushed the ashes down the toilet. Gil kept calling me but I ignored my cell phone. The calls stopped at around nine at night. I’m guessing that’s when he picked up the pool cue instead of the phone.

“He cleared everybody out,” Jackson says, still pointing his gun at me. “Everyone except for me. He told me he wanted to see your head on his desk. I could have gone to your place last night and tried to kill you, but I’m guessing you were expecting something like that to happen.”

I was. I stayed up all night, knowing Gil might send someone to help me see the errors of my ways. I was planning on going to the restaurant today, after this session, to explain to him why I did what I did. I just wanted to give him a bit of time to cool down first.

“So instead I followed you,” Jackson goes on. “Watched you get in your car. Stayed out of sight and I tailed you right here.”

Fuck.
Nobody’s been able to tail me before without me knowing it. As much as I hate to admit it, Jackson is good. “And now here we are,” he says. “In the last place I expected to find you: a fucking shrink’s office!”

Jackson lets out a shrill gale of laughter and my finger tenses on the trigger.

“I mean, seriously? A fucking shrink?” he asks. “Come on, I knew you were fucked in the head, but I didn’t know how bad.”

“Look,” I say. “Why don’t you and me go down to the restaurant now and let’s talk to Gil together? I can explain to him what happened and we can figure this out.”

But Jackson smiles.

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he asks. “You’d like me to drop my guard so you can shoot me in the head and be done with it. Well, that’s not going to happen, fuckwad. What
is
going to happen is that I’m going to kill you, and then I’m going to kill whatever fucking shrink you’ve got hiding behind that desk. Just because I can.

“And speaking of which, why don’t you stand up, Doctor Simmons? I know you’re there. If you cooperate I swear I’ll make it quick and painless — unlike how Lance here is going to go.”

I try to will Katie not to stand up, but of course she does. Her hands are raised and she looks like she’s witnessing a bank robbery. Jackson’s eyes flick over to her and back again, and the smile on his face practically doubles in size.

“Woo hoo, look what we have here!” he says. “A fucking hot lady shrink … Lance, no wonder you wanted to see her. Hell, knowing you, you probably already fucked her, haven’t you? Just like you fucked Sandy. You know, I even asked around, and you’ve fucked every single waitress working there.”

His smile curls downward into an ugly sneer.

“You fucked all of them. You didn’t leave one for anybody else.”

I don’t say anything, and neither does Katie. She doesn’t look at me. Jackson’s sneer somehow becomes uglier as he adds a smile to it.

“Well … that’s just fine,” he says. “Because I’ve got a new plan now. I’m going to fuck this little shrink of yours,” he says, glancing at Katie again. “First I’m going to kill you, and then, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to bend her right over this desk and I’m going to fuck her right in her little asshole. And trust me, lady, you’re going to like the way that I fuck. At least that way you’ll know what it’s like being with a real man right before you die-”

BAM!
My arm tenses to hold back the kick as my gun fires a bullet right at Jackson. Unfortunately either he was anticipating it or my aim was off, because it skims right by his head instead of blowing it apart. The bullet manages to hit the top of his ear, though, and I see the thin mix of skin and cartilage explode in a mist of red and white.

“AH!” Jackson yells, lowering his weapon as he brings a hand to the side of his head. Katie shouts something and I don’t even give myself time to think. I start to run forward, right towards Jackson, but he sees me and swings his gun to me instead. I dodge out of the way just as he fires and I hear the plaster behind me crack as it takes the shot. I keep running and a second later my body collides with his.

“Oomph!” is the noise he makes when I barrel into him. He flies back and lands on the ground, the wind being knocked out of him. His gun hits the ground and skids away as I land on top of him. Jackson lifts himself, though, the side of his head smeared with blood, and we grapple as I try to aim my gun at his head. But he’s strong, and he pushes my arm away, causing the shot to merely fire into the carpet instead.

Behind me I hear Katie scream. Jackson keeps trying to force my gun away, while I keep trying to aim it at his head. He gets me with both hands and pushes my fingers closed, forcing the gun to fire shot after shot until I’m completely out of bullets. I yell with rage and bring my head down, cracking it dead on into Jackson’s.

Jackson bellows with pain and twists his head to the side. But when I try to lift my gun to hit him, he keeps a hold on my hand and bends it back instead. Now it’s my turn to yell as I feel the gun tumble out of my grasp. Jackson uses the chance and shoves me to the side as he turns around, making a lunge for his gun, only six feet away.

Luckily he lands just short of it and I grab onto him, pulling him back. He twists again and we end up rolling, with me on my back and Jackson on top of me. I pull my fist back and hammer it into his side, and then again under his armpit. But despite his grunts, he still manages to flip over and pin me to the ground. His eyes meet mine and they’re burning wild. The side of his head is matted with blood, his ear a gory mess. My fist swings up at him but he leans back, dodging my punch, before dropping both hands over my throat and crushing my windpipe in his grip.

Immediately I find I can’t breathe. All of my offense goes into defense as I try to push him off of me, scrabbling at his hands, desperate for much-needed air. But Jackson leans his weight down and his smile widens as I feel my Adam’s apple being crushed. My face swells up with blood and Jackson’s eyes burn as he laughs, a cruel, heartless sound.

“It’s time for you to die,” he says in between his laughs. “It’s time for you to die, you fucking piece of shit!”

The world is starting to turn black. But up beyond him, appearing overhead, I see Katie come into view. She looks tall from this angle, and in her hands is a large, dark carving of an elephant — that paperweight off her desk. The tendons on her neck stand out as she lifts it up, and just as she blurs into nothingness I see the last vision of her bringing it down.