Espion | Book One

Nineteen.

Left was so wrong.

Ten minutes after making up her mind and turning left, Anna was cursing so much it would have made a sailor's ears bleed. She whipped the motorcycle around as fast as she could and sped back the way she came.

Ten minutes chasing a dead end. Literally. Ten minutes wasted while Jessi's kidnappers got farther away. She wasn't cut out for this job. She knew that now, now more than ever as her target remained in danger. This wasn't her kind of thing. When she reached though, when she reached and killed all the men who took her target, that would be her kind of thing. But Anna knew she wasn't cut out for such spy work. It was blatant to her now, staring her in the face.

It took a whole of fifteen minutes for her to spot the same black car Jessi was taken away in. By that time she was a bottle of agitation, springing off her bike before it fully came a stop and practically sprinting over to the car. It was unbearably hot, searing under her palm as Anna skulked around to the windows. She peeked inside. No one.

Anna didn't know how much she was up against. She suspected two, more than likely three, since one person wouldn't be able to pull this off on his own. When she made it to the door of the abandoned, broken down warehouse however, Anna counted four men.

Rod in hand, she waited for an opening. The lights in the warehouse were busted, blackened and broken on the dirty, dusty ground below. Light spilled in from the cracked roof, shining down on Jessi who was tied up in a chair. The four men surrounded him, two holding pistols.

No silencer, she noticed. They knew no one was going to be around to hear them.

Anna licked her lips, anticipating the fight that was coming. She felt eager for it, almost excited.

That was before she saw Jessi's face. It was sporting a black and blue eye, slowly swelling itself shut, as if it was trying to block out the hurt it was receiving from the outside world. His left cheek was swollen too, blood running from a cut on the surface. From the way it looked, she knew it wasn't a cut from a knife or something sharp. Someone had hit him until his cheek busted open. Fists caused the wound. The very thought had her clenching her jaw in anger.

Now there was an emotion she didn't mind. She would take anger over fear any day.

"Still not going to talk, petite homme?" one of the men spoke. She recognized the accent instantly. He was French.

"I already told you," Jessi growled from his chair. He glared at the man who spoke, his voice dripping with angry venom. "I don't know anything."

"You expect me to believe that?" the same man asked. He leaned down and knocked the barrel of his gun in Jessi's temple, lightly, mockingly. "Come on, you're his son. You must know something. I know you're hiding it from me."

"I don't know what you're talking about." The murderous look in Jessi's eyes did nothing to appease or scare the man. He eased up and scratched the barrel of the gun into his own temple with a sigh.

"You're testing me, garçon. Tell me what you know or this won't end pretty."

Jessi didn't say another word. He only glared until thy kingdom come.

The man sighed again. He motioned with his gun and the two men without guns stepped forward. Jessi tensed when the men raised their fists, ready to send it plowing into his skin. Anna saw that as her cue.

She whipped out her knife and threw. The knife embedded itself into the back of the man standing right before Jessi, his fist raised upwards. Everything froze for a moment while she stood there at the entrance, waiting for them to react. No one moved. All eyes were on the man who seemed to be taking forever to respond to the knife in his back.