Yours (2 page)

“This
is your idea of control?” Dan asked, incredulous.
“This
is doing what you like, when you like? You just wait for the call to go—” his voice dropped to a hush, “—
to go kill people!
”

“Sure. I like to follow orders,” I said.

“I like to kill people,” Rien said. “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life, am I right?”

“I am so not cut out for this,” Dan said.

“Fine. More bodies for us, huh, Rien?” I slapped them both on the shoulders. Rien grinned.

“You two are fucking psycho,” Dan said, shaking his head. “Fucking
psycho
.”

Chapter Two

Jessica

“Guys? Hey guys? We missed the downtown exit.”

I pressed my face to the window. The metal and glass dome of the San Diego library disappeared behind the other buildings as we sped down the freeway.

“Hey, Mimi. Guys!”

“Do you think she knows yet?” Mimi asked, ignoring me. She winked at April in the rearview mirror.

“Knows what?” I asked, totally confused. I turned around in the passenger’s seat of Mimi’s SUV. “What don’t I know?”

“Oh, Jessica,” April said, reaching forward and patting my shoulder. Next to her, her boyfriend James chuckled.

“Are you serious? Hey! What are you doing? We were supposed to be going to the library.”

Mimi raised her head and let out a cackle.

“Our evil plan is working!” she cried.

“Oh man, Jessica, I thought you knew,” April said, shaking her head.

“Knew what?” I asked.

“Ha, she even brought her Kindle!” Mimi said, poking me in the side. “Jessica, did anyone ever tell you that the dictionary has your name next to the word
gullible
?”

“What? I was going to check out some ebooks. What’s going on?” Panic began to bubble up in my chest. “Wait. Are you
not
dropping me off at the library?”

Mimi shook her head gleefully.

“Jessica, remember when we told you about having fun and taking a break from studying?”

My heart sank. They didn’t mean— No. They couldn’t. Mimi and April had been talking about taking a trip to Mexico for weeks now. I’d pleaded out of the adventure, but now… Now…

“No,” I said.

“Yes.”

“No way.”

“Yes way!” James chimed in from the back.

“You’re kidnapping me?!” I cried out. Mimi and April burst out into laughter. “Are you for real? You guys? Seriously? You are not for real.”

“We are totally for real,” Mimi said. She raised both her hands in the air. “Tijuana or bust!”

My heart beat fast. The library dome was already far behind us, and I had a sinking feeling Mimi was serious.

“Mimi,” I said slowly. “No. You cannot take me to Mexico.”

“Give me one reason why not,” she said.

“I have to study!” I had three big exams coming up, and I’d planned on using this week to catch up on the material.

“That is the worst reason ever. It’s spring break, Jessica! You gotta do some wild and crazy things when you’re still in college. Get out. Lose control. Have fun.”

“Ughhhh
.” I slumped back in my seat. “I don’t want to have fun.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Right now? I want to read books.”

“No! Sheesh, Jessica, you’re such a priss!”

Mimi grabbed my Kindle off of my lap and tossed it into the back seat.

“Hey! Give it back!”

“No way, braniac,” Mimi said.

I spun in my seat, but James was already picking up the ereader.

“
Kidnapped by the Rogue Prince
? Is this what girls like?”

“Give it back!” I squealed.

“Oh my gosh, are you for real?” April said, grabbing the Kindle away from her boyfriend and scrolling through my reading list. My face turned steaming hot.

“April, don’t!”

“You have romance novels on that thing?!” Mimi laughed. I groaned in embarrassment as April kept reading aloud.

“
A Pirate’s Captive
.
Taken by the Bad Boy
. I can’t believe you read that kind of stuff!”

I would have leapt back into the back seat if we hadn’t been driving on the highway. As it was, I buried my face in my hands. My roommates were never going to let me live this down.

“So that’s what Jessica fantasizes about, huh?” James said. He poked me from the back seat. “Hey, if you’re into bad boys, I have a friend—”

“Stop! Oh my God, stop! I’m going to die of shame,” I mumbled.

“I want to hear all about Jessica’s fantasies,” Mimi said. “What’s your favorite?”

“
Please
stop.”

“I would never have guessed you would like this stuff,” April said, still scrolling through my Kindle. “I thought you would dream about… like, a nerdy poolboy who sits next to you and reads anatomy textbooks to you all day long.”

“Ohhhhhhhh
,” I moaned. “Please stop. Turn around. Take me back home so I can throw myself off a roof.”

“Don’t worry, Jessica,” Mimi said, patting me on the back. “As soon as we get a couple of margaritas into you, you’ll be
just fine.
”

My phone rang. I looked down at the screen.

“Oh, holy God,” I said, the blood draining from my face.

“What?” April poked her head into the front of the car.

“It’s my mom.”

“Uh oh.”

“So what?” Mimi asked.

“Jessica’s mom is insane,” April said.

“She’s not insane,” I said, feeling weird for defending her. “She’s just a little overbearing.”

“She called you every morning during midterms to make sure you wouldn’t be late for a single test.”

“She’s protective!”

The phone kept buzzing in my hand.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?”

“There’s no way I can tell her I’m going to Mexico. She’ll flip her lid!”

“Here, gimme.”

Mimi plucked the phone out of my hand.

“Mimi! Stop!” I yelped and strained against my seatbelt to try and grab my phone back. Mimi leaned over to the window and answered it.

“Hello?” She held up her hand to shush me. I shushed, if only to get one of her hands back on the steering wheel.

“Hi Mrs. Quoyle. No, this is Mimi. One of Jessica’s roommates?”

I was dying inside, gripping my knees so that I wouldn’t be tempted to open the door and throw myself into traffic. My mom would kill me if she knew I was going on a trip and I hadn’t told her about it. Mimi grinned at me, driving with her fingernails tapping on the wheel.

“Yes, I understand. She’s very busy with her studies and she asked me to take her cell phone away so that she wouldn’t be distracted. If it’s an emergency, I can tell her—”

In the back, April and James were cracking up with stifled laughter. I glared back at them.

“No? Okay. Would you like me to tell her to call you back? She’s studying for the rest of the day, but she should be back from the library before midnight.”

April snorted, and James smacked her on the shoulder to shut her up.

“Great. Thanks, Mrs. Quoyle!”

Mimi hung up the phone and tossed it back into my lap.

“What did she say?” I said.

“She said that she’s very proud of you for avoiding distractions while you study,” Mimi said, a mock serious look on her face.

“You lied to her,” I said, staring down at the phone.

“Well, duh.”

“You… you lied to her.” I had to admit that I had never before considered lying to my mom.

“What did you want me to do, tell her we were going to Tijuana to slam down as many margaritas as we could?”

“I… no… but what if something happens? She’ll go crazy if she doesn’t know where I am!”

In the back, April was hooting laughter.

“
Where you are
?” Mimi said. “You’re in the library. You’re studying for your tests. Just like you wanted to be. Or did you want me to call her back and tell her you’re busy reading
Tied up by the Rogue Duke
?” She had an evil glint in her eye, and I didn’t doubt for a second she would do it.

“No! But—”

“Come on, Jess,” April said. “We’ll be back in a couple of days. You can call her tomorrow if you really want to.”

“Okay,” I said, sighing and staring down at my phone. It felt like I was doing something very, very wrong. But then again, that was supposed to be half the fun.

Right?

Chapter Three

Vale

I walked into the Los Angeles airport behind a young guy in a suit. He looked more nervous than Dan always looked when we talked about killing people. I wondered if Ten had told him about me.

The suit led me through the airport and past one of the security doors into a small office. There were two chairs and a dingy desk.

This is where Ten would meet me?
Figures.

“Wait here,” the nervous guy said. He left me in the office and locked the door behind me.

“I hate waiting,” I said to nobody in particular. I took a few paces back and forth before the walls of the office grew boring. God, Ten was something else. Making me come here in the middle of brunch to wait for his sorry ass? This had better be a good mission.

I sat down in the chair and fished into my pocket. Half a joint left. I lit up just as I heard the door opening behind me. Ten walked in, grimacing at the cloud of smoke I blew toward the ceiling.

“Is that pot?” Ten asked.

“Might be.”

Ten sat behind the desk. He’d gotten stronger since the last time I’d seen him, and he’d cut his unruly mop of hair. Maybe he’d met a girl.

“Thanks for bringing that in here,” he said.

“No problem.”

“You know, some of us get randomly drug tested at our jobs.”

“Yeah, well, sorry you have a shitty job,” I said, taking another drag. The buzz was light. “You shouldn’t have made me wait.”

Ten frowned, as if deciding whether or not to go after me on this, and then decided it wasn’t worth it. He shoved a manila folder across the desk. I picked it up.

“This your new boyfriend?” I asked. The mug shot staring out at me from the file was decidedly one of the ugliest faces I’d ever seen. A bald Mexican dude, maybe forty years old, with a nasty scar running down the left side of his face and a thick black mustache like a bushy caterpillar across his upper lip.

“He’s your new boyfriend,” Ten said.

“Federal witness?” I scanned down the rest of the file.

“He got off scot-free a year ago. Got sent down to Rosarito to sit pretty. But he’s starting to stir up trouble again with the other Mexican druglords.”

“Mmm,” I said noncommittally.

“We were on the fence with this one. We weren’t sure if we’d need him later or not.”

“But now?” I looked up at Ten. His face was creased.

“Now, though, there’s a body.”

“American?”

“American woman, a civilian. Looks like she overdosed on something, washed up on the beach. Someone saw her get into his car at a club.”

“Should have sent him to me before you let him escape to Rosarito,” I said, closing the file on top of the guy’s ugly mug. “I know a plastic surgeon who does wonders with those kinds of assholes.”

“Hindsight’s twenty-twenty,” Ten said, sighing. “He gave us a lot of information on the drug cartels.”

“Then you definitely made a mistake.”

“How do you know?”

“He’s rolling over on the cartels?” I asked, tossing the file back down onto the desk. “Must mean he’s involved in something even shadier.”

“Maybe.”

“So who is this guy? What do I need to know?”

“Alfonze Ensueto, thirty-eight years old. El Alfa, is what he calls himself.”

“
The Alpha?
Seriously? Guy sounds like a real tool.” I leaned back, rocking the chair on two legs.

“They say he’s invincible. That no one can kill him.”

“Yeah? So what are you sending me in for?”

“To kill him.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Sounds like an impossible job.”

“That’s why we’re sending you.”

“A nice vacation to Baja. You’re the best, Ten. What did I ever do to deserve this?”

Ten ignored my sarcasm.

“Don’t blow your cover. No matter what. It’s your job to get close to this guy, close enough to kill him. Do it right before we raid the estate.”

“Which is when?”

“Midnight. The Sunday after next. Try to keep from raising an alarm. Otherwise, we won’t be able to get anything from the raid.”

“How do you know?”

“We’ve tried. Twice. The guy’s never there; it’s just an empty palace full of armed guards. And nobody knows where he is.”

“Maybe he’s at church. Have you tried raiding on a weekday instead?”

Ten ignored my joke.

“We’ll be able to pull you out during the raid, but you have to kill him first.”

“I can do that.”

“Alone.”

“I heard you the first time,” I said.

“Time it as close as you can to the raid itself, or you risk raising the alarm. Vale, we tried this twice.”

“You said that already.”

“Both times, our man on the inside was killed.”

I didn’t say anything. Ten didn’t like losing men, and I didn’t like the idea that I might be dead in two weeks. I clasped my hands together in a pose that was as close to deferential as I could get. Ten continued his speech.

“He’s got people around him at all times. His estate in Baja is surrounded by guards. You’ll have to be careful.”

“Got it. Break in past the guards, get to this guy—”

“You don’t need to do that. We’ve got an in who can get you up close and personal with El Alfa.”

I tilted my head. If there was already someone we had working on our side, this should be a piece of cake. I wondered if that’s what the other two guys had thought.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“She
is an escort. Valentina Orizo. El Alfa flies her in from Los Angeles nearly every other week. One of his favorites.”

“What’s the plan?”

“She’ll introduce you to El Alfa as her friend who needs a job doing anything.”