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  SLOANE

  Assassins, Book Four

  by V. J. Chambers

  When Sloane Drake learns her best friend Leigh has gone missing in Boston, she expects the worst. She and the rest of the ex-assassins go after Leigh to discover her whereabouts. No one’s seen her, not even Axel Whitman, the arrogant rich boy who used to be Leigh’s best friend.

  Sloane has always stuck to the shadows. She’s not flashy, she doesn’t take charge, and no one notices her. But when everyone else disappears as well, she’s left on her own. She’s got to find where the others have been taken, and she’s got to rescue them.

  Axel wants to help. He’s a careless playboy who owns a burlesque gentleman’s club and usually spends his nights snorting cocaine or screwing anything in a skirt. Helping Sloane is dangerous and exciting, and he can’t get enough of it. Furthermore, he can’t get enough of Sloane herself.

  Sloane knows that Axel is getting in the way of her mission. He distracts her with trivialities when she should be focusing on freeing her friends. But being with Axel makes her feel like she’s been pulled from the shadows into the light. She’s never been so… noticed.

  **Recommended for mature readers due to explicit sexual situations, coarse language, and violence.**

  SLOANE

  © copyright 2014 by V. J. Chambers

  http://vjchambers.com

  Punk Rawk Books

  Smashwords Edition

  Please do not copy or post this book in its entirety or in parts anywhere. You may, however, share the entire book with a friend by forwarding the entire file to them. (And I won’t get mad.)

  SLOANE

  Assassins, Book Four

  by V. J. Chambers

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Have you heard from Leigh?” Griffin pushed his way into my house, his eyebrows drawn together.

  “Um, hey, Griffin,” I said, backing away from the door.

  His clothes were rumpled and there were dark circles under his eyes. “Have you talked to her?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sloane.” He gave me an exasperated look. “When was the last time you talked to Leigh?”

  I thought about it. “Maybe a few days ago. Is something wrong?”

  He rubbed the top of his head. “Shit.”

  I bit my lip. “Griffin, is something going on? I thought Leigh was in Boston.” She’d gotten a call from some lawyers working on her father’s estate or something, and she had to go to Boston to tie up some financial loose ends.

  “She is,” he said. “But she’s not answering her phone. I haven’t talked to her since the day she left, and that was two days ago.”

  That wasn’t like Leigh. I started to feel worried.

  “Can you, um, call her?” he said.

  “Sure, I guess so,” I said. “But I don’t see why that would make any difference if she’s not picking up her phone.” I was already thinking the worst. Maybe it was my training as an assassin, or maybe it was because the last few years had been peppered with danger, with people like Jolene French and Derek Rolf trying to kill the people I cared about. Whatever the case, I was fairly sure that something bad had happened to Leigh. I made a mental catalog of the weapons and ammunition in our arsenal. We didn’t have a lot. Mostly the stuff we kept around these days were for recreational trips to the shooting range. Still, I thought we had enough, if push came to shove, and, if need be, we could be ready to go.

  Griffin’s shoulders slumped. “We sort of had an argument.”

  Oh. I made a sympathetic face.

  “She ran off mad, and I was mad too. And so I didn’t even try to call her until yesterday, and then…”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “Hey, why don’t you come into the kitchen, sit down, and have a beer. I’ll try and call Leigh, okay?”

  He hesitated, and then he nodded.

  I went into the kitchen, and he followed me. Our kitchen—well, my kitchen, actually—was a combination kitchen and dining room. It was equipped with a breakfast bar and a dining room table in the corner. I was still having trouble thinking of the house as mine, even though my brother Silas, who used to live here with me, had been in Austin, Texas with his girlfriend Christa for nine months.

  I went to the refrigerator to grab two beers.

  Griffin was already settling down at the table. “It was a stupid fight, but she got really pissed off.”

  I set down the beer and a bottle opener in front of him. At one point in time, our fridge was always stocked with homebrews, but Silas had made them, and he wasn’t around anymore. That meant we had to settle for stuff like Magic Hat. “I thought you guys were in a good place. I thought you were trying to get pregnant.”

  Griffin popped the cap off of his beer. “Yeah, so did I.”

  I took the opener to open my beer. “So, you’re not, then?”

  He sighed.

  I sat down next to him. Honestly, even though Leigh was probably my best friend, she and I hadn’t been spending as much time together as we used to. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that part of the reason was because it kind of grossed me out when she talked about egg white cervical mucus—which was apparently one of the sure ways to know that you were fertile. Yuck.

  I was twenty-three years old. My best friend was married and trying to get pregnant. And my brother—who’d always been what I called a manwhore—had fallen hard for Griffin’s younger sister Christa. So hard that he’d uprooted himself across the country to live close to her. I was single. I’d never really had an actual “relationship,” not one that had lasted longer than a few weeks, and I didn’t feel like I had anything in common with all the people in my life. They were all happy and together. I was alone and miserable.

  Griffin shook his head. “I pushed too hard.”

  “For what?”

  “For us to have a baby.” He took a swig of beer. “I don’t think she ever wanted to do it at all.”

  “Is that what you fought about?”

  He nodded.

  I drank some beer too. “I don’t know, Griffin. I think she wanted it. It was all she talked about for the past few months. I know way more about trying to conceive than I ever wanted to know.”

  “She said she was only doing it for me, and that she’s terrified of being pregnant, and that I’m an asshole for pressuring her about it.” He rubbed his face. “I didn’t know I was pressuring her. I thought she wanted it too.”

  “She did,” I said. “She does.”

  Griffin wouldn’t look at me.

  I touched his shoulder again. “Hey, I’m serious. She seemed really excited about it the last time I talked to her.”

  He snorted. “You sure?”

  “Well, she talked about it a lot, anyway.” And I’d done my best to tune her out, because I couldn’t handle it. Whenever Leigh talked about having a baby, all I thought about was how I was sure I was going to spend my life alone. I’d pushed her away. I hadn’t really listened to her. I felt ashamed.

  “I shouldn’t be talking about this, anyway,” said Griffin. “I shouldn’t be spreading our private stuff all over the place.”

  “Hey,” I said. “It’s me. You can tell me anything, I swear.”

  He was quiet.

  “Let me try to call her,” I said.

  “Thanks.”

  I pulled out my phone and dialed Leigh.

  He stared up at me.

  We both listened as it rang on her end.

  And rang.

  And rang.

  Voicemail.

  Griffin covered his eyes with his hand.

  I hung up and texted her. Hey hows Boston? Check in so we know ur okay.

  Griffin slugged his beer.

  I set down my phone. “Um, so how bad of an argument was it?”

&n
bsp; “Bad.”

  “But she’s not mad at me, right? I mean, she should answer when I call.”

  He took a shaky breath.

  I looked from the phone to my beer. “When Christa and Silas went missing last year—”

  “You think something happened to her?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But she’d usually call, wouldn’t she? Even if she’s mad, she wouldn’t let you worry. I guess you’ve left her voicemails?”

  “Only hundreds,” he said. “And texts. I even tried to call the hotel where she’s staying. They connected me to her room, but no one picked up.”

  “Well,” I said. “She could be busy, right?”

  “Or mad,” he said.

  “But… she could be in trouble.”

  He grimaced. “That’s what I’m afraid of. She was supposed to meet a lawyer to take care of stuff for her father’s estate. So I called them.”

  My eyes widened. “She didn’t show up?”

  “She did,” said Griffin. “But they took care of everything the first day that she was there. I don’t even know what else she was supposed to be doing, but I don’t see why it’s taking two days.”

  I bit my lip. “Maybe banks or something…”

  “Why isn’t she answering her phone?”

  I took a deep breath. “We need to go to Boston.”

  “You think so? Because I was thinking that, but then I was thinking maybe I was being crazy. What if she just hates me, and she’s trying to leave me or something?”

  “Well, then she should have told you that.” I got up from the table. “Besides, Leigh would never leave you.”

  “You don’t know that. Things have been rocky for us in the past. We’ve both run off on the other person before. Once, she disappeared for months.”

  “Well, you knew where she was.”

  Griffin got up from the table too. His expression was agonized. “Yeah, but when I ran off on her a couple years ago? I didn’t tell her where I was going. And I didn’t pick up the phone when she called.”

  I twisted my hands together. “That was when she had the abortion, right?”

  He looked at the floor.

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, you were an asshole. That doesn’t give her an excuse to be an asshole too.”

  He let out an unsteady laugh.

  “No, we’re going to Boston. We’re going to find her.”

  “You don’t have to come,” said Griffin. “I mean, what about classes? Finals are in a couple of weeks, aren’t they?”

  “I had to make up my finals two years ago when we were on the run from Marcel,” I said. “It all worked out. This is more important.”

  “What if she’s just pissed at me?”

  “What if she’s not?”

  Griffin shut his eyes.

  “Should we call Silas? If she’s in trouble, we could use all the help we can get.” Griffin, Silas and I had all been trained to be assassins by Op Wraith, a shadow wing of an arms corporation called Dewhurst-McFarland. We’d all been injected with a special serum that made us practically indestructible. Even though Leigh had been given the serum as well, that didn’t mean she couldn’t be in danger. And having Silas, one more unkillable super soldier, on our side was never a bad thing.

  “Who could be after her?” said Griffin. “We killed Marcel and his goons. Her dad’s dead. Jolene French is too.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said. “You untied French.”

  “She was unconscious,” he said. “The whole building blew up two minutes later. She didn’t have time to get away.”

  I nodded. He was right. He was probably right. Griffin and Leigh had destroyed Op Wraith. A year later, we’d destroyed the remnants—psychologist Jolene French and Frank Thorn, both of whom had been in charge at Op Wraith. “Yeah, she couldn’t have gotten away.” I picked up my beer and took a drink. “Okay, then, no Silas. But I’m coming with you. If it turns out that she’s mad at you, I’ll come home. But if she’s in danger, you’re going to need me.”

  Griffin gave me a hesitant smile. “Thanks, Sloane. Thanks so much.”

  * * *

  Leigh’s hotel room hadn’t been cleaned. The do-not-disturb sign had been on the door when we’d arrived, which meant the maid hadn’t been inside. Between the two of us, though, we hadn’t had any trouble jimmying open the hotel door. Assassins training was good for some things, even if it was only checking up on your wife when she was pissed at you.

  But deep down, I didn’t believe that was the case. If Leigh wasn’t answering her phone, then something was wrong. She wouldn’t disappear on us, not like this.

  The bed was unmade, covers askew. Leigh’s suitcase was sitting on it, open. A pair of jeans and a few stray socks were strewn across the bed. One of her bras was dangling out of the suitcase.

  Griffin and I took that in.

  “No sign of a struggle,” he said.

  He was right. Nothing was broken. Nothing was overturned. I went over to the bed and began picking up her clothes and the covers, looking under sheets. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for. Spatters of blood?

  I swallowed.

  No. I didn’t want to think that. Leigh might be in trouble, but I wouldn’t believe it was that serious.

  Griffin ducked into the bathroom. In a second, he came back out again.

  I was going through the drawers in the dresser in the room. I always thought it was strange that hotels provided dressers, like you were moving in or something. Did anyone actually go to the trouble of unpacking their suitcase into them and then packing it back up a few days later? All of these drawers were empty. I raised my eyebrows at him.

  “Her stuff’s in there,” he said. “Shampoo. Soap. All that weird stuff she uses on her face in the mornings.”

  I pushed a drawer closed and straightened. “Her purse isn’t here. Neither is her phone.”

  He rubbed the top of his head.

  “Look, Griffin, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” I said. “I mean, looking at this room, it’s consistent with the scenario of her getting up and going out to do business somewhere.”

  “She doesn’t have anywhere to do business. The stuff with the lawyer’s done.”

  “Well, it’s consistent with her getting up and going out. With her being okay.”

  He nodded. “Right.” He ran a hand over his face. “Right.”

  Of course, I wasn’t sure that I believed that. Sure, Leigh got upset. One time, after she and Griffin had tortured and killed Marcel—who was a really nasty prison rapist and all-around waste of air—she’d freaked out and spiraled out of control. None of us had seen her for months. It had been a bad time for Griffin, who’d started drinking pretty heavily. They’d both fallen apart without each other.

  But that was the thing. When Leigh and Griffin worked it out, it was because they realized that they were better together than they were apart. They needed each other. So, I found it really difficult to believe that she’d leave again.

  I tapped my chin. “Look, Griffin, here’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to rule out the possibility that Leigh’s mad and ignoring your calls out of spite.”

  “Rule it out.” He nodded again. “Right.”

  “So, she used to live here, right? In Boston? Does she have any friends here, people she might go to if she were angry?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know. She doesn’t keep in touch with anyone from back then. When Leigh lived in Boston, she was - crazy, partying cokehead.”

  “Think, Griffin,” I said. “She must have had a best friend. All girls have some other girl they tell all their secrets too.” Leigh had been mine, after all. She should be calling me if she was angry with Griffin.

  But I’d been distant lately. I’d pushed her away. Damn it.

  He shook his head. “No, Leigh doesn’t much get along with other girls. She told me that she didn’t have a lot of friends that were girls in Boston.” His expression darkened. “No, the way I
understand it, she basically slept around a lot, and everyone she slept with was also a ‘friend.’”

  I winced. Okay, that was worse. “Well… do you know who any of those ‘friends’ might have been?”

  “No.” He began riffling through her suitcase. “It wasn’t a subject I really liked talking about.”

  “Still, she must have mentioned something. You guys are married. You must have wanted to know all about—”

  “All the guys she fucked before me?” He glared at me. “No, actually I didn’t want to know about that.”

  Okay. Well, maybe he had a point. Maybe that was something that a husband wouldn’t ask his wife about too much.

  “You’re her best friend,” said Griffin. “Didn’t you guys ever talk about that kind of stuff?”

  “Not really,” I said. “I, um, well, I tried to avoid conversations like that. It’s so easy for Leigh to attract people, you know? But nobody’s attracted to me—”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, I guess not no one, but I’ve never really had a real boyfriend, and—”

  “Not that.” He waved it away. “Who was Leigh attracting?”

  I furrowed my brow. “Well, no one anymore. But in the past, she was confident, she got all these guys.”

  He flinched. He pressed his lips together in a firm line. “You know, maybe there’s one person I know of in Boston. But she’d never have gone to see that asshole.”

  “You don’t think we should check it out?”

  “He forced her to work in his strip club,” said Griffin. “She hates that dude.”

  I wrinkled up my nose. “He has a strip club?”

  * * *

  “Gentleman’s club,” said Axel Whitman. He was sitting in a booth in The Golden Key, which was his strip club, er, gentleman’s club. Axel had dark hair, a little curly at the edges. He had piercing eyes, pronounced eyebrows, and a bow-shaped mouth. Which he was using to smirk at us. He was wearing a pink suit, complete with a matching pocket square—which was plaid. Seriously. Pink. Plaid. “This isn’t a strip club. It’s a burlesque gentleman’s club. There’s a difference.”