Read Online Assassin by Tara Moss - Free Book Online Page A

stonework so old it appeared to be crumbling. Next to it, a hotel appeared to have been made from what once was a convent: there was an old statue of Mary in one window.
    Mak kept walking.
    Then, in an area of graffiti-stained stone and increasingly dire-looking shops selling the same tired souvenirs — plastic bulls covered in bright shards of glass, T-shirts with vulgar slogans ( SPAIN apparently the acronym of Sex Paella Alcohol Is Needed ), red polyester flamenco dresses swaying in the breeze out front — she found the address she’d seen in Luther’s contacts. Before her was a single door and a narrow shop window of dirty glass, lined with gold watches, glass costume jewellery, fake Rolexes and dusty clock radios. Deeper inside were cardboard boxes brimming with what looked to Mak like junk. A show of desperation and broken promises frozen in time and locked behind glass — wedding china, engraved anniversary gifts, vinyl records that once meant something to someone. She checked the address again and shrugged.
    Could this be it?
    She pushed open the door, the edge of which hit a small bell rigged to chime, and she walked over a doorstep that was worn smooth like a river stone from more than a century of use. ‘ ¿Hola? ’
    A strong, swarthy man of about five foot nine emerged from a back room, frowning. His hair was black and curly, his eyes dark. His beard was the result of at least two days’ growth. He wore jeans and an unironed, collared shirt, gold rings on his fat fingers.
    ‘ Hola. No parlo el catala ,’ Mak told him. Her Catalan needed work.
    ‘ Ingles. English,’ he replied in a heavy accent. It was a comment, not a query. He looked her up and down from the tips of her motorcycle boots to the top of her dyed raven hair, eventually settling somewhere in the upper half.
    She nodded, wearing her most good-natured expression, but not a smile. ‘Javier Rafel?’ His dark eyes flickered with recognition. Yes, it’s him. ‘Mr Rafel, you come highly recommended.’
    ‘By whom?’ he replied slowly, with a long gap between the two words, as if his brain was searching for both the right language and the right response for the circumstances. He hadn’t decided yet what he thought of her. He moved behind his cash register, and placed his hands on a broad open book — a ledger.
    Mak removed a thick wad of Euros from her satchel and calmly laid them on the table under her palm, right in the crease of the book. Between her thumb and index finger the number 100 was visible. Javier quickly took the bills from her and slid them under his ledger, then lifted the edge to count all twenty of them. His grubby hands were swift and no one would see the transaction from the street. Yup, this was her guy. He lumbered past her to the door and flipped the sign over to indicate that he was closed. ‘You come,’ he said in a gruff voice and led her to the back room he’d first emerged from. It would have been big enough for perhaps four people to stand comfortably if the space had not been filled with tatty boxes, a wooden chair and an overpoweringly large black safe, much newer and more high tech than the shopfront would lead one to expect. As it was, the two of them could barely fit in the remaining floor space. Mak was immediately on high alert. If something went wrong, there was only one exit, possibly witha time lock or other security device on it that this man could activate if he chose. If he somehow had an idea of the money he could make by capturing her, dead or alive, he would not hesitate to lock her inside.
    No paranoiac. Don’t get paranoid.
    She fought to remain composed as he closed the door, locking the two of them together into the windowless space.
    Luther Hand had trapped her in that dank cellar while she was drugged and unconscious, but she was alert now. She could defend herself. She’d brought Luther’s Glock, a gun she’d practised with every day. It was loaded, but the safety was on. This man