Hitman vs Hitman - L.A. Witt Page 0,21

the sarcasm drip. “Don’t worry about tracking mud all over my—”

“Cut the crap.” Ricardo faced him and lowered his voice. “We have to go.”

“We?” August sneered at him. “You ditched me on the side of the road, and now you want me helping your ass out? Go fuck yourself.”

Ricardo pushed out a sharp breath through his nose. “I’m putting my neck on the line by coming here. Would you rather I let them show up and kill you?”

August clearly wasn’t convinced. “Where exactly are we going? The nearest taxi stand so you can dump me off again?”

“I was thinking a safehouse.”

“Mmhmm.”

Ricardo exhaled. “Look, I’m going.” He gestured over his shoulder. “If you want to come with me, speak now. Because the money has a tracker on it, and I just barely got away from whoever is tracking it.”

“Uh-huh.” August folded his arms. “So are you saying I was right? That we’re better off working together than going alone?”

Rolling his eyes, Ricardo groaned. “You know what? I should just let them kill you, because now you’re going to be insufferable.”

August laughed smugly. “How do you even know they’re after—”

An alarm pinged.

August straightened. He looked at his phone, then swore. “Son of a bitch. Let me put on some pants and get a gun.” He hurried past Ricardo and up the stairs, calling over his shoulder, “Come on.”

Ricardo followed, and… Shit. He couldn’t lie—the view of August’s bare back and shoulders was the best thing he’d seen all day. Okay, that was a low bar, but if he’d seen a picture of those shoulders on Grindr and didn’t know who they were attached to, he would’ve swiped right.

Unfortunately they were attached to August Morrison, rich punk asshole extraordinaire, and whether Ricardo liked it or not—he so did not—that was who he was stuck with until this shitshow was over.

Goddammit.

Chapter 6

Ricardo Torralba is in your house. In your house!

It was all August could do to keep himself from checking the man’s sightlines, because surely this was one of those dreams where he ended up murdered on the floor after a miscommunication or taking too many liberties. Even in his sleep, he never got lucky with Ricardo. There was something about the guy that forbid August’s subconscious from playing around too much with him, probably because it was smarter than August’s conscious brain was.

Because now Ricardo was here, and this wasn’t a dream, and even though his security systems showed at least eight individuals making inroads on his private property, August couldn’t resist the urge to show off a bit. “This won’t take a minute,” he said breezily as he headed for his closet. It was a big closet, the kind that had actual corners you could go around leading to more wonderful sections of closet.

God, he was going to miss his suits. Did he have time to pack the Pignatelli in his go-bag? Ugh, no, not if he wanted it to keep its lines.

“Did you miss the part where I said I barely got away?” Ricardo called out from behind him, sounding intensely annoyed. Good. “We need to leave, now. Just throw some jeans on, grab whatever frou-frou gun you’re carrying these days, and get a move on.”

“They’re not frou-frou, they have custom three-dimensionally printed parts for better ergonomics.” Fuck it, he’d wear the Pignatelli now. At least if he was going on the run, he’d be doing it in style, cravat tie and all. “I’ll be fast.”

“You have intruders coming in right now, and you call this fast?”

August stuck his head out the closet door and smirked at Ricardo. “I do when I’ve got the means to slow them down a bit.” Then he activated the first layer of his defenses. A series of low, rhythmic booms echoed against the floor of the house. From somewhere outside, August thought he heard a man scream. Nice.

“What the fuck was that?”

“That,” he said as he pulled on the beautiful, shining waistcoat that accompanied this particular suit, then reached for the jacket, “was the sound of my home suddenly acquiring a moat, of sorts. You know, they don’t have to be filled with water to be called moats, they can just be ditches, but it so happens that mine is filled with water now.” August had just blown over two million dollars’ worth of custom plumbing, not to mention ruined a lot of his landscaping, but it was worth it to actually be able to use all the precautions he’d put in place.

“Let’s see who