Clandestine [C.H]

20

Charlotte Evans

"Did Em give you anything to protect yourself? Any weapon?" Calum looks at me before averting his eyes back to the road.

I open my mouth to speak but hold it to myself and instead choose to slide my dress up my leg, exposing a garter type holster with a dagger tucked into it. "She gave me this and taught me, in the little time we had, how to use it."

Calum looks at my leg out of the corner of his eye and brings his cigarette back to his lips, taking in an unusually large breath through it.

He takes it from his lips and holds it in my direction. "You want?" He asks while keeping his eyes on the road.

If this man keeps offering me smokes then I'm never going to be able to run around the field with ease. I mean I'm still going to smoke it, I just have to keep my fitness up.

"Yeah." I shrug and go to take it from him but he moves it away. I drop my hand and look at him expectantly. He shakes his head and moves the cigarette so that it's being held between his index and middle finger before bringing it in front of my face.

"Have a hit and be careful not to get ash on the dress," he says with a strong yet calm tone.

I lean forward and take it between my lips, sucking in a breath of smoke and moving away from the cigarette. "You're going to get my lipstick on your lips now."

He takes it back and ashes it out of the window. "It's fine, there will be more of it on me later tonight. He brings it back to his mouth.

"Wha-"

"You're my wife. I'm going to have to kiss you, Charlotte," he says while letting smoke release from his lungs.

"Right."

"Are you ready? Do you feel okay?" He asks me, sounding genuinely concerned.

"Wow, who knew you could be such a nice guy?"

"Charlotte, I'm being serious," his response is harsh and stern. "This isn't a time for you to mess around. You fuck up and we're dead."

I feel my heart rate pick up with his words. He's right, if we don't work together and if I fuck up it's on me. I have no practice and I didn't even know this was going to be happening until a couple of hours ago.

Emma told me everything I need to know. She told me what the goal of the night is and how it's all supposed to go down. She explained my role in the whole operation and showed me how to behave in order to make my character more believable. She made me learn my identity back to front and tested me on it multiple times. I know everything from when Calum and I met all the way to his and my own blood type.

She taught me how to use the dagger in order to protect myself and other close contact self-defence moves. She showed me how to walk and how to talk. How to use my body language to my advantage and how to read the body language of people around me. We practiced all different types of poker and she taught me the basics of card counting.

It's safe to say that it was an eventful hour and a half.

He sighs when I don't respond and I'm sure he can tell that I'm half a mind away from jumping out of the moving car and running for my life. I wonder if he gets as scared as I am right now. It had to have been like this for him the first time he did some of these operations, I'm almost one hundred percent certain about that. How can you confidently go to rob someone who has constant security around them — big, muscular men in black suits with guns and knives and more guns — and not be terrified?

One wrong move and there's a bullet in your head. One wrong word or your fake accent slips up, and the other side knows that you aren't who you say you are which inevitably leads to getting a bullet in your head. It's dangerous and risky and I don't see why anyone would want to put their lives at risk like this. Our fates are in each other's hands and that's what makes this so much worse than it already is.