Double Agent

○ two ○

A loud thud sounds from somewhere else in the house.

The dust from the top of the wardrobe chitters and showers me head to toe. Through the sliver between the doors, the four men pause in their tracks.

"Check the alarm system," my uncle orders.

One of them picks up their phone.

"Nothing."

Another thud.

"Should we leave?"

"Wait for orders."

"The beepers aren't ringing yet."

"So it's nothing to worry about. Back to work."

The men reluctantly go back to work, but I can see the obvious worry in their poise and their stance. The room is so tense and so quiet I can see shivers going down one of the men's arms. None of them do any more work, they're just listening, their eyes trained downwards on the desk.

The silence seems to stretch on forever. On instinct I bend down and remove a knife from the inside of my shoe, clutching it tightly.

A gunshot sounds outside our room, and my heart drops. Danger is part of our world. We face it all the time, but it doesn't make it any less terrifying. The men reach for their guns, pointing them towards the door.

The door is kicked open with a startling force, slamming it into the adjacent wall with a crash so loud the walls shake, but I can't see who has walked through. Four shots are fired. All four shots hit the men squarely and perfectly in the chest. Their guns clatter to the floor, along with their dead bodies.

I take in a sharp breath, watching my uncle bleed on the floor. He was my father's brother, and while his affection for me disappeared a long time ago, my heart still aches as I watch another part of my father disappear.

A tall man, dressed in a black suit strides into my field of vision. A head of messy hair, a strong aristocratic nose, full lips. He spins the gun once and tucks it into the back pocket of his dress pants before wiping the blood flowing from his lip with his thumb. He gets on his haunches to inspect the men, rummaging through their clothes and overturning their pockets.

My breaths come out short and panicked. I don't recognise him and he doesn't seem to be working for one of our more infamous enemies. He's alone in the room, facing away from me as he flips my uncle's body over callously, shattering a joint with a crack. I wrack my brain, trying to figure out if I knew anything about a surprise attack, or a new enemy we may have made. Nothing comes up.

He finishes his search, and goes after the guns, removing each magazine and pocketing it, before throwing them back to the floor. I grip my knife behind my back, praying to whoever's up there to get him out before I hyperventilate. The walls of the closet have started to close in on me.

He's about to leave, but just as he escapes the field of my vision he pauses, and his head snaps to the closet, where I swear his dead eyes meet mine. He's beautiful, but that's irrelevant compared to the fact that he's looking at me like he knows I'm in here. He seems to stare for a long time, contemplating, daring me. I hold my breath as he walks towards me, dark and demanding. He stops before the closet, dark brown eyes ablaze.

I have not a minute to react before the closet is flung open and a black gun is pointed at my head, the man staring at me with no expression on his face. My instincts react before I can, and the small knife that I had is placed against the side of his waist, the point of it jutting into the skin beneath his dress shirt just enough to pinch.

His eyes glance down to where the knife is pointed and raise back up nonchalantly, steady hands holding the gun up. He's almost a head taller than me, his presence consuming, the light smell of his cologne invading the musty draughts of the closet.