Chapter 20
The house smelt of body odour, whisky and cigarettes and it looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years. There were dirty clothes all over the floor, unwashed dishes with half-eaten food everywhere you looked and spilt liquids and drug residue on every floor and surface.
Toby Denis was a slob.
Hihi, Mrs & Mrs Smith.
You are headed to Lake Como, Italy, to secure high-value target Toby Denis. You are to transport him SAFELY to the designated safe house and await further instructions.
The sounds from the television echoed around the house as Agatha and Rio snuck inside. Agatha rolled her eyes at the state of the 4.5 billion dollar mansion. As always, Rio stifled a laugh at her theatrics.
Toby had no sense of self-preservation. He hadn’t even turned to look at the sound of a pan falling when Rio slipped on a puddle of god knows what, knocking it off the kitchen counter as they approached his location in the living room on the couch. He was too busy snorting a line of coke.
With one swift movement, Agatha pulled a black hood over his head and locked it with a thin plastic handcuff.
“Hey!” Toby shouted. He swung sluggishly at nothing, too coked up or drunk to do any real damage.
Rio caught one of his attempts and made quick work of securing a handcuff around one wrist whilst Agatha pinned him down so Rio could grab the other.
“You want money?”
Agatha rolled her eyes again.
“Because I have it. I have loads of it!”
“I’ve got more than enough of my own,” Agatha replied boredly.
“We’re here to keep you safe, Toby,” Rio answered, her agent voice on.
“By handcuffing me and putting a hood over my head? Yeah, not fucking likely. Let me go right now or I’ll-”
“You’ll what?” Agatha entertained. She was ready to hear whatever the man was about to come up with.
“Well…I’ll…I’ll…”
“Brilliant,” she said, clapping her hands together when he gave her absolutely nothing. “Looks like you’re coming with us.”
“I’ll scream,” Toby said.
“Go on then.”
“Aggs,” Rio warned, giving her a pointed look.
“What?”
“Stop toying with him and help me get him in the car.”
Toby started moving then, thrashing around on the couch like a fish out of water. “You won’t take me! I won’t allow it!”
Rio sighed before she pulled at his restraints and yanked him up by his shoulder.
“Oh, look at that,” she said as she started shuffling him out of the house. “Guess we’re taking you after all.”
Toby did not give up his ‘fight’ as the two women dragged him outside to their waiting matte black Porshe Cayenne Turbo E-Hybrid Coupé. It was pathetic really, the way he tried to wriggle out of their grip. He looked like he had ants in his pants.
“Yeah, you deal with that,” Agatha gestured to Toby once she’d opened the back passenger door for Rio to shove him in.
She got into the driver’s seat as Rio tried her hardest to calm Toby down.
“We should’ve gagged him,” Agatha said as she started up the engine.
“What did you just say?” Toby seethed.
“Shut up, both of you,” Rio scolded. “Toby you’re safe with us, we’re FBI. Agatha, stop making digs at our mission subject.”
Rio’s voice was entirely serious, but Agatha caught her trying to hide her smile in the review mirror.
“But he’s so easy,” Agatha whined.
Rio rolled her eyes as she strapped him in. She shut the passenger door before climbing into the seat next to Agatha.
Then, they were off.
Lake Como was beautiful in May. Every tree was covered in green leaves, flowers dotted the mountainside as they drove down winding lanes towards the safehouse, the sun was shining, what more could you ask for?
Rio slipped her hand easily into Agatha’s and Agatha didn’t fight the smile that spread across her lips.
Ever since their talk two days ago where they had laid everything out, things had been (she didn’t want to say good) good. Everything felt so clear now that they had communicated, and she wondered why they hadn’t done it sooner (they were both afraid of their own feelings and would rather die than face them).
Like Agatha had said, she’d met her match.
She’d been so ready to be done with Rio, to pretend that her feelings for her could be stuffed and buried. And Rio, like Rio always did was prepared to challenge her. She’d gone into her bathroom and showed her that she couldn’t run and hide from her feelings. She’d taken care of her, been there for her just as Agatha wanted.
The little shit.
“I can’t breathe!” Toby exclaimed the same time Rio started running her thumb along Agatha’s hand.
Agatha knew she was dramatic, she was self-aware like that, but this Toby was taking it to a whole new level.
“There’s breathing holes in the fabric, you’re fine,” Rio told him. “Just calm down. We’re here to help you remember?”
“Then why is my head in a bag!”
“For your safety,” Rio replied calmly.
“It can’t be for my fucking safety if I can’t fucking breathe!”
Agatha wondered if all their mission targets were going to be insufferable.
Toby started hyperventilating. “Oh god, oh god, oh god. I recently had a heart attack.”
Agatha rolled her eyes for probably the fiftieth time in the space of half an hour. “It’s probably all the coke you’ve been snorting.”
Rio whacked her in the arm as Toby’s monologue continued.
“I…can’t…breathe,” he panted.
“Toby,” Rio said, her voice dripping with authority. “Calm down.”
“You’re gonna have to take this hood of me,” he nodded. “Mhm. That’s the only solution.”
Agatha pulled a face as if to say that was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard.
“You’ve gotta do it. Please or I’ll die! You told me you were here to keep me safe!”
Rio huffed. “We need him alive.”
Agatha shook her head before nodding at Rio to take off the hood.
Her wife nodded in confirmation, detaching her hand from Agatha’s, undoing her seatbelt and swivelling around to lean into the backseats.
Agatha wanted to get to the safehouse now before she strangled their mission subject and blew the whole mission.
Toby’s head popped out of the hood, and she locked on to him via her rearview mirror. He was pushing sixty with white hair and ice-blue eyes and he had a beer belly and sickly looking skin. The man was not looking after himself. No wonder he’d had a heart attack if he was even telling the truth.
Rio sat back in her seat and in no time her hand was in Agatha’s again.
They arrived at the safehouse twenty minutes later.
“Alright, Toby,” Agatha said. “We’re going to move you in there now.” She nodded her head back to the small house surrounded by trees. “I don’t want any-”
“Babe,” Rio cut her off. “I think-”
A bullet whirled towards them hitting the side mirror on Rio’s side.
Agatha turned around in time to see a figure dressed in black slip behind a wall from where they’d shot at them in front of the safehouse window. Another figure previously hidden by a tree appeared, and another, and another.
Bullets rained down on them soon after.
“Who the hell is after you?” Agatha asked at the same time their back window shattered as a bullet hit it.
“Get down, Toby!” Rio instructed.
The man did as he was told.
Rio retrieved her gun immediately and fired back through their now open window, hitting the figure behind them.
“Agatha. Drive,” Rio urged.
The other woman did, backing away from the not-so-safehouse. Her gun hung out the window as she shot at the approaching targets. She hit one woman, didn’t get a chance to hit anyone else as she swerved the car and sped away.
“Who was that and what have you done?” Agatha yelled as they made their way back down the winding lanes of the mountainside.
Toby said nothing. He remained hunched over in a sort of foetal position on the floor of the car. He was making strange blubbering sounds that reminded Agatha of a walrus.
“Are you fucking crying?” She screamed.
“On our six,” Rio announced.
A black Range Rover with blackout windows was on their tail.
“Oh, for fucksake,” Agatha muttered as she pushed down on the accelerator.
The Range Rover followed suit, ramming into the back of their car.
“Are they fucking serious?” Agatha complained as if the person who had tail-ended them was an idiotic driver and not someone trying to murder them.
Rio laughed as her wife sped up once again, swerving the car this way and that to try and shake their inconvenience.
“Are you laughing right now?” Toby screeched like a prepubescent boy. “We just got shot at!”
“Yeah, and we’re still alive calm down,” Rio replied.
The car on their tail annoyingly had kept up with Agatha. It was just as close as ever.
“Right. They’re pissing me off now,” Rio said as she pushed herself towards the open passenger’s window, gun raised.
A bullet sailed past and almost took her arm off once she did. She immediately retreated back inside as more bullets hit and ricocheted off their car.
“Fuck.”
“We gotta get off this mountain,” Agatha said. “I don’t feel like driving over any more cliff edges.”
Rio laughed again as she prepared to hang out the window once more.
“I will not be driving over any mountainsides!” Toby declared.
“Shut up,” the wives replied simultaneously.
The second the gun stopped firing, Rio stuck her upper half out of the car and shot at the tyres of the vehicle behind. One of the front tyres burst and the Range Rover skidded before crashing into the mountainside.
“Well done,” Agatha praised, a wide smile on her lips as Rio’s upper half returned to the car.
“I do try,” Rio replied, her smile mirroring her wife’s.
“I’m gonna die,” Toby mumbled. “I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, I'm gonna die.”
Agatha rolled her eyes as they sped down the mountain. Rio kept her eyes trained on the road just in case any more Range Rovers made an appearance.
Once at the end of the lane by the lake, Agatha made a sharp left into a residential area. Colourful houses and shops lined each street as Agatha slowed down as to not hit any civilians. Church bells sounded and once the church came into view, it was evident why.
There was a wedding.
For fucksake.
A cluster of people blocked the road as the happy groom and bride stood in the centre kissing.
Agatha honked her horn, and the sound fell on deaf ears.
“Speed up and they’ll move,” Rio told her.
“No!” Toby yelled from the floor of the car. “You will not run over a wedding that’s bad luck!”
The patience Rio had been displaying for the insufferable man in the back of their car seemed to snap as she grit out:
“Well, what do you want us to do Toby?”
More people poured out of the church adding to the already large crowd.
“Because they’re slowing us down and putting you in more danger.”
“Crashing a wedding literally is bad luck!”
“Oh! So, you’d rather die than have bad luck?”
Agatha rolled her eyes before retrieving her gun, rolling down her window, sticking it out and shooting: once, twice.
The wedding began to disperse as people screamed and ducked for cover.
“Or we could just do that,” Rio nodded her approval.
She pressed down on the accelerator again, bolting down the street until a Range Rover came out of seemingly nowhere and crashed into the side of their car. The gunman in the passenger’s seat closest to Agatha stuck his head out the window, gun raised, and she didn’t hesitate to shoot him right in the centre of his head. He collapsed, falling out the car window.
She started to reverse, heard the screams of fleeing people as they tried to dive out of the way before she hit them.
“Wait, stop, stop, stop!” Rio urged.
Her words didn’t register soon enough, and another Range Rover smashed into the back of their car. Every person in the vehicle jolted from the impact.