Chapter 21
“I’m gonna die,” Toby sobbed as Agatha pushed open her car door.
Rio watched her as she shot three times at the three targets moving in on them over the hood of the car. Agatha hit all three, one in the head, one in the shoulder, and one in the heart. She ducked behind the car at the retaliation.
Rio climbed into the backseats and yanked Toby up on his knees. She leaned over him and pushed his car door open before pushing him out. He fell to the cobbled ground with a splat. She made quick work of climbing over him to get out of the car before forcing him to stand.
“Keep your head down,” Rio ordered.
Toby nodded profusely.
Agatha was on the floor, hands under the car to grab the assault rifle beneath it.
Her wife rolled to her feet again, didn’t hesitate before spraying a rain of bullets onto their fast approaching enemy. She took most of them out on her first sweep, took the rest out on her second.
Rio cut the restraints locking Toby’s hands together with her knife whilst the sounds of guns and bullets hitting marks rang out around them.
“Let’s go,” she nodded her head to the alleyway behind them.
She made Toby go first, keeping on his heels behind him. She saw her wife toss her rifle next to their car and follow suit.
Stairs. Far too many of them came into view and Toby let out a sound that was most definitely a sob. He stopped.
“Move!” Agatha barked behind them. “Or I’ll push you and don’t think I won’t.”
That snapped Toby into action. He practically threw himself down the hundreds of stairs. They’d almost made it to the bottom when a bullet hit the wall by Rio’s head.
She spun around to see a motorbike headed straight towards them. She nodded at Toby to go ahead whilst she and her wife shot at the gunwoman on the bike.
Rio hit her shoulder; Agatha hit her heart. The vehicle crashed into the wall with a loud bang.
They grabbed an arm of Toby's each and started ushering him down the next alleyway. Unfortunately, it opened up to a bridge, a bridge that would leave them exposed to potential bullets if they came their way. They didn’t have a choice; they had to cross it.
“Cover us?” Rio said.
“Always,” Agatha replied as she reloaded her gun.
Rio pushed Toby down and used her body to shield his as she began to sprint across the bridge. She couldn’t see what her wife was doing, just heard bullets fire from above her head and saw sparks from bullets ricocheting off her surroundings.
They crossed the bridge safely, taking cover against the closest wall.
Another motorcycle with a gunman appeared soon after. Rio tugged on Toby to move again but this time he resisted.
“I…can’t…breathe,” he panted.
“Yeah, and you certainly won’t be able to if there’s a bullet in your heart now move,” Agatha snapped.
Toby grunted before he did as he was told.
They ran up a steep incline, having to dodge children as they played a game of football. The sound of an approaching motorcycle only grew louder.
“In there,” Rio said, nodding her head to another passageway in the alley.
It was a dead end, leading only to a gated home but they could wait there and hope the motorbike passed without detecting them.
It did.
Agatha ran out of their hiding spot soon after, Rio just behind until she paused realising she didn’t hear footsteps behind her. She backtracked until she locked onto Toby who was still cowering in the passageway.
She looked at him the way you would a child who knew they had done something wrong. His head hung low before he shuffled his feet to join her.
They made their way up the rest of the hill. A mistake. They had hit another dead end. All around them now were colourful houses. People hanging out their washing, people smoking on their balconies.
Toby sat down on a bench outside of the yellow house hunched over.
“I need to…I need to pee.”
“Hold it,” Agatha replied fiercely. Her eyes darted to Rio. “Ri…thoughts? What are we doing?”
Rio sucked in a breath, tilting her head up to scan her surroundings. “Go through a house to get to the water.”
Agatha clapped her hands, “Okay, let’s go.”
Toby shook his head. “Hold on, let me catch my breath.”
“I’m giving you ten seconds,” Agatha told him.
Rio glared at her before nodding her head to tell her wife to take a walk. Her wife complied, turning her attention to focusing on working out their escape route.
“Toby, look at me,” Rio said.
He looked up, eyes fixed on hers.
“In through your nose out through your mouth, ready?”
Toby did just as she instructed. They did this four times before his breathing levelled out.
“You ready?”
He nodded before getting onto his feet.
The sound of a door being bashed in sounded. “In here,” Agatha beckoned from a house three doors down.
Rio dragged Toby to her wife’s location and pushed him through.
A frenzy started up in the house as soon as they entered. They’d intruded on a family eating dinner. Harsh words in Italian got spat their way and Rio fumbled around in her brain for the right words as Agatha dragged Toby through the house.
“Polizia, calmati.” Police, calm down.
To nobody's surprise, the family did not calm down. One woman grabbed her knife from where it rested next to her plate.
Oh, for fucksake.
She ignored the family’s advances and ran after her wife and Toby who had made their way to the balcony outside the family’s small living room.
A vase shattered by Rio’s head as she neared the balcony. She turned to see a gunwoman preparing to shoot at her again. Rio beat her to it, shooting. The blood from her enemy’s head splattered on the wall behind them and an old woman screamed.
“Scusa.” Apologies. She said, turning on her heels and away from the family she’d just traumatised.
When she came outside, she’d just caught the middle of Toby and Agatha’s latest argument.
“It’s a one-story jump you’ll be fine!” Agatha yelled.
Toby shook his head. “Nope. Nope, can’t.”
“You can,” Rio jumped in before her wife had the chance to spit any more venom in the man’s direction. “Look, just watch me.”
She put her gun in her holster before swinging one leg over the balcony railing, then the other. Rio jumped and landed on the gravel surface below.
“And then it’s only one more jump after that, see.”
Toby bit his lip before he did as Rio had just done, swinging one leg over the railing then the other at a much much slower pace.
“Wanna do that any slower?” Agatha snapped.
“Just,” Rio held up her hand.
“But he’s-”
“Ah!” Rio said as you would when a child is adamant about getting in a rebuttal.
Agatha kept quiet.
What felt like hours later, Toby finally jumped off the balcony railing. Agatha jumped down in triple the speed.
“Okay, and now this one’s just the same.”
It wasn’t it was slightly higher.
“You’ve already done it once, just do it again,” Rio said as she jumped down to the pavement by the water.
“I can do it,” Toby said although it sounded like it was more for himself.
“You can,” Rio encouraged.
“Yep,” he swung his arms in preparation for the jump. “Yep, yep, just…”
She caught Agatha rolling her eyes.
“Nope, nope. Can’t do it.”
Agatha groaned. “Do it or I’ll push you.”
Toby gasped, bringing a hand to his heart. “You’ve already threatened that before! You wouldn’t!”
“She would.”
“I would,” Agatha and Rio replied simultaneously.
“Okay, okay,” Toby said, his hands up in surrender. “I’ll jump just…could you count me down?” He was talking to Rio.
“Okay. Ready?”
He nodded.
“One…Two…”
Agatha pushed him before Rio said three.
He landed on his two feet but then proceeded to collapse on the floor as if it were from the impact.
“Ow!” He exclaimed, rolling around on the floor. “I think I’ve sprained my ankle.”
“You’ll live,” Agatha said before she climbed down to them.
Rio did find herself laughing at that.
“Come on, Toby. Get up we gotta go.”
“I am not going anywhere with that woman!” He pointed at Agatha.
Okay, that did. She was willing to tolerate anything but that.
“Get the fuck up,” Rio said, her voice lethal.
Toby stilled.
“You can say anything…anything at all except something like that. I will not tolerate you speaking to my wife in that tone. Understood?”
Toby nodded as if he were a little boy being scolded by his teacher. He peeled himself off the ground and waited for further instructions.
Agatha had a shit-eating grin on her lips before she said, “We’ll steal one of those boats.”
She was talking about the ones hooked up at the dock a few meters ahead of them. Wordlessly, Toby made his way over to one.
Agatha kept looking at Rio’s lips like she wanted to risk the whole mission by fucking her against one of the walls surrounding them.
“Quit looking at me like that,” Rio warned. And she meant it because if Agatha made a move, she was certain she would do nothing to stop her. “We’ve got a mission to complete.”
“Okay,” Agatha replied even though she was licking her lips.
“I mean it, Harkness.”
Agatha’s voice was low when she replied, “I heard you the first time, Vidal.” She stepped closer towards her.
“Okay, so stop.”
“I am stopping.”
They were nose distance away now.
“Are you two coming?” Toby called from one of the boats.
Agatha’s eyes never left Rio’s as she said, “Yep.”
Rio’s breath hitched as Agatha drew closer if that were even possible.
“I’ll have my way with you later,” her breath hot against Rio’s skin.
It was a promise and the hairs on Rio’s arms stood on end. Her wife walked away from her.
This fucking woman.
Rio cleared her throat and stretched out her neck before slipping on the mask of an agent when heading over to the pair on the boat.
Toby was fiddling with the motor as it roared to life.
BANG!
A bullet hit the side of the boat next to Toby’s head.
“Get down, Toby!” Rio yelled as another gun fired.
From the balcony they’d just jumped from, a gunman had his gun trained on them.
Agatha held her gun up to shoot back when the boat jolted forward throwing her off balance. She folded over as another shot rang out.
Rio shot back as the boat zoomed away into the heart of the lake.
“You guys, okay?” Rio asked once the gun was out of range.
Her wife and Toby nodded.
After a long stretch of silence, Rio’s phone pinged.
Hihi,
Waterplane coming to pick Toby up. The coordinates as to where will be sent shortly.
She showed the message to Agatha.
“Good,” the other woman muttered.
***
The waterplane had been and gone. They were finally, finally rid of their insufferable mission subject Toby and Hihi had given them four uninterrupted (their words) days off.
Things were looking up.
“What are you doing?” Rio asked as she docked their stolen boat at the other end of the lake.
Agatha was on her phone; she hadn’t gotten out of the boat yet or offered Rio any help in trying to dock it.
“Securing our transportation out of here.”
“Ah,” Rio nodded. “What do you want to do with our days off once we get back to New York?”
Agatha shrugged. “Not sure yet.”
Rio offered her hand as Agatha began to make her way off the boat.
“M’lady.”
“You are too kind,” Agatha teased, taking Rio’s hand.
She stepped onto the dock with a slight wobble.
“You, okay?” Rio asked, holding her steady.
“Of course.”
They’d found a bench outside of a church and waited there for half an hour. Rio swung her legs back and forth whilst Agatha rested her head on Rio’s shoulder. She almost fell asleep. The rhythmic rocking of her wife’s body as she swung her legs mixed with her comforting scent had the same effects as a lullaby.
A car honking had Agatha’s eyes fluttering open, she smiled when she locked eyes with the driver.
“Long time no see, Aggie,” Luca called from inside the forest-green Ferrari Portofino. His Italian accent thick.
She rolled her eyes as she got up from the bench. “You know how much I hate that nickname.”
“Apologies,” Luca smiled, getting out of the car.
He hugged her, pulling away to hand her the keys.
“You’ve been looking after it?”
The man with olive skin ran his hands through his chocolate brown hair. “Yes,” he replied boredly. “I only crashed it that one time.”
“Yeah, okay,” she laughed. Agatha stepped out of the way to introduce Rio who was now standing behind her. “This is my wife, Rio. Rio, Luca. He’s a family friend.”
“Hi,” Rio said.
“Hello. È bellissima.” She’s beautiful. He told Agatha.
“Grazie,” Rio replied.
Luca blinked at her.
“Ooo...yeah, she can understand you I should’ve said,” Agatha laughed.
He stuck his middle finger up at her. “Ciao.”
“Ciao,” Agatha replied, a smile still on her face.
“Ciao. It was nice to meet you,” Rio said.
Luca took her hand and kissed it. “You too.”
“You can fuck off now,” Agatha told him.
He did, but not before sticking his middle finger up one more time in parting.
“Do you happen to know someone on every single continent?” Rio asked.
“No,” Agatha replied, opening the passenger door. “I don’t know anyone in Antarctica.”
Rio rolled her eyes before hopping into the passenger’s seat.
“Thank you.”
“Of course,” Agatha said as she shut the door.
“You needed all of this to drive us to the airport?”
“Yes,” Agatha answered as she climbed into the driver's seat. “Only the best for my girl.”
Rio rolled her eyes again but there was no missing the toothy smile that painted her lips.