Kindred Intentions (21 page)

“Put down your weapon,” he ordered. His voice
was closer now; she could hear the shuffling of his feet on the tarmac.

Panting, Amelia crouched down, dropped her
jacket and laid the weapon on the ground.

“Slowly.” Now
Monroe
was very close.

Perhaps, if he had come close enough, she
could have taken advantage of his surprise when he recognised her, to disarm
him and escape.

“Stand up …” the voice behind her said, with
an uncertain tone. There was something else, a rustling.

She turned slowly, until she met his gaze.

“
Jennings
?” the detective murmured, as his mouth opened in astonishment.
“What … what the hell is happening here? Are you …?”

Unwillingly, Amelia’s sight moved to the other
thing she’d heard. At the same time that
thing
placed a gun against the
back of
Monroe
’s head; and he
winced. She stepped forward, reaching out with an arm.

“I’m sorry,” Mike said, then he pulled the
trigger.

“No!” Amelia shouted in a surge of
desperation, whilst her hands reached her chief’s body, as it touched the
ground. Bent over him, she kneeled on the tarmac. “No, no, no!” She wept and
yelled. She raised her head to look at her
partner
. “Why did you do
that?” She knew full well the answer, but couldn’t contain herself. “He was a
good man, an innocent. Why did you kill him?” She turned her attention to the
corpse and started shaking it, as if that could be of any use. At last she gave
up and broke into inconsolable crying.

Mike crouched down in front of her. He reached
out to her face and forced her to look at him. “He’d seen you.” His limpid,
blue eyes appeared sad, but his voice was controlled. “We can’t allow somebody
to know you’re alive and involved in this business, before we leave the
country. I had to do that.”

“It isn’t fair,” she whined, shaking with
sobs. She pushed him away with both hands, but he closed in more firmly,
seizing her shoulders.

“Amelia!” His was a hard, scolding tone. “You
must calm down now. We must go at once.” He took out his rucksack and laid it
down. Then he rose and walked away.

She didn’t have the strength to look at what
he was doing. She dropped her arms to her thighs, doing nothing but staring at
a plastic bottle cap, half crushed, abandoned beside the pavement.

Mike returned. He’d taken her gun and was
placing both weapons into his rucksack. He closed it and put it on his
shoulders. He offered her a hand, inviting her to stand up; he was holding her
jacket with the other. “Come on.”

Tormented, Amelia looked at that hand. A part
of her wanted to do nothing. She preferred to stay there and wait for the
police, let them arrest her. The people who had died during this insane day,
including those she had killed, were guilty of something, in one way or
another. But
Monroe
, he wasn’t.
She used to know him, she knew he was a good person. It should not finish this
way. “I can’t.”

“Sure you can!” he insisted, stooping. He was
staring into her eyes now. “You can’t go back, you know.”

She was listening to him, but struggle to
ascribe any meaning to his words.

“Fuck, Amelia, you asked me to bring you with
me and now don’t you want to come? Do you want to be arrested and spend the
rest of your life in prison?” His face was contracted, livid with anger. “I
won’t let you do this. Now it’s me who wants you to come with me.”

She felt her mouth open up, while she welcomed
those unexpected words. The choice was between the certainty of a cell, and the
unknown future with this man who now, for the first time, stated he wanted her
to be with him.

“It isn’t true that I consider you responsible
for Yasir’s death. I’m sorry for what I said earlier, okay? I didn’t really
think that,” he added, cracking a smile. “Come with me.” He offered his hand
again. “Come on.”

Amelia took it and let him help her to stand.
Any hesitation of hers had now faded away, just like what was happening with
her shadow. She looked up. The sky was closing in. A fresh gust reached her and
tousled her hair.

After laying her jacket over her shoulders,
Mike put his arms around her and led her away.

A few minutes later they were walking along
the pavement of a busy street, among people who didn’t pay any attention to
them. A normal couple strolling. Mike was holding her tight with an arm. Amelia
had placed hers around his waist and was resting her head on his shoulder. Her
face was still wetted by tears, but she’d stopped weeping. She was dizzy,
tired. She craved sleep, hoping that when she woke up all the horror would have
vanished, or at least lessened.

“Where are we going now?” she asked him in a
whisper.

“To see a person who can provide us with new
documents and then another one who can give us a
lift
towards a
definitely sunnier place,” Mike replied, while a few raindrops started falling,
forming tiny stains on the concrete.

“Tell me that all this includes a good sleep
sooner or later. I can’t take it anymore.” She didn’t want to sound funny; she
wasn’t in the right mood for that. She really couldn’t take it anymore.

He gave a faint laugh. “You’ll sleep during
the intercontinental flight. And I’m quite convinced that once we reach our
destination you’ll be able to make use of a comfortable bed for as long as you
like.” And he pulled her to him even tighter.

What Amelia was feeling was strange. She was
about to leap into the void, following a man whose job was to kill people. Her
sense told her she was getting herself into trouble, even deeper than she
already was. It was true, though: she had no other choice. Or rather, the other
choice involved a life sentence, prison, the end of everything. But she would
be lying to herself if she tried to convince herself that she was following him
only because she could do nothing else. The uncertainty towards which she was
moving excited her. Whatever happened with him, whether it worked out or not, a
new Amelia was about to be born. What she had been before didn’t exist anymore
and now she felt free to create a new her, without any more external
conditioning from the people who had influenced her life until now.

“My family.” The thought of her parents
interrupted her reverie for a moment. “They think I’m dead, they’ll be
desperate.”

She felt him shaking his head. “You can’t
speak to them.”

“I just want that they know I’m okay.” She
didn’t have a good relationship with them, but she couldn’t let them believe
their only child was dead. She raised an imploring gaze towards Mike.

“When we reach our destination, we’ll see what
we can do. Do you think they can keep this information to themselves … for your
sake?”

Perhaps, yes. In spite of everything, they
would never do something to harm her. “Yes,” she replied, trying to appear
certain.

He studied her for a moment. “Fine,” he said
at last and wiped her cheek with a hand.

Amelia smiled at him and held him with her
other arm, closing her eyelids and letting him lead her. Yes, things would be
all right, somehow.

“My real name is Michael Campbell.” Mike’s
words interrupted that moment of peace.

“Michael Campbell,” she repeated, reopening
her eyes and turning to him.

He almost laughed, as if she’d said something
funny. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard it pronounced by someone else,
including myself.”

“Nice to meet you, Michael Campbell.” And it
occurred to her that it was really nice. Even if he had been the architect of
her descent into hell, she was happy she’d met him. “I’m still Amelia
Jennings.”

“Not anymore. You’ll soon have a new name.”

“A new name …” She really would become another
person. It didn’t seem such a bad idea either. “Okay.”

She lowered her gaze again, as they continued
to make their way amongst hurried employees, parents barely holding their
children, people of all races, religions, and cultures, all the mix to be found
within the metropolis of
London
.

“You owe me fifty thousand pounds!” she
exclaimed out of the blue. She felt like joking again.

“Really?”

“I’m afraid you do, given that I had to finish
the job for which I’d paid you.”

Mike laughed. “I would have done it myself, if
you hadn’t stopped me.”

“Ah, all excuses. You can’t do things by
halves.”

“All right,” he said. “Well, what’s fifty
thousand pounds, when you have twenty million?”

Oh, yeah, small change. “Twenty million.”
That
was a lot of money. “Listen, Michael Campbell.” She forced him to stop and put
herself in front of him. She smiled, amused by what she was about to say.
“Would you maybe marry me?”

He looked at her, perplexed, but at the same time
he appeared alarmed.

“Well,” she added. “I know it’s a bit quick.”
She laughed.

Mike shook his head, as he smiled. He resumed
walking and she let him lead her again. “You’re always the hurried one, aren’t
you?” he teased her.

“Always,” Amelia replied, as they took the
steps down to the Tube.

Did you like this book?

If so, spread the word with your friends and
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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the members of my
publishing team in
Italy
who
worked with me on the original version of “Kindred Intentions”: Gabriella Serrenti,
Alessandra Fadda, Silvia Marongiu, Stefania Mattana, Maristella Di Caprio,
Marco Mincarini, Giovanni Venturi, Silvia Molinari and Tore Mocci.

Special thanks go to Veronica DeLorenzo, who
provided extensive comments for the first draft of the novel; to my parents,
who have learned to love every literary genre I’ve tackled; and especially
Federico Fadda, my number-one fan and test reader par excellence, for his
unwavering love and support.

I would also like to thank all my readers
around the world. I hope you enjoyed the read!

About the author

Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli is an Italian
science fiction and thriller author.

She has lived in
Cagliari
(
Sardinia
,
Italy
) since 1993, earning a degree in
biology and working as a writer, scientific and literary translator, and
freelance web copywriter. In the past she also worked as researcher, tutor and
professor’s assistant in the field of ecology at “Dipartimento di Biologia Animale
ed Ecologia” of the
University
of
Cagliari
.

She writes original fiction since 2009.

Between 2012-2013 she wrote and published a
hard science fiction series set on Mars and titled
Deserto rosso
.

The whole
Deserto rosso
series was also
published as omnibus in December 2013 and hit No. 1 on the Italian Kindle Store
in November 2014.

Deserto rosso
was published in English, with the title
Red Desert
, between 2014 and
2015.

It includes the following books:
Red Desert
- Point of No Return
,
Red Desert - People of Mars
,
Red Desert -
Invisible Enemy
and
Red Desert - Back Home
.

She also authored two more a science fiction
novels in Italian:
L’isola di Gaia
(
The Isle of Gaia
) and
Per caso
(
By Chance
).

Her crime thriller
The Mentor
(
Il mentore
,
2014) was published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2015 and became an Amazon
international bestseller hitting No. 1 on the Kindle Store in
USA
,
UK
, and
Australia
in
October 2015.

Kindred Intentions
(
Affinità d’intenti
, 2015) is her eighth book.

She’s also a podcaster at FantascientifiCast,
an Italian podcast about science fiction, an Italian Representative of Mars
Initiative, and a member of the International Thriller Writers organization.

She’s often a guest both in
Italy
and abroad during book fairs,
including Salone Internazionale del Libro di
Torino
(Turin Book Fair) and Frankfurter Buchmesse (Frankfurt Book Fair),
local publishing events, university conventions as well as classes, where she
gives speeches or conducts workshops about self-publishing and genre fiction
writing.

As a science fiction and Star Wars fan, she is
known in the Italian online community by her nickname, Anakina.

You can find Anakina (or just Carla, as her
friends call her) on:

Anakina.blog:
ladyanakina.blogspot.com

Facebook:
www.facebook.com/RitaCarlaFMonticelli

Twitter:
twitter.com/ladyanakina

MySpace:
www.myspace.com/anakina

aNobii:
www.anobii.com/anakina/books

Goodreads:
www.goodreads.com/anakina

YouTube:
www.youtube.com/user/ladyanakina

Google+:
plus.google.com/+RitaCarlaFrancescaMonticelli

Pinterest:
www.pinterest.com/ladyanakina

LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/anakina

Visit her profile on Amazon:

www.amazon.com/author/ritacarlafrancescamonticelli

www.amazon.co.uk/Rita-Carla-Francesca-Monticelli/e/B0089YQE4U

The official international website of
Rita
Carla Francesca Monticelli
is
www.anakina.eu
.

Her official Italian website is
www.anakina.net
.

More books by Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli

The Mentor
(AmazonCrossing,
2015)

Detective Eric Shaw, chief of a forensics team
at Scotland Yard, together with Murder Investigation Team detective Miriam Leroux,
is investigating the death of a previous offender, killed by two pistol shots:
one at his neck, in a style recalling an unusual execution, but preceded by
another shot at his groin, which seems having a more personal implication.

However, his attention at work is often
distracted by criminologist Adele Pennington, a beautiful woman more than two
decades his junior, by whom he realises he is attracted, though his feelings
aren’t returned.

Meanwhile, the details about a very similar
crime are described in an anonymous blog, unbeknownst by the
London
police. The author of the blog
signs herself Mina, like one of the victims in a case Shaw investigated many
years ago.

Free on Kindle Unlimited.

The
Red
Desert
series:

Red Desert - Point of No Return
(2014)

Red Desert - People of Mars
(2014)

Red Desert - Invisible Enemy
(2015)

Red Desert - Back Home
(2015)

Thirty years after the Mars exploration
mission ‘Hera’, whose crew died in mysterious circumstances, the ensuing
political issues that slowed NASA’s race to conquer space have finally ended.
This time the five members of the new ‘
Isis
’ mission will not travel the 400 million kilometres for a short
visit. This time they are destined to become the first colonisers of the Red
Planet.

Among them is Swedish exobiologist Anna Persson,
come to this adventure to start a new life away from Earth.

But Mars has got an incredible discovery in
store for her, a key to a mystery hidden in the depths of Valles Marineris.

If you read Italian, you can find more novels
by this author.

La morte è soltanto il
principio
(2012)

L’isola di Gaia
(2014)

Per caso
(2015)