Alex felt the heat radiating from the barrel of Mr Martín's gun, yet he couldn't convince his arm to lower the weapon.
His ears rang from the shot and adrenalin coursed through his veins, leaving his heart pondering against his ribs – His body was still convinced the man would rise to wrench the weapon back.
Six months ago, he had held a similar gun, in another dark apartment, ready to kill the woman he had been convinced had ordered his father's execution.
According to Blunt, Alex wouldn't have hit Mrs Jones even without the extra security in place – that he had let the shot go wide on purpose.
Blunt made a living out of lies.
This time, Alex had no comfortable excuses.
This time, there was a body lying on the floor and he had put it there.
No one would have assumed Juan Martín to simply be asleep – even if you disregarded the growing stain slowly dyeing his blue-chequered shirt a dark purple.
The middle-aged man laid eagle-spread on his back; one leg folded awkwardly underneath him. His neatly styled salt-and-pepper hair had gotten ruffled during their brief scuffle.
One corner of his mouth was stained white from the mint he had popped into his mouth right before he noticed Alex standing frozen in the middle of his hotel room.
Juan hadn't been one of the murderous madmen that Alex was used to meeting on his missions.
He had just been terrified.
Alex fought the bile rising in his throat. He hadn't meant to pull the trigger.
What was he supposed to do now? He finished what he came for. Still… it felt wrong to leave.
Before he could make a decision, something changed in the room.
There had been no sound apart from his own gasping breaths, but Alex had learned to trust his instincts this past year and turned his head to look.
Even in disguise, Alex would have recognised the man anywhere. Before he had consciously registered the threat, his gun was aimed at the man.
Yassen Gregorovich's hair was longer than Alex remembered and dyed a chestnut brown, matching a short-trimmed beard. He wore light grey contacts and was sporting a light tan. While he didn't quite look like a local, he certainly blended in better than Alex.
Alex had seen the assassin twice after his supposed death on Air Force One: Once as a glimpse across a security line in an airport in Singapore; the second time in the Netherlands, as a part of the security team of a wealthy businessman.
Their jobs hadn't intercepted then, and Alex had nearly been able to convince himself that he had imagined seeing ghosts.
Now, with the ghost in question standing barely five steps away, it was a little harder to dismiss.
Yassen was dressed in a beige shirt under a dark jacket, paired with some well-worn jeans the outfit would have made him completely unremarkable if he hadn't also been holding a gun with a silencer in his gloved hands.
To Alex's surprise, Yassen lowered his weapon after a tense moment.
Alex kept his own gun aimed at a spot between the man's eyes.
Yassen looked remarkably calm about the whole thing. Then again – they had been in a similar situation before, and that had ended with Alex fighting a bull. Alex fought the itch to turn to look for Raoul standing behind him.
You should never point a gun at someone you didn't plan to shoot. Yet, he made no move to pull the trigger as Yassen strode over and plucked the gun from Alex's hands.
Yassen checked the clip of the Glock 19 and stepped around Alex to get to Juan.
"I didn't–" Alex cut himself off, unsure of how to finish the sentence.
Realising what the assassin intended a second before he moved, Alex made a choked-off sound of protest when Yassen aimed the gun at Juan's head.
Yassen glanced back; his face unreadable.
Alex felt his face heat up, though he stared the assassin defiantly in the eyes.
It was stupid, he knew. It wouldn't make a difference for Juan – but the thought of what the bullet would do to the man's head made his stomach turn.
Yassen gave Alex a long look, then shifted his aim and shot Juan twice in the heart.
The shots sounded louder than they had during the fight.
Yassen padded the body down with practised movements and pocketed the man's phone, before seemingly dismissing it from his mind. "Give me the plans."
It took a moment for Alex to process the question.
"What plans?"
The assassin smiled; it looked genuine that was the worst.
Alex shuddered and forced his hands to stay at his side and away from his pockets.
"Alex," Yassen said patiently. He pointedly kept his eyes on Alex while he dismantled the Glock one-handedly and pocketed the parts. He didn't put his own gun away, though he kept it aimed at the floor.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Yassen raised a brow.
"I don't," Alex insisted. "I don't even know who the man is… was." His voice broke on the last word. It hurt to swallow around the lump in his throat.
"Then why were you here?"
Alex looked out of the window. He could barely see the white and red lights of the streets below.
Yassen seemed to take this as an answer. Alex was forced to hold out his arms as Yassen gave him a pad-down as well, swiftly removing the small flash drive in his pocket and the letter opener he had hidden in his left shoe. Alex was glad Yassen didn't comment and just finished up and stepped back.
Yassen tapped a finger against the side of his gun. "Don't move."
Alex didn't try to pretend not to understand the threat. He wasn't sure he could have croaked a quip anyway.
He followed Yassen with his eyes as the assassin moved around the room and did his best to ignore the body lying in front of him.
Yassen strode over to the overturned coffee table – Juan had stumbled into it during their scuffle. A laptop had been lying on the table when Alex had first entered the room, and he had tried unsuccessfully to guess the code. Now it lay on the floor, screen broken. Yassen picked the laptop up and put it and its charger in his backpack.
The assassin went around the room, searched through Juan's suitcase, and investigated every nook and cranny for any irregularities, effectively searching the place in less than a minute. He slipped two folders with papers and Juan's keys into his backpack as well.
Yassen searched the small en-suite and the wardrobe in the same way, always keeping himself between Alex and the front door and holding his gun in his left hand. Alex didn't doubt the man was just as deadly shot with that hand as his right.
Alex hadn't really paid attention to any noise coming from outside, but he noticed when a siren cut off close by.
Yassen looked up from where he had been checking the lining of Juan's coat and gave Alex a calculating look.
Alex expected him to repeat his usual spiel about staying out of the intelligence world. Maybe tie Alex up for the police to find. Instead, Yassen hid his gun under his jacket – easily assessable – and grabbed Alex's shoulder. "Come."
Alex swayed as the room suddenly spun. Only Yassen's grip kept him from listing to one side. He felt bone tired. The adrenalin had crashed and now his body let him know of every bruised he had sustained during the fight.
He wanted to stumble down the hallway to his own room and collapse under the covers.
Instead, he let himself be led out of the door and down the hallway, in the opposite direction of the elevators.
He knew there was an emergency entrance that way and wasn't surprised when this was their destination. Yassen must have disabled the alarm on the doors because they descended the stairs unchallenged and arrived in the narrow side street behind the hotel.
A few people were out and about, even at the late hour, but Yassen's tight grip on his shoulder prevented Alex from getting any ideas. He didn't doubt the assassin would remove any obstacles in his way of a clean escape and Alex didn't want to see any more people dead that night.
He closed his eyes and forced out the mental image of Juan bleeding out on the floor and locked it away together with any lingering feelings about the episode. He had more immediate problems to worry about.
Like how to get the flash drive back without getting killed.
Yassen led him to a nondescript grey SEAT and Alex climbed into the passenger seat without protest. He pretended not to notice the child lock engaging.
Five minutes later, they were several streets away, swallowed by the traffic of Spain's second-largest city.