The Assassin - a Denied Spies Novel Book 1

Ava

I hate my life! Fifteen years, I've spent in foster care, fifteen years. And I get a visit from a so-called aunt – a fake aunt that wants to kill me – and now I'm moving into hers. Am I seriously supposed to just sit back and let this happen? I don't think so. I'd rather have a life of being beaten to pulp than with a fake, evil woman that wants me dead.

It had been a week and a bit – 1 week, 2 days, 3 hours and 45 minutes, to be exact – since the fake came to visit and now I'm getting sent away. Charlie and Alex said it'd be OK, that I should go along with it, but even though Jake didn't say anything, I knew he was thinking the same as me; that I'll go with her and never be seen again.

"I'm telling you, you'll be fine." Alex said getting bored of me worrying. I was at a café with Alex, Charlie, Craig, Kate and Jake. We were discussing new training plans since my schedule would be different now that I'm moving. Five drinks and three cakes each later, we had arranged days and times for training. After we agreed on that we planned days out.

We talked about that for a while, so the food and drinks kept coming. Craig might have had too much sugar because he seemed very hyper – or bored – and kept jumping about. So when Charlie went to pass a cake topped with cream to Kate, Craig knocked it out of Charlie's hand and it smacked Kate in the face before sliding onto her lap.

"Craig!" Kate yelped. She muttered to herself while getting a mirror out of her bag. "You are so lucky, if I didn't have my mirror, you'd be in for it." She flipped the lid and held the mirror close to her face. I looked at the mirror through the corner of my eye and gasped when I saw a man standing outside the café through a mirror. Everyone stared at me bewildered.

"The man from the pictures, that was hiding in the trees and was in my foster home, he's outside." Charlie tried to look but couldn't see him and shook her head when she gave up looking. I sighed then thought for a minute before pointing to Kate's face – like I was pretending to show her where some cream was – to show where the man was standing. "See, there," I said still pointing. Kate looked through the mirror; she smiled when she saw the man and pretended to whip her face clean. Everyone except Charlie saw him.

"I can't see is it him?" she asked.

"Yeah, it's him alright," Alex answered. "Let's get out of here and try to lose him, come on." Casually, we got up and left, laughing and joking, acting like we were just out for fun, not planning on running away or anything.

"So where are we going exactly?" Jake asked, it was the first he'd spoken all day – except from when we were talking about training. Me and Charlie looked at each other and nodded.

"My dad's shop," Charlie replied and we left the café. 

It didn't take us long to reach Charlie's dad's bookstore. Her dad seemed surprised to see so many of us and said a quick 'hello', before speaking directly to me.

"Well, hello Ava, I haven't seen you in while. Are you too busy spending time with that lovely aunt of yours to visit us commoners?" he joked playfully but he must of noticed the anger and hatred burning in my eyes because he carried on talking, changing the subject. "What can I do for you?" he asked looking for a serious answer, so I gave it to him.

"We're looking for some action, fast reading. Got anything?" I said as innocently as I could, I even put on an extremely cheesy smile.

Charlie's dad just chuckled before speaking, "Not out here, but I'm sure there's something in the back." And he led us away.

He led us into the back of the shop, where all the new stock was brought in. There was a pull up garage door at the opposite side of room and boxes lay around everywhere, all different shapes and sizes.