The Housewife Assassin's Deadly Dossier (13 page)

“I think we should get a kid,” Arnie proclaimed. He’d just come back with the groceries, a.k.a., more beer and pizza.

Jack put down his binoculars to stare at him. “What are you, nuts?”
 

“No, I’m being serious,” Arnie insisted. “Don’t you see? If we had one, it would make it easier to talk to the neighbors—you know, at the park. Otherwise, I’m just the sad sack neighbor guy tossing a Frisbee to myself.”

In a way, he’s got a point, Jack conceded.
 

“Great. I’ll ask Ryan to requisition one for us.”

Arnie frowned. “Really?”

“No, you moron. What are you going to feed a kid, beer and pizza?” He pointed to the countertop, where Arnie had left their primary food supply. “Should we ask Ryan to spring for another cot, too?”

“Okay, I get the point. Then, how about a midget who just acts like a kid?”
 

Jack’s reaction was to sigh and rub the headache from his forehead.

“The least we can get is a dog,” Arnie pointed out.

“No.” Jack shook his head adamantly. “With a dog comes…responsibility.” And that was something neither of them could take on if they were to focus on taking down the Quorum.

So no dog, and no kid.

And certainly no wife.

It had been two weeks since the twenty-four hour surveillance mission had begun. So far, Arnie’s attempts to engage the neighbors had resulted in three slaps to his face. Either his disguises weren’t working or he had lousy social skills, or both. Jack was willing to bet on Door Number Three.
 

In Arnie’s favor, he had been invited to a neighborhood key party. His reconnaissance brought both of them some interesting insights into a more provocative point of view of life in the suburbs, to say the least. “One thing’s for sure, there are a lot of unhappy couples in Hilldale.”

In time, would that have described Donna and Carl?
 

In the hours when Jack wasn’t on surveillance duty, he did what he could to delve into files covering every facet of Carl’s life, both before and during his tenure with Acme—the background check on his parents, his academic reports, his military record, and Acme’s recruitment and training reports.
 

Nothing stood out.

Jack then combed over the dead agent’s mission reports, looking for any telltale sign that might indicate when he knew the Quorum was onto him. He found none. The reports were perfunctory at best—no color or embellishments. On the rare times Carl’s reports included clandestine surveillance photos of the Quorum operatives who had interacted with him, they were either targets who had been exterminated or who had been apprehended in the meantime.
 

However, there were no photos of his Quorum recruiter and handler, a man named Eric Weber.
 

Nor were there any of Tatyana Zakharov, although one of his earlier filings reported a brief encounter, apparently by mistake. Carl’s description of her was straightforward and spot on, matching Jack’s own observations:
 

Beautiful. Smart. Deadly.

Now in hindsight, Jack wondered if Carl’s assessment of her was short and not so sweet for personal reasons.

There was no picture of Pinky Ring either. This was particularly disappointing to Jack because there was a fifty-fifty chance the man would have been identified by name as well.

Going over all these, Ryan was adamant that Carl never let on that he felt his cover was blown. “He knew I’d pull him out at the first sign of danger.”

“He must have been worried about something,” Jack insisted. “Why else would he have left his family in that bunker of a house?”

A house in which his bereaved widow slept fitfully, if she slept at all.
 

Maybe the Quorum figured out that the intel died along with Carl, Jack reasoned.

To date, there hadn’t been any break-in attempts or other unusual activity in or around the house. Life for the Stones—and for Jack and Arnie, for that matter—was settling into a pattern.
 

On most days now, it was Aunt Phyllis who took Mary and Jeff to school and then went on to the stores for any necessary shopping. During that time, Donna cared for infant Trisha, and did the laundry or other housework. Usually Phyllis got home in time for Trisha’s mid-morning nap, at which time Donna took a run, or she slipped off to the shooting range.
 

Jack was impressed with what he saw—clean shots, mostly bull’s-eyes.

It relieved him to know that, on some level, she could protect herself and her family.

Unlike her days, which were filled with family tasks that kept her grounded in the present instead of lost in the past, Donna’s nights were spent roaming from room to room in the large house. If she wasn’t patting the heads of her sleeping children, she was staring out the great room window facing the backyard and into the dark recesses beyond the trees.

Or she was baking—cinnamon rolls, cakes, pies, cookies.

And all the while, she cried.

It’s odd—what people will do as they mourn, Jack thought. He laughed mercilessly as he thought about his own recent actions in light of his wife leaving him.

He’d thrown himself into his work.

In other words, despite his anger and sadness, he hadn’t changed a thing about his life.

I have lousy priorities, he realized. I guess Carl did, too. If I’d had his family and knew that the Quorum was after me, I would have run for the hills with them, and never looked back.

Chapter 9
Ambush

The best ambushes create a diversion first, so that the target is looking in the wrong place when the time is right.

Even if you’re the target, you can turn the tables on your aggressors by taking the first opportunity to take them off guard.

If possible, have this interaction in the presence of others. No one wants witnesses to a hit.

“Ouch! Trouble in paradise,” Arnie murmured.

It was ten-thirty on the fourth Wednesday of their surveillance mission. Jack looked up from the file he was reading and walked over to the wall in front of the el-shaped couch, where Arnie had set up a seventy-inch flat screen monitor. The screen was divided into six separate webcam feeds. Like dominos, every ten seconds the sections changed to another location in the surveillance area not previously seen in the past sixty seconds.

He scanned the screens, one by one. “Where should I be looking? Have you spotted an intruder?” Jack’s hand went instinctively to his gun holster.

“No, no! Nothing like that. It’s just a trio of the neighborhood mean mommies.” Arnie swiped one of the screens so that it grew twice as large as the other ones, and moved front and center. It showed the Stones’ driveway. A Mercedes G wagon was pulling up.
 

When it stopped, three women exited from the vehicle. Their attire was casual: slim jeans and silk blouses under casual linen jackets that were cut in a way that fit their well-toned bodies like gloves. They wore jeweled sandals with heels as high as those Jack had seen on Vegas showgirls.
 

Jack stared at Arnie. “You know these women?”
 

“Sure, everyone does…well, I mean, if you hang out at the playground, you pick up the gossip.”

Jack snorted. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”

“Let’s just say they rule the school—and I mean that, literally. The brunette is Tiffy Swift, and the redhead is Hayley Coxhead. See the tall blonde, in the lead? Her name is
Penelope Bing
.
” Arnie looked at Jack, as if the name should mean something to him.

Jack shrugged helplessly.
 

“Her son, Cheever, is in Jeff’s classroom. He’s a bit of a brat. But since Penelope is the head of the Hilldale Elementary School PTA, she has clout at the school. The last time his teacher sent an email to Penelope ‘Bada’ Bing—that’s what some of the mothers call her, because she’s like a mafia don—the poor woman was suspended by the principal.”

Both men watched as the front door opened. Donna was dressed for her jog—a loose T-shirt over a sports bra, and cropped yoga pants. Trisha was strapped to her chest. There was a baby blanket over Donna’s shoulder. From the looks of things, she was in the middle of breastfeeding Trisha.

Arnie turned beet red.

“Oh, wow! Ladies, to what do I owe this honor?” Donna asked. Her voice sounded harried.

Jack enlarged the screen so that they could better see and hear what was happening in the living room.

A basket of unfolded laundry was at the foot of the sofa. Using one hand to secure Trisha, she scooped up a batch of folded towels off the sofa with the other.

The women exchanged knowing smirks.

“We’re not interrupting something, I hope?” Penelope asked. Her voice dripped of false sweetness.

“No, nothing at all.” Donna smiled back, but her voice was brittle as ice.
 

Good girl, Jack thought.

“Please, have a seat while I put Trisha down for her nap.” She nodded toward the sofa before walking upstairs with the baby.

While she was gone, the women perused the living room. Besides the laundry scattered about, there were still a few unopened boxes—mostly Carl’s old baseball trophies, which she didn’t yet have the heart to display, let alone put in the garage—and an upturned box of Legos by the fireplace, left from the night before, when Jeff was in the middle of building a castle.

The woman named Hayley whispered to the others, “She’s not much of a housekeeper, is she?”

“Maybe that’s why her husband hasn’t been home since she moved in, over a month ago,” Tiffy muttered.

“Ahem!” The other two women were so busy exchanging snickers that they hadn’t noticed Donna was standing in the foyer behind them until Penelope cleared her throat. “So, Mrs. Stone—May I call you Donna?—I don’t know if you remember because you rushed out the door so fast after the PTA new parent’s tea, but I’m Penelope Bing, the PTA president.”

“Yes, of course I remember you, and your co-vice chairs as well, Hayley and Tiffy.”
 

“Yes, well one thing you conveniently forgot was to sign up for a volunteer duty.” Penelope practically clicked her tongue in mock horror. “That being said, we assigned one for you—cafeteria duty, every Friday.”

“Ah! I see. I’m sorry, but that won’t be convenient for me, since I have an infant.” She pointed upstairs. “Perhaps there’s some task I can do at home?”

“If you’d stuck around instead leaving before the meeting was over, you would have had a lot of other tasks to choose from,” Hayley scolded her. “So the short answer is ‘no.’”

Donna cast her eyes at the ground. “I’ll see if I can work around it.”

Jack couldn’t believe his ears. “Why would she let those bitches walk all over her?”

Arnie threw up his hands. “I told you—they can seriously make her life miserable!”

“With the hell she’s been through, she doesn’t need any more misery—”

Arnie shushed Jack. “Wait—Penelope just said something about Jeff.”

They both turned back toward the screen.

“—and my little Cheever says that Jeff is really good at T-Ball.”

Donna nodded. “Carl—his father—played ball in college.” She glanced away quickly.
 

Jack zoomed in on her face. Her eyes glistened with tears.

“We can’t wait to meet him,” Hayley said slyly. “In fact, my husband and I are having a dinner party next Saturday. Just a small, intimate group. We hope you can make it.”

Donna opened her mouth to say something, only to hesitate before murmuring, “He’s…out of town. I’ll be flying solo—if that’s okay.”

Hayley scowled. “Tell you what, why don’t we make it another time, when it’s more convenient for both of you?”
 

Donna forced a smile onto her face. “I’m sure he’d appreciate that as well.” She stood up. “Please excuse me for being such a bad hostess! I’ve just baked a chocolate walnut pie. Why don’t we have some? I’ve also brewed a fresh pot of coffee—hazelnut. I’ll be right back with both, okay?”

Before they could say no, she glided off to the kitchen.