The Housewife Assassin's Deadly Dossier (15 page)

“Are you kidding? A typical jog for her is five miles, minimum! He would have passed out after the first quarter-mile.”

“I’ve got to get that boy into a gym,” Ryan conceded with a nod. “In fact, it’s time to yank both of you off surveillance. I need Arnie back on Tech Ops, and I need you on an important extermination. Consider this your penance for the lost files paid in full…Okay, not in full. Until they show up, you’ll always be my bitch.”

“What? But…Don’t pull me off now! Look, Ryan, if it’s because of my accident—”
 

Ryan frowned. “To some extent, yes, that has something to do with it. Now that she’s seen your face, your role in this mission has been compromised.”

“But…but she didn’t! I swear!” Jack hated the fact he was stuttering like some foolish schoolboy with a hard-on.
 

“You don’t know that. By your own admission, you were out cold, at least for a few seconds.” Ryan slapped the desk in disgust. “Listen, even if she hasn’t seen it, I can’t afford having my best hard man babysitting a decoy.”

“That’s all she is to you—a decoy?” Jack muttered.

“No. She’s also a woman I have tremendous respect for. And she’s also the widow of one of my agents.” Ryan hesitated, as if searching for the right words. “Jack, I know you feel guilty about Carl. We’ve all made mistakes we regret—mistakes that have fatal repercussions. But maybe this isn’t the best way for you to make amends. If you want to catch the Quorum, you can’t wait until it comes to you. Right now, I need you in the field.”

Jack knew he was right.
 

If I hadn’t fallen in love with her, I would have been itching for a transfer by now.

Yes, okay I admit it—
I love Donna Stone.

I just can’t tell her.

And now, I won’t be here, watching over her.

He looked over to Ryan. “I presume you’ll still keep a surveillance team on her.”

Ryan nodded. “I owe that much to Carl. So yes—at least until we hear affirmatively that the Quorum did somehow retrieve what they’ve been looking for and she’s in the clear, or until we take down the Quorum. I’m hoping for the best result, the latter of those two.”

They shook hands before Jack started out the door.

He had no doubt that Ryan knew why they were shaking—to seal his commitment to keep watch over Donna and her children.

“Can I have a table out on the deck?” Jack asked the hostess at the Sand Dollar.

She looked down at the seating chart on the podium in front of her. “I’m sorry, sir, but it looks like every table is taken.” Her apology came with a smile.

“I see an empty one, right there—the corner one, by the railing.” He pointed through the reception area window, where the deck could be seen clearly.
 

“Oh…” She looked down at the chart again. “I’m sorry, but that one is reserved, and it’s marked ‘special occasion.’ It will be occupied in about fifteen minutes.” She seemed sincerely sorry she couldn’t give him the table he wanted. Hoping to make it up to him, she scanned the chart with her finger, only to show the futility of his wish by shrugging helplessly. “If you care to wait for an outside table, there may be one opening up, but it looks like it’ll be at least another forty minutes.”

He shook his head. He was famished, and he desperately needed a drink.

The restaurant was his last stop in Orange County before heading out to LAX.

“Tell you what, I’ll get you the next best thing—an inside table overlooking the patio.”
 

Yeah sure, what the hell, he thought. Seeing his nod put an even bigger smile on her lips. She beckoned him to follow her.

From what he could see from the neighboring tables, the surf and turf looked good, so he ordered it too. The tumbler of Scotch held a generous pour. By the time he had it in his hand, the table on the patio was indeed occupied.

By Donna.

What was she doing there?

Then he remembered:
today would have been her anniversary with Carl.

She sat by herself, staring out at the setting sun, already half below the horizon.

The wind was gentle enough that she hadn’t noticed how her shawl now dipped below her bare shoulder. The strapless sundress was a soft beige, almost the color of her skin.

It took only a few moments before the sun dipped below the water line. After watching the last of its rays fade into a darkening sky, she turned back to face the table.

A tear glistened on her cheek.

He wished he were beside her to nudge it away. To tell her not to worry, that all would be fine.

To tell her that he loved her.

There were too many reasons why he couldn’t, the first and foremost being the reason why she was there in the first place:

She still loved Carl.

He motioned the waitress. “See the pretty lady out there? Send over a glass of your best cab.” Before the woman could ask, he added, “And tell her it’s on the house.”

He didn’t wait for his meal.
 

When he rose, he left more than enough cash to cover the Scotch, the surf-and-turf, a glass of the cabernet, and a generous tip.

He caught his plane with time to spare.

Chapter 11
Double Agents

If you’re able to turn a target into an asset or an operative, you’ve got yourself a double agent.

If your enemy is able to coerce one of your agents or assets to feed them intel on you, he’s got a double agent.

Here’s hoping your double agent lets you in on the secret before his double agent tells him about yours.

“Are you with the band?” Two groupies, sunning themselves topless on the poolside chaises outside the Miami Setei Hotel’s penthouse suite, posed the question in unison.

If only, Jack thought. And twins, no less. I should have never sold my drum set. “Nope, sorry. I’m a journalist—with
Esquire
.”
 

As if
that
gave him an inkling of cred.
 

“Oh,” they sighed, obviously disappointed. They flipped over on their stomachs.
 

He lowered his head and tilted it sideways for a better view of the two comely backsides. Their bright blue bikinis exposed identical beauty marks on their left butt cheeks.

He exhaled slowly. Um…yeah, definitely twins.
 

Damn it, a better cover would have been
People
, maybe, or
US Weekly
. Nope, a
Playboy
photographer ID would have worked even better. He made a mental note to see if Ryan could arrange that next time.

“The dude may be old but, hell, bitches—you can still take him in the back and show him a good time,” Mass Reconstruction’s lead singer, Rory McManus, shouted from the penthouse’s master bedroom.
 

Old? Jack knew for a fact the musician was a year older than him. He was tempted to shoot Rory, right then and there. But no, that would have defeated the purpose of Jack’s mission:
 

To learn how, and where Rory was passing firearms of all kinds—pistols, rifles, semi-automatic assault rifles, even tanks—to Sudanese rebel forces.
 

Once he had the needed intel, he could shoot him. Hopefully with one of Rory’s own guns.
 

Of course, he’d make it look like an accident. It was no secret that Rory was a pothead, or that he had depression issues, and that he liked to play Russian roulette with a loaded barrel.

The truth of the matter was that Rory was the worst kind of gun enthusiast. He had more money than brains and more guns than he could possibly handle, let alone remember he owned. So yeah, he was certainly an NRA poster boy. No issues there, as long as the firearms he acquired were permissible to own in the US, and that he purchased them legally.

That was the problem. As one of the world’s highest paid entertainers, he had unlimited finances to buy as many toys as he could possibly want, in any country he wanted, and take them home on his private jet.
 

To top it off, his arsenal was growing at an astonishing rate.

But he wasn’t into hunting. He was into ego. He was into playing God.
 

His benevolence extended to those who came looking for whatever firearms he’d grown tired of—as long as they paid tribute with an open pocketbook.
 

Fortified by a half-dozen Patron Premium shots and enveloped in a cannabis haze, he’d been recorded declaring, “Yo, this music gig won’t last forever. At my burn rate, I lose money every time I go on the road. Brokering arms is my retirement pension, yo.”

If one of his buyers was astute enough to know the name of his latest hit or at least one of his golden oldies, he’d throw in a concert ticket with a backstage pass, or an old school CD.
 

Because that was how he rolled.
 

No thought at all about the many innocent civilians his castoffs had murdered, including the one who eventually recorded him making that statement—Sally Maxwell, the international runway model and ever-present arm charm to Mass Reconstruction’s lead singer.

It had always been Jack Craig’s contention Sally was too young, too beautiful, and too green to be an effective Acme asset. There was absolutely nothing covert about her.

He had to admit, though, that she was also one of the smartest people he’d ever recruited. That, and the fact that Rory was obsessed with her, trumped her liabilities.

 
“With all he’s handling, there’s no way he’s the middle man here. He’s got to be acting as a front for someone,” Jack had explained to Sally. “Can you find out who’s supplying him?”
 

“I’ll do my best,” she promised. As she handed Jack the thumb drive with the recording, she murmured, “The bigger the gun, the smaller the dick.”
 

He nodded. “Oh, by the way, did I tell you I carry a SwissMini C1ST?” He held his thumb and index finger apart by just two inches.

To this day, he still remembered her hoarse belly laugh at his expense.

And he would never forget the look on the face of her corpse.
 

There wasn’t much left of the rest of her skull.
 

He flew down to Jamaica the moment he heard of the shooting—in one of the hotel rooms rented by Mass Reconstruction for the band and its crew. The coroner ruled the death a suicide, based on the fact that she’d been shot at close range: the hollow-point bullet entered on the right side of her head, just above her ear.
 

The gun was Rory’s, of course.

At least the detectives had video-recorded Rory’s testimony. Through crocodile tears, he choked out an explanation with as many holes in it as his designer-ripped T-shirt. “She did too much of your great ganja, bros. But then she went into a downer, yo, so I left her alone to hang with some of my homies out by the pool. The next thing we know—
bam
! I go running in, and there’s brains splattered all over the joint.”
 

He had no explanation why there wasn’t any gun residue on her hands.
 

They never tested his hands for any residue, either.
 

Besides that, Sally was a leftie.

Based on the evidence Sally had secured prior to her death, Acme’s client, the ATF, had no problem with ridding itself of yet another illegal arms dealer. Considering his high profile, the only caveat was that the extermination was to look like an accidental death, or a suicide.

Jack was only too happy to oblige.

The musician had a sound check in a couple of hours. Jack’s
Esquire
reporter cover allowed him an hour, maybe two, with the asshole, so Jack would have to work fast.
 

He was willing to bet his target was already halfway through the stash of white rhino he’d purchased from one of the roadies just last night. Between it, and a few drops of Russian truth drug SP-117 in his perennially present Red Bull, Rory would be loose enough for Jack to lead the conversation into any direction he wanted.
 

After he got the answers he was looking for, Rory would suffer a heart attack, thanks to a prick from a needle containing a super-condensed dosage of succinylcholine, hidden in the underside of the fake fraternity ring on Jack’s right hand.