The Housewife Assassin's Deadly Dossier (6 page)

She gave him an open-mouthed kiss.

“Not bad,” she murmured.

She walked down the terrace steps without a backward look.

He didn’t wait until the click of her heels echoed on the slate steps to start crawling out.

He saw her run onto the dock, where Ross Tanner’s boat was waiting. When Ross saw her, he started the engine.

The fussy little man with the pinky ring helped her climb onboard.
 

So, they’re Quorum operatives, too, Jack thought.

He groaned in pain as he shifted his shoulder in order to reach the gun in his back holster.

The boat’s engine had already started when the bullet hit its mark, but his aim was off. It wasn’t Tatyana who fell forward in the boat but Ross.
 

Was he dead? Jack couldn’t tell.
 

He would have preferred that the shocked look on Tatyana’s face was from the pain of a second bullet, but he was too weak to get off another shot. Realizing her luck, she smiled triumphantly back at him.
 

Pinky Ring stumbled to the boat’s steering wheel. After a lurch forward, the boat sped off in the dead of night.

Jack was so weak that he crawled only as far as the dock. There, he collapsed beside a skiff.

Later, he learned he had been saved by a couple who had walked down to the self-service rialto for a bowl of calamari. If the husband hadn’t come back to the boat to fetch a shawl for his wife, Jack would have bled to death. He staunched the wound with the shawl while she steered the skiff to the hospital.

Jack awoke to find his wound dressed. He was in a hospital gown. When he rang for the nurse, she was able to tell him in broken English that although his jacket and shirt had been too bloody to keep, his pants had been saved.
 

Jack let loose with a relieved sigh. “
I miei pantaloni, pronto per favore.”

He had to get the pants back. The thumb drive was still in the pocket.

It was his wedding ring he’d tossed out the window instead.

The nurse hurried out. When she came back, she had a paper bag with her.

Inside were his pants, neatly folded. In the pocket was the thumb drive. His wallet was also there. Nothing had been taken from it.
 

When the nurse left to get on with her duties, he crumpled the empty bag and tossed it across the room.

He put on his pants and slipped out of the hospital, shirtless.

He stopped at the first store he could to buy a T-shirt. The only ones they had were emblazoned with:

VENICE IS FOR LOVERS

It would have to do for now.
 

He had to run to catch the next flight to Charles de Gaulle Airport. Tired and still aching from his shoulder wound, he dropped into his seat and immediately closed his eyes, hoping to get some sleep during the two-hour flight to Paris.

As he drifted off, he saw Irina’s face—her sad eyes and sweet smile. She hadn’t deserved to die that way.
 

And she certainly hadn’t deserved the spouse she had been cursed with.

Neither do I, Jack thought. Good riddance to her.

“You look like shit,” Carl Stone muttered to Jack.

They were sitting across from each other in the VIP lounge at CDG. Jack had just received notice from Acme that he was to hand off Leonid’s thumb drive to Carl, who was flying home to LAX after some hijinks of his own.
 

“Thanks. Great to see you, too.” Jack winced as he moved his shoulder to position it a bit more comfortably. The thumb drive was folded into the Technology section of that day’s edition of
The Wall Street Journal,
which Jack had just laid on the coffee table between them.
 

When a cocktail waitress came over to drop off his Scotch whiskey, she gave him a slow wink.

Carl winked back and tipped big.
 

She walked away without even a glance at Jack.
 

Noting this, Carl smirked. “You know, guy, you’d have a better chance at getting laid if you lost the tourist T-shirt.” Before Jack could retort, Carl added, “Just kidding! Speaking of the old ball and chain—or maybe I should say, having your balls chained—how’s married life treating you?”

So that he wouldn’t have to go into the pathetic details of yet another spy’s marriage hitting the rocks, Jack countered,
“Hey, did I hear you just had another kid?”

Most expectant fathers, Jack knew, could talk about their offspring for hours on end. Jack figured all he had to do was listen and nod for the next fifteen minutes before Carl had to leave for his departing flight to LAX.

Jack’s question put a big, bright smile Carl’s face. “Yeah, the little lady is ready to pop any day now, with our third.” He took a sip of his drink, and then placed it on top of the newspaper.
 

“Boy or girl?” Jack asked.

“Since we already have one of each, we decided to learn on the tyke’s birthday. But I told Donna I’m throwing it in the Pacific Ocean if it’s not inclined to pitch a fastball at ninety-seven miles an hour.” Carl’s eyes never met Jack’s because both men were scanning the few others in the lounge to see if anyone was watching. Convinced they were unobserved, Carl picked up his drink, downed it, and slid the newspaper holding the thumb drive under his folded Burberry trench coat.
 

Just then, a gate update was announced in French by a seductive female voice.

“Your flight is boarding,” Jack growled. “Safe journey.” Carl held up the Technology section of the paper, as if something important had caught his eye. Then he rose, casually tucking the newspaper under his arm.
 

Jack didn’t move until five minutes after Carl walked out of the lounge.

When he got up to leave, the waitress handed him a note:
 

Dear Jack, too bad about the ring. I hope it wasn’t too great a loss.
 

—Tatyana

Oh, shit, he thought. So she knows I held onto the thumb drive. She must have followed me to the VIP lounge and seen that the ring was off my finger—

She must have seen the hand-off to Carl, too.

He ran out the door, and walked as quickly as he could to the airport’s architecturally renowned nest of clear escalator tubes. Each ascended or descended from the main terminal to a cluster of boarding gates. Jack had to make sure Carl made his flight, as opposed to lying in some restroom with his jugular slit.

As Jack ascended in one of the tubes, he glanced over to another tube on his right, which was descending from where he was headed.

Tatyana was in it.

She was frowning.
 

At first she didn’t see him. When she realized he was staring at her, she forced her lips into a smile.

Then she threw him a kiss.

He didn’t know what to make of it.

He shoved his way forward, beyond some of the other travelers, hustling as fast as he could to Carl’s gate.
 

He got there to find that it had already departed. He went up to the ticket agent. “I need to know if a passenger made the flight. His name is Carl Stone.”

The woman frowned, unsure if he was worthy of the information, but the distress in his eyes must have convinced her to ignore his idiotic T-shirt.
 

“
Oui, monsieur
, he made the flight—just barely.”

Relief flooded Jack’s face. “
Merci
,” he murmured.

So, Tatyana hadn’t been able to stop Carl.

Jack couldn’t wait to get home, to his own bed.

Then he remembered that going home meant sleeping alone.

Jack woke up with a start. It took him just a second to remember why:

Having seen Carl Stone, Tatyana could now have one of her people intercept him at LAX.

He looked at the clock on his bed stand. Hell, he’d slept over ten hours! The plane had landed by now. If they’d gotten to Carl, Ryan would want to debrief him as to how and why things had gone so terribly wrong.
 

It was a call he wasn’t looking forward to making, since it would be on top of a long list of bad news he’d have for his boss, especially if he hadn’t yet heard about Leonid and Irina’s deaths.

The thought of Ryan’s reaction made his wound throb. He needed another painkiller.

He opened his bar. A new bottle of Scotch whiskey was waiting for him.
 

Yep, that would numb the pain.
 

He started with a full tumbler, and didn’t stop until the bottle was empty, which was somewhere around Monte Carlo.

A little sick leave was certainly in order.

Chapter 3
Ghost Story

[Contents of Donna Stone’s overnight bag, reviewed by Acme Analysis Team]

1 floor-length terrycloth robe

1 pair of plush slippers

1 silk negligee

1 pair of support stockings

1 small cosmetic bag, filled with various makeup items

1 stuffed animal (Steiff polar bear)

1 toiletry bag, filled with a tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush, facial cleanser, and moisturizer

1 silver heart-shaped locket

2 handwritten notes, which read:

Dear Baby,

I hope you are a little sister, and not another dumb little brother.

Love, Mary

Dear Baby,

I hope you don’t cry too much.

Stay out of my tree house!!!!!!!

JEFF

1 miniature GPS tracking device