Cinderella's Secret Agent

by Ingrid Weaver

  There was a low murmur from the agents around Del. Camera shutters clicked and film whirred forward as the surveillance teams made full use of this rare opportunity to record Simon’s image.

  This was it, Del thought. He felt a tremor of excitement, the controlled, adrenaline rush of the hunter. With hands that were rock steady, he retrieved his rifle and followed the progress of his prey.

  It would be a simple matter for Del to kill him. One squeeze of the trigger and he could rid SPEAR of the enemy who had tried to engineer their downfall and had unleashed a year of terrorism. But Del wasn’t an assassin. He wouldn’t take a life. And he still needed to wait before he could fire the bullet that would put Simon out of commission. For all its power, SPEAR was bound by the laws it upheld.

  Still, now that they knew the location of their quarry, SPEAR wasn’t prepared to let him slip out of their grasp. One by one, agents left to take up positions around the building and draw the net tighter. It was well after midnight. In this area, few people were on the streets at this hour, but even those who were would have had difficulty spotting the black-clad agents as they melted into the shadows of doorways and alleys.

  Apparently oblivious to the activity outside, Simon slowly revealed his plans.

  For the most part, he only confirmed what Del and SPEAR had already guessed. Simon had arranged to rent that particular apartment because of its view of the UN headquarters. And the event that interested him was the security council session on world terrorism. Simon was indeed planning an assassination.

  But the target, when he revealed it, was a complete surprise.

  Simon’s disembodied voice floated from the speaker. “He will be making a presentation to the council in two days,” he said. “We’ll hit him on his approach to the building. He’s the head of a top-secret government agency called SPEAR and he’s never seen in public. For the past ten years, he’s gone by the name of Jonah.”

  Bill came over to stand beside Del at the window. His unlit pipe was clamped between his teeth, an M21 semiautomatic cradled in his arm. Instead of one of his classy quotes, he muttered a short, crude oath.

  Del echoed it. He’d known Simon was growing bolder with each of his schemes, but this? To go after the head of SPEAR itself? It was brazen and unprecedented. And in an open, public space like the approach to the UN, it just might work. “Is headquarters patched into this audio?” Del asked.

  The agent monitoring the video camera responded. “They’re getting all the data that we are.”

  Simon continued, his voice gaining in volume as he expanded on his plan. “Hull, you’ll be the primary shooter, but the rest of you will be in position around the approach route.”

  The short man lit another cigarette from the butt of his last one. “How much are we going to ask for?”

  “Not a cent,” Simon replied.

  There was a brief silence, then a chorus of protests from the men gathered around Simon. He shouted for quiet, then fixed each one of them in turn with a stony glare. “We have shared many profitable ventures in the past,” he said. “This time, it isn’t business, it’s personal.”

  Another round of protests, less vehement this time. Simon waited until they tapered off before he elaborated. “I want the man called Jonah dead. And I intend to be close enough to watch him take his last breath. That is my goal, and I am willing to give two hundred thousand dollars to whoever fires the fatal shot.”

  At the promise of a payoff, the discord disappeared. Simon smiled, the scars on his cheeks writhing grotesquely. Then he unrolled a map and began to lay out his plan in more detail.

  The woman overseeing the SPEAR listening equipment checked the red light on the backup recorder and smiled grimly. “That’s it, Simon. Talk to me,” she said. “Lay it all out so we can make the charges stick.”

  And Simon did lay it all out. Either he was so emboldened by his past successes that he didn’t believe he could be under surveillance, or he was too arrogant to care. Over the next seventeen minutes, Simon incriminated himself so thoroughly that even a tag team of Hollywood lawyers wouldn’t have been able to mount a defense for him.

  Del’s earphone crackled with static for an instant before a deep voice came through. “Stand by, Rogers.”

  Del stiffened. He knew that voice. He’d only heard it on briefing tapes or on rare occasions over the scrambled line, but the steady, authoritative tone was unmistakable. It was Jonah himself.

  As a rule, Jonah worked behind the scenes, trusting his agents to do the jobs they were trained for. Still, it was only fitting that he chose to get directly involved now—Simon had baldly stated that his desire to see Jonah dead was personal.

  “Yes, sir?” Del said, pressing his throat mike.

  “Can you take him alive?”

  Moving smoothly despite the sudden increase in his pulse, Del cranked the window open and knelt in front of it. He rested the struts of the rifle’s bipod support stand on the windowsill and focused his sights on a point above Simon’s left ear. Fired from this range, a bullet would slow down marginally as it passed through the glass of the other apartment’s window, but it would still have more than enough velocity to cause a concussion as it creased Simon’s scalp. “Yes, sir. I have a shot.”

  “Assault teams, report,” Jonah ordered.

  More voices joined the frequency as the agents who had deployed earlier confirmed they were in position.

  “All teams prepare to move in,” Jonah said. “Agent Rogers, take your shot.”

  The endless hours of training took over. Del closed out everything around him. The ongoing drone of Simon’s voice over the speaker, the hardness of the floor beneath Del’s knees, the cool dampness of the breeze that blew through the open window all faded away as his concentration narrowed to a point no larger than a dime. He knew that Bill was standing beside him, prepared to provide cover, he knew that eleven months of fruitless pursuit hinged on his marksmanship ability, yet that, too, was pushed to the back of his mind.

  All that mattered was the job. This was what he did, who he was.

  Del squeezed the trigger.

  A neat round hole appeared in the glass of the lighted window. A narrow red line furrowed across Simon’s temple, and a heartbeat later, he crumpled to the floor.

  Pandemonium broke out as Simon’s cronies scrambled for cover or raced for the door, but Hull had the presence of mind to douse the lights. When the SPEAR agents burst into the suddenly dark apartment, weapons aimed and ready, it was they who were the easy targets. Hull swung his M16 into position and fired at the first man in. The agent went down with an agonized cry, the body armor he had donned ripped open by what had to be an armor-piercing shell.

  From his vantage point across the courtyard, Del watched in horror as what should have been a quick, clean strike turned into a firefight. The darkness of the apartment was broken only by intermittent muzzle flashes, not enough to give him a target. Abandoning his long-range rifle, he rammed an ammunition clip into a Heckler and Koch pistol. With Bill on his heels, he headed for the street.

  Maggie licked at a tear that trickled to the corner of her mouth as she put the sheets in the laundry basket. She carried it to the door and set it down beside the garbage bag where she had tossed what was left of the candles.

  If she could have afforded it, she would have burned those sheets. If those wineglasses hadn’t been the only ones she owned, she would have thrown them against the nearest wall and happily watched them shatter. And if her fancy silk blouse hadn’t cost her a week’s worth of tips, she would have torn it into a thousand ragged little pieces to match her heart.

  She picked up the hem of her T-shirt and wiped her eyes impatiently. Well, what had she expected? A fairy-tale ending? Midnight had come and gone. The ball was over. Time to return to the pumpkin reality of diapers and spit-up stains.

  “You’ve been through worse,” she told herself. “You’ll get over this, too.”

  Of course, she would. She still had h
er health, she still had Delilah. So what if she no longer had her best friend? So what if she wouldn’t have a lover who could make her knees melt? Sex was overrated. Chocolate was better. It was always there when you needed it, you enjoyed it at your own pace, you didn’t have to worry about awkward mornings after or stilted conversations when the hunger abated. Yes, she would just indulge in a chocolate bar once a day until the craving for Del went away.

  First thing in the morning, she would see about ordering a case or two. Or maybe fifty.

  Another wave of tears flowed down her cheeks. Maggie sniffed hard and sank down to sit in the rocking chair. It was a good thing she hadn’t thrown out her maternity clothes. Once she started on those chocolate bars, her waistline was bound to start expanding again.

  On the other hand, considering the record she and Del had set tonight, she might just need those maternity clothes anyway.

  The chances of conceiving while she was still breast-feeding were slim, but the doctor had said it wasn’t impossible. Maggie had meant to use birth control. She really had. That’s why she had gone to the pharmacy on the corner and bought a box of condoms from the blushing, acne-plagued young clerk. Yet somehow, she hadn’t used them.

  It hadn’t been a premeditated decision. It had just happened. What she and Del had done had seemed so natural, so right that she had been willing to take the chance of another pregnancy, because Del would have made such a wonderful father and husband….

  “Oh, God,” she muttered, putting her face in her hands. “I did it again.”

  Her dreams had gotten in the way of her brain again. She had wanted so much to believe that Del was the one she could build her future with, she had jumped right in with both feet…and her heart.

  So much for her knight in shining armor. She had replayed their final confrontation over and over again in her head, but no matter how she looked at it, the facts remained the same.

  Del admitted that he was hiding something. And whatever it was, it was so serious that he had walked out.

  Damn, she really knew how to pick them, didn’t she?

  Maybe her mother was right to always assume the worst. To hell with trust and taking risks. If she just stopped trying, she was sure not to be disappointed again. Safety wasn’t such a bad thing, was it?

  There was a cranky sob from the direction of the bedroom, and a heaping dose of guilt piled on top of Maggie’s misery. Delilah had been fussy ever since Maggie had brought her home from Armilda’s. Like most babies, she had the ability to sense her mother’s agitation. So now, because of Maggie’s blind infatuation with Del, she was making her child suffer.

  As she picked up Delilah from her crib, Maggie’s gaze was caught by a flutter of movement. The delicate unicorns that hung from the mobile at the side of the crib danced playfully on the air currents that she had stirred.

  Del had bought that mobile three weeks ago. His face had softened with one of his wistful, adorable smiles as he’d fastened it in place and spun the unicorns for Delilah. He’d also bought the pink sleeper Delilah was wearing, and the menagerie of stuffed toys that hung from a ribbon in the corner, and the stroller, and the night-light, and that pair of frivolous, purple-ribbon-trimmed matching sun hats….

  Maggie’s heart clenched in pain. How could she have been so wrong? Del wasn’t like Alan. He was sweet and gentle and considerate. Maybe she had been too hasty. If she gave him another chance…

  Oh, face facts, she told herself harshly. He’d said all along he wouldn’t stay. Whatever other things he had hidden, whatever other lies he had told, that much was the truth.

  It was a scene from a nightmare. Men Del had known for years, solid reliable agents who had worked with him on countless occasions, lay wounded and bleeding in the stairwell and the corridor as Simon’s criminal accomplices viciously fought their way out of the trap the apartment had become. Del worked his way along the corridor, choosing his targets with levelheaded deliberation despite the confusion around him. He felt a searing pain in his left arm just as Bill shouted a warning. Del pivoted in time to shoot the rifle out of Hull’s hands before he could get off another shot. Bill was on the ex Marine in a flash, knocking him out with a karate chop to the side of his neck.

  Finally, the tide turned. Black-suited SPEAR agents took control of the area, swarming among the fallen bodies. As the lights came on, Del stepped over the threshold into the apartment he had been watching for months. Simon’s men, the ones still conscious, were quickly immobilized with plastic bindings around their wrists and ankles. Medics provided field first aid to the most seriously injured on both sides while the map that Simon had been using to illustrate his plan was carefully bagged for evidence.

  “Is the area secure?” Jonah’s question came through Del’s earpiece.

  He pressed his throat mike. “Yes, sir.”

  “What is the condition of Simon?”

  Del tipped his gun toward the ceiling and scanned the crowd, looking for the large, bearded man his bullet had creased.

  The place where Simon had fallen was empty.

  “No,” Del breathed, moving forward.

  Tiny chips of glass from the hole in the window sparkled on the floor next to a smear of blood. But there was no body.

  “That’s impossible,” Del muttered, looking around. “He was out cold.”

  “Rogers?” the voice in his ear barked. “Report.”

  He walked through the apartment again, checking faces, turning over bodies, but he didn’t find the one he was seeking.

  His blood chilled. No, he thought. Not again. After all this time and effort and endless, soul-deadening waiting, it still wasn’t over. He turned to face the window and stared straight into the video camera he knew was focused on the apartment. “He is not here, sir.”

  “Say again?”

  “It appears that Simon has escaped.”

  There was a stunned silence. Shock, rage and bitter disappointment registered on the faces of the agents around Del. “How the hell did that happen?” someone asked, voicing the question that was on everyone’s mind.

  The answer came almost immediately. A young agent staggered to his feet, a swelling bruise over half his face, a dazed look in his eyes. His black vest and ski mask were missing.

  No doubt an infrared analysis of the SPEAR videotape would provide the details of what had happened in the darkness. Right now, though, there was no time for questions or recriminations. Within minutes, a search was organized and the agents who were uninjured left to fan out through the neighborhood. They were betting that Simon couldn’t have gotten far—with the headache from the concussion Del’s bullet had given him, he would barely be able to walk.

  Del tucked his gun into his belt and automatically turned to follow Bill when he was stopped by one of the medics.

  “Give me your arm, Rogers.”

  Del looked down. The sleeve of his black jumpsuit was shiny with wet blood. The iron control he had been keeping over his body and his emotions finally slipped. Only then did he become aware of the throbbing ache in his flesh.

  The medic guided him to a chair, slipped a scalpel into the hole in the fabric and calmly sliced off the sleeve. She grasped his arm to turn it over. “It’s gone straight through. Doesn’t look as if it hit bone.” She shook her head and slathered disinfectant on the entrance and exit wounds. “Consider yourself lucky it didn’t hit three inches to the right. That vest wouldn’t have been any protection against the hot loads they were using.”

  Del’s gaze went to the agent who had been first through the door. He was being lifted onto a stretcher. His face was white, his body limp, his bulletproof armor bearing a hole in the center of his chest.

  “Is he going to make it?” Del asked, nodding toward the man on the stretcher.

  The medic wrapped a bandage around Del’s arm. “It doesn’t look good,” she said quietly.

  It was like the aftermath of the warehouse explosion nearly two months ago. It was like all the operations ove
r all the years. They could plan and prepare all they wanted, but nothing was ever one hundred percent certain. Then, like now, it had been only the luck of the draw that determined who lived and who died.

  Was that agent on the stretcher married? Did he have a wife who would mourn for him, a child who would grow up fatherless?

  This was why SPEAR agents shouldn’t marry. The job was too dangerous. There was no guarantee of a future.

  It was the same thing Del had reminded himself of countless times. The logic seemed sound, yet somehow, something was missing.

  And suddenly, Del knew what it was. The future wasn’t some distant worst-case scenario. It unfolded each and every day. It started now.

  Del watched as the stretcher was maneuvered through the doorway, and he felt his view of the world shift.

  Yes, it would be a tragedy if that man left a grieving family, but wouldn’t it be a greater tragedy if he left no one at all? What if his life had been empty, if he’d never had the chance to share his life with the person he loved? What if he’d never known the joy of holding a newborn child in his hands, or hearing the passion-filled laughter of a loving woman?

  Life was precious. It shouldn’t be wasted.

  But that’s exactly what Del was doing.

  Don’t let what happened in the past keep you from taking a chance on our future.

  Maggie’s words came back to him, whispering through his head like the rain-scented breeze, cool, fresh and full of promise. He had told her she didn’t understand, but he’d been wrong. She understood him better than he did himself.

  There were no guarantees in life, no matter what a person did for a living. Take Maggie. She had been only a child when she had been gravely injured, but she hadn’t given up. Instead, she had taken a chance and embraced life head-on and the hell with the odds. She was so passionate about everything she did. Was it any wonder he had fallen in love with her?