He consulted the information that they had received from Carly.
“It’s in six days,”
“Six days? Amazing, and no one from the State of Massachusetts even bothered to inform me about it. If Gregory hadn’t tried to have me killed, we would have never known about any of this.”
“They’ll try again. When Rossetti doesn’t hear back from his man, Gregory will insist that he hire someone else.”
“What do we do?”
He gazed into the fire while taking a sip of wine, and then he swiveled his head and answered her.
“We prepare.”
CHAPTER 14
They came four days later, and this time there were three of them.
The three men pulled their van onto the shoulder of the county road within yards of the spot that the failed assassin had parked his stolen car at days before.
The weather had warmed over the past few days and the sun shone brightly upon them as they exited their vehicle. The men were all large, but the one in the middle, the one named Carter, was the largest. All three carried backpacks, and wore denim jackets and flannel shirts. If anyone glanced at them while driving by, they would take them for hikers.
Carter, a black man with green eyes, nodded at the man on his right and watched him until he disappeared into the trees, before getting back into the van with the third man.
Thirty minutes passed.
Then forty,
At forty-three minutes, Carter’s cell phone rang.
“Report.”
“They’re here. I did a recon and found him watching football in the living room and she’s at the back of the house pruning plants.”
“She’s pruning plants? It’s winter,”
“She’s inside; at the rear of the home is a glass enclosed atrium, sorta like a hot house I guess.”
“What’s the husband look like? Do you think he’ll be any trouble?”
“I didn’t see his face. All I could see from the window was the TV and a pair of legs lying on the end of a sofa, but hey, there are three of us. He’ll be handled.”
“And you saw no sign of the police?”
“Nothing,”
“Good work, we’ll be right in to join you... Blaine.”
“I almost thought that you forgot the signal. My name is Rory, and no, no one is holding a gun to my head. Where the hell did you get the name Blaine?”
“He’s the guy that grooms my girlfriend’s schnauzer.”
“Where do we meet?”
“The doctor is the primary target. Johnson and I will meet you at the atrium in the back. Carter out,”
With no need for stealth, the two got out of the vehicle and ran towards the home. Sixteen minutes later, they were approaching the rear of the house by circling through the woods. Carter raised his hand and signaled the other man to stop. Afterward, they took off their backpacks and removed their weapons, both were Sig Sauer 522’s with thirty round magazines. The black rifles looked deadly, and appeared more so when they threaded the thick, round sound suppressors onto the ends of their barrels.
The road they came from was parallel with the front of the home, while acres of forest stretched to the right and left. The rear faced a towering wall of rock, but was separated from it by a stream.
The leader of the group, Carter, eyed the top of that cliff suspiciously as he and Johnson maneuvered past the tree house and across the rear yard, where they met Rory behind a row of hedges that kept them from sight.
Rory pointed towards the glass-enclosed atrium, where Jessica walked about tending to rows of plants, but Carter’s eyes were once again drawn to the top of that wall of rock.
“Rory, hand me the binoculars; I want to check out that cliff.”
“I already did. That glint you see up there is from a broken beer bottle, but here, take a look.”
Carter took the binoculars and studied the cliff, as he focused in on it, he saw the familiar label of a brand of beer.
He handed the binoculars back to Rory and looked around. Something was bothering him, something nagging at a corner of his mind. He dismissed it with a sigh, thinking it just a case of nerves, because the last man that took this job, Enzo Parker, had never returned.
“Let’s do this,” he said, as he stepped out from behind the hedges.
As the third man came into the open, Jessica dived to the floor.
“She knows we’re here,” Johnson said, and that’s when Carter realized what was eating at him.
The tree house,
Why would a childless couple have a tree house in their backyard?
The first dart hit him in the back of the left leg and he felt it go numb immediately. He turned to find Rory falling toward him with a silly look on his face and a tranquilizer dart sticking out of his ear. Rory’s weight knocked him over and he hit the ground less than a second after Johnson fell face first into a patch of melting snow.
Carter attempted to raise his gun, but he no longer felt his arm and his field of vision was down to a tiny dot. The dot shrank into insignificance and Carter sank into oblivion.
***
He hung from the edge of the tree house floor by his fingertips, then, let go, and fell to the ground below. He landed in a crouch, on the balls of his feet, and afterward, sprang up and walked towards the fallen men with the gas-powered tranquilizer gun aimed at them. The three men had never searched about for him, and so he reasoned that the pair of fake legs on the sofa fooled them.
Inside the house, Jessica said, “I’m coming out.” and he heard her voice through the device secured in his ear.
She walked out from behind the bullet-resistant glass of the atrium carrying a medical kit and studied the three men, then, she pointed at one of them.
“That one, the first to show up, he’s taken three darts. If I don’t give him a dose of Naloxone he may not make it.”
“Do it. We only need one, but we don’t know which one that is yet.”
Jessica removed the darts from the men as he gathered up the weapons, then, while she was administering to the man with the overdose, he checked the others for belongings.
When he was finished with all three men, besides the three rifles, and the backpacks, he had two handguns, three cellphones, a pair of binoculars, keys to a vehicle, first-aid kits, food rations, extra ammo, maps of the area, a keycard for a nearby motel, and half a pack of gum. They carried no identification and the cell phones were throwaways, most likely bought for the job.
He looked over at his wife with a grim expression.
“I’m going to need help this time. I don’t know if I can secure all three of them before the drug wears off.”
“I’ll do whatever I have to do. This entire business is my fault.”
“Jessica, you’re not to blame for Gregory Zubek.”
She wiped away a tear.
“It doesn’t feel that way, now let’s hurry, they should be out for hours, but you never can tell how someone will react to the drug.”
***
Carter awoke to find himself hanging from his wrists in what appeared to be a garage, only there were no cars inside. To his left hung Johnson, and Carter had never seen him look so pissed, beside Johnson, hung Rory, and he had never seen Rory look so scared.
Not good,
Carter craned his neck and saw that his ankles were bound together with what looked like half a roll of duct tape. He also took note that the walls, floor and even the ceiling were covered in thick plastic.
Not good,
Seated on a stool in front of them was a man who, he assumed, was the target’s husband. He was a tall man, well-built but not bulky, and he had the face of a movie star, but the eyes of a wolf.
The husband reached down and picked up one of their rifles.
“Two of you are going to die. One of you is going to live. That one will convince Zubek that my wife is dead and no longer a threat to him. He will also return to Boston and kill Zubek for me.”
“How do
I know that I can trust you not to kill me later?” Carter said.
The wolf eyes bored into his and Carter felt intimidated for the first time since he was a seventeen-year-old kid in boot camp.
“You won’t know if you can trust me anymore than I’ll know if I can trust you, but you appear to be a professional, and once I’ve let you go and you’ve killed Zubek, they’ll be no reason for either of us to come after the other.”
“I’m gonna kill you,” Johnson shouted, and Carter watched as the wolf eyes slid his way.
“You hear me you son of a bitch? You let me go or I swear I’m gonna—”
The first shot was dead center to Johnson’s heart, while the second one entered at the bridge of his nose. Carter forced his eyes away from the body of his late partner and stared at the doctor’s husband, as he remembered what Rossetti had said about the man.
He develops apps. You know, for smart phones and tablets. He’s a nerd; waste him if you have to.
The room grew silent, save for the Splat... Splat... Splat of Johnson’s blood and brains dripping onto the plastic, but then, there came another sound.
Splat Splat Splat Splat Splat Splat Splat Splat Splat Splat Splat Splat Splat Splat
It was Rory. He was in a state of absolute terror and he had urinated on himself. The piss was running down his pant leg and onto the plastic and the room suddenly reeked of it.
A moment later and Rory was babbling like a fool.
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know anything my name’s Rory Currin you just shot Mike Johnson and that guy there is Scott Carter you can’t trust him though you can’t he’ll tell you one thing and then do another I’m the man you want I’ll kill Zubek hell I’ll kill anyone you want and then you’ll never see me again honest just please cut me down from here and I’ll—”
One bullet this time, and Carter took note that it entered through Rory’s blathering pie hole.
The wolf eyes found his and he nodded.
“I’m your man.”
***
The husband cut him down and then had him clean up the bodies.
Afterward, he took him outside and he was surprised to find the van backed up to the door and ready. He struggled the bodies into the van along with the bloody plastic, and then the husband gestured him over to a wrought iron table and chairs set. Atop the table were the three disposable cell phones they had brought along for the job.
“The one who panicked, he said your name was Scott Carter.”
“That’s right,” Carter said.
“Once the job was done, what were you supposed to do?”
“We were to wait for Rossetti to call us at four o’clock,” Carter said.
The husband took out his phone and looked at the time.
“We’ve got nearly half an hour. Tell me, how will you go about killing Zubek?”
“That may take a while. Once your wife testifies at the hearing they’ll never let him go; they’ll probably even bar him from taking those day trips. That means that I’ll have to get inside the hospital and kill him, and that won’t be easy.”
“My wife is not going to testify.”
Carter looked surprised, but then he nodded.
“You want him out. If he’s out, he’ll be easier to kill.”
“That’s right.”
One of the phone’s on the table vibrated.
“Rossetti’s early,” Carter said.
“Eager to hear the good news, when you answer, hit the speaker button, and no tricks, if I suspect you’re warning him, you die.”
Carter stared at the husband as he picked up the phone. As far as he could tell, the man sitting across from him was as unarmed as he was. Carter had been a Marine, had spent six years in Special Forces before becoming a hired gun and had killed more men than he could remember, a few with his bare hands.
And yet, there were those eyes, those wolf eyes staring back at him with a predatory glint that made him doubt his abilities, and quite frankly, scared the crap out of him.
“Hello?”
“It’s me, any problems?”
“No, we’re cleaning up now.”
“What about the husband?”
“Same as the wife,”
Rossetti’s chuckle carried over the phone.
“Good, good, he’ll like that; the guy kicked his ass once,”
“Listen, we don’t want to spend any more time here than we have to, so give us a call the next time you need a hand.”
“I will, and good work,”
Rossetti hung up and the line went dead.
Carter looked over at the husband.
“Now what?”
“Now you get in the van and take the bodies with you. As soon as you can, kill Zubek,”
“You’re really letting me go?”
“We had a deal. I let you live, you kill Zubek.”
“Why wouldn’t I just leave here and disappear?”
The husband took out his phone, after a moment, he found what he wanted and began reading.
“Scott Jason Carter, born September, 15, 1974, father, David, deceased, mother, Stephanie, sixty-two, two younger sisters, both teachers at Tallahassee Public—”
“I get it. That’s some info, what are you, a spook?”
“I’m Dr. Jessica White’s husband, and I will kill anyone who threatens her.”
Carter swallowed.
“I’ll take care of Zubek.”
“Yes you will,”
***
As Carter drove off with the bodies in the back of the van, Jessica walked outside and joined her husband.
Both of their phones emitted a unique tone while flashing wildly, as unseen cameras tracked the van as it moved along and set off the hidden sensors strewn throughout their property, the same sensors that had warned them of Carter and his partners’ arrival.
“He’ll do as you say?”
“He will, and while he’s doing that we need to be somewhere that will give us an alibi, if we should ever need one. I called George earlier; he said that he and Lena look forward to seeing us again.”
Jessica began crying.
“How many died because I didn’t let you kill Gregory that day? I trusted the justice system and Dr. Harte and her family paid the price, and now, and now they’re about to let that monster back out onto the streets.”
He took her in his arms.
“Their deaths were not your fault, and since then, how many have we saved? Dozens? Scores? We do what we do because we’re good at it and because we know firsthand what doing nothing cost, but we can’t change the past, Jessica. Zubek did what he did, but today, today we made sure that he never hurts anyone again.”
“Better late than never?”
He brushed her hair from her face.
“Better him than us,”
***
“Gregory Zubek, a newly released mental patient was felled by a sniper’s bullet yesterday, as he left the competency hearing that set him free. The police are investigating but so far have no leads on the identity of his assassin. In other news, Wall Street was stunned today when—”
Carter muted the TV in his kitchen and grabbed another beer from the fridge. The cops had no reason to suspect him of killing Zubek, and Rossetti hadn’t put two and two together, so he was in the clear.
Speaking of Rossetti, Carter glanced over and saw a photo of the shyster on the TV; it was followed by a camera shot looking up at the roof of Rossetti’s office building. He put the sound back on.
“Albert Rossetti, a successful and often controversial figure in the Massachusetts’ justice system, apparently committed suicide today by leaping from the roof of his office building, the police say that Rossetti—”
The beer in Carter’s hand fell to the floor as he recalled the words spoken to him just days before.
“I’m Dr. Jessica White’s husband, and I will kill anyone who threatens her.”
Carter rushed to the bedroom and grabbed his gun from atop th
e bedside table.
He never noticed Jessica's husband standing behind the closet door, and he never felt the bullet that killed him.
PART FOUR – MEETING A LIVING LEGEND
CHAPTER 15
They were in New York City, consulting on a case.
Over the last five days, six men had been found dead in various hotel rooms across the city, the fourth man was the brother-in-law of a United States Senator, and it was his death that spurred the task force to creation.
The dead men had all been drugged before having their throats cut, and their killer was a woman.
In fact, they had footage of her from several different surveillance cameras. The woman was a brunette, tall, with a beautiful face and figure. They knew what she looked like, but little else.
In several bars near the scenes of the murders, bartenders told investigators that the woman seemed to target married men, and that when they left the bar, the man always left first, perhaps to secure a room for a promised tryst. It fit the pattern; all six men had been found inside rooms that they themselves had paid for.
Seated across from Jessica and her husband at the round conference table was an old acquaintance, FBI Agent, Theresa Ramos. Ramos had been one of the agents on duty years ago when Jessica’s father was targeted by a serial killer named Stiletto.
Stiletto managed to out-maneuver the FBI and gained access to Jessica’s home, but was eventually stopped by the man who would become her husband.
Ramos was in her mid-forties, attractive, with long dark hair and dark eyes. As the agent-in-charge of the taskforce, it was her responsibility to gather all available information and see that it was studied and evaluated for its worthiness in leading them towards the killer. There’s just one problem though, there is no information, their killer may as well be a ghost.
“As much as I hate to point it out,” Jessica said. “We need more info, and unfortunately, that probably equates to more victims.”
Seated beside her husband was the police department liaison, Lieutenant Thomas Delaney. Delaney was a big man with short black hair and a moustache. He nodded in agreement while pointing at the evidence board.
“Dr. White is right; all we have to go on so far are assumptions. All six of these men were supposedly happily married, and yet, they met our killer in a hotel room. That tells us more about the victims than their killer. We need to know more about her.”
The TAKEN! Series - Books 1-4 (Taken! Box Set) Page 17