The Operator

by Craig Martelle

  “Some men have a weird reaction to that. Want a threesome or something.”

  I chewed fast, even though I wanted to enjoy the pulled pork. The barbecue sauce made for a perfect tang with the tenderness of a well-smoked shoulder. “I’m not some men. I have zero interest in spending intimate time with anyone other than you. I will spend the rest of my life proving it to you.”

  “From the L-word to a lifelong commitment. You move fast.”

  I used two napkins to clear the sticky mess from my hands so I could eat the coleslaw. “I spent half my life looking for you and don’t intend to waste the other half. Let’s get dessert to go.”

  “Make it so.” A simple reply, appropriately geeky for me. I loved it. I hunted down the server to get a box and ordered lava cake for two with vanilla ice cream to go. When he came with the box and dessert, I reached for my wallet, but Jenny stopped me and handed over her credit card. Once our debt was satisfied, we headed out of the restaurant, hurrying to keep life from getting away from us.

  Into the car and off, down the road, through a turn and then another, onto a side road. Jenny pulled into an older home. Yard a little unkempt. No picket fence.

  She parked under a carport and not in the garage beyond. I guessed it was filled with junk.

  Inside was a tidy house that smelled of fresh flowers, but there were none in vases. I would have to order some. Three bedrooms with a living room and dining room sharing space. The kitchen had worn corners on the counters, a shine on the appliances, and racks to hold the utensils of a master chef.

  “Your mom was a good cook.”

  “She was magnificent. We never longed for a good meal.”

  Jenny put the lava cake on the dining room table, pulled open a drawer in the kitchen, and dug out forks and a serving spatula. Went to a cabinet for dessert plates. She sat down and I took the spot next to her, leaving the corner of the table with our dessert between us.

  “What is your secret, Ian Bragg?” she asked as she cut the cake in half. When she finished, she fixed me with her undivided attention.

  I didn’t even have to take a breath. I had been holding it and waiting for the moment to say out loud the words I had never spoken before. “I was sent here to kill Jimmy Tripplethorn. You see, I kill people for a living.”

  Jenny’s hand trembled but she carried on, nodding slightly before serving us both. She left her fork on her plate and watched me closely. I continued.

  “Six total over the course of a little more than a year. I have nine days left to make the hit, but I can’t do it. The others were bad people. It was easy to pull the trigger on them because their loss made the world a better place.

  “But not this time. I’ve dug hard and can find no reason why Jimmy needs to die. The bad news is, the organization I work for, The Peace Archive, won’t allow me to renege on the contract. I need whoever paid for the contract to cancel it. Even paying the money back won’t stop the hit.”

  I pinched my eyes closed. My heart raced. Some tough guy. I felt like I was going to cry. I heard her sigh and then breathe rapidly. The silence dragged on. When I opened my eyes, she was looking at me, undecided. I looked into my lap and waited. The ball was in her court.

  Jenny finally moved from her chair to kneel by my side, taking both my hands in hers and kissing them. “I can live with that. If that’s all you have, then you are stuck with me.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.” C.S. Lewis

  “This job isn’t that hard. Find the exit route, wait until the target enters the kill zone, make the hit, and leave. The hardest part is not having anyone to talk with, hammer out an idea or plan, make it better. You can help me think, save me from myself. Jimmy is the first politician I’ve gotten. The others were crime figures of one sort or another.”

  “Is The Peace Archive a government organization? Maybe a black program?”

  I contemplated her question. I had missed the obvious. “That is a good question. Who in the government would want to kill a politician, an honest one? I think the answer to that is all of them. But who could afford it? It’s at least a million dollars, maybe more. No government employees could afford this hit. Rich elected officials, maybe, but that’s a hard theory to embrace because rich politicians destroy people with lies in the media. Destroying people’s lives is a game to them. No. I think Tricia Tripplethorn is involved. Either her or an illicit boyfriend.”

  “No one likes her, but no one talks about it. I can see her having a boyfriend.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “Of course not. I watch the news, and the future mayor and his family get a lot of airtime around here.”

  “Everyone assumes he’s going to win. I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t. Why do you think that is?”

  “Because the current mayor does stupid things and doesn’t seem to care. In walks squeaky clean Jimmy Tripplethorn. No one is running against them. It’s a two-horse race, and one is hobbled and crawling toward his deathbed.”

  “From my point of view, both of them are on their deathbeds.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not used to thinking like that.” Jenny continued to look up at me. Our ice cream was melting. The house seemed warmer than it should have been.

  “I’m the one who’s sorry. Why couldn’t Jimmy be a bad guy no one would miss?” I scooped up a forkful of lava cake and ice cream and offered it to Jenny.

  “A hitman who is tender and loving. Who would have thought?” She opened her mouth and accepted the bite of dessert. I took one and then offered her a second spoonful. She remained on the floor as I worked my way through my half of our dessert. It went quickly. I slid her plate to my edge of the table. “Did you go fishing today with a client?”

  “I went to Bainbridge Island, where Clive Barrows berths his boat Euripedes’ Ion . The Tripplethorn family went to see Grandpa. I was there to watch them, but they undocked and headed out to sea. A crotchety fisherman saw me on the dock and asked me to join him. He also provided some firsthand information on Old Man Barrows. So yes, it was one hundred percent a business trip until Ion buried us in her wake. Then we went fishing. Caught about seventy-five pounds of chinook. I think he wanted lingcod too, but we only had to cast five times to catch four fish. Then we returned to port, and I drove straight to the hotel. Oops, I stopped at the electronics mart and picked up a couple of magnetic GPS trackers. I intend to put one on the Wonderbeast’s Porsche.”

  “Wonderbeast?” She looked at me with her lips parted and her tongue resting between her teeth.

  “I call my targets by names to dehumanize them. Jimmy used to be Kicker before he turned out to be a decent guy. Kicker, as in ‘kick me in the Jimmy.’ And Wonderbeast is because she thinks she’s wonderful and everyone else thinks she’s a beast. Trust me when I say it sounds a lot better in my head. I don’t usually say the names out loud.”

  “I’ll take your word for that. I want to know it all. How does one get into the business of being an assassin? How do you contact The Peace Archive and accept a contract? I can’t see how any of it works.”

  I cried out in brief panic, “Do not search online for The Peace Archive or my name or anything like that. They’ll pick it up, and your ISP will lead them right here.”

  She got up, but only far enough to arrange herself in my lap and wrap her arms around my neck. “Are we in danger?”

  “I told you I wouldn’t lie to you.” I looked down. “The answer is yes. I am always in danger, and now you’ve been seen with me. That was a poor decision on my part, but I wanted you to know how beautiful you are and that it was my privilege to be seen in public with you. But that selfishness has put you at risk.”

  Jenny kissed my forehead, then slowly caressed my face with her lips. She rested her nose on mine and looked into my eyes.

  “I feel incredible exhilaration knowing that. My life is different now
, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not.” She dipped her finger into the chocolate atop the lava cake and drew a line from her jaw down her neck. She tilted her head back. “What am I going to do about this mess?”

  “Whatever you do, don’t get any on your clothes. It’ll stain.” Tacky, but it was the best I could manage with the blood rushing from my brain. I licked the chocolate off her neck.

  I wouldn’t have any problems with The Peace Archive until I was late with the contract, or whoever paid for the contract complained about getting pressured to cancel it. For the moment, Jenny was safe, but there would come a time too soon when we’d be on the run.

  We made love with reckless abandon, like two people with everything to lose living the last of their lives to the fullest.

  ***

  “Ian isn’t your real name, is it?”

  “It is for now. The name from before doesn’t mean anything. That person is gone. I am Ian Bragg.”

  She nodded. I propped an elbow on the bed and supported my head in my hand.

  “A world cruise doesn’t sound too bad, does it?” I asked.

  “It sounds like a great idea. I’ll have to take a leave of absence from my job, but that means a substitute teacher will get her shot at a full-time job. It begs the question, can we honeymoon for the rest of our lives?”

  “That is the question, now isn’t it? Assuming they let me out of the game.”

  “Killing people is a game?” She wanted to know. She wasn’t judging.

  “No, but that’s what I call it. A deadly game with only winners and losers. There is no second place.”

  Jenny nodded while I ran my fingers absentmindedly along her curves.

  “Do you have Wi-Fi?”

  “How backward do you think I am?” she shot back.

  “I don’t think you’re backward, Jenny. My real question is, can I have the password so I can work.”

  “Don’t you want to sleep with me?” Not a taunt.

  I swallowed. “I will always want to sleep with you. It’s for when I get up in the morning and you’re still sleeping. I can only watch you for so long before I feel creepy.”

  She laughed, a light and musical sound. “I love Ian Bragg, no spaces. The Is are ones and Os are zeros.”

  I pulled the pillow under my head. “I think I can remember that, Miss Jenny.” I closed my eyes, not realizing how tired I was, and fell asleep quickly. I don’t know how long Jenny stroked my hair and watched me before she fell asleep too, pressed tightly against me.

  ***

  I didn’t bother getting dressed. I sat naked at the dining room table with my computer, using Jenny’s Wi-Fi. My VPN hid any trace of my efforts. First order of business: dig into the Wonderbeast’s emails and try to find evidence of a daytime liaison.

  I accessed her unlabeled email first. A thirteenth email had popped up, and she had already read it.

  Soap. Tree. Car. Water.

  I dove into the deleted folder to find her response. Noon Monday.

  Sent at six the previous evening. They would have either been still at sea with dear old dad or on their way back home. No codebook available. She couldn’t wait to send her answer. It was important to her, despite the risk of sending it in the clear, not even cryptically worded.

  If I could get the tracker on her vehicle before then, I could follow her from a distance. If not, I’d have to do it the old-fashioned way.

  Her normal emails were a disaster, but I wanted to be thorough.

  I turned off her email’s system of marking emails as read when viewed in the preview pane. I browsed the previously read emails, looking for someone who shouldn’t have been there. She didn’t delete many emails.

  I confined my search to the previous two months, then I moved to the unread. Tedious and time-consuming. I took notes on possible email addresses. Two hours and four cups of coffee later, I finished perusing the inane public life of Tricia Tripplethorn.

  She confined her secret life to the cryptic private email.

  Who was the mysterious sender hiding behind DN74XTW1?

  I adjusted my VPN to make it look like I was searching from China. I typed in the letter-number combination. The return comprised subsets of the individual letters, but nothing exact.

  A dead end.

  I’d been sitting too long. I stood and stretched before strolling around Jenny’s house. Family photos on the walls, the artwork Jenny had chosen to keep, and new items she’d put on display.

  Art done by teenagers. Up-and-comers. Maybe.

  She supported her students. They liked her, as Dara had shown.

  Jenny was an innocent, living a sheltered life. Society, as it bubbled below the surface, was a hard place. I had not done her any favors by dragging her into my world. She said she was willing to come, but she didn’t know the danger. An innocent.

  She gave me something I hadn’t realized I was missing—a partner.

  In business. In life.

  Jimmy Tripplethorn loved his kids. His dog, too. Did he love his partner?

  I returned to the kitchen for another cup of coffee. I waited for the Keurig to deliver a Seattle’s Best for me.

  A soft footfall signaled that Jenny was awake. She hugged me from behind, sending a tingle all the way to my toes. She hadn’t bothered dressing either.

  “Did you find anything?” she asked.

  I turned to face her and pulled her close. “You live a sheltered life,” I said.

  She frowned. “I meant on the internet.”

  “I’m sorry. I just finished strolling around your house, but I didn’t open any drawers or anything. I wanted to know more about you. Everything about you.”

  “Sheltered?” Jenny leaned close, her nose touching mine. We spent a great deal of time talking that way. It was strangely soothing, yet fiercely intimate.

  “Pictures, art, everything is from here. Local to this world.”

  “It’s how I grew up. It’s…” She struggled for the word. “Comfortable.”

  “And then I show up and flip everything on its head.”

  “I’m only going to say this one more time because I am the champion of self-induced anxiety. There’s no reason for you to worry, Ian Bragg. I will go wherever you go willingly, no matter what that does to my life. I want to see the bigger world while sharing your world. I like comfortable, but I find that in you and not a place. How does someone like me get a 007 life? It’s crazy, but it means cutting ties with my past. This is all new to me, but I am running headlong into it with my eyes wide open. ”

  “Guns,” I said out of the blue. “You’ll need to be able to protect yourself, which means you’ll need to be confident with a handgun.”

  “I’ll show you my dad’s arsenal.” She backed away half a step, smiling at my response to her body pressing against mine.

  I grabbed my cup off the Keurig and followed her. In the master bedroom, which still belonged to her parents, she opened the closet, exposing a handmade rack built to hold Mr. Lawless’ collection. There were two pistols. First was a Browning M1911A1, the preferred close-combat weapon of the Marine Corps. I caressed the .45. It was an original and a collector’s item. Worth a thousand dollars or more to the right buyer.

  The last pistol was a Phoenix Arms HP25A, a .25 caliber semiautomatic pistol. A concealed-carry self-defense weapon. It wasn’t anything I would use.

  A shotgun and two rifles stood upright with socks over the ends of the barrels to keep dust from getting in. A Mossberg twelve-gauge pump shotgun. He’d probably bought it in a department store on sale. I’d had a Mossberg twenty-gauge growing up. They were sturdy, reliable shooters.

  A Marlin .22. Inexpensive and common. A semiautomatic. It was easy to shoot five hundred rounds in a day. Made for fun while trooping around the woods. Little more than a toy, but it helped teach shooting fundamentals at a low cost.

  The last rifle was a gem, like the Browning. A Springfield 03A3, a former military
weapon reconfigured as a hunting rifle. Fired a 30-06 round. Deadly accurate and rugged. A warfighter’s weapon without the semi-automatic proclivity to descend to volume of ammunition fired versus the quality of a single well-aimed round.

  “You look like a kid in a candy store.” Jenny leaned against the dresser with her arms crossed.

  “The .45 and 30-06 are both collector’s items because they are nice pieces of gear.” I smiled. I locked the slide to the rear, sending a round into my hand. I dropped the magazine. “Did you know this was loaded?”

  Jenny shrugged while she shook her head. I unloaded them all. Boxes of ammunition sat under the rack bolted to the side wall of the closet. The old clothes within smelled musty. I put the weapons back, giving them one last appreciative look. I would have liked Jenny’s dad.

  “You haven’t cleaned out your parents’ stuff.”

  Jenny hung her head and started to sob. I took her into my arms and gave her as much time as she needed. I pulled a tissue from the box on the dresser and gave it to her.

  “I’m sorry…” She started to cry again.

  “What are you sorry for? That you care and had no one to share your grief?”

  She wiped her nose and looked up at me, eyes red and puffy.

  “We’re naked,” she mumbled.

  I had to chuckle. “This is the American dream. I’m naked with a beautiful woman, a cup of coffee, and a bunch of guns. My life is now complete.”

  She play-slapped me, then chuckled and hugged me intensely, digging her nails into my back. She bit my chest and pushed me against the dresser. I cupped my hands around her butt cheeks and lifted her to carry her the short distance to her parent’s bed.

  Jenny didn’t resist, embroiled in the emotions of leaving a lifetime of history behind. She pulled me so hard against her, I could feel the skin on my back give way. The pain was sharp but distant. The intensity of this moment sealed our bond.

  I winced and gasped as she pulled her nails from the wounds. She looked in horror at her hands, covered in blood. She tried to push me off, but I held steady. “I’m not ready to get up yet.”