HiT – The Complete Series
Copyright © 2014 Margaret McHeyzer
Second Edition
ISBN13: 978-0-9925621-0-6
All rights reserved. This book is copyright. Apart from the fair purpose of private study, research or review as permitted by the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced without written permission.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover created by Book Cover By Design – Kellie Dennis.
Interior Formatting by Tami Norman, Integrity Formatting
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HiT 149 ~ Anna Brookes First Chapter
Anna Brookes in Training
HiT for Freedom
HiT to Live
Acknowledgements
Other Books by Margaret McHeyzer
HiT 149
Anna Brookes First Chapter
Anna Brookes is not your typical teenager. Her walls are not adorned with posters of boy bands or movie stars. Instead posters from Glock, Ruger, and Smith & Wesson grace her bedroom. Anna’s mother abandoned her at birth, and her father, St. Cloud Police Chief Henry Brookes, taught her how to shoot and coached her to excellence. On Anna’s fifteenth birthday, unwelcome guests join the celebration, and Anna’s world is never the same. You’ll meet the world’s top assassin, 15, and follow her as she discovers the one hit she’s not sure she can complete – Ben Pearson, the current St. Cloud Police Chief and a man with whom Anna has explosive sexual chemistry. Enter a world of intrigue, power, and treachery as Anna takes on old and new enemies, while falling in love with the one man with whom she can’t have a relationship.
Breathe.
Breathe.
In and out. Breathe.
All I need to do is concentrate. Breathe in and out. Henry always told me that’s what I need to do. Breathe.
Concentrate…Breathe.
I’m standing here on top of the building, and I need to remind myself to breathe. It’s not like I haven’t done this 146 times before. It’s not as if I’m not the best in the business. I am. I’m the best at this because as sick as it sounds, my business is my life. I love doing what I do. Yes, it’s very strange how a twenty-eight year old woman would want to do what I do. Actually, what’s strange about it is that anyone would want to do what I do.
This is a male-dominated profession. No women. I’ve been in this line of work for the last thirteen years. I didn’t just fall into it; I sought it out. And I’m without doubt the best woman in the industry; I’d even go as far as to say I’m the best, period.
Other women have tried to take my place, but they didn’t last long. They’ve tried to eliminate me; that didn’t work. I’m respected by all the big players. I’m the biggest player of them all. When rookies tried to show me up to demonstrate their capabilities, it didn’t take me long to figure them out. They won’t try it again.
I remember a certain young lady by the name of ‘J’ who decided she wanted to muscle in on my clients. She tried sending me a warning how she was the new up-and-coming superstar and she’d stop at nothing to take over my clients. She thought she was doing me a favor by warning me she was taking my place. Her mistake. They all try to warn me. There’s no “warning” in this business. There are no second chances. I understand this. It’s why I am at the top of my game.
No hesitation. No second thoughts. No doubts. No emotions. No feelings.
Now I’m standing on top of a building, getting my breathing under control. Because this job is number 147.
I need to get this right; there’s no room for error.
You see, my name is Anna Brookes, and I’m the most dangerous woman you’ll ever meet. I am the best assassin in the world.
And if I don’t take out the target, I become the target.
I am untraceable; I am unidentifiable; I am a ghost. I choose to have no friends, to live a life of isolation and solitude. I can’t afford the distraction or complication of emotional connections with anyone.
I’m an only child. My mother, Natalia, left my father, Henry, the moment I was born. She was a sixteen-year-old girl who became pregnant by her nineteen-year-old boyfriend. He loved my mother so much that when she told him she was pregnant; he took responsibility and decided to give Natalia and I the best in life.
He worked hard, going to the Police Academy and graduating at the top of his class. Natalia, on the other hand, hated being tied down to one man. She hated being in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and she hated me for ruining her life and body.
The moment I was born, Mom left. Henry was at work when Natalia went into labor, and she didn’t call him. She’d been sneaking house-hold money and saving it to make her getaway. After I was born, the hospital called Henry and told him Natalia had given birth to a girl but was missing.
They searched for her for close to an hour after they discovered me lying on the bed alone. Henry came to the hospital and searched high and low. I was born healthy, so when I was released from the hospital, Henry took me home.
That day, there was a letter in the mailbox. It was from Natalia, and it simply said, “I don’t want this.” With that, Henry stopped looking for her and resigned himself to the fact Natalia wasn’t coming back.
I have the resources to find her and have received regular updates on her whereabouts until five years ago, when she dropped off the radar. She led a very self-abusive lifestyle, involving herself in drugs and prostitution.
I hadn’t bothered chasing her down once she disappeared because she was of little interest to me and I assumed drugs had claimed her life.
Henry was the best father and role model he could be. He had no idea what he was doing as a father, but he gave his all to keep me safe. He worked hard and quickly rose through the ranks at the St. Cloud Police Department. He became the Chief when he was just twenty-nine years old. It wasn’t without sacrifice, though. He had to work long hours and had no time for any other relationships. After the way Natalia treated him, leaving with no more than four words scrawled on a piece of paper, he didn’t want any other relationships. He loved me, though, and taught me so much.
When I was twelve years old, Henry began taking me to the range to teach me how to shoot. He didn’t have to teach me much, since I was a natural. The moment he put a Glock G-17 in my hand, I started to breathe for the first time in my twelve short years. Everything made sense to me; everything fell into place.
In that one moment, I knew I wanted – no, I needed – never to be without a gun again. I felt the steel against my palm and smiled. This was home for me. As I wrapped the gun in my hand, there was an energy that started at my fingertips and went all the way through my body to my core.
My heart skipped a beat and my breathing became erratic. Not from fear, but from pure elation. This was what I was born to do. This was home for me, where the sun rose in the morning and set in the evening. I’d never felt more alive.
After that first day at the range, I begged Henry to take me there every spare moment he was home. He loved how I wanted to become a police officer the moment I became legally old enough to be accepted into the Academy. But life doesn’t always go the way you plan.
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Most twelve-year-old girls were listening to music and swooning over celebrities. There was no way in this world I wanted any of that. I wanted to learn everything I could about firearms. I started out by finding out as much as I could about small handguns.
After that research I went on to discover what other weapons I could aim and shoot. The other girls at school had posters on their walls of Madonna and Nirvana. I had pictures of Glocks, Colts, and Sigs.
Henry worried I was taking my fondness for guns too far. He often remarked how it might be turning into an obsession. He was right of course, but I didn’t want him to limit my time at the range. So I did everything I could to deflect that idea.
I threw myself into my studies and worked to be the best daughter he could have. I took my gun pictures down and replaced them with token celebrity posters. Henry fell for it, of course. I destroyed my photos of the guns and learned how to hide the real me away.
I put on the façade of a loving, normal, twelve-year-old daughter. Inside, I craved the information I was acquiring about anything gun-related, but I also understood I had to conform. I learned very early on how to hide. If my own father, Henry, St. Cloud’s Chief of Police, didn’t pick up on my overwhelming devotion to the beautiful object known as a gun, I would be able to control myself in any situation.
The construction of my façade began on the day I took those gun pictures down. It was the first time I truly cried about anything. I know now how silly it sounds that taking down pictures of my beautiful Glocks would make me cry, but for me guns were the only things in the world that made sense.
I never cried when Henry told me about Natalia. I never cried through films or songs or funerals or anything else people find sad. I didn’t have a stellar introduction to life. But I made up my mind the day I first touched a pistol that I was going to do everything in my power to feed the love I had for the cold steel masterpieces I held.
Henry saw me devour books, and school was becoming easier and easier. I learned all I could so Henry would reward me with shooting practice. We even made a compromise that if I got straight A’s and did extra-curricular activities that counted toward my education, he’d take me to the shooting range for an entire day on either a Saturday or Sunday. That was all the encouragement I needed.
I threw myself into my schoolwork. By the end of the school year, I’d studied so much and so hard I skipped ahead two grades. The teachers were shocked I had advanced from an average sixth-grade student, to an exceptional scholar who finished middle school in nine months. It was hard, but my thirst for knowledge about guns spurred my advancement in academics.
I wanted Henry to take me to the range and because of my success at school, I was rewarded with weekly trips. The range was my haven. That was where I belonged. Henry was so happy and proud that I had skipped two entire years of school, he increased our trips to the range to twice weekly.
Henry was surprised how he really didn’t need to help me aim at the bulls-eye. I am and always have been a natural. The more I went to the range, the better I got.
From the age of twelve to the age of fourteen, I was unbeatable. There were tournaments, and Dad encouraged me to enter them. He was so proud of me.
His words to me were always the same. “Breathe, Anna, breathe. Let out that breath that’s holding you back and let go.” I lived by his mantra of “breathe”. In the tournaments I entered with Henry’s support, I won. I was soon known as a gifted shooter.
I only saw it as target practice. It wasn’t about who won and lost for me, maybe because I never lost. But to me, it was about hitting that bulls-eye 100% of the time.
May thirteenth – the day of my fifteenth birthday – I came home from school and Henry took me to the range as one of my birthday presents. Everyone knew me there, and everyone knew Henry because he was the Police Chief.
That particular day changed my life.
That was the day I killed the first two on my list. That was the day I knew I wasn’t going to be a police officer. That was the day the lust I had for weapons and shooting became the way of life for me.
That was also the day Henry was killed.
Henry and I were at the range and I was doing my usual target practice. Mike, the owner of the range, had told Henry and me how there were two men here to meet me and to watch me practice.
I really didn’t care; I wasn’t there to impress anyone. I was there because I loved being there. I’d been practicing shooting with both hands and hitting the bulls-eye with one gun in each hand at the same time.
It’s actually a lot harder than it sounds. I’m right-handed, but shooting and hitting the bulls-eye with my left hand had become as natural as with my right. I had worked and worked at it until I’d mastered it. That day I held two G-30s and started with my practice.
Dad had me holster my pistols and told me how two guys, Nox and Damon, wanted to introduce themselves to me. Apparently, they were from some government agency and had heard about a girl who could shoot anything and from any distance. They said they wanted to come out and meet me.
“Hello Anna. My name’s Damon and I just want to watch how you handle those weapons. Is that okay with you?” Damon said as he stuck his hand out so I could shake it.
Henry looked at me with a smirk and nodded for me to take his hand and shake it.
“Sure,” I said as I took Damon’s hand. The moment I touched his hand, I felt it. A cold chill shot up my arm and it felt like a serpent bite. Quick and forceful. It was the most frightening thing I’ve ever experienced. I gasped and looked at Damon.
He knew exactly what I felt. Fear. My stomach knotted, twisted, and turned. That feeling told me he wasn’t who he said he was.
This man was evil. I stole my hand back from him. This man wants to scare me, well guess what? I’m the one with the guns.
Nox must’ve noticed the small exchange with Damon and he stuck his hand out. “Anna, you’re one very interesting young lady. I’ll be watching you practice today, too.” I took Nox’s hand, and felt the same thing I felt with Damon.
These two men were anything but who they said they were.
And they knew I knew.
The look in their eyes told me they were capable of great hurt. Not the kind of hurt you feel when you’re sad, but the deep, soul-shattering hurt you feel very few times in your life.
The one that stops you dead in your tracks and ends everything that’s familiar to you. The one where the hands on the clock stop and you can see every minute detail without actually looking for anything.
These two men knew how to produce pain. I might have been only fifteen that day, but I knew to the depths of my soul these two men were lethal.
I stood tall, pulled my shoulders back and gave them the warning look they deserved. They could certainly watch, and boy, was I going to give them a show. I asked Henry to go in and ask Mike to get me a Diet Coke. This was the only way I knew to get my Dad out of harm’s way.
Henry left and I quickly turned to the two men. “You’re not government. You may have others fooled, but I know you’re not who you say you are,” I spat the words, waiting for an explanation.
Damon turned to Nox and I could see just the smallest hint of a smile on his mouth, so small, that unless you were looking you’d have missed it. Nox gave one small shake of his head. They were having a silent conversation and it appeared I wasn’t invited to the party.
Henry was still inside getting my drink. I’d seen in the fridge on the way in that Mike had run out of Diet Coke, so I knew I had a good five or six minutes before Dad came back out.
I turned to the men, “If you want me to show you what I can do, you need to tell me who you are.”
The silent conversation continued between the two men for another few seconds.
“We’re private contractors,” Damon said. I knew right away what he meant.
That meant they were sizing me up to see if I would make a worthy recruit. Maybe not right then, because let’s face it
, I was only fifteen.
At that point in my life I had a decision to make. If I showed them what I could do, likely I’d be recruited the moment I was old enough. That meant I’d be on someone’s list, to be watched until that day came. If I disappointed them, I would still be on a list, but a different kind of list and for a different reason.
I could see Henry coming back out and knew I needed to make my decision on how to play this. He was soon by my side with a can of Coke.
“Sorry sweetheart, Mike ran out of diet and we looked in both the fridges. So I brought this out for you,” Henry said as he gave me the Coke.
I opened the can and took a drink, never breaking eye contact with Nox and Damon.
“It’s okay Dad, thank you.”
I gave the can to Dad and stood back. I put my mask on. My mask of concentration. I turned around and headed to the edge of the range.
I heard my Dad say, “You’re in for a real treat, gentlemen.” My poor Dad, he had no idea the two men standing there weren’t who they said they are. They were pure evil.
Breathe.
Breathe.
I focused and took my pistols out of the holsters.
There were forty targets scattered around the range. No one else was on the range. I stepped forward and started. From where I stood I put a bullet hole in the bulls-eye of thirty of the targets. I didn’t move from my one spot. Yes, I really am that good.
I reloaded both my babies. I looked over my right shoulder and saw a huge grin on Dad’s face. Damon and Nox were still standing there with their own masks on. I was still staring at the men when I shot the other ten targets. I didn’t even blink. I watched Damon and Nox as I holstered my weapons.
The three men started over toward me, when Damon asked my Dad something. My Dad turned and went to the main office where Mike usually was. Damon and Nox waited until Dad was far enough away and walked toward me, giving them an extra few feet of distance between us and Henry.
The HiT Series Page 1