The narrow mosaic path gave way to an open door and an opulent round room filled with antiques and rare artifacts. The room could have been in Better Homes and Gardens: The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous edition with the amount of gilt and gold used even in the wallpaper. The only hint of the sadistic activities that went on in the space was a series of inconspicuous drains than ran along the floor.
The room was occupied, as the man she sought and his latest victim were just yards away. Jones was apparently in the throes of his lust, hips cocked back for a brutal thrust, and she prayed for her justice to completely end the man’s depraved acts. She couldn’t tell from her vantage point whether the shell of abused human was still alive. The girl made no sound or movement, and Jaden was left to assume the child was dead already.
The disgust rose so quickly that Jaden didn’t even remember her initial attack, but she must have thrown her knife. The carefully weighted steel was no longer in her hand, and she looked up just as the blade went through his neck cleanly. She had severed Jones’s spine, and now the knife was embedded to the hilt.
No sooner than she realized what she had done, Jaden jumped into action and pulled the steel from Jones’s nape. The man was dead already, and she was angry with herself for allowing justice to be so blind as to gift the bastard with a quick passage across the river Styx. Jones never gave the children he abused that same mercy. As soon as the dead man hit the ground, Jaden could see the carnage from his latest frenzy.
The girl was a shadow of golden skin now blotted with bruises and aged scabs. Her arms were decorated with a series of brands, but even with her injuries, the lithe girl screamed and began to struggle within her bonds on the examination table. Jaden wiped her knife off on the dead man’s Egyptian cotton shirt and used the well-blooded blade to cut the rough woven hemp around the bound child’s wrists and ankles.
As soon as the ties were severed, the girl jumped upward and bolted, but Jaden stopped the flight with a quick forearm clothesline smack dab across the girl’s chest. She hated to hurt her, but if the girl kept on, she risked discovery for both of them, which was definitely not part of the plan.
“Shhhhh.”
The girl looked perturbed at being silenced, but Jaden didn’t have time to cosset her momentary charge.
She hadn’t expected to find the latest abductee alive. Her prior experiences with men like Jourdain always culminated with a tiny plot in tired earth to memorialize the death and hold what was left of the remains. She hated the idea that the victims were left to rot ignobly, but it was the only option she had on most of these trips.
Now she actually had a live person to deal with and no plans to accommodate the extra body.
Her escape plan was to crawl out the same way she came in, but the kayak was only capable of holding one person, and even her hips were a tight fit after last week’s excessive consumption of Chunky Monkey. Not good to be an out-of-shape, half-retired assassin, it left her open to retaliatory attack, Jaden thought.
But there was a room with all-terrain vehicles on the schematic, Jaden reminded herself. There was no way the girl could march back to the kayak with the battering she had taken at the hands of Jourdain. The beginnings of a plan came to mind, and she felt more comfortable with the backup idea.
One stolen ATV later, she made her way back to the bushes outside the property for her hidden charge. She would help the girl with no name, and if Jaden had her way she wouldn’t find it out either. A name lent a sense of friendship, a camaraderie that was best left to normal people. Her life didn’t allow for true friendships, not if she wanted to live to a ripe age. She’d like to see forty-five at least. That was a good age to die if need be.
Jaden ended up using the kayak anyway. But this time she had to get really wet. The girl wasn’t capable of paddling the watercraft, so Jaden sat her inside of the single seat and placed her gun and ammo into a Ziploc bag, both left in the girl’s lap for the ride. The rest of the two-mile trip was made with Jaden swimming behind the boat, and the girl was left to steer the craft with the paddle. The going was slow, but given the care she had taken to conceal herself and her mission, they had the time to spare.
When they made land, Jaden pulled the plug she’d built into the base of the kayak and filled the body of her vessel with several cinder blocks. Watching the craft sink was painful but necessary to make sure that she covered her tracks. She refused to be caught or associated with the carnage in any way come morning. Once their getaway was sure to be a clean one, Jaden carried the naked girl to her car, and the drive homeward bound was made in silence.
Now that she was certain that the girl was going to live, and they were halfway to freedom, Jaden took stock of the child next to her. She wasn’t Jourdain’s usual type, as the girl was more a dirty blonde than the usual darker tones the man had preferred. She was taller than the norm also, at about five seven. The height was deceptive, as the girl was underfed. So she appeared much more frail and shorter for the lack of spare flesh.
But with her vibrant-green eyes and delicate features, save the extremely full mouth, she was gorgeous. The girl was a beauty. That was plain to see, despite the wounds dotting her skin nearly from head to toe. It was easy to see why Jourdain had taken her in the first place.
Jaden had no idea what she was going to do with a fresh young woman who carried the pain of abuse. But this girl had to go. And Jaden didn’t care where, as long as she was out of her face by the morning. She knew the thoughts were uncharitable, but the reminder was enough to make her even madder. This was not her problem, nor was it going to be either.
Jaden had enough blood on her hands that if she had ever let guilt get in the way, she would never sleep.
“What’s your name?” the girl asked, and Jaden was reluctant to answer.
But she would give the child this much. “Jaden.” It wasn’t like it was her real name anyway, just the one she preferred. The first nom de plume, per se, that she had chosen for herself. The only difference was that she wrote allegories of death and not for mere entertainment.
“My name is…” Jaden put her hand in the air and used a zipping motion across her lips.
“Stop right there. Your name doesn’t matter. I am about to take you to the police. You can call your family if you want first.” Jaden picked up her burn phone, a simple flip device, from the center console and offered it to the girl.
“I don’t have any family.” The girl seemed to wilt visibly when she made the admission.
“Everybody has family.” Even me, if I cared to look up my aunts and uncles.
“Not me. That’s how he got me in the first place. I have been on the street for three months now, and I can take care of myself.”
Damn it! I am not going to feel guilty or responsible for this girl.
“Seems like you did a shitty job of it, seeing how we met and all.” Jaden knew she was being too sharp when she said it, but the cheeky child needed a reminder of how helpless she truly was.
The woman-child lacked enough meat on her bones to even put up a good fight, and the only saving grace was the lack of track marks on her body. Given how clean the girl’s mouth was, she wasn’t smoking anything either. It was more than most people had to make their fresh starts with.
But she did feel responsible somehow. Jaden knew well the feeling of being alone in the world and no one else caring if there was a meal or not. A bed or not. Love or not.
“I don’t want to go to the police. Just leave me here please.” Jaden stopped the car on the side of the road and looked out the window. They were on I-40, and there was nothing for miles in either direction. What was this scrappy child going to do? The girl was naked and wounded to boot. Would she Dumpster dive and get hooked on drugs to hide the pain of what her life had become? The same woman Jaden could have been if not for her Rōnin master? This girl had spirit and deserved the same chances that everyone in the world had for a fresh start.
“So where are you going to go th
en?” Jaden knew that she had just broken the number one rule of her life. Don’t get emotional or personally involved. And the tenuous attachment with this girl certainly had already done that in spades.
“It doesn’t matter where I go.” But somehow, now it did. Jaden found that she actually cared. That was the very reason she avoided these situations like the plague.
A scant hour later, Jaden had the girl ensconced in her apartment. It was a downtown loft over an empty store front that she also owned, but she could never decide on a business to fill the lower space with. So the empty front remained a shell of building with just cardboard over the windows to keep out prying eyes. She still didn’t know the young woman’s name, but that would have to be hashed out later.
A trip to a major chain department store gave her someplace to put together a bundle of clothes and toiletries for her new roommate. All of the garments seemed too big or too short, but Jaden would at least get something for the girl to cover herself with. She had no idea what to offer the girl to banish some of the sadness in her eyes, but she did remember the joy of making cupcakes with her mother as a child. So Jaden grabbed a few boxes of cake mix and frosting to bring back as well.
On the way back she made a phone call to the one person she trusted to check over the girl and not report her to the authorities. She wasn’t physically in need of emergency medical attention enough to warrant a trip to the hospital, but it was best not to leave anything to chance.
As the weeks progressed, habits formed and her friend had a name. Krisliva, which was a hybrid of her real name of Kristine Oliver meshed together. Kris was smart and strong willed. Jaden was able to prop together a set of documents that were good enough to fool the government so Kris could complete her GED and place her one step closer to the fresh start that was well deserved.
They mostly began baking due to the fact that Kris was laid up healing from the scabbing brands and scrapes. Kris was vain enough that she didn’t want another person to look at her while she was at her worst. But they continued because it was fun and solidified a bond that both of them sorely needed. The cupcakes they made at first were from the box until adventure struck and they began baking scratch-made ones while watching Food Network at two a.m. The flavors grew out of control, as did the experiments with taste and scent.
Jaden’s personal favorite was rum cake with buttered wasabi frosting. Kris, however, loved carrot-cinnamon topped with granola and Greek yogurt.
Chapter One:
Nowhere to Hide
Present Day, Somewhere in Jamaica
“You know we’re running out of time here right?” Toro asked the single question that Jonah didn’t want to acknowledge. He could make this happen. He had to.
“You let me worry about that. I’m close, I can almost taste it.” If Jonah could just get his mind on track and put the puzzle that was her together, that was.
“You said that yesterday and the week before that. Oh actually, you said that last month, too. We can send Anatta to the auction. She would get the job done, and Stein is capable of reining her in with a little work.” Toro smiled. The expression was unusually smug, as if Toro had discovered the cure for world hunger with his unorthodox solution.
“I’d rather not trust half my covert operation to our resident Ms. Planters, but you are more than welcome to do so next time.”
“Hell. No. I like having a left and right nut, Jonah.”
“Well then, stop trying to make me work with her. You vetted her, Toro, and even with what you knew, chose to bring her anyway. That makes you responsible for her.”
“She makes the best weapons in the world. It seems like you could accept a little crazy with her résumé.” Toro shook his head from side to side, and Jonah felt his annoyance factor ratchet sky-high. There was no way he was going to let Toro be right. He was going to find her and prove everyone wrong. “Fine, but if we’re not ready for the auction, it’s your fault.”
Jonah pinched the bridge of his nose. “Toro…” His voice trailed off as he tried to hold on to the last shred of patience he had at his disposal. “Just get the fuck out of my office. Please.” The last word was an attempt to be polite, even though that was far from how Jonah felt in the moment.
But Toro left as requested, and Jonah hunched back over the keyboards to his left and right as if the multicomputer held every answer to life’s invariable questions. For him it did.
Hours later, he looked up and saw it was nearly the end of the ninety-seventh day of his search. Yet another day to add to his tally, and another point against him in the chess match he had with a woman that didn’t know he even existed. The main compound where the Human International Trafficking Unit, also known as HIT U, called home was quiet at this time of night.
This was his preferred time to work, as he didn’t have thirty things to concentrate on or the melee of questions he fielded from the operatives on a daily basis. Sebastian Jonah Whitmore stretched in the supposedly ergonomic leather chair in front of his desk. His back was killing him, and he had the makings of a monster headache.
He had been at his computer twelve hours a day for the last three months in an attempt to ferret information out of his hard drive and the World Wide Web. He was sick and tired of clicking away at the damn thing as if it would give him the answers to life. The worst part was his only real clue was a photo taken from a security camera at Pietr Jourdain’s vacation manse.
Not only was the photo years old and she may not look the same, but she was covered head to toe in black. Armed only with the picture, he had nothing to go on but height and approximate weight.
He sought one of the deadliest women on Earth. That was, if half of the work that was attributed to her was honestly hers. And no matter what he did or what rock he looked beneath, she was more elusive than ever.
The longer he was forced to look, the more his admiration for her grew. He was a master hacker, and he still had more questions than answers about her, although he just now figured out who she was. She would be perfect for his plan. But based on how hard he had to work to find her, either he was looking for a ghost or she didn’t want to be found. He couldn’t blame her, as she had assassinated some big fish in her day, and there would be many people seeking their righteous pound of flesh from her hide.
After weeks of frustration, he saw her carefully concealed identity begin to unfold. But in order to find her, he had to backtrack the last ten years and find the jobs attributed to her. She would have had to enter and leave the country the target was in at some point during the operation. No matter how good she was, killing someone from another country was nearly impossible.
Until he found himself on the right track when he combed the airport security cameras for a week before and after the handful of jobs he was sure she actually performed were complete.
First, he discovered that she used a fake passport on entrance to the USA, as he wasn’t able to find anything resembling her using the name she checked in with at her prior connections. He found a grainy photo from an airport security camera at ILM. She would have been coming back stateside from a job in the Ukraine, and he knew he had hit pay dirt. She left using the arrivals gate, and she didn’t fly back out for several months. So he knew she had a home based within the area for certain, but it gave him a start, as there were only a handful of passengers on the flight from Miami that continued to Wilmington.
After eliminating the other travelers as his quarry, he saw she was slick enough to register a different name for the last connection. She made it appear as if her debarking alias was a local that had gotten off at her destination even while she checked back in and flew homeward under yet another assumed name. But with a bit of fact-checking, he found the real Susan Jennings who lived at 145 Sycamore Lane was nowhere near similar in appearance to the identity of the woman who flew into Miami. The actual Susan was a five-foot-ten-inch bottle blonde, and his prey was just over five feet and Afro-American to boot.
But he was able to use
profiling software based on the passport photo to unearth a driver’s license issued in North Carolina, and then he had her. The photos he found confirmed not only that she was the woman he sought, but that she was far from photogenic. But the last part had no bearing on what he needed her for.
Even better, he next found tax records and zoning permits under the same owner. She was a small business proprietor for a bakery in a city along the North Carolina coast. After that point it was a cakewalk to dig up what he needed to know. He had finally tracked down one of the most feared women in the world. And after a peek at the time, it had only taken him ninety-eight days and thirty-two minutes. Jonah sent a message to Toro in part to gloat and asked him to come to his office. He had a flight to catch, and he needed Toro to get Dayna and Johannes on board as well.
Toro cracked open the door. “So you found her?”
“Yeah.” It was all he needed to say.
“So am I doing the usual bag and tag?”
“Not this time.” Toro cocked a brow, and Jonah could see the questions ready to fall from the other man’s lips. “I will go and retrieve her.” Toro had the right to look shocked. It was usually the other man’s job to go and proposition future agents.
But this time, he wanted to be the one to meet her in the flesh. Jaden Bishop was one of the smartest women alive. The fact that he hunted her for three months and one week nonstop had his interest piqued. He had to find out if she was as smart as he thought she was, or if she was just that lucky.
He knew one thing for sure. She was the one that botched the Jourdain job all of those years ago for his team’s recon. If nothing else, Jonah knew that simple fact was leverage he could utilize to his advantage. That was if, Jaden wasn’t jaded from years of for-hire murders and stealthy assassinations.
* * * *
Jaden watched as Krisliva walked to the front door of the bakery with a backpack slung over one shoulder headed for the college campus.
The Laughing Assassin [Assassin's Diary] (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 2