She came back almost an hour later, still alone.
She left once more for what must have been a short errand of some sort, then had left just ten minutes ago.
Jean was stunned. What was happening?
Was Sam still alive in there?
And what part had Sam played in whatever Mary Jo and her husband were up to?
She didn’t dare go in there to look for him. All she could do at the moment was wait. Whatever was happening wasn’t her doing.
She shut down her security panel, but not before extracting a pistol from a box inside the open wall. She made sure the clip was full and took a second clip.
Until she figured out exactly what was happening, she was going to stay armed.
And she was going to watch Mary Jo’s house.
CHAPTER NINE
MARY JO WALKED from the mall to her stolen brown Ford sedan not drawing any attention to herself, climbed into the brown sedan and ten minutes later had it parked on the top of a pine-tree covered hill just to the right of town.
She had turned the car around so she could go straight down the hill she had just come up and be lost in the streets below in thirty seconds, long before anyone below even knew what hit them.
She left the car running and left the disguise bag in the car. She then took her rifle and made sure it was loaded.
It was actually a deer rifle, a classic bolt-action Roberts with a scope. The rifle was a collector’s item that she remembered back sixty years ago really liking for a job similar to this one. The thief who had given her this rifle had assured her it was accurate and had been tested.
She tested it on him and he had been right, actually. The thief was still one of her husband’s unsolved cases.
She moved to the small stone wall that kept tourists on this hill from tumbling over the edge of a fairly steep cliff down into an old stone quarry below. This small turn-around often held teens out parking for some first love experiences in a parent’s car.
She was so old now, she could barely remember her first sexual experiences. They had not been pleasant, she remembered that much.
That’s why she enjoyed the modern pleasant experiences now. Just like she enjoyed her drinks. When good, they were both worth savoring.
The rock quarry two hundred feet below was abandoned and mostly a playground for neighborhood kids after school and in the summer.
The body of good old Sam lay below her, right where she had dumped it. Someone had covered it.
Killing never did anything for her, one way or the other, and poor old Sam was just bait for her husband who was the real target.
She checked the area in the small clearing around her to make sure no one was nearby that she would also need to kill.
Thankfully it was clear.
Her husband stood with two detectives in a tight group near the body, talking.
Good, she would take care of all three at the same time. First her husband, who was her target, the one she was getting paid to kill. She had slept with her target for fourteen months. She thought of it like a cat playing with a mouse.
She studied the scene quickly one more time. By taking out the other two detectives, it would slow down any investigation.
“Goodbye, dear,” she said softly. “This is what you get for pissing off the wrong people who have far too much money.”
The rifle was loud, but had almost no kick.
The echo of her first shot bounced around through the trees and over the surrounding farmlands and down against the rock walls.
Her husband went to the ground instantly.
She knew the entry wound would be small in his chest, but most of his back would be blown away from the high-velocity rifle as the hollow point bullet expanded on impact and blew him apart.
She quickly took out her husband’s best friend with a second shot before anyone even thought to move for cover.
She killed the third detective as he turned to run.
She picked up the three shell casings, made sure she had left nothing else where she had fired, brushed around the dirt to kill any shoe prints, then put the gun back in the case open on the back seat of the car and headed down the road.
She turned away from the police and then worked her way slowly back toward the mall.
She parked the Ford sedan next to her Jeep again. Then she transferred the disguise bag and everything into her car and put the rifle back under the back seats.
She climbed into her Jeep and turned on a high-tech scanner she had in her purse that told her if any camera was watching at all.
Nothing, as she had known for this area of the large mall parking lot.
She quickly pulled off her disguise and tossed them into the bag, zipping it up and putting it on the floor behind her driver’s seat.
Then she took off the thin, transparent gloves she had been wearing that were embedded with fake fingerprints and stuck those in the pocket of her jeans.
She hit almost no traffic on the short drive home.
That was nice. Her job was done now.
All she had to do was make sure nothing came back toward her and get paid before moving on and vanishing into the next job.
CHAPTER TEN
JEAN WATCHED AS Mary Jo pulled into her garage and the door slid shut. She had been gone for just over forty minutes.
What was she up to? Where was Sam?
Jean really, really wanted to just go bang on the door and ask what had happened to Sam, but that would blow her cover completely.
But honestly, she wasn’t sure that her cover wasn’t already blown. She needed to be prepared for that possibility.
She quickly went out to her garage and clicked open yet another secret panel behind some boxes she stored there. Sam had been handy with tools, but he had no idea how good she was as well, and she never let on that she was a master carpenter who could build just about anything she needed.
In the panel was what she called her “go bag” meaning guns, clothes, an extra pair of shoes, fake passports and drivers’ licenses, and some rolls of cash.
She also had two different full face and hair disguises in the bag.
If she needed to go, there was a way she could go under the hot tub, through an opening in the deck siding and through their fence and into the neighbor’s back yard.
She kept an SUV gassed and stored in a self-storage place five blocks away.
She closed up the panel and put her go bag near her back door where she could get it on a run, then went back into the living room and sat, watching Mary Jo’s house.
She had often sat in the same chair, watching for her target, Chief Hanson, to get home. She knew their routines as well as her own. He should be home by now, but clearly he hadn’t come in yet.
A few moments later the garage door on Mary Jo’s garage opened again and she backed out. The windows on Mary Jo’s Jeep were tinted, so no way Jean could tell what she had.
And still no way that Jean could try to go into that house to investigate what happened to Sam.
She watched Mary Jo drive away, then stood and went into her kitchen to make a quick sandwich and grab a bottle of a sports drink.
This was going to be a long night.
A very long night.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BACK AT HOME after her run to the rock quarry, Mary Jo put back on the fake fingerprint gloves and pulled out two more black garbage bags full of weekly trash from the kitchen, including a bunch of stuff she had tossed out of the fridge after wiping prints and putting the fake prints on the stuff.
She got the rifle from the car and broke it down and put parts in three bags, wearing her fake fingerprint gloves as she did.
Then she took parts of her costume and spread them through the garbage as well. And she made sure that there was nothing in the bags that would lead to her in this home in any fashion.
Next, she headed back to the landfill, made some mention to the man taking her money that it was her second trip because she
was cleaning house. He didn’t care. He was about to close up for the night.
She tossed the three bags over the edge and into the stinking mess of the landfill.
A moment later the large grader covered all three with a layer of dirt.
She could feel the slight relief and excitement course through her.
A job finished.
Her tracks completely covered.
Nothing could lead anyone back to her for the deaths today.
So Mary Jo headed home once again.
She had played the happy wife for the last year, now she had a new part to play for a while.
She had to play the part of the grieving widow.
Sam’s wife would be grieving as well tonight.
CHAPTER TWELVE
AFTER MARY JO came back once again, Jean went to the panel in her closet and pulled out a police scanner. If Sam miraculously showed up, she would explain where it had come from, if she couldn’t hide it in time.
Or she would just kill him and abort this job. Something clearly had happened and she had no idea what.
She was shocked when she turned on the police scanner. It was going crazy.
It took her a few minutes to piece it all together, but it seemed that while responding to the report of a body in the rock quarry (more than likely Sam’s) just outside of town, Chief Hanson had been killed along with two other detectives by sniper fire.
No suspects at all.
“Well I’ll be a bitch’s bastard,” Jean said, standing and pacing in the living room.
She knew exactly what had happened. The bastard who had hired her to kill Chief Hanson had hired another assassin as well.
And the other assassin had used poor Sam as bait to get Chief Hansen into a dead zone at the bottom of a rock quarry for an easy kill.
And that other assassin was none other than Mary Jo, the chief’s wife.
Jean had married or slept with her target many times over the centuries. It was a very easy way to get close enough to the target to know how to deal with finding an easy way to kill the target and not have any evidence lead to you.
And sometimes it was actually fun.
Jean stared down the quiet suburban street at Mary Jo’s house. Jean was sure that Mary Jo had no idea that she had just killed the husband of another assassin. Jean wouldn’t hold that against Mary Jo, but it was something just not done.
In fact, assassins never worked together. Or as far as Jean knew they didn’t.
And they were never hired for the same job and never sent to compete. Jean had no doubt that the bastard who had hired the both of them was going to pay and pay large.
But now Jean had to figure out if she was going to let Mary Jo know she was part of the same ancient order of assassins. Over the centuries, Jean had met fewer than twenty of the other assassins. All of them had been women like her, most were small, like her and Mary Jo.
And all looked like they could never hurt a flea.
Jean had no idea if there were male assassins with the order. She had never asked. In fact, the last time she communicated with anyone directly in the organization had been long before the First World War. The assassins were just independent contractors, living and working on their own terms and in their own ways. Killing when the money was good enough, but never just for sport.
The bastard that had hired them both was going to pay. But the question now was should Jean contact Mary Jo or just let events play out?
At the moment, she needed to just let events play out. She had no other choice. She had to play the surprised and suddenly grieving widow.
And she had to play it perfectly.
She wasn’t worried. It was a part she had played many, many times over the centuries.
PART THREE
Complication
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JEAN HAD BEEN suspicious of the hug from the young woman cop from the instant it happened. It had gone on far too long.
Not that Jean minded being hugged by a woman. In fact, she liked a lot more from women than just hugs. But the cop’s hug had been inappropriate and bumbling. Like a high school boy on his first date.
Even with the two cops giving her the news that her husband had been killed, that hug had been wrong.
Jean had played out the scene perfectly, pretending to melt into a pile and then slowly recovering when told her about her husband.
As the cops left, that was when the woman cop had hugged her.
So Jean watched the two cops go down the street to give the same news to Mary Jo. When they entered Mary Jo’s home, Jean quickly went to her closet and got out a scanner.
The bitch had planted an audio scanner in her collar. The scanner was powerful and tiny.
Very tiny. But not top of the line by any means.
Amateur.
The rest of the house was clear.
Jean quickly went to the garage and flicked a hidden switch there. A small screen appeared and she knew instantly that there were no scans or cameras around her house or in the general neighborhood.
Jean left the bug in place in her collar and went back to the living room to watch until the two cops left Mary Jo’s house. Someone was clearly trying to double-cross her and more than likely Mary Jo.
To play into the script that whoever was listening would expect, she broke into sobs and tears a few times. She really didn’t feel bad for losing poor old Sam. He had been a nice guy. Not much more.
So what was an amateur doing planting a bug on her? And how did the young cop even know about her?
More than likely the young cop thought of herself as a killer and had been told, more than likely by the client, that Jean and Mary Jo needed to be eliminated.
How the client had gotten that information was the problem that also needed to be solved.
The young cop was an amateur, clearly not from the order.
Jean quickly scribbled some notes on a yellow legal pad after the two cops drove away, then headed out the front door.
It seemed the question of when or if she should tell Mary Jo she had also been hired for this target had been answered.
Now was the time.
She couldn’t believe Mary Jo wouldn’t have spotted the bug, but better safe than sorry.
And one of them would need to deal with the problem.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MARY JO WAS watching television when the expected two uniformed cops came to her door.
One was a woman cop who seemed to be almost in tears.
They told Mary Jo the news and she broke down as the two cops expected her to do.
They asked Mary Jo if there was anything they could do and Mary Jo told them she had a sister who would come over and stay with her. She didn’t, but the two cops bought it.
Then the woman cop hugged her harder and longer than was necessary and gave Mary Jo her card for anything she needed.
Mary Jo wondered if her good old husband had been getting a little of that on the side. He didn’t seem to be the type. But that had sure been a strange hug.
Mary Jo was about to go fix herself that long-overdue second Screwdriver after the two officers left when her alarm bells went off.
Instead, she went to her bedroom, all the while pretending to be distraught.
She quickly used a scanner she kept hidden in the back of her dresser drawer to check for audio and visual bugs in the house or surrounding neighborhood.
The woman officer had planted one all right, under the back collar of her blouse.
Audio only.
Not high grade.
There were no other bugs in the house or around the house or neighborhood.
No young rookie cop would do that, especially so quickly after the entire department was tossed into panic mode. Besides, there was no reason to suspect Mary Jo.
That girl worked for someone outside the department. More than likely the same idiot who had paid Mary Jo to kill her husband and would pay a second half as soon as she reported in to h
im.
And the stupid woman was a rookie at the job. Not a member of the order, that was for sure.
Mary Jo shook her head.
How the bastard had known it was her was a question she would deal with later.
For now the bastard who had hired her would pay a far higher sum. You didn’t try to double-cross Mary Jo. Not ever. The idiot who had hired her had no idea the order of assassins even existed.
So he thought Mary Jo would be easy to get rid of.
Keeping up the act of a distraught wife for the bug, she put on thin, clear gloves and took from what looked like a perfume bottle a small drop of fluid on a pad. She carefully wrapped the pad in a tiny bag and stuck it in her pocket. It was an odorless, untraceable poison that would kill anyone who touched it within five minutes.
She took off the glove and put it in her pocket as well.
She was about to call the young officer when there was a knock at her door.
She glanced at the security feed to see the face of Sam’s recently widowed wife.
She was a beautiful woman. Wow, just stunning.
But what the hell was she doing here at this point in time?
Mary Jo, making sure her tears were in place on her face, opened up the door.
The woman facing her was about Mary Jo’s size and so beautiful it took Mary Jo’s breath away. The woman had deep green eyes that seemed to see everything and a body that under other circumstances, Mary Jo wouldn’t have minded spending time exploring.
A lot of time, actually.
It took Mary Jo a moment to say to the woman, who was also crying, “I’m sorry, this is a bad time.”
The woman nodded. “I know. I just want to say how sorry I am for your loss.”
At that moment, the woman standing in the door put up a finger to her lips for Mary Jo to say nothing more, then held up a yellow legal pad against her chest for only Mary Jo to see.
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