Killer Assignment

by Black, Maggie K.

  Her voice was gentle, but still something about the comment stuck under his skin like a thorn. None of this had anything to do with love. It was about responsibility. It was about doing what needed to be done.

  He ran his hand over the back of his neck. But he’d been foolish. He’d let himself care about her in a way he had no right caring about anyone, and in the process, he had led her on. Now her feelings were hurt. Well, he had delivered her safely to where she needed to be. Now it was time to move on.

  “I’m sorry for hurting you, but I did what I thought was best.” He walked to the sliding glass doors and slid them open. “I apologize for kissing you. That was foolish. I think it’s best I leave now before the media circus begins. If you want to get in touch, you can send me a message via Nick. Just know it may be weeks before I’m able to respond. I’m actually leaving the country the day after tomorrow and will be gone for months.”

  He stepped out onto the balcony and scanned the courtyard below. A spiral staircase led down to the courtyard to where a large, white marquee tent was spread across the lawn. The space was deserted now, except for a lone gardener in a battered cowboy hat who was clipping the last of the dead flowers off the bushes. A pickup truck was parked nearby. Could he risk asking the man for a ride out of the complex? “I’d better get out of here before anyone else recognizes me. The last thing I want is for the projects we’re helping to suffer because other people can’t handle where I come from.”

  She crossed the room in three steps. Her hand slid onto his arm. “Are you sure it’s other people who can’t handle where you come from?”

  He gripped the railing with both hands. “I’ve got to go. I’m going to hitchhike to Kapuskasing. If anyone asks, you can just tell them I walked off.”

  “Well, then I guess this is goodbye.” She let go of his arm and stepped back. “Thank you for everything.”

  He shut his eyes tightly. He couldn’t risk looking back. “Stay safe.”

  “You, too.”

  He sprinted down the staircase.

  * * *

  She clenched her fists so tightly her nails pressed into her palms and watched as he ran across the lawn. He didn’t even notice the gardener tilt up the brim of his hat and call out to him as he passed.

  How dare he? Yes, his family history was messy and complex. And she could hardly blame him for not wanting to stick around for a day’s worth of events. But that didn’t justify hiding the truth from her. Or running away.

  Was she ever going to see him again?

  No, she couldn’t let herself think about that right now. She was still here to do a job—like it or not. She needed to be professional. She walked back into the living room and opened the laptop. It connected to the internet immediately. Idly, she opened her email. The first message was from her editor.

  Katie

  Breaking news. Big scoop. I expect you to get on this immediately.

  Ethan

  She clicked the attachment. Her heart stopped in her chest as a grainy picture of Mark loading his truck outside Celia’s farmhouse filled the screen, under this headline: Busted. Son of Real Estate Mogul, Jonah Junior, Runs Secret Charity.

  His identity had been blown wide-open and in the worst possible way. Almost every gossip news site had the story and photo—including Impact News.

  How had this happened? Well, she could guess. Billy had taken their pictures at the farmhouse. Then, sometime after ambushing them on the road, they’d gone through Mark’s belongings and realized who he was. He was sure to carry a government-issued ID with both his old and new name on it. But to sell that information to the tabloids? Why? Were her kidnappers media-savvy opportunists? Or was there something more insidious in play?

  One thing was clear. Whoever had been after her knew who he was. They probably also knew where to find him. She slammed the laptop closed. She needed to warn him that his identity had been blown, especially if there was even a chance that it put his life in danger.

  She ran down the stairs into the courtyard and sprinted across the lawn toward the elderly gardener. “Hey! I need your help!”

  He stood slowly, wiping his hands on dirty, tattered jeans. She caught a glimpse of a wrinkled, sun-scorched face framed by a trim white beard.

  “My friend just came through here.” She gasped for breath. “He was walking to the highway. Did you see where he went?”

  “Is everything all right?” Fierce blue eyes looked into hers.

  “No. I need to catch up with him. It’s important. Please. Can you help me?”

  He nodded. “We’ll take my truck. He’ll have taken the main road. It won’t take long to catch up with him.”

  “Thank you.”

  * * *

  The pickup was large and the color of dying embers, with the kind of wide base that implied it was used to carrying heavy loads. They drove through the main gates and out onto a rural road. Moments later, they reached the highway. The gardener paused for a moment. “He’s heading toward Kapuskasing?”

  “Yup.”

  He turned left.

  “Do you live in the complex?” she asked.

  “I used to. Now I live in a cottage I built, just outside it. It’s very simple and quite small. But it’s all I really need.”

  They crested a hill, and she could see the unmistakable outline of Mark in the distance. Thank you, God. “That’s him.”

  A low, black car pulled to a stop beside him. Mark exchanged a few words with the driver. Then he climbed in the passenger door. The gardener honked his horn and flashed his lights. Katie waved out the window. The car took off. She sighed. Now what?

  “Don’t worry.” The gardener accelerated. “There’s an intersection about fifteen minutes away. I’ll pull up beside him then.”

  “Thanks. I’m just really sorry to take you away from your work.”

  His smile was dry. “Oh, the gardening? It’s really just a hobby—”

  His voice was lost in the blare of a car horn and the screeching of wheels. The car ahead of them swerved hard, weaving back and forth. Mark must have been fighting the driver for control of the wheel. A gunshot split the air. The car’s passenger window exploded in a cascade of glass.

  THIRTEEN

  The car straightened and sped away.

  Color drained from the gardener’s face. “He’s in trouble.”

  “Yeah. It’s—”

  “Hang on. I’m going to force them over.” He gunned the engine.

  Within minutes, the larger, stronger vehicle had caught up with the smaller one and pulled alongside it. She started to roll down the window and then stopped. The young man driving was the same one who had threatened her at the mini-golf course. She couldn’t even see Mark.

  The truck edged ahead of the car. They pulled in front of it, blocked its path and then began to gradually slow. Any luck and they could just carefully slow down until the car was forced to stop.

  But instead, the car turned sharply, trying to U-turn around them. The driver lost control. The car flew off the road. It hit the ditch and rolled twice before landing upside down. The gardener hit the brakes and grabbed his phone. Katie leaped out and ran toward the wreck.

  Mark was crawling out the shattered passenger window.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Thanks to you. This guy offered me a ride and then pulled a gun on me. I tried to force him over. But then he shot out my window. Last thing I wanted was for him to try to keep shooting in a speeding car.” He straightened slowly, brushing off broken glass. “How did you know I was in trouble?”

  “I didn’t. Your picture is all over the internet. It looks like whoever wanted to kidnap me used the information they stole to expose you online. But I don’t know why—”

  The teenager crawled out of the ca
r, a gun shaking unsteadily in his hand. But before they could react, there was the metallic sound of a shotgun cocking behind them.

  “Drop the gun, and keep your hands where we can see them.” It was a voice of authority. She turned. There was a pump action shotgun in the gardener’s steady hands. “You okay, son?” The cowboy hat had slipped down his back. For the first time, she looked past the well-worn jeans and mud-stained boots and straight into the fierce, weathered face of the man she’d met in the garden. Her hand rose to her chest.

  It was Jonah Shields.

  * * *

  The porch swing creaked gently. Mark looked out over the lush small garden that spilled out behind his father’s simple log cabin. His. Father’s. Log. Cabin. Now there were four words he never expected to go together. He risked a glance at the woman sitting beside him. He knew he should say something. But words failed him. For the moment, he was just thankful she was there.

  “Last time I saw my father he was living in a six-bedroom house.” It almost felt like an odd thing to comment on, considering the plethora of police and Shields’s staff currently swarming the cabin behind them. His father’s house was so full of uniforms; it was standing room only. Local police had even invited officers from Cobalt to consult.

  Both cops and Shields’s security had arrived in droves within minutes of the car flipping, which probably meant his father had called them from the truck. Yeah, his father now drove a pickup. Add that to everything else going on that required answers.

  True, he had long stopped listening to his father’s voice messages. But he’d expected them to still be filled with the reminder that he was disappointed and angry—not the news he was firing his chauffeur, moving out of the Shields complex and dramatically rearranging his priorities.

  “He told me he built his place,” Katie said.

  “Well, he did get his start building houses.” Not that he’d ever expected his dad to pick up a hammer again.

  Katie leaned her head on Mark’s shoulder and, while he guessed it was more out of exhaustion than anything else, there was something about the simple gesture that sent waves of relief coursing through him. When security had escorted them to his father’s cottage, he’d half expected her to still be frustrated with him. And maybe she was. But when he’d suggested they pop outside for a chance to talk in private, she’d just slipped onto the porch swing beside him and waited for him to start—for which he was grateful.

  The back of her hand brushed against his. “We need answers,” she said, “and I’m tired of not getting them.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I didn’t know that was your dad, by the way. He was just tending the bushes, and I asked him to help me catch up to you.”

  He’d run by his father without even noticing him. “So now, the whole world knows that Mark Armor, charity engineer, started his life as Jonah Shields Junior.”

  “Just those who read gossip.”

  He smiled slightly, despite himself. “But that still doesn’t explain why I can’t get two steps outside Shields Corp without having a total stranger pull a gun on me. Don’t get me wrong. Being recognized as my father’s son is never all that easy. But it’s awkward—not deadly. Not to mention that we still don’t know why someone was after you.” He glanced back toward the cabin. “They’ll probably be ratcheting up tonight’s security so high you’ll practically need a retina scan to reach the punch bowl. You said you’d seen the guy who tried kidnapping me before?”

  “At the gas station yesterday,” she said. “You hit him with the helmet. I know Billy had a Langtry Glen bandanna, but I just can’t imagine any of the residents holding enough of a grudge that they’d chase me across northern Ontario. But if this whole thing was just about someone trying to crash today’s event, does that mean by tomorrow it’s all going to be over, and we can both go back to life as usual?”

  Whatever usual was going to look like now.

  “I wish I knew.” He glanced up at the sky and pictured his workshop. It would be so much easier if he could just tackle this like a piece of broken equipment. Lay it all out on the table, take it apart, examine and test each component until he’d isolated what had gone wrong and why. The trick was to start by ruling out possibilities and work backward from there.

  “Okay, let’s begin with what we already know,” he said. “We know they targeted you before you’d even met me.”

  “But it’s still got to be linked to this assignment somehow,” she said. “Otherwise, why hadn’t anyone tried to kidnap me before I took the train here? Besides, there’s nothing valuable or special about me—”

  “No, you’re amazing.” He leaned the top of his head against hers for a moment and just breathed her in. “And I’m glad that you’re here with me.”

  There was a sudden outburst of shouting from inside the cabin. The door flew open, and his sister stormed out. Sunny was dressed to kill in a slick white business suit and string of black pearls. Her steel-gray stilettos clacked on the wood. Her eyes flashed.

  “Did you know that you’ve got a fifty thousand dollar bounty on your head?”

  “What?” he said. “No!”

  Sunny’s lids narrowed. “Not you.” She pointed a long, French-tipped finger at Katie. “Her!”

  Mark leaped off the porch swing. Sunny stepped into her big brother’s chest.

  “What’s going on here?” she demanded. “I don’t see you in three years, and then suddenly you show up, out of the blue, with a wanted woman who every two-bit criminal in miles is likely to be chasing after. Do you even know who she is or what kind of game she’s running?”

  “I am exactly who I say I am.” Katie rose to her feet. “I was invited up here by your company to cover this weekend’s events—which I’m sure you already know.”

  “This is between me and my brother. I’ll thank you to stay out of it.”

  “No.” Katie’s arms crossed in front of her chest. “With all due respect, it isn’t. I realize there’s a lot going on right now, and you’re probably really stressed. But my life is in danger, and trying to sideline me isn’t going to help anybody.”

  Mark felt a surge of pride. Sunny’s mouth gaped. For a second, her hand raised as if to...what? Fire her? Suspend her? Have her removed from the premises? If the whole thing wasn’t so deadly serious, he’d have almost been tempted to laugh. He couldn’t imagine people tried standing up to his sister all that often. But Sunny just sucked in a hard breath, turned on her heels and marched back into the cottage.

  Mark’s arm slid around Katie’s shoulder. “Chances are you’re the first person to shut her down in years.”

  She glanced at him sideways. “Just don’t you start sidelining me again, either.”

  The door swung open again, and three cops walked out: Officers Parks and Sakes, who’d been brought up from Cobalt, as well as the shaggy-haired Kapuskasing veteran, who was Officer Ward. Detective Brant, who’d come up all the way from Sudbury that morning to lead the investigation, followed them. The tall woman with long red hair and determined features had the build of an Olympic athlete and a clear, no-nonsense way of asking questions. At least no one could say the police weren’t taking it seriously.

  Mark turned to Brant. “Is it true? Has someone actually put a price on Katie’s head?”

  “Yes, it appears so.” She turned to Katie. “I do apologize for not informing you through the proper channels. It appears Ms. Shields overheard two officers talking and did not realize that we were in the process of confirming the information.”

  That was a polite way of putting it, Mark thought.

  Brant walked over to the patio set and gestured for them to sit. Then she sat down across from them and set her arms on the table. “The driver of the car is a young man from North Bay named Carl Lane. He’s seventeen years old and is known to local police. Heavy drug
use mostly. Some crime—assaults, breaking and entering—to support his drug habit. But he is not someone who police had reason to believe would be involved in something of this nature.”

  “Does he have anything to do with Langtry Glen?” Katie asked.

  “No. As far as we can tell, he’s never even been to Toronto. He does, however, frequent some particularly nasty websites dedicated to sharing information on how to illegally modify weapons and build homemade explosives. We do have a task force monitoring many of these sites for signs of potential illegal activity, but of course new ones spring up all the time.”

  “How does any of this relate back to Katie?”

  “He’s claiming that yesterday morning someone posted a notice on one of these sites looking for people to help with kidnapping her.”

  “You must be joking.” For a moment, Mark had to clench his hands together to keep from banging them on the table. “You’re telling me that this kid threatened our lives yesterday and today just because of something someone wrote on a website?”

  Brant nodded. “The notice has now been removed from the site, but we were able to confirm its existence. It stated there was a fifty thousand dollar reward for kidnapping ‘Katie Todd of Impact News’ and that everyone who helped would get a cut. There was a photo, too, in case anyone was lucky enough to catch her solo. It appears to have been taken at the guesthouse where you both stayed in Cobalt.”

  Which could explain why Billy had been taking pictures at Celia’s. Had Al put the photo together with the identification in Mark’s stolen wallet and realized he could make some side money in a tabloid deal?

  “For an unemployed kid with a taste for both drugs and violence, it must have looked like a really easy way to make some fast money,” Brant went on. “He called a cell phone number—which has now been disconnected—and was told where to meet the posse and to bring his own weapon. It appears he failed to get the names of anyone he met, and most of them were wearing bandannas.”