The Housewife Assassin's Husband Hunting Hints

by Josie Brown

  “I read you loud and clear. Jack’s life is at stake. I’d get Lee’s full understanding that no one other than you, he, and my Acme mission team must know.” Ryan shakes his head. “On another note: I presume you don’t have a pair of surveillance contact lenses on you, or your audio earbuds.”

  “Nope,” I say with a snort. “I didn’t feel it necessary to transmit what was supposed to be my honeymoon night to Acme headquarters.”

  A sad smile rises on his lips. “I’ll put your shadows in place immediately. One will intercept you with whatever toys you’ll need to subvert Eric’s agenda. To that end, I think I should give you this now.”

  He goes to the brick wall surrounding the fireplace. He places his hand on one of the bricks—it’s high, to the right. As he presses, it springs out into his palm. With his other hand, he reaches deep into the now empty space—

  And pulls out something. “What is that, a survival tin?” I ask.

  “You could say that.” He motions me forward. “Do you know what happened to Acme’s last agency director?”

  I shake my head. “I presumed retirement.”

  “Something like that—but earlier than expected, and not by choice. He was kidnapped and tortured, along with his wife and children. We found them too late. His family didn’t make it. He was barely alive.” Ryan shrugs. “Their deaths put him over the edge. He put a gun in his mouth, so I guess you could say his torturers killed him too.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Ryan.”

  “He wasn’t the first to be kidnapped, and he won’t be the last.” Ryan opens the tin and pulls out a tiny velvet pouch. Two things fall into his open palm. He holds up one of them: a miniscule see-through microchip, cylindrical in shape and no bigger than a grain of rice. “Since then, DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—has come up with a prototype for a subcutaneous tracking chip.”

  “You mean, some sort of GPS tracker, injected under the skin?”

  “Affirmative. Directors of black-ops organizations with high security rankings were asked to be beta-testers, for obvious reasons.”

  I nod. “You’re desirable kidnap targets.”

  “And for even more obvious reasons, most of us balked at the honor.” He shrugs. “I guess what happened to Jack is reason enough to do so.”

  “I presume it’s not battery-operated. Otherwise it would be too big to inject under the skin, not to mention a potential biohazard to the wearer.”

  “Right again. In fact, it’s operated by a bio fuel cell. Glucose from your bloodstream gives it enough energy to emit the GPS signal strong enough to be tracked by satellite.”

  He takes the other item in his right hand: an Epipen. “If you’re game, I’ll inject it in you. That way, we’ll always have eyes on you—just in case…well—”

  “In case I go missing.” I sigh. “I understand. Okay, well, let’s do this thing. Any suggestion as to where?”

  “Ideally, your lower thigh.”

  “Yowch. Well, I guess it will have to do, until we’ve got something like James Bond’s ‘smart blood’.” I lift my leg onto a chair but turn my head. No need to watch.

  He lifts my yoga pants high enough that he can prick me in the back of my thigh, above the bend of my knee.

  It doesn’t hurt, but instinctively, I flinch anyway.

  “They’re watching our room. I’d better get back to the hotel.” I rub the sting from the spot before lowering my pant leg again. Hesitantly, I add, “Ryan, I’ll be honest: I didn’t know exactly how you’d react to my news, but I was praying that we’d be of like minds regarding this problem. Thank you for understanding. You’ve been like a father to Jack—to both of us, really.”

  “I love Jack too, Donna. The goal is to bring him home, safe and sound.” His smile curdles into his trademark grimace. “But it won’t be easy. Compromises will be made. Here’s hoping they’re all ones we can live with.”

  I bow my head. “Is it too forward of me to ask you about Natalie?”

  Slowly he nods. “Thank you for caring enough to do so. My wife never really knew what I did for a living—at least, not until the day she died.”

  “You kept it from her, the way Carl kept it from me.”

  He nods. “An Acme corporate mandate, set up by my predecessor, for obvious reasons. Personally, I rue the day I broke the news to her.”

  I have to ask: “Why?”

  “I’d like to think she’d still be alive today.” He shakes his head. “Then again, maybe I’m fooling myself.”

  “What happened?”

  “I came home late that night. I’d never seen her so happy. She told me she was pregnant.” He smiles at the memory. “To celebrate, we made love. And in the throes of passion, I told her everything: what I really did for a living, how I was recruited, and the number of missions I’d had to that point—even the fact that I was a hard man.”

  “I guess she didn’t take it well?”

  His smile dissolves into sadness. “That’s putting it mildly! I couldn’t stand the thought that she and our child would never know this side of me. Instead, the realization that I’d lied about my profession in the four years we’d been together was abhorrent to her. Then when she heard about my exterminations, she recoiled. She declared she’d married a monster.” He shrugs. “Maybe she was right. To do what we do doesn’t exactly make us good people—or ideal spouses for that matter.”

  I lift my head. “Our job is to save lives, even if it means taking a few.”

  “That wasn’t exactly the reaction you had when I told you what Carl did for a living.”

  I shrug. “Like Natalie, I felt deceived. But did I think of Carl as a monster? Not then, anyway. Only when I discovered how he duped you and Acme, and that he did it for money and power, did I feel as if his sacrifice—and mine—had been for nothing. It was only at that point that I hated him.” I take Ryan’s hand in mine. “Perhaps it was when and how you broke the news to her that caused her to react in that manner. Coupled with all she was feeling about the baby, of course it would have been devastating news.” I hesitate, then ask: “Did you offer to resign?”

  He looks up at me. “It was her one condition, but I said no. That’s how big of an asshole I am.” He shakes his head. “Donna, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it! I thought she’d eventually see the importance of our mission, and that things would work themselves out.” He purses his lips. “No, to be honest with you, I was stubborn. I’m not the greatest communicator, you already know that.”

  He’s right, but I’m not about to kick a good man when he’s down.

  “On the evening it happened, she ran out of the house. I followed her out and ran after her. That night it was storming. All winter long, Los Angeles had been experiencing torrential rainstorms.” He falls into a chair. “I cornered her out there, in the back on the hill, but she refused to come back into the house with me. She said the last thing she wanted was to raise a child with a monster. She vowed I’d never come near them. I was so angry that I reached up to slap her. She took a step backward. Her feet slipped out from under her. I reached for her, but it was too late. She tumbled over the cliff.” His eyes shut, as if the memory still lays heavy on his mind. “The rescue squad found her the next day. Her neck was broken.” He buries his head in his hands. “I killed her.”

  “No, Ryan! You can’t blame yourself.”

  “I did, and I always will.” He shakes his head adamantly. “If I had it to do all over again, I would have put my family first. In life, it’s the only thing that counts. Please, never forget that.” He takes enough control of his emotions to look up at me. “My only solace is that I do my job to the best of my ability. Otherwise, her death—and the death of our child—is meaningless.”

  Words elude me. All I can do is put my hand on his shoulder.

  In time, he gets ahold of himself. He lumbers out of the chair to the door. “You’d better get going.”

  He’s right. Time is of the essence. I kiss
the top of his head before heading out the door.

  Chapter 3

  Separation Anxiety

  When you were a’courtin’, it seemed as if you were joined at the hip. Needless to say, you presumed the vow, “I do,” also meant a twenty-four hour lovefest, just the two of you. But now that he’s put a ring on your finger, you find him acting more distant—

  If you find him at all. Why, the li’l booger seems to have taken off to parts unknown!

  Not to worry—that is, if you planted a Global Positioning System bug on his cellphone…

  Ooops! Looks like he realized that it was in his cellphone, which he left at home.

  What, you say you also sewed another tracker in the hem of his jacket? Well, good for you for having such forethought…

  Until you notice he left the jacket behind, too.

  Oh, dear.

  Eventually, he will come home to you.

  And you will forgive him.

  But you will never forget the time he got away.

  So, after your “miss-you sex,” when he’s fast asleep, there’s one more thing you can do: slap on a GPS ankle monitor.

  Granted, doing so will certainly let the cat out of the bag regarding your need to keep tabs on him. Still, look on the bright side: besides the fact that he’ll have to saw off his foot to keep you at bay, it proves to him how far you’ll go to stay by his side.

  Damn, damn, damn Highway One traffic! Even at this early morning hour—even going against traffic—my quest to find Ryan took me over two hours, round trip.

  I’ve been away for much too long to be sobbing my heart out in the shower.

  Since leaving him, I’ve kept one eye on the road, and the other on my phone’s screen. It displays the security feed of my hotel, switching back between the parking lot and my suite’s front door.

  Now that I’m only three blocks from the hotel, I should be breathing easy—

  But something on my cell screen catches my eye: a stretch limousine has just pulled up to the hotel’s back parking lot. The driver hops out in order to open the door for the person in the back seat:

  Eric Webber.

  Shit.

  Okay, I’ve got to move fast.

  I hit the gas so that I take the last four blocks at warp speed. Suddenly I hear the yelp of a police siren. The officer flashes his lights to let me know that he’s on my tail.

  I can’t stop for obvious reasons: first, it’s not my car; second, I’m driving without my license; and third, I’ve got to be in that room when Eric knocks on the door.

  All the more reason to outrun the police car.

  I turn right, down a residential street—

  And flick off my lights—

  Before veering into a driveway with an open garage. I’m far enough away from him that he drives right by it, and on up into one of Laguna’s hills.

  I hear a loud meow beneath the car. Oh, my God, I could have run over a cat!

  Quickly, I get out of the car, and crouch down beside it. The cat’s golden eyes glow when caught in my cellphone’s flashlight. Her fur is black.

  She’s angry enough to spring at me, claws bared.

  In the nick of time, I dodge out of the way.

  She takes off into the night.

  I wonder if I’m cursed. For Jack’s sake, I hope not.

  My heart is beating so fast that I have to sit for a moment and take deep breaths—a good thing, too, since the police car must have circled around, because now it’s heading my way.

  I watch as he turns back onto Highway One. Thank goodness he’s heading in the opposite direction of the hotel.

  I roll the Lexus out of the garage. A moment later, I’ve parked it back where I found it—a block from the hotel—and I hightail it back to my hotel.

  Eric and one of his operatives are now getting into the elevator.

  Needless to say, I’ll take the stairs.

  I use the housekeeper’s key to get me into the hotel’s back door, and into the emergency exit staircase, which I take to the roof, where I’ll climb down onto the terrace of my hotel suite—

  Except for the fact that there’s a bald hulking block of a man on the balcony beside mine, smoking a cigarette. His feet sit in a circle of dead butts.

  Is he another one of Eric’s operatives?

  I get my answer when I hear Eric shout, “Gunter!” The man answers, “Ja, kommt!” as he heads back inside.

  I slide down the rain pipe onto my terrace, and leap through the sliding door to my bedroom. I tear off my clothes before jumping into the bathroom shower.

  The water is tepid at best. I’m sure the rest of the hotel’s guests won’t appreciate the hot water hog.

  In no time at all, I’m soaked.

  I slip into one of the hotel’s complimentary terry robes. As I wrap a towel around my damp hair, I take a quick glance at myself in the mirror. My mascara is smeared around my eyes, as if I’ve been crying for the past few hours.

  Good. Let Eric presume that I’m devastated.

  That I’m weak, and I’ll do anything he wants.

  In other words, I’ll have him right where I want him.

  “We aren’t disturbing you, are we, my darling Mrs. Craig?” Eric has thought nothing of letting himself and three of his colleagues into my suite. His voice greets me from the bed, where my honeymoon bliss had just taken place.

  On the bed I should now be sleeping in, with Jack.

  I don’t recognize two of the other men. One is small, wiry and non-descript. He smirks as if he thinks he’s got something on me. The other is a tall square-jawed hunk with pale blue eyes separated by a lazy auburn forelock. He turns toward me and winks, as if we share a secret.

  The third man is Gunter. He is going through my suitcase when something catches his eye: one of my negligees. I don’t like his leer as he scrutinizes its sheerness. Carelessly, he stretches it, as if testing its strength—as what, a restraint? If so, it fails, as it rips into two pieces.

  The lout tosses it over his shoulder as if it’s some rag. It drifts to the floor, like the promise of a dream that is never to come true.

  We’ll see about that.

  As Eric rises, he straightens imaginary wrinkles from his medium gray Brioni suit. He then has the audacity to finger a wet tendril that has escaped my towel turban. I steel myself from flinching.

  Instead, I nod toward the living room. “The sooner we talk business, the sooner I get my husband back—that is, if you’re good to your word. I’ll be with you shortly.”

  “Ah, well, you see, Mrs. Craig, I plan on keeping you in sight at all times.” He nods toward his colleagues. “A necessary evil.”

  I frown. “Don’t be ridiculous. If I’m to accomplish my tasks, I can’t have any of your goons tagging along.”

  Eric’s harsh laugh reveals teeth as white as his shoulder-length mane. “My colleagues are the very soul of discretion. You won’t even know they are there.”

  I scoop up the torn negligee off the floor. “Yeah, okay, if you say so. But your mutts stay out of my way, unless I whistle for them.” I toss it in Gunter’s face.

  He’s angry enough to take a step in my direction.

  I can dig it. Still, no better time than now to put this relationship in perspective, right?

  I grab his nutsack and twist as hard as I can. Gunter howls loudly and indignantly, before crumpling to the floor.

  Weasel’s eyes narrow. Apparently, he takes Gunter’s whimpers as a rallying cry. As he charges me, a switchblade opens in his right hand, but it slices the air when I deke left. Before he’s had time to turn and parry, I’ve reached for my perfume spray bottle on the dresser. A generous spritz of Dior Pure Poison has him screaming and clawing at his eyes.

  I know one way to shut his yap: jab him in the throat.

  He keels over, gasping for air.

  I curl a finger in Pretty Boy’s direction. He throws up his hands, its fingertips facing me. “New polish. Don’t want to muss it.” He purses his
lips to make his point.

  Been there, done that.

  I lift Weasel’s knife from the floor. I then pull Gunter’s gun—a Glock 21—from his back holster. I smile pretty at Eric. “You know what they say: finders, keepers.”

  Eric roars with laughter. “Now that you’ve established a pecking order, Mrs. Craig, I’ll do the honor of a much belated introduction to your entourage.” He nods toward the human weasel. “This is Hugo Kaspar. He underestimated you. But despite his diminutive physique, I would caution you about doing the same to him.” Next, Eric points to Pretty Boy. “Varick Velasco will accompany you on some of your more formal social outings. Don’t be fooled by his vanity, or his bon vivant demeanor. He won’t hesitate to kill you if you attempt to sully my goals.”

  Varick’s wolfish leer goes flat and his eyes deaden into dark slits. A shiver charges up my spine.

  Eric waves in the direction of Gunter, who has finally stopped writhing on the floor. “I’m sorry that Gunter overstepped your boundaries. I promise, should he do so again, it will be at my command only.” When his eyes shift to me, the smile is now a steely grimace.

  “Good to know.” I shrug. “In the meantime, let’s get one thing straight. Since this isn’t a peepshow, only one of you can stay while I dress. For all I care, you can toss a coin for the honor.”

  Eric smiles at my flippancy. But from the way he flicks his hand at the others, he proves being the boss has its benefits. “Wait in the next room.”

  Hugo glowers as he storms off. Gunter limps out of the room as fast as he possibly can. Varick’s disappointment is declared in a sad sigh as he follows them out.

  I wait until the door shuts before disrobing.

  I won’t look at Eric. I don’t need to, as I feel his eyes on me.

  And I hear his footsteps coming toward me. He moves in so close that I feel his breath on the back of my neck. “Turn around,” he commands me.

  I do so, slowly.

  Eric has knelt in front of me. Like I said, it’s a peepshow—only up close and personal.