The Assassin

by Rachel Butler

  The ring of the doorbell startled her. She jumped to her feet, looked out the sidelight, and saw the delivery truck parked behind the T-bird. Her hand trembled as she opened the door; her smile was unsteady as she greeted the driver. He collected her signature, loaded the crate onto a dolly, eased it down the steps and up the ramp into the back of the truck. She watched until he was gone, when she reluctantly turned back to pick up the sole bag in the foyer.

  She had no doubt her house was under surveillance, just as she had no doubt she could easily lose the agent following her. She was dressed in capris, a T-shirt, and running shoes, and the clothing she was taking was packed in her gym bag. Anyone who knew anything about her would assume she was merely going to the gym to work out—and the FBI, she was sure, knew everything.

  Except that Rocky, her sparring partner, had already shown her the rear exit at the gym. He’d agreed to loan her his vehicle, a pickup similar to thousands of other pickups on the Oklahoma highways, and to park it in the alley behind the gym. He was looking forward to stalling the agent as long as he could once the man’s suspicions had been aroused. How could he do anything less, he’d teased, for the only girl who’d ever kicked his ass?

  All she had to do was leave. Walk out the door. Say good-bye to Tulsa once and for all, knowing that this time, she really wouldn’t ever return.

  She picked up the bag. Opened the door. Stepped out into the blistering heat. It took several tries to get the key into the lock to secure it. Another couple tries to get her car unlocked. She’d tossed her bag on the passenger seat and was about to slide behind the wheel when a mournful sound stopped her. Mutt was standing at the fence in Tony’s backyard, watching her, looking for all the world as if he understood she was leaving and never coming back. She walked back to the fence, crouched, and scratched between his ears. “Hey,” she murmured. “Maybe you’ll get a new neighbor with kids who will play with you. Or better yet, one with a pretty little female dog.”

  He closed his eyes and strained against the fence to get closer.

  Abruptly her eyes grew damp and a lump formed in her throat. Getting teary over a dog because he was the only creature who had ever been sorry to see her go . . . how pathetic was that?

  “I’ve got to go. You be a good boy,” she whispered, “and—”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Tony’s voice, sharp with suspicion and distrust, came from a few yards behind her. She balanced herself with one hand on the fence, took a deep breath, then eased to her feet before turning to face him. She was grateful for the dark glasses that covered her eyes, grateful that his own dark glasses kept her from seeing the hostility radiating from him. “I was petting your dog,” she said, striving for even and cool. “Am I no longer allowed to do that?”

  “What was that truck doing here?”

  She glanced at her watch and saw it was nearly three-thirty. He must have come home shortly before the delivery van had arrived. It said something about her level of distraction that she’d missed that. “I’m sending some canvasses to the gallery.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s difficult to sell paintings that are in Tulsa at a gallery that’s in Key West.”

  He didn’t look as if he believed her. If she said it was a hot day, he would probably want to feel the sweat beaded on his forehead before accepting it as truth. “You’ve been here for weeks and suddenly you need to ship your canvasses?” He twisted to look through the windows into the sunroom. It was easy to see that all the canvasses were gone. Of course, he could have guessed that from the size of the crate.

  When he faced her again, the skepticism was clear on his face. “Where are you going?”

  “To the gym.” She tried to smile but her mouth wouldn’t cooperate. “I feel the need to hit something.”

  He wasn’t amused. But that was all right. Neither was she.

  She tried to think of something careless to say, but with every nerve in her body on edge, it was impossible. She settled for sidestepping him and starting toward her car. She’d left him some ten or twelve feet behind when he quietly spoke.

  “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

  She stopped, turned, and managed a better smile. “I told you, I’m going to the gym.”

  “You sent your paintings home because you’re not coming back. You’re running away like a coward.”

  Stick to the lie, she counseled herself, but when she opened her mouth, something else spilled out. “A coward? Because I can’t spend the rest of my life in a tiny, cramped prison cell?” Even saying the words aloud made her breath catch, made her chest tighten so that drawing in oxygen was impossible. “Because I don’t want to surround myself with drug dealers and murderers? Because I’m sick to death of being used and manipulated and controlled for other people’s benefit?”

  “Hey, the choices were yours,” he said, his tone short on sympathy. “When you found out Henry was a dope dealer, you could have cut him out of your life. Better yet, you could have turned him in to the cops. When he invited you to visit two years ago, you could have refused. When he asked you to kill a cop, you could have said no.”

  Incredulity drew her a few feet back toward him. “Cut him out of my life? He saved my life! He killed to protect me! He gave me food and shelter and an education and opportunities, and I owed him for that! He was all I had!”

  “You owed him your gratitude, and that’s all,” he replied, displaying all that stubbornness Henry had hated in him. “You didn’t owe him your life, and you damn sure didn’t owe him your soul.”

  “I wouldn’t even have had a life if not for him!”

  He made a dismissive gesture with his right hand. “You survived fourteen years without him. You could have survived the next fourteen. Granted, it wouldn’t have been so cushy. There wouldn’t have been any fancy education or trips to Europe or a big old house in Key West, but at least you wouldn’t have been living off the suffering and deaths of others. At least you wouldn’t have been in a position where he could order you to kill someone.”

  The bitterness in her smile seeped through every part of her body, and made her movements stiff when she closed the distance between them. “It’s so easy for you to talk. You never went hungry a day in your life. Your parents never dropped you off in town and warned you not to come home until you’d stolen at least five hundred dollars. You didn’t fall asleep on a blanket on the floor every night just wishing that someone, anyone, would give a damn if you didn’t wake up in the morning.” The muscle in his jaw tightened, but before he could say anything, she went on. “That was my life, Tony, until Henry came into it.”

  She’d thought that taut muscle meant sympathy, but there was nothing but callous disregard in his voice. “So you had a lousy life when you were a kid. You’re sorry, I’m sorry, everyone’s sorry. But that doesn’t excuse the lousy choices you made as an adult. He asked you to kill for him, for Christ’s sake, and you said sure, not a problem!”

  The unjustness of his words frustrated her. She had never intended to kill him! She had come to Tulsa looking for a way out, to save herself from a sin that would have destroyed her. She’d been willing to die so he could live, and all he cared about was that she’d pretended to agree to Henry’s request in the first place. Her intent didn’t matter; neither did her actions.

  She stared at him, tears stinging her eyes. Then, folding her arms across her chest, she turned to leave. She paused only long enough to murmur “You don’t understand, Tony. You can’t.”

  He caught her wrist, yanking her to a halt. “Then explain, damn it! Make me understand how you can agree to murder someone you’ve never even met, how you can become friends with him and sleep with him, only so you can get close enough to kill him. Make me understand how you could be that twisted in your devotion to Henry!”

  She tried to jerk free, but he only tightened his grip on her. “He was the only person in the world who thought my life was worth anything! He didn’t look at me an
d see the results of an affair that was a mistake from the start. He didn’t see another man’s bastard or a punching bag or a thief with the potential to become a great whore. He saw a child who desperately needed someone, and he chose to be that someone. And I loved him for it!”

  “And I loved you!”

  For a moment Selena went utterly still. She couldn’t think, breathe, move. Her wrist slid from his grasp, her arm limp. When she did manage a breath, it hurt. Swallowing left her throat raw and achy, and the tears that slid down her cheeks burned hot and salty. “D—don’t . . .” She forced a swallow, then another breath, and her voice turned weak and pleading. “Don’t say that. Please . . . nobody’s ever said that . . .”

  He looked as if he wanted to take back the words. She wished he could. She could live knowing that no one had ever loved her. She had lived with that for twenty-eight years. But to know that Tony had loved her, that he didn’t now . . . She couldn’t handle that.

  But when he spoke, he didn’t try to unsay the sentiment. He looked reluctant, unwilling, as if he had no choice but to follow through on what he’d started. His voice was low, his tone intense. “Then it’s way past time someone did. I don’t know how to get over being angry with you . . . but I do know that letting you go isn’t the answer. I love you, Selena. I’ve tried real hard in the past week not to, but . . .”

  She wanted to believe him, oh, God, more than she could say, but all she could do was shake her head in denial and all she could manage was a plaintive whisper. “Men like you don’t fall in love with women like me.”

  He stepped closer and raised his right hand to catch a tear on her face. His touch was unsteady until the fingers came into contact with her skin, then they curved automatically to cup her cheek. “What do you mean, women like you? Beautiful women? Strong women? Sexy women?”

  Desperation threaded through her—that he didn’t love her, couldn’t love her—along with fear . . . that he did. All her life she’d wanted it. Would she know what to do with it if she had it? “I—I shot you.”

  A hint of amusement was barely audible in his voice. “Yeah. I figure that ought to be good for getting my own way a few times, don’t you? Starting now.”

  “Now?”

  He tried to bring his other hand to her face but, with a grunt of pain, settled for resting it at her waist. “Don’t go, Selena. We can work out the problems between us, but not if you run away. If you leave, you’re just going to break both our hearts, and, honey, I’m not up to that right now.”

  Right now . . . but maybe he would be later. Maybe, if she stayed, if she let herself believe he really did care for her, in a few weeks or a few months he would decide that he was up to a broken heart, only it would be her heart. Could she let herself believe he loved her, only to find out that he didn’t—or, worse, that he did, but not enough?

  But what if he did love her enough, but she never knew because she didn’t give them a chance to find out?

  She raised her gaze to his. There was confusion in his dark eyes, and reluctance, and tenderness. It would be so much easier if she could look and see nothing but accepting, forgiving love . . . but her life had never been easy, had it?

  “Do you know what you’re asking?” she whispered.

  He moved closer, until she could distinguish the heat radiating from his body from the afternoon sun, until she could catch a hint of his cologne, until she couldn’t think about anything but how very much she wanted to be even closer. She wanted to crawl right inside him, become a part of him, trust her life and her heart to him forever.

  “Yeah. I’m asking you to take a chance.”

  Everything comes with risks, she’d told Henry, and it was true. Living, dying, loving . . . all risks that she could take, or not.

  She could run away, live more completely alone than she’d ever been, and never know exactly how much she’d lost. But that wouldn’t be living—merely surviving.

  Or she could stay. Face the consequences of her actions. Face the future and maybe even a shot at getting it all— even her wildest, most sacred and secret dream: Tony, love, marriage, and a family.

  She laid one hand against his chest and felt his heartbeat, strong and steady. “I would have died for you.”

  “I know. But I just want you to live.”

  And the only way to do that was to take risks. She drew a deep breath and prepared to take the biggest risk of her life. “I love you, Tony.”

  He smiled, and it was like the sun rising after a long, dark night. She felt fearful and anxious and unsteady and off balance . . . and safe. I’ll be your safe place, he’d promised the night of the tornado, and he’d kept his word. She’d never had a safe place before.

  Wrapping her arms around his neck, she gave him her sexiest, sultriest smile. “I’ve had a really lousy week, Tony,” she said, brushing her mouth along his jaw. “Make love with me.”

  With a laugh, he kissed her, then hustled her into the house.

  They gave her the role of a killer. And no one plays it better...

  Don’t miss the next thrilling novel starring reluctant assassin Selena McCaffrey

  Deep Cover by Rachel Butler

  Coming in Fall 2005 from Dell Books

  Read on for an exclusive sneak peek—and look for your copy at your favorite bookseller.

  Deep Cover

  On sale in Fall 2005

  Selena McCaffrey had had one hell of a day.

  A .45 gripped loosely in both hands, she sighted on a paper silhouette target seventy-five feet away. She’d emptied the last magazine center mass in the target’s chest. This one was going into the head.

  The day hadn’t started badly. She’d gone for a run that morning, then put in a good six hours at the easel. Then she’d opened her door to find Special Agent King of the FBI on her stoop and everything had gone to hell.

  Selena two-tapped the target—fired two shots in rapid succession—then did it again. The ground around her was littered with brass. The owner of the shooting range had left her alone to relieve her frustration. In the time she’d been there, the sun had set and the flood lamps had come on, but she still didn’t feel much better.

  It sounded so reasonable the way the FBI put it. She had an in—a fourteen-year pseudo-father/daughter relationship—with Henry Daniels, better known to her as William Davis, a man who headed an extensive drug operation that stretched around the world. He had always intended for her to take over the business someday, and now that he was out of commission, the FBI was pressuring her to fulfill his wish—and, in the process, help them shut down the operation once and for all. If she cooperated, they would be willing to forget their list of charges against her. If she didn’t. . . .

  Sweat trickling down her spine, she fired the last of the bullets in the magazine and set the pistol on the table beside her. She pulled off the ear protectors and combed her fingers through her hair. Summer nights in Oklahoma weren’t much different from back home in Key West— hot and muggy—though she missed the ocean breezes. In Tulsa the best they could offer was the Arkansas River, sluggish and brown, and the scents of the oil refinery on the west bank. But that was all right. She hadn’t come for the weather, and she wasn’t staying for it, either.

  Clenching her jaw against the curses she wanted to shout into the night, she was reaching for the box of bullets when a puff of dust rose from the concrete only inches from her hand. She stared at it, and the small neat hole left behind, for the instant it took her brain to process the information—the same instant it took a second bullet to glance off the cement and ricochet into the night. Instinctively she dove to the ground, taking cover behind the nearest half-wall. From her position she could see her gun on the table—and fewer than ten rounds of ammo in the box beside it. She hadn’t had a chance to reload, and the shooter probably knew that.

  He couldn’t have picked a better place for an attack to go unnoticed. The neighborhood was largely industrial, and the people who worked nearby were accustomed
to gunfire. Even if anyone was around this late, they wouldn’t think to call the police.

  Another shot splintered the concrete above her head, showering fragments on her skin. She flinched, and the switchblade in her waistband dug into her skin. With the blade and her extensive martial arts training, she’d always felt confident wherever she’d gone, but neither was of any use against an attacker secreted in the darkness with what sounded like an AK. He could kill her, then disappear with no one the wiser.

  Damned if she was going to die without a fight.

  She shimmied on her belly along the length of the cinder-block wall, stirring up puffs of dust. When she reached the far end, she drew a deep breath, murmured a silent prayer as yet another shot rang out, then eased to a crouch. There was no sound—no heavy breathing, no fumbled reloading, no sirens racing to her assistance. Nothing but the thudding of her own heart.

  One, two, three, she counted, then launched herself around the corner toward the table where her weapon lay. Bullets followed, biting into the ground, the cement, the wood posts that supported the overhanging roof. She hit the ground with a thud, rolling, reaching up to grab the pistol and the box of bullets. Weakening relief rushed over her when her blind groping located both. Holding tightly to her best chance to walk out of the range alive, she rolled again, came up onto her feet in one fluid movement, then dove once more for the cover of the cinder-block wall.

  Her hands were steady as she fed the bullets into the empty clip. Once the final round was in place, she shoved it into the butt of the pistol, chambered a round, then pushed the remaining ammo into her pocket as she rose onto her knees.