The Assassin

by Rachel Butler

  The angle of the shots indicated they’d come from the same location, a spot high on the wooded hill to the south of the range. Presumably that meant there was only one shooter, and he had a bird’s-eye view of the entire area. He knew she was alone, knew her odds of making it to the squat building that fronted the range or to her car in the parking lot beyond were minimal. He could pick her off like a sitting duck.

  Selena was forty feet from the door, and the wall that shielded her was the last cover available. The door opened into a hallway that ran the length of the building. On the right at the back was the indoor range, used during the worst of Oklahoma’s inhospitable summers and icy winters. At the front was the office and the armory, both heavily secured. She was a fast runner, but not fast enough, not with the shooter’s vantage point and the flood lamps that turned darkness into day.

  Unless he couldn’t see her.

  Sinking back against the wall, she sighted on the nearest light and fired. The bulb exploded with a pop. Steeling herself against the panic that was just under the surface, she hit a second one, and a third, even as the shooter opened up on her protective cover with a hail of automatic weapon fire.

  The instant the last lamp went out, cloaking the range in shadow, Selena surged to her feet and made a furious zig-zag dash for the door. Clods of dirt exploded around her and something hit her arm with enough force to send her staggering against the building. Biting her lip against the pain, she jerked the door open and raced down the dark hall. Wherever the assassin was parked, she had no doubt she could reach her Thunderbird seconds before he made his way down the hill. Seconds were all she needed . . . unless he had an accomplice waiting outside.

  She didn’t let the thought slow her. Gripping the pistol in one hand, she dug in her pocket for her keys with the other. As she burst outside, she unlocked the car with the remote, yanked the door open, and threw herself inside. The engine roared to life, and the tires squealed wildly as she backed up, then accelerated out of the empty parking lot, barely making the turn onto the street before pressing the gas pedal to the floor.

  She’d gone two miles, the speedometer pushing eighty, before the adrenaline rush deserted her. Her foot eased up on the pedal at the same time her hands gripped the steering wheel tighter. The throbbing in her left arm was growing too strong to ignore. When she reached back with her right hand, her fingers came away sticky with blood.

  In the last seconds her breathing had gone beyond rapid to nothing less than a pant, and her entire body was starting to shake. She turned off the street into a shopping center that was closed for the night, drove around one end to the back, and parked in the loading zone for a discount store, where tall walls shielded her on three sides. Pressing a tissue to the wound in her arm, she closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe, calmness and control in, fear and pain out. When the trembling had stopped, when her heart rate had returned to some semblance of normal, she reached for her cell phone and dialed one of only two numbers stored in it.

  “Tony, this is Selena,” she said when he answered, surprised by how calm she sounded. “I was wondering if you could come meet me. I think I’ve been shot.”

  Kathryn Daniels Hamilton nodded politely to the uniformed guards at the main gate of the estate, drove around to the back of the house, then went inside. Sonja, the Daniels family housekeeper since Kathryn was a girl, stood at the stove, and her husband, Cecil, the butler, sat at the nearby table, a newspaper open in front of him.

  Ninety minutes earlier, Kathryn had been waiting in the reception area of the local FBI office, idly paging through a magazine in between glances at her watch. When Mr. King had called to set up this appointment, he had offered to meet her at the hospital or at the family’s Riverside Drive estate, but she’d politely refused. She didn’t want a stranger coming to Henry’s hospital room, and she certainly didn’t want to invite one into his home. That was reserved for family and friends, not glorified police officers.

  A police officer himself, her brother didn’t appreciate her opinion that policemen ranked with the hired help. One paid their salaries, and benefited from their particular skills when necessary, but one didn’t socialize with them. After all, they were called public servants for a reason.

  She’d always thought Henry had undercut his own potential significantly by choosing a career in law enforcement, no matter that he’d risen through the ranks to become chief of police. Business and politics—that was where the real money, power, and prestige lay. If he’d gone into either, he wouldn’t be lying in a coma, wasting away before her very eyes.

  Footsteps drew her out of her thoughts, and she watched a young woman pass by. The girl wore a slim, tropical-print silk skirt that reached almost to her ankles and was split on one side to mid-thigh. Kathryn didn’t have to look any higher than her hands to see that she was black, or at least, half black—which was half too much, Kathryn thought as she returned her gaze to the magazine.

  A moment later, more footsteps approached. “Mrs. Hamilton? Special Agent King is ready for you,” the receptionist said. “If you’ll come this way . . .”

  Now, Kathryn greeted Sonja and Cecil, brushed off Sonja’s offer of coffee, and passed through the kitchen into the house proper.

  She’d always loved this house—a beautiful white gem plunked down in the middle of a vast lawn, filled with beautiful things and, her grandmother had liked to say, beautiful people. Definitely privileged people, for all the good it had done them. Her father had grown up here, his every whim fulfilled, but it hadn’t stopped him from dying of cancer before his forty-fifth birthday. She and Henry had been raised here as well, spoiled, yes, but nothing they’d been given—not wealth, not attention—could raise him from the hospital bed, where he lay dying before her very eyes.

  She wandered through the rooms—the very formal living room called the white room, because everything in it was; the library filled with leather-bound first editions; the gentlemen’s drawing room, where her grandfather had played poker with his cronies, betting oil wells and real estate; the ladies’ drawing room where Grandmama had entertained their wives; the formal dining room that could seat thirty; the informal dining room that seated only ten. Every piece of furniture was antique, every slab of marble imported, every painting and knickknack and lamp worth a small fortune.

  Kathryn had taken it all for granted when she was a child. All her friends had lived in beautiful homes, though none so beautiful as her own. She’d been the only one to have a Monet hanging on her bedroom wall, but then there had been a great master in every room; she’d paid them little attention. She had been in college before she’d realized that not everyone lived this way. A sorority house was as close as she’d ever come to seeing how the other half lived, and that had been more than enough for her.

  Trailing her hand along the banister, she climbed the grand staircase to the second floor. Her meeting with the FBI had been far more unpleasant than she’d expected. She had thought they would ask a few questions about the men who’d harmed her brother, offer their sympathy, and leave her to visit the hospital.

  As it turned out, she had been the one asking questions. They’d told her a fantastic tale . . . and had proof to support it. About how Henry, loving brother and highly regarded chief of police, was a drug dealer. How he’d suffered his injuries while trying to kill one of his own detectives and the young woman he’d referred to as his niece. How he’d lived a secret life, complete with a different identity, for twenty years. How the FBI now wanted to use his family home to destroy the business he’d worked so hard to build.

  She hadn’t been able to decide which part of the story stunned her most. In the time since, she’d figured it out: the niece.

  Henry living a secret life as a drug dealer . . . it should shame her, but she could see that. He’d always looked for thrills and challenges; that was why he’d become a police officer in the first place. He’d been a master game player all his life. He loved competition, strategy, outs
marting, and outlasting everyone else. He loved pitting his skills against all comers, and he especially loved winning.

  And he’d proven himself quite capable of looking the other way when a crime was committed, if the incentive was strong enough. She’d seen that for herself.

  But the niece . . . the FBI agent had called her by various names—Gabriela Sanchez, Rosa Jimenez, Amalia Acostas, Selena McCaffrey. Henry had met her when she was fourteen, and claimed her for his own. He’d treated her like family—dressed her in the finest clothes, sent her to the best schools, filled her every need.

  No matter how Kathryn tried, she simply couldn’t imagine Henry taking someone else’s child to raise. He’d been uncompromising when she’d told him she and Grant were adopting a child, and he’d never shown the least interest in Jefferson once the boy had joined the family. A simple legal process couldn’t make a stranger family, he’d insisted. Blood mattered.

  But then he’d taken in a stranger, and a fourteen-year-old girl at that. At least Jefferson had been a mere five years old when they’d adopted him. By fourteen, the damage caused by a child’s upbringing was done; they were rebellious, troublesome, and not the least appealing. The only reasons she could think of for a man to take in a stranger’s teenage daughter were too perverse to give voice to.

  At the top of the stairs, she turned to the right and went to the one room she’d avoided since returning home—Henry’s study. That was where the events that led to Henry’s coma had taken place. The police had removed what they considered evidence, and Sonja had cleaned the room, then closed the door, and it had remained closed. Now, her hand trembling, Kathryn turned the knob to go inside.

  It had been raining that day in Greenhill, when Kathryn received the call from a distraught Sonja saying that Henry had been gravely injured. Kathryn had hastily packed while Grant borrowed the use of a friend’s jet for the trip to Tulsa. One of the deputy chiefs had picked her up at the airport and delivered her to the hospital, and he’d filled her in on what had happened.

  A daytime burglary. The estate was encircled by a six-foot iron fence; there was an elaborate alarm system with panic buttons in every room; armed guards patrolled the grounds; and still the thugs had managed to find their way inside. It had been no secret that Henry was making a public appearance with the mayor that day—some sort of fundraiser that had received plenty of publicity beforehand—but he’d left early and surprised the burglars in the act. One of them had shot him, and the impact had knocked him through the window behind his desk. He’d fallen headfirst onto the parapet four feet below, and had been in a coma ever since.

  That was the official version of events—what she’d been told by the deputy chief, read in the paper, heard on the news.

  Now the FBI was saying, no, sorry, it didn’t happen that way at all.

  The hand-knotted rug Grandpapa had brought back from Turkey was gone, leaving bare marble. There were dark spots on the wall near the vault door, and a large splatter at the far end of the room. Blood, her mind supplied, even though she didn’t want to know. No one had died in this room, according to the authorities, but not for lack of trying. One of the thugs had been shot, another had suffered a concussion and a broken nose along with a stab wound, though the third had only bruises and contusions. The young detective credited in the media with saving Henry’s life had, in fact, been the one to shoot him, and he’d been shot himself by Henry’s other target that day. Selena, the girl he called niece.

  Actually, someone had died that day, Kathryn thought as she forced herself to approach the windows and gaze down onto the narrow parapet. Sonja had brought in a crew to clean away the broken glass and blood, but it was still far too easy for Kathryn to imagine Henry lying there, dying. Machines kept his body functioning, but his spirit, his essence, was gone.

  As a chill rushed over her, she hurried from the room, closing the door firmly behind her. She’d told Mr. King that she needed time to consider his request, to take in everything he’d told her, and he’d agreed none too graciously. He’d made it clear that she had little choice, that asking her permission was no more than a courtesy. He’d mentioned words like criminal enterprise, seizure, and forfeiture, and asked her to please give him an answer within the next day or so.

  At the end of the corridor, she went into Henry’s bedroom. Sonja continued to dust it every day, as if he was merely away on a trip and might return home at any moment. His toiletries still filled the bathroom, his clothes the closet. Kathryn pressed her face into a jacket, inhaling the familiar scent of him, and her breath caught on a sob. “Oh, Henry, you fool! Any man in the world would have been satisfied with what you had, but not you. No, you wanted more—more money, more power, more challenge, more excitement. And look where it got you.”

  Leaving the closet, she stopped in front of the portrait that hung in the sitting area between two love seats. Grandmama and Grandpapa were seated in the middle, Mother and Father stood behind them, and she and Henry flanked them. They’d been a beautiful family. Now they were all gone, or as good as.

  On a small table beneath the painting stood two dozen or more framed photographs. Henry graduating from the academy. When he’d been promoted to detective. His first job as deputy chief. Receiving awards and commendations. Photo after photo of Henry in the highlights of his law-enforcement career.

  “What about your other career?” she murmured as she studied his smiling face. “Nothing to commemorate earning your first million in drug money? No photograph marking your move from just another dealer to the big-time? Nothing to remind you of the first murder you committed in the name of the almighty dollar?”

  She was about to turn away when a small frame caught her eye. It measured barely three inches tall and was easily overlooked among the larger, more prominently displayed photos. Her hand trembled when she reached for it—and with good reason, she soon realized.

  The girl in the photo was in her teens, and she wore a school uniform along with an uneasy smile. Her skin was a creamy light brown, her hair black, and her features bore the obvious stamp of her African-American heritage . . . along with a familiarity that made Kathryn’s heart clutch.

  The frame fell from her unsteady grip, landing face up on the floor. Kathryn clapped one hand over her mouth and stared at it—at the lovely young girl she hadn’t seen in twenty-eight years. The girl who had haunted her all those years. The girl she’d believed was dead.

  She sank to her knees in front of the hearth and covered her face with both hands. “Damn you, Henry! Dear God, what have you done?”

  About the Author

  Rachel Butler lives in Oklahoma with her husband and son, where she is at work on her next novel of romantic suspense featuring Selena McCaffrey, Deep Cover, coming from Dell Books in Fall 2005.

  THE ASSASSIN

  A Dell Book / April 2005

  Published by Bantam Dell

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2005 by Rachel Butler

  Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  www.bantamdell.com

  www.randomhouse.com

  eISBN: 978-0-307-42330-6

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