I put it back in its original position and unscrewed the barrel. I held it to my nose and inhaled deeply. I had taken twenty-one lives with this weapon. I put it back in its case and slid it into my pants pocket. I went into the back part of the safe looking for bullets but first came out with a small envelope.
As I remembered its contents, I smiled. It could come in handy, but I would need Christian’s help with it. I slid out the fake identification. A driver’s license and passport, both of which would need updating. I placed them back into the envelope and put it in my jacket pocket along with a box of .22 bullets.
As the weight of the bullets pulled down on my jacket, I considered my wife and children. They had no idea the type of person their husband and father was, or who he had been. I had kept all of this from them—for their protection. Yet now, everything demanded one final accounting and I had no choice but to pay the bill, as it were.
I STOOD IN THE COVER OF DARKNESS, tucked into a corner untouched by the glow of a street light or motion sensor spotlight. The house was a two-story brick but only home to one man.
A man stood vigil in the corner of the porch. There would be at least one more out back. If Christian hadn’t changed, both men would be carrying AK-47s.
But there would be no need to disturb them.
My heart fluttered with the adrenaline rush that used to fuel my soul on a regular basis as I contemplated the ascent to the second floor. There were two large windows that would serve as a means to propel myself upward. The brick’s mortar had become deeply inset over the years and allowed for a good toe hold. I could have done things the easy way: placed a call and accepted the mission. But I needed to prove that I wasn’t one to mess with either. He violated my home; I would his.
I hoisted my legs onto the bottom window sill and spent a moment thankful I had kept in good physical shape. I stood there, braced in front of the window, back to the world, vulnerable. I heard something ruffle and realized the two guards were moving around. I froze there while I struggled to study their movements by sound. My heartbeat thumped in my eardrums and made it hard to hear. I had to recall my breathing technique. I had to tell myself that I had nothing to lose, just like before. But so much had changed since then. Brenda’s and the kids’ faces skipped through my mind, and I closed my eyes willing them to obscurity.
The men were still moving around. I strained to hear. As I focused, my heartbeat relaxed in my ears and receded into a dull hum.
“Carlos…pssst, Carlos.”
“What are you doing man?”
The second voice sounded paranoid and at unease. Either he hadn’t been a soldier or grunt, for long or he had been witness to Christian’s evil side.
“He’s sleeping man. Relax.”
“Go back to your watch,” the one named Carlos said.
The more they spoke and the more they moved around, I feared they’d do a full perimeter search. If they did, I would be dead. One bullet to the back of the head, and I’d be fed to Mitchell, Christian’s pit bull. At least that’s how the lucky intruders were disposed of in the past. Betrayers of The Family never received the courtesy of the gun shot first.
Mitchell had likely passed, but Christian loved the breed and would have replaced him with a younger, hungrier version.
They’re good at tearing flesh from bone, he told me. Anything that can do that is worthy of my respect.
“You ever been to Popeye’s? The girls are hot.” The chatty soldier was from the front door. This much I could tell.
“Please go back.”
“You’re such a fuckin’ pussy.”
“Go.”
I heard the man return to the front, his feet crunching on the crushed shell driveway that Christian had demanded be shipped specifically for show. Standard gravel would never suffice for a man like him.
I let the rush of air leave my lungs. I placed my gloved hands on the brick and worked the toes of my shoes into the deep groves. I made my way to the second story like a modern day Spider-Man. As I reached for the sill of the second window, I paused and listened. My toe went into a slot, and I extended upward as far as I could reach. I needed to go up another few bricks in height. My hand reached the sill, but as I went to pull myself up, my grip slipped.
Shit!
I was hanging suspended, fifteen feet off the ground, by one arm. I needed to maneuver my legs to the side, get them into a toe hold. My body lost all willpower to move when I heard rustling in the bushes.
Shit!
My arm was aching like a son of a bitch. The push-ups and bench presses at the gym hadn’t prepared my muscles for this workout.
I summoned my thoughts to go somewhere more tranquil. They instantly jumped to Brenda—the smell of her perfume and the warmth of being in her arms. The recollections weren’t helping as my resolve weakened. I needed to rediscover the killer inside of me, and it wouldn’t come from thinking of my family.
There was silence. Not even a blade of grass blew from a breeze. I looked to my left and noticed the silhouette of a guard easing around the back corner of the house. His hands were holding onto his weapon. I couldn’t see the one from the front.
My attention back on the hand that still gripped the windowsill, I swung my body.
“I think someone’s here.” The voice came from the man at the front.
Not good at all. Maybe he never left the side of the house.
Carlos answered, “Nah, you’re hearing things. It’s your mind playin—”
“Sssh.”
“You’re such a loser.”
For the next few seconds, my breathing labored. The muscles in my arm bit as a scorching fire. I watched the guard from the front move up the side of the house. If he looked up, I was dead. I had to stay perfectly still.
He seemed satisfied from his search and went back to his post. It was time to move, pain or not. I swung again and found a toe hold. I reached up, obtained a hold on the sill with my other hand and hoisted myself up.
I balanced in the sill and worked to pry the window open with a flat-headed screwdriver. The action brought me right back to my days of being a hitman. I would move stealthily and undetected, and the mark would be dead before they could open their eyes to see their killer. At least, those were the lucky ones.
The window was located in a hallway, at the top of the stairs, just as I had remembered. The hallway was dark, but if Christian kept his old bedroom, he was the third door on the left.
As I made my way down the hall, the oak flooring softly moaned my approach. I stopped moving and heard nothing other than the heavy breathing of a sleeping man. Christian.
I stepped inside the room and closed the door behind me. “Rise and shine!” I flicked on the light and watched him struggle to get out from under the duvet in a sleepy confusion. My eyes adjusted to the light much better than his seemed to as he had been roused from a dead sleep.
“What the fuck—”
“Am I doing here? Getting even. Now you know how it feels to have your home violated.” I reached into my pocket and turned on the recorder I had also grabbed from the office. I just wanted some insurance in case I needed it.
I heard the moan before I saw her. A woman, who didn’t look much older than my Yvonne, sat up. Her eyes were large, and she attempted to crawl behind Christian. He snapped his fingers. “Out!”
The girl didn’t move.
“Get your fuckin’ ass out!” Christian pointed to the door and slapped her bare ass without restraint as she rose from the bed. She took a shirt from a chair and made her way out of the room, completely naked.
Christian’s eyes fired at me. “You better have a damn good—”
“You want me to kill Governor Behler.”
Christian rolled his eyes.
“Speak it.”
“Yes, my Father demands it.”
&nb
sp; “And you want me to do this up close, and speak the words, from Pietro Russo?”
“Yes.” He let the tail end of the word drag out.
I stopped the recorder. “I’ll take the job.”
He remained unimpressed. “You broke into my house to tell me—”
“I’ll do it for five hundred thousand.” I had given the amount and the breakdown significant thought. If I were going to do this, I would make it worth my while. My family’s wellbeing was already at risk. Taking the job was the only viable option. When it was over, we may need to go far away.
Christian laughed. He was awake now. “Five hundred?”
“She’s a person of office. This one’s different.”
“No different.”
To me, Governor Behler represented different in several ways. Regardless of her station, I knew her. I was relatively close to her. And she was a woman. I had never killed a woman before. I had to assure myself they died just the same as a man. Obviously they were capable of making enemies the same way.
I took out my pen gun and untwisted the barrel. Christian never moved. He would never acknowledge experiencing fear. But I was also careful about the way I moved. I didn’t need him to feel threatened, but I needed him to know I was serious. “Five hundred.”
“Fine.” Christian’s jaw tightened. He rose from the bed and positioned himself inches from my face. “Five hundred.” He spat on the floor to the side of me. “Two fifty, less the ten I gave you earlier.”
I remained steady. “Five hundred now. Five hundred upon proof of death.”
“You must have fallen. Hit your head.” Christian stepped back from me and reached into a dresser drawer. He came out with a handgun if you wanted to term it that. A Desert Eagle, ten-inch barrel, likely .357 caliber. He examined it almost as meticulously as I had affectionately handled my pen gun earlier. In a gun battle, mine wouldn’t be a match against his.
“You need to start using a real gun,” Christian said.
With his words, conflicting energy surged in the room. Reality must have struck him. Killing Governor Behler meant a lot to The Family and he had been entrusted to ensure that it happened. How would he explain to Pops that he killed the hitman?
He placed the gun back in the drawer and closed it slowly. “Five hundred? Fine. Agreed.” He looked at me and went to another drawer. This one was full of cash. He tossed wrapped wads of bills on his bed. “How’d you get in past Rocco and Carlos?” Christian kept fishing out the cash. Each wrapped amount valued ten thousand, making for forty-nine of them. “There, that’s it.” His finger pointed at me, his eyes reflecting with the likes of a human Lucifer. “You better make good.”
For an instant, I feared being on the receiving end of Christian’s wrath. He was only one year younger than me but held the maturity of a raging hormonal twenty-year-old eager to prove himself to any trespassing mammal. “I always have.” I looked at the cash on the bed and at Christian. “I’ll also need you to pack this up to go.”
“And you never answered my question, what’d you do? Climb up the wall like Spidyman?” Christian’s laugh ended abruptly when my eyes responded to the question. “You still have skills.”
“That’s why you pay me the big bucks.” As the words slipped out, it felt reminiscent of my earlier years and the tight friendship that had once existed between us. I handed him the envelope with the fake IDs.
He took it with a smile. “You held onto these. All this time. See, you are meant for this.”
“I need them updated right away.”
“For certain.” The smile remained pasted to his lips.
“And I’ll need you on the way out.”
Christian led me through the house to the front door; his man there jumped back ten feet when it opened. His gun came up to the ready.
“What the fuck? You shoot your boss now? In the house!” Christian’s arms flailed with each word.
“Sorry, Boss. Sorry.” When his eyes reached mine, he shook.
Christian snapped his fingers. The man hustled through the front door. With him out of earshot, Christian said, “The rest will be brought to your office once it’s done.”
As I walked away, I heard the back door swing open. I knew Rocco and Carlos may become pit bull food, but that wasn’t my problem. Right now, I had to focus on myself and keeping my family safe—and I would come out one million dollars richer. The bills that I held in the bag were blood money, but they spent just like the rest of it did. I felt the old, familiar tug on the corner of my mouth.
-
Chapter 3
DETROIT, MICHIGAN
FRIDAY, JUNE 4TH, 9:30 AM
BRENDA GAVE ME THE SILENT treatment through breakfast and left for work without saying goodbye. We normally kissed and hugged before going our separate ways. But I couldn’t focus on that; I had to dwell on the entire picture. I’d go into work today, but I wouldn’t get much done, at least when it came to clients’ financials.
“Good mornin’, Ray. The sleepy bug must have bit ya.” Serena had come up to Michigan from a southern State and held onto her twang. She followed me down the hall to my office. It was nine thirty, but Serena had the work ethic of a pig farmer—in the trenches early and up to her armpits with shit to shovel.
“I got your coffee ready for ya a while ago now. Let me refresh it.” She reached for my cup.
I placed a hand on hers and smiled. “I’m fine.”
She withdrew her hand, and her cheeks flushed a modest hue of red. “‘K then, I’ll be down the hall if ya’ll need me.”
“Actually, Serena.” She stopped and turned in the doorway, appearing ready to please. It was hard to find good help these days, but I struck it rich with her. “Can you close the door on your way out?”
“Course.” She smiled, seemingly deflated that’s all I requested of her. She was working toward her accounting certificate and was hungry to get any real-life experience she could. I did my best to pass things on to her as she grew in her knowledge.
I loosened my tie as I sat behind my computer. The timeline compressed on me from all sides. One week. I needed to become intimate with Governor Behler’s itinerary. I snuffed the conscience that attempted to creep in. It made no difference who she was. All of my marks had been people. All of them had family and friends who loved them. Behler would be no different.
I logged on to my email to verify the date of her trip. My mind remembered the mention of a trip to Niagara Falls, New York, but I couldn’t risk a sloppy recollection with fact. I needed to verify everything, and it pivoted on her location.
Scrolling through emails, I found everything but the one I was looking for. I opened up seven from the Governor all in relation to her business account with us.
She owned a florist business by the name of Rose Buds. When she first approached me, we laughed about the name of the company, but she said it always made her smile, and she hoped it would bring joy to others. It must have held appeal because Rose Buds grew from a single location to a nationwide franchise.
I had to shake aside my personal recollections of the woman and dwell on the hard facts. Governor Behler’s first name was Marian. She was fifty-six and hailed from a family of six children. Her parents were into scrap metal and had struck a small fortune before Marian graduated from diapers. As with most Governors, she was wealthier than God and didn’t draw a salary from the state. She viewed it as her duty to be used in any capacity the State required of her. When I had asked about her decision to get into politics, she told me it’s up to each of us to use our talents to the best of our abilities.
I took a deep breath. I doubt she referred to a natural talent for taking people out.
Where the hell was the email where she mentioned going away? I knew she had put it in writing. My eyes went to the phone on my desk. I had no other choice. “Vanessa? This is Raymond Hunter
—”
“One minute—”
“No, please don’t put me on hold,” I said.
“I’ll get the Governor for you.”
“No, there’s no need to bother her.”
“Okay.” Vanessa dragged out the word.
Vanessa was her assistant for nearly two years. I had met her in person and could envision her biting on the tip of a nail while on the phone with me.
“I just need to verify when she’s going away again. I have some papers for her sign. She mentioned Niagara Falls.”
“Yeah, she’s going this weekend.”
This weekend? My heart cinched in my chest. That was tomorrow.
“No, wait a minute.” Vanessa paused and laughed. She must have removed the finger from her mouth. “I’m a week ahead of myself. She goes on the twelfth. Well, she leaves on the eleventh, but she’ll be gone that weekend. It’s been a long week.”
It’s been a long week? It’s been a long twenty-four hours. “Thanks.”
“So you want to make an appointment? I can squeeze you in before she leaves.”
Maybe I wasn’t ready for this mission. “The paperwork’s not quite ready. I just wanted to know the timetable I’m looking at. I’ll call when she gets back. So she’s expected back on the—”
“Fourteenth, yes, Mr. Hunter.”
“Thanks.” It was merely a token word and served as a closure to the conversation. I had the information I needed. The location and date had been confirmed. Christian would have to accept it was just over his mandated week.
I would be killing Governor Behler.
As the sentence repeated in my head, the main verb punched out more each time. “I’m going to kill Marian.”
First I had things to do. Whatever the Governor’s purpose it was likely I’d need to look the part to fit into her world. Passing Serena’s cubicle, I said, “I’m stepping out.”
Assassination of a Dignitary Page 2