Partners

by D B Steward

  When Sonny finished the magazine, she set down her Glock and looked over to Kelly as she cleared the firearm before reloading. Kelly was clapping her hands and cheering which caused Sonny to raise an eyebrow in curiosity. She removed her ear protection and looked quizzically at the ex-federal agent. “What are you doing?” Sonny could not help the light chuckle at the confusing woman’s actions.

  “You could be a gold medalist! I could sell tickets to come watch you and make a fortune!” Kelly caught herself as she was about to say she could make a killing, but thought better of it considering Sonny’s occupation. She watched as Sonny shook her head with a smile and if Kelly did not know any better, she could swear that the beautiful assassin was blushing.

  “You are very confident in your belief that you are funny, Miss King. I admire your conviction, even if it is delusional.” It appeared that Sonny had her mask back in place as she lobbed the sarcastic comment at Kelly.

  “I’m serious, you’re very good. So good that you probably don’t need the practice today.” She crossed her arms as she studied the tall, raven-haired beauty. “So why the show? Trying to impress me or is this your idea of a date?”

  Rolling her eyes, Sonny huffed before she explained. “This is insurance.” She had anticipated the confused face from Kelly so she continued her reasoning. “If I were to get arrested after a job, and mind you that is a big if, I need a reason for having gunshot residue on my skin. Being at a public shooting range gives me an excellent cover.”

  Kelly whistled in appreciation. “I can see why you’re the best in the business, girl. You take your preparation very seriously. No wonder you don’t have time for a life.”

  Visibly bristling at the back-handed compliment, Sonny frowned as she replied back. “Excuse me?”

  “Oh come on, you’ve already shown me what you do all day. Clean your guns and watch movies. Now I see that you also sit in the dark and formulate scenarios that might come up in your, you know…” Kelly leaned forward and continued with a sarcastic stage whisper. “Killing people for money job.”

  Being made fun of was not something that Sonny was used to so she could not control the flushing of her skin from the sudden spike of anger. “I do not sit in the dark thinking up scenarios!” She bit back in a menacing tone while stepping forward to close the distance between them.

  “So you keep a light on or…?” Kelly trailed off and smirked while she crossed her arms. Sonny opened and closed her mouth a few times as she tried to come up with a retort but she was unable to think of a good one.

  Why does this woman get under my skin like this? “You are very annoying, Miss King,” she finally said and suddenly realized just how close they were. She was well into Kelly’s personal space and was confused as to why that made her so nervous. Kelly picked up on her discomfort and decided to push it by taking a step forward and coming even closer, well within arms length and near enough to feel Sonny breathing erratically on her face.

  Kelly dropped her voice an octave and licked her lips. “A lot of people tell me that it’s my best feature, but I can think of better things to do with my tongue.” She watched as Sonny swallowed before she backed up a few steps, clearly put off her game by Kelly’s flirting. Good Lord, it’s so easy to get to her! Kelly enjoyed how much she could rattle the nearly robot-like mind of the assassin. “I can see your circuits overloading!”

  Sonny frowned in confusion. “My circuits? What are you babbling about now?” Deciding to busy herself by gathering her guns and equipment, she turned away from the curious woman who was stirring more feelings inside her than she was comfortable with.

  “Like the Terminator. Your CPU gets all frazzled when I flirt with you!” Kelly took a step closer and eyed one of the pistols in front of Sonny, wondering if she could get to the gun before Sonny stopped her. “If you smiled, I wonder if you would look like the T-800?”

  Blowing out a hiss of amusement through her lips, Sonny turned with a raised eyebrow. “Which T-800? The one from Judgment Day or Pops?” Kelly’s jaw dropped in astonishment.

  “You’ve watched the Terminator movies?” Sonny leaned her head to the side and looked at Kelly as if she had grown a third eyeball in her forehead. “Oh yeah.” Tilting her head back in realization, Kelly admonished herself. “I forgot, you have probably seen every movie known to man since you don’t have a social life.” A hurt look flashed over Sonny’s face before she put her impassive countenance back in place. Kelly saw that she had gone too far and tried to smooth over the wound from the inadvertently sharp verbal barb. “So which one is your favorite? The first or the second?”

  Sonny turned back to her pistols and began to put away the one Kelly had been planning to snatch. The ex-federal agent kicked herself for the missed opportunity, thinking that if she had not been such a smart ass she would have distracted Sonny from her task. Without looking up from what she was doing, Sonny answered in a more quiet voice than she had been using. “It’s a tie between T2 and Genisys.”

  Eyebrows flying up, Kelly sputtered. “Genisys?” Changing her voice to try and sound like an old man, she said, “Genesis is planet forbidden!”

  Without missing a beat, Sonny replied, this time with a playful tone. “The Search For Spock.” Again, Kelly’s jaw dropped in surprise.

  “You got that one? Wow, I’m impressed, Sonja Moretti!” Crossing her arms, she nodded in respect. “Usually nobody gets my movie quotes.”

  This time, it was Sonny’s turn to give a flirtatious wink. “You’ll find that I have more talents than just firearms, Miss King. I have a particular set of skills.” Kelly grinned at the movie reference. Sonny finished putting away her weapons and jerked her head toward the exit. “Let’s go.” With a sigh, Kelly walked in front of the assassin. She was finding it very difficult to get the upper hand with the woman. Her admiration for Sonny’s poise and professionalism was growing by leaps and bounds, and Kelly was finding that she was liking her more and more. This job was really starting to tie her up in knots. What was she going to do? She needed the money really bad, but could she really turn Sonny in? Kelly honestly did not know what she was going to do.

  Unbeknownst to her, Sonny was facing the same inner turmoil as she followed Kelly outside to the rental van. Sonny knew that she should probably just drive the former Fed out in the middle of nowhere and leave her. There was no way that she was going to kill her; there was no reason to and she liked the annoying, frustrating, attractive, and seductive woman too much. If she let her go, Kelly would just sit on Ivan and wait for Sonny again. If she was going to kill Ivan, then she needed to keep Kelly close and under her control. The real hazard was the growing connection she was forming with the other woman. She did not have any friends and being able to be herself around another person was surprisingly addictive. And she was so tired of being lonely.

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  “This is becoming a shitstorm!” Petrov Popov shouted inside his lushly decorated office, the thick Russian accent echoing off the dark wooden walls. “How hard is it to find one bitch?” Spitting mad, he rushed up to his assistant, Gregory, who had to move back a step or wind up getting a head butt from Petrov. “Now there is a dead woman on the news! The wrong woman! Since when did I start employing morons in my organization? Tell me, Gregory!”

  Gregory Martin considered himself an intelligent man. He had graduated with a business degree from Maryland and could have joined a hedge fund and made relatively good money, so he realized that answering Petrov’s question would prove both foolhardy and dangerous. Instead of answering, he decided to swallow audibly and nod instead, a move that usually deflected some of Popov’s anger. Petrov exhaled hard, blowing hot breath that smelled of cigars into Gregory’s face before whirling around and stomping back to his desk.

  “All because my shithead of a son decides to go out on his own and play gangster!” He opened a humidor on his desk
and removed a Cuban, dark and fresh, smelling it under his nose. The hard earthy scent relaxed him slightly, allowing his shoulders to drop a little. Snatching the cutter from the desk, he removed the tip with a violent snip, letting it fall onto the carpet, leaving it for the housekeepers to clean up later. Holding the cigar gently between his lips, he held the freshly struck match to the end, burning leaves pushing blue smoke higher and higher until it hung in a cloud over the man. Taking a long draw, Popov released a slow stream of smoke from his pursed lips and closed his eyes. Removing the cigar from his lips, he rolled the lit bundle of tobacco slowly between rough fingers, still tasting the tingly tobacco on his lips. His eyelids rose slowly as he focused on the glowing tip. “What does a father do when he has a son that has become a liability?” Popov spoke into the cigar as if the answers were in the dimming ashes that fell like black snowflakes, slowly descending to the floor.

  Clearing his throat, Gregory spoke in a quiet voice as his eyes never left the tiny pile of ashes collecting at the feet of his boss. “Amina Golovkin is here to see you.” Petrov’s bushy eyebrows rose a small fraction.

  “What does she want?” he asked after a moment of reflection.

  “She says she wants to make a deal with you.”

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  The sounds of chewing intermingled with the heavy silence that hung in the safe house kitchen, Kelly taking big bites of her greasy bacon double cheeseburger while Sonny poked away at her drive-thru salad that she would not describe as fresh, both finding it hard to believe how circumstances had placed the two of them together and now sharing a meal. Kelly grunted in amusement while she worked on a mouthful of burger, causing Sonny to look up from her limp lettuce. “What?” Sonny questioned with a furrowed brow.

  Swallowing first and then taking a sip of her Coke through the straw, Kelly looked at the other woman from behind her half-finished burger. “It’s just that I would expect a more classy place for our first date.” She added a smirk and suggestively raised an eyebrow. “If you think you’re getting any from me tonight after cheaping out on dinner, you’ve got another thing coming.”

  Rolling her eyes, Sonny placed her fork on her plastic plate and sighed while she put her head in her hands. “You just don’t let up do you, Miss King?”

  “It’s just because you are so cute when you get flustered, Sonny! The way your eyes get wide first and then you close them slowly, your lips pressing together in a frustrated grimace.” Kelly chuckled. “Makes me just want to kiss that look right off your face. You’re just so adorable!” Her baby talk made Sonny shake her head in frustration.

  “What will it take to get you to stop trying to irritate me? You think you can frustrate me to the point where I make a mistake and let you get the upper hand on me?”

  “I would love to get a hand on all your uppers.” She added a blown kiss to punctuate the sentence.

  “Oh my God, Kelly!” Sonny slammed her hands on the table surface and got Kelly to jump in her seat slightly. “You are making this impossible!” Seeing Sonny come apart like this surprised her, and Kelly did not fail to notice that she had not called her Miss King just now.

  “We are stuck together in this crazy standoff. I can’t let you go because you would just show up again and try to take me in and fuck up my hit! I can’t do my job if I have to constantly watch my back because you are going to make a run for it the first chance you get! We have to come to an agreement here or you’re going to force me to do something that I really really don’t want to do!”

  Kelly gulped because she had an idea where Sonny was going with this. “You mean killing me.” Sonny’s face was apologetic for an instant before she replaced it with a determined stare. “It makes the most sense, I guess.” Kelly sighed and sat back in her seat, suddenly losing her appetite for the half-eaten burger in front of her. “If I’m dead, all your problems go away.”

  Sonny nodded slowly. “Well, I would like to register my vote for not killing me!” Kelly looked down at the table and then brought her head back up and resigned. “Fine. I promise to stop hitting on you to get into your head and you don’t kill me. Deal?” Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath before she opened them again, Sonny nodded in agreement, satisfied with the compromise. “But can I just say one more thing before I drop the subject?” Raising her hands to signal she was willing to concede to the small demand, Sonny silently waited to hear what Kelly had to say. “I admit that some of what I was doing was trying to get you to drop your guard; however, a lot of it is still true.” Kelly’s eyes reflected the truth she was trying to convey. “You are very sexy, Sonny, and in another setting, I would be giving you the full-court press. You’re a fascinating woman that I wish I had the opportunity to get to know better and it sucks that we find ourselves tangled up in this mess. So that’s that, cards on the table.”

  This time, it was Sonny’s turn to gulp. Kelly King had really gotten to her, and Sonny would be lying if she said that she did not find the woman very attractive. Sonny had more than her fair share of one-night stands with other women but those encounters had been just for sexual release and she never thought of starting a relationship with them. But she found Kelly King very enticing. She was funny and direct and had a rough sensuality that aroused Sonny to the point of distraction. She exhaled slowly and relaxed her shoulders. “Thank you, Miss King.” She nodded professionally before she continued. “And I appreciate you being frank just now.” She hesitated. “And just so you know, the feeling is mutual.” A playful grin tugged at the corners of her mouth before she turned serious again.

  Kelly had been trained by the FBI to read people and tell if they were telling the truth or not. Although it was difficult for her to get a clear reading on the emotionally closed off assassin, she could tell that Sonny was being truthful and the confirmation of her attraction being reciprocated made her feel a pull deep down inside her. Man, I just want to jump her and rip her clothes off!

  “So here it is. Tonight, I am going to show you Ivan’s operation and then I’m going to take it down. And after you see what is going on in there…” She paused to let Kelly understand the gravity of her words. “If you are the kind of person that I think you are, you won’t stop me from doing what I am going to do.”

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  “Agent Burns? This is Agent Timmerman from DHS.” Reggie was just finishing up a call when his phone rang the instant he had put down the receiver. He recognized the low voice of Timmerman from their meeting in the parking lot, but before he could answer, she was already talking again. I bet this woman doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He smirked while he listened. “I just sent you an email, did you get it yet?” He moved his mouse to wake his screen up and clicked open his mailbox.

  “Let me check, just a second.” Once the application opened, sure enough, there was an email from DHS marked urgent. “Yep, I got it.” Clicking it open, he saw a police report of a woman being murdered. “Okay, what am I missing here?”

  He heard the soft chuckle in the woman’s voice through the phone. “Did you read the address where the body was found? Does it look familiar?” Reggie’s eyes scanned the report for the address and it took him a moment to register what he was reading.

  “Holy shit! That’s Kelly’s apartment!” He panicked for a second until he saw the name of the female victim. “Lori.” His voice was low. “That’s her ex-girlfriend. What the fuck is going on?”

  “It looks like someone was looking for your girl and this Lori was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The apartment was tossed and whoever did it looks like they weren’t worried about leaving anything for forensics. There are prints everywhere but no matches.”

  Reggie’s heart rate increased as he worried about his friend. He did not want to entertain the thought that they had taken her.
Kelly was a survivor and he had to believe that she was okay. “Agent Burns? You still there?” Timmerman’s voice had a bit of compassion in it that surprised Reggie a little.

  “Uh, yeah. I’m here.” He had to clear his throat before he continued. “I’m going to try and get a hold of her.”

  He heard the tired sigh on the other end of the line. “We’ve tried but we can’t find her. We think she’s still with Moretti, at least we hope. Our contacts tell us that the Popovs are still looking for the assassin so…” She trailed off as if she was trying to extend a modicum of hope to Reggie.

  “I have her personal number; it’s registered under an alias.”

  “Hm, clever girl. We didn’t know.” Timmerman was impressed with the resourcefulness of the ex-agent.

  “I’ve got a call to make, Agent.” He was ending the call, then his voice softened. “And Timmerman? Thanks for the heads up.”

  “No problem, Agent Burns. Keep in touch.” The line went dead and Reggie immediately began to dial Kelly’s private number, and it went straight to voicemail.

  “If you have this number, then you know the drill. Leave a number and I’ll call you back.”

  “Damn it, Kels.” He let out a breath in exasperation. “Kelly, it’s Reggie. It’s urgent that you call me back as soon as you get this.” Reggie waited a beat as he thought about how he should break the news to her. “The Russians got to Lori. She was at your apartment, probably looking for you. She’s gone, Kel. She’s dead. Call me back. Stay safe.” He put the phone down softly and rested his chin on his hands. What have you got yourself in the middle of, girl?