by Erin Wade
Katherine let her gown fall to the floor, stepped out of it, and walked toward her bed. Peyton followed, carrying their wine.
“I’m delighted everyone was as excited as I that you accepted the job as our new police chief,” Katherine said as she sat on the side of the bed and reached for her wine. “With our new coaching staff and you, nothing can stop the progress of our university.”
“You did surprise me by announcing that you plan to marry me.” Peyton chuckled. “Did you see their faces?”
“I did.” Katherine laughed out loud. “But they knew that only you and I had kept a lid on what could have been a devastating scandal for the university. They trust us to lead the school into the future.
“So, when are you going to make an honest woman out of me?”
“You set the date, honey, and I’ll be there with maracas. You’ll have no trouble finding me. I’ll be the one with a smile as big as Texas and shaking two brightly colored gourds.”
“Right now, all I want you to shake is the earth under my feet.” Katherine lay back on the bed, holding out her empty wine glass for Peyton to take.
##
Katherine and Peyton’s wedding had been the social event of the year, and Peyton had settled into her new job creating a safe environment for all students. Katherine had initiated a zero-tolerance policy for sexual misconduct.
“This is the last of your boxes,” Katherine called out as Peyton carried two containers from the garage. “What’s in them?”
“Clothes, I think.” Peyton opened one of the boxes as Katherine opened the other.
“What’s this?” Katherine said, holding up a costume.
“Oh, I wore that for Halloween one year.” Peyton shrugged as Katherine unfolded the costume’s mask.
“You went as Batman?” Katherine laughed and kissed her wife. “You should wear it at the masquerade ball this year. I bet you’re a heart-stopper in spandex.”
Peyton pulled the costume from Katherine’s hands. “I think I’ll donate it to Goodwill. It’s served its purpose.”
The End
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Other #1 Best Selling Books
by Erin Wade
Too Strong to Die
Death Was Too Easy
Three Times as Deadly
Branded Wives
Living Two Lives
Don’t Dare the Devil
The Roughneck & the Lady
Wrongly Accused
The Destiny Factor
Coming in 2019
Assassination Authorized!
Java Jarvis
Dead Girl’s Gun
Doomsday Cruise
The following Erin Wade
novels are on Audio
Three Times as Deadly
Living Two Lives
Don’t Dare the Devil
The Roughneck & the Lady
Wrongly Accused
The Destiny Factor
Assassination Authorized
By Erin Wade
Below are the first four chapters of Assassination Authorized. I hope you enjoy them. Assassination Authorized will be released in the second quarter of 2019.
Again, thank you for being a reader of Erin Wade novels.
Chapter 1
Dr. Mecca Storm took the familiar white envelope from her patient, a handsome, muscular man in his midforties.
She removed the card from the envelope and glanced at it. She knew, without looking, what the card said. “Please take care of this gentleman for me,” was neatly printed in black ink on the stark white card.
“I truly appreciate you seeing me after hours,” the man said.
“Who recommended me to you,” she asked.
“A friend of a friend,” the man flashed a smile and lowered himself into the chair across the desk from her. “I was told you are the best in the business.” His easy manner and relaxed demeanor told her he was a man confident of his place in the world. A place she knew he might not occupy for long.
“Mr. Reynolds, how may I help you?”
“Please, call me Tom,” he flashed his easy smile again.
A heavy silence weighed on the room as she waited for him to begin talking.
“Tom, how may I help you,” she prodded.
“If you read the papers, you already know who I am and why I’m here.” For the first time, he seemed uneasy.
“You’re a United States Senator and a person of interest in the disappearance of your wife and three children.” Mecca spoke softly, watching his face for any emotions her words might elicit. “You’re the ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Committee. You’re a very powerful man and are considered the top contender in the next election for president.”
“I see you have done your homework.” The easy smile was back.
“Did you kill your wife and children?”
His head snapped back as if she had hit him with a hard uppercut. The smile disappeared from his face. “No! God, No.”
“Well, now that we have that out of the way, how may I help you, Tom?”
After Tom Reynolds left, Mecca looked at the stark white card with its perfect lettering. She called patients bearing the card her “special patients” and she had received more special patients than usual this year.
##
Mecca was still replaying her visit with Tom Reynolds in her mind when the cab stopped in front of her Upper West Side apartment. She paid the driver as the doorman opened the cab door greeting her warmly. “You’re home late tonight, Dr. Storm.”
“It’s been a long and interesting day, Paul,” she smiled.
Alone in her apartment, she ordered Chinese food, poured a glass of wine and walked out onto her terrace. She never tired of her view of the Hudson River. She collapsed onto the lounge, leaned her head back and reveled in the unseasonably cool breeze.
Tom Reynolds. The man’s face flashed before her as she recalled the distress in his eyes as he discussed the disappearance of his family. She wasn’t sure whether the distress was caused by the disappearance of his family or the investigation of him as a suspect.
Reynolds’ wife and three daughters had disappeared during a shopping trip in New York; just vanished. Their driver had dropped them at Macy’s Herald Square before noon. When they failed to call him at the appointed time, he began calling Mrs. Reynolds’ cell phone. After several calls, Mrs. Reynolds answered and told him they had taken a cab back to the hotel. She would call him tomorrow. On closer questioning, he couldn’t swear it had been Mrs. Reynolds’ voice.
Authorities traced the family’s movements through credit card purchases, which stopped at the restaurant where they had dinner. No one recalled seeing them after that. A check of the cab companies showed no pickup of four women from Macy’s. It was as if they had eaten, paid the bill, and vanished.
Reynolds had been in his office in Washington. Although most of his colleagues had deserted the “The Hill” early for their Fourth of July vacation, he had stayed late to finish dictation on several matters he needed his office staff to handle while he was gone. Both his secretary and an assistant had reported he had not left his office, as they could hear him dictating the information he later gave the secretary. His secretary had reported that he had left her office a little after nine, handing her dictation drives he had just finished. A check of the thumb drive showed the data had been entered during that period.
The doorman rang that the deliveryman was on his way up. As Mecca sat down to dinner, she turned on her laptop. A quick check of her Swiss account verified that the usual quarter-million dollars had transferred into it. It was time to go to work on Tom Reynolds.
##
Chapter 2
Jericho Parker pulled Mecca Storm’s file from the double loc
ked drawer in the heavy metal desk. Jericho had been protecting Mecca for over five years. An honor student, graduating at the top of her class, Mecca had received numerous scholarships from medical schools that recognized her genius and wanted to add her name to their list of distinguished alumni.
Her work in the field of therapeutic hypnosis had received rave reviews from the psychiatric community. She had finished her bachelor’s degree in two years and a medicallaw degree at Harvard in four years. She was editor of the Harvard Law Review. Graduating Summa Cum Laude, the top psychiatric hospitals had vied for her to do her residency in their facilities. After her residency, she devoted seven more years to research, honing her knowledge and absorbing everything she could from those considered the elite in her field. Wherever Mecca went, lucrative government grants followed to fund her research. The psychiatric community was surprised and disappointed when she suddenly left research and opened a private practice.
Fluent in five languages, Mecca worked with wealthy, influential patients from all over the U.S. and other countries. Her client load was heavy, and she often worked ten hours a day.
Jericho flipped through the photos of Mecca Storm. At 5’8”, she was an imposing figure, tall and slender. A true natural beauty with long dark hair, she looked more like a movie star than a doctor.
Both of Mecca’s parents were doctors with a successful practice in Albany, NY. Mecca and her older sister Teagan were highly regarded in their chosen medical fields. She adored her parents and her sister and visited them as often as possible. She often commented that the Hudson River tied them together.
Jericho’s job was to keep her safe and make certain no one interfered with her work. Her file gave no indication why she was so important to the United States Government. Although Jericho knew all there was to know about her, they had never met.
##
Mecca never took anything for granted. When patients told her their stories, she listened attentively, watching for the telltale signs of half-truths or outright lies. After one session, she could tell if a patient was being open and honest with her, or guarded and secretive. She was never wrong. As his second session with her began, she knew Tom Reynolds was hiding something.
“Tom, I feel you are holding back information I need to know in order to help you,” Mecca spoke softly but firmly, carefully articulating each word as if he were a child that might not understand what she was saying. “I can’t make a recommendation to the DA’s office unless you are completely honest with me. We are all working hard to get your name removed from the suspect list, so you can get on with your life.”
“Dr. Storm, I believe I am being framed and I don’t even know how to stop it. Miriam and I have certainly had arguments over living in Washington. She wants to raise the girls in Texas, but she would never just leave me.”
Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to make it look like Miriam took the girls and left me or worse,” Tom cocked his head to one side and glared at her. “Supposedly she cleaned out our savings account and the girls’ college fund; almost a million dollars. Why would she do that?”
“Did you give this information to the police?” Mecca asked.
“Of course! They interviewed the bank officer who handled the transactions. Miriam withdrew the cash over a three-month period. The bank official called me a couple of times to alert me to the withdrawals, but I was too busy to be bothered with our personal household issues. I was sure it wasn’t important. I never returned her calls.
“I looked at the security tapes of Miriam’s transactions and honestly, I don’t believe the woman on the tapes is my wife. She resembles Miriam, and everyone keeps insisting it is, but it isn’t.”
Mecca made a note to obtain a copy of the police report and the tapes. She didn’t like being fed bits and pieces of information whenever Reynolds deemed it necessary for her to know something.
“What do you think is happening, Tom?”
“Dr. Storm, my wife is an heiress. She didn’t need the piddling amount of money in our savings account, but I do. I barely have enough money to retain a lawyer. Most people think I married her for the money, but that’s not true. I love my wife and I love my daughters. I would never hurt them. I am worried sick about them.
“You’ve seen what a media circus this has become. It has eclipsed the presidential election and I believe that is the intent of whoever is behind this. I think my family has been murdered and I’m being framed for it in order to give the other party an excuse to drag my name through the mud and cost us the election. These people are ruthless, and nothing will stop them. They wouldn’t think twice about killing my family. Yes, I’m hiding something; sheer terror!”
Mecca closed her eyes. “Your family has been missing almost a month. Has there been a ransom demand?”
“No.”
“Who inherits your wife’s estate in the event of her death?” Mecca asked.
“It is to be divided evenly among the girls,” Reynolds said, “If all of them preceded me in death, I would inherit everything, billions; a great motive for murder, right?
“As long as Daniel Devon is alive, he will be the sole administrator of the estate,” Tom added.
The intercom on her desk buzzed reminding her of her next appointment. “Same time next week,” she smiled.
Tom Reynolds left by the private entrance to her office. An entrance used only by clients who presented the white referral card. She usually handled two such patients a year. Their names never appeared on her calendar or in her accounting. As far as the records of Dr. Mecca Storm showed, such patients never existed.
##
Jericho loved it when Mecca went to Broadway plays or musicals. Though not so fond of the opera, it was beginning to grow on the bodyguard. Jericho was even beginning to recognize songs from the various operas they had attended over the years. Of course, only Jericho knew they were a couple. Mecca was completely oblivious to her shadow’s existence. If she ordered tickets, Jericho automatically received a ticket for the seat directly behind her. For the more popular theaters, she had standing box seats and so did Jericho. Mecca’s apartment was right above Jericho’s, so the agent was very aware of those times the doctor paced the floor. On occasion, Jericho silently removed threats to her: a friendly drunk, a not so friendly mugger, and a stalker that had become obsessed with her. The drunk and mugger had simply faded into the crowd when Jericho shoved the Ruger into their back, but the bodyguard had been forced to kill the stalker.
Mecca was in great demand both professionally and socially. She attended many benefits and political black-tie events, moving easily among senators, governors and visiting royalty. She had many suitors who escorted her around town, but she never took any of them home with her. For that, Jericho was thankful. She was the epitome of what a proper, chaste woman should be.
Five years ago, when assigned the job as Mecca Storm’s invisible bodyguard, Jericho was upset. Life as Jericho knew it ceased. Mecca’s life became Jericho’s life. Where she went, Jericho went. Where she dined, Jericho dined. Jericho was thankful Mecca disliked sushi. Although Jericho hated to admit it, life’s best hours were the ones spent watching Mecca. Sometimes during a play or musical, Jericho had to suppress the urge to reach out and touch her hair. The agent couldn’t imagine life without Mecca Storm and she didn’t even know Jericho existed.
A former member of the Air Force’s Special Operations Team, Jericho had escaped the war with only a small metal plate in her head. She was tall, beautiful and completely devoted to her country. Extremely intelligent, fluent in seven languages, and an expert in all forms of combat, she had never failed a mission. Her transition from special ops to secret service agent had been an easy one. She was considered one of the nation’s top assets when it came to protecting her assignments. She did whatever it took to keep her charge safe. Although she preferred intimidation, killing came easily to her when all else failed.
Jericho had no idea why Mecca was so important. She did k
now not to ask questions. It was a sweet assignment for her. Mecca was so important the government wanted to keep Jericho as happy as possible in her assignment. The government paid all her expenses. Everything she did charged to a limitless credit card, and she had received a clear deed to her five-million-dollar apartment. Of course, she knew the only reason her apartment was so grand was because she had to be below Mecca’s. Funds were automatically deposited into accounts for her homeowner’s association, utilities, etc. Every two years a new black vehicle appeared in her parking place with a title and insurance card in her name in the console. She banked her annual income of $200,000 in a savings account. In exchange for being a kept woman, she gave up all semblance of a personal life. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, she belonged to Mecca Storm.
Mecca dialed the phone number she had always called when she needed information on her special clients. The same voice she had heard for the past five years answered. “I need a copy of the police files on Tom Reynolds,” she said.
“You will have it tomorrow,” the voice replied.
“Please, don’t hang up,” Mecca pleaded, but Jericho knew the dangers of engaging in conversation with her. The line went dead.
Mecca watched a sailboat on the Hudson and slowly lowered the phone from her ear. She had made every search imaginable to find the owner of the number she called when she needed information. As far as the phone company knew, the number did not exist. More than anything she wished the voice would talk to her. She needed someone to talk to when she was sent these patients. She recorded every conversation she had with her unknown contact. She couldn’t tell if the mechanically altered voice was male or female, but she knew that if she ever heard that voice—even in a crowd—she would recognize the speech pattern.
The information on Tom Reynolds arrived at her office before noon. The courier had strict instructions to release the manila envelope containing a flash drive to Dr. Storm and no one else.
