by Jet MacLeod
“This is going to get interesting,” he said shutting his door
“The Ukraine, huh? Maybe it is Ukrainian then. Wouldn’t hurt to look?”
She opened the laptop that Cole had given her. She pulled up Google translator and typed out the words the best that she could. She knew that they weren’t in Cyrillic but hopefully it would work. Her eyes got wide as she read the translation off the screen.
“No, no, please, no…I’m sorry…I had to…I’m sorry.”
She turned her head to the door, knowing that Del wasn’t there. What the hell could it mean? Why would she be apologizing to someone in a Russian dialect? It didn’t make any sense. She was a trained killer. It was her job. Why would she apologize for it?
Chapter 8
Angie came down first in the morning. She went into the kitchen and started the coffee maker. She knew how both of them lived off the caffeinated drink. They drank more than she did and she didn’t think that it was possible. She turned to the fridge and raided it, unsure of what she would find. She knew that Delia had surprised her with her culinary skills the last few days that they had been there. She figured that it was time that she reciprocated the gesture.
As she rummaged through the fridge, bent in half, Cole made his way into the kitchen. He poured himself a cup and studied Angie’s ass. He shook his head as he realized that Del was going to be a goner once she realized what she had in the woman bent over before him. He wanted to say something to her, but he realized that it would be worse for her to find him in the position she was already in. He refilled his cup and cleared his throat.
Angie hit her head on the fridge as she backed out of it. When she turned around to find the older gentleman standing there, smiling, with his customary cup of coffee in hand, she was holding some eggs and a pack of bacon. She returned his smile as she headed towards the stove.
“Do you have milk?”
“I’ll get it for you,” he told her as he went into the fridge.
“Thanks, Cole. I mean that. It means a lot to me that you have opened your house to me. I know that it can’t be easy for you to trust people. But, believe me when I tell you that I won’t forget this, but I won’t tell anyone that you helped me, either. I know what it means to lose your privacy. This has given me a new appreciation for it,” Angie told him.
“No problem, Kiddo. Just remember that you are Emily, now, and we’ll call it even. I don’t want to have to make you another identity so quickly. Then, my work would be traceable. But, if for some reason you did need new ones, I am sure that Del would find someone else to do it. She is a smart cookie. She’ll take care of you.”
“I’ve noticed,” Angie replied.
“Have you, now? Want to tell me what you mean by that? She say something to you?”
“No, nothing like that. It is the way she acts around me. Like I am so delicate that I might break, she seems afraid of me. I don’t understand why though. She was so hard and difficult when we first met a few days ago. I don’t understand what’s changed. It is like she is two different people. Does that make sense?” she asked him as she moved around his kitchen orienting herself to it and locating some other things that she needed to make breakfast.
“I do and yes, it does.”
“So, it isn’t just me?”
“No, Emily, it isn’t. Del is a very private person. She has done her job for so long and pushed away people that it take a while for people to understand that she is really human underneath it all. I think it is the same thing for her. I will tell you that you are the first mark that she has been assigned that she hasn’t killed. That in itself is complicated for her. She has been trained to kill. She is good at it. She is actually one of the best. That is why she is so quiet.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Angie asked as she grabbed a bowl from the cupboard and broke some eggs into it. She quickly started whisking them with a fork before taking the milk from him and adding a splash to it. She continued to stir it. “I hope that scrambled eggs are okay. I never really mastered any other way of cooking them, because I love them this way.”
“It’s fine, Girlie. I’ll eat them anyway you make them. I am not that picky.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yup, I am sure,” he replied, turning around to pour himself another cup of coffee.
“If you don’t slow down, I am going to have to make more,” Angie teased him.
“Well, I’ll make it. Don’t worry yourself too much about it. If I don’t make more, I am sure that Delia will as soon as she gets up. Speaking of which, I am surprised that she hasn’t come down, yet. It isn’t like her to sleep in so late,” Cole replied.
“I think she has a rough night, again.”
“Again?”
“I asked you about it last night before we both went to bed, remember?”
“You did?”
“I asked what the phrase meant in Russian. I knew what ‘no’ was, but I had to look up the rest. You told me that you didn’t know what it meant, so I used a translator to find out. She was apologizing to someone in her sleep. It was very disturbing. She doesn’t seem like the type of person who would need to apologize to anyone. She seems like she wouldn’t care. She would just move on and keep going. She doesn’t seem to let anything really faze her. She seems very head-strong and self-sufficient. I just can’t imagine a situation that she would find herself in that she would need to be sorry for something she’d done. And, it seemed like she it was something that she had to do while she was on an assignment,” Angie explained.
“It was.”
“Excuse me?” Angie asked as she poured her egg mixture in a frying pan.
“I know what happened.”
“You do?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Can you tell me?”
“No, I can’t.”
“It was something bad, wasn’t it?” Angie asked him.
“It was.”
“It hardened her, didn’t it?”
“It made her…more resolute, yes.”
Angie pushed the eggs around in the skillet. She thought about what Cole had said. He was trying to protect Del and still keep her confidence. He knew that Angie would dig and if she could get her hands on it, she would. What he didn’t know was that he told her enough in that brief interaction not to dig. She would wait for Del to tell her.
“She doesn’t talk about it, does she?”
“No.”
“It broke her a little, didn’t it?”
“Assignments like that one break all of us eventually, but that one almost killed her.”
“Almost killed her?”
“Yeah, she almost died, but in her mind, it would have been worth it.”
“Why do you say that?” Angie asked him, grabbing another skillet and setting it on the stove.
She gave the eggs a gentle push around their skillet. She reached across the stove and turned on the other eye. She grabbed the bacon and started placing it into the new skillet. She gave it a push with some tongs that she had found in a side drawer. She watched his face as she continued to cook. She dug around the cabinets and found some other ingredients. She grabbed another bowl and set to mixing up something else.
“That is how her mind works. She doesn’t care how the mission gets accomplished as long as it happens. She found her mark on that one. She did what she had to do to get close enough to him to get more intel on his operation before she was given the execution order. Those are always the hardest missions to do. She tried to detach herself from the situation, but she had gotten too deep. It was hard for her to break free. And, in the end, she was shot several times trying to get away. They found her and they knew that she was the assassin who killed their…leader.”
“So, they took their pain out on her?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes, they did. When our operatives found her, she had almost bled out. She had been shot thirty times. Her body was broken, but her mind wasn’t…yet.”
“Rehab broke her, didn’t it?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. Her body healed quickly, almost inhumanly fast. But, that is just Del for you. She isn’t going to stay down. She was then released, but the brass didn’t think that she was ready for duty. Don’t get me wrong. She lied her way through the psych evals. We all did. We learned how to tell them what they wanted to hear. Sometimes the only way we found peace was behind the crosshairs, looking for the pink mist,” Cole told her.
“Pink mist?”
“Please don’t make me explain that to you. It should be self-explanatory. What are those?” he asked her trying to change the subject.
“I was planning on making some muffins. I found some fruit in the fridge. Is that okay?”
“Sounds great, I haven’t had a good muffin in ages.”
“Don’t think that I am letting you off the hook, Cole.”
“I have no idea what you mean,” he replied, getting more coffee.
“Stop drinking that swill. You’ll rot your insides with it. I am not going to drop this topic. I’ll wait until later to bring it back up. You know when you least expect it. That way you’ll tell more than you already have. I am a lawyer. I’ll get the information I want. You’ll see.”
“I have no doubts about that. I’ve read your file, remember? I know that you are a bulldog in the courts. But, this isn’t a courtroom, Missy. And, I have been trained to resist you. Don’t you forget that. Del will tell you more if she wants to, which I doubt that she will. She hates herself for what she had to do. I think it finally got to her and that is why she took your case.”
“Why do you say that?” she asked, plating the bacon and eggs.
“You are her retirement package. One last mission before she goes somewhere and vegs out until oblivion comes to claim her. She deserves it. She has been doing this for too long.”
“Oblivion comes to claim her?”
“I don’t know how long Del will last in the real world. She has never been part of it for very long. She jumped from mission to mission, never settling in one area long.”
“But, still…”
“A lot of people in our position can’t hack it in the real world. If we aren’t institutionalized by the G men when we get out, we go into hiding. And, in hiding, no one can find us. We do it to get off the grid. We don’t want to be found. And, then there is the third possibility.”
“And, I am sure that I don’t want to know what that is, do I?”
“The same for some of you cop friends who suffer from PTSD after a hard case or shooting.”
“They eat their gun?” Angie stated more than she asked.
“Exactly.”
“Do you think that she’ll do that?”
“No, I don’t. I think that Del is looking for something that she never had. She’s realized that she is still young enough to have a real life. She could replace all the bad memories with good ones. She is looking for a place to settle down and a peace that only stillness can give sometimes.”
“That would explain on her mornings and evenings on your porch,” Angie mussed.
“It would.”
“But that still doesn’t explain all the uneasiness in her eyes,” Angie stated.
“It does if you knew her life. Look, Emily, I am not telling you to befriend her. Just give her some leeway. She’s had it harder than most. She had to prove herself in the beginning and it wasn’t easy. She is the first female that they let into our program. I’ll tell you that she had the perfect aptitude for it. She was in the test cycle and she passed with flying colors. I think that her lack of real social skills made it easier for her. She…was the best of us.”
“You say that like it is a bad thing.”
“For someone like Del, it is.”
“Because she feels things?”
“Exactly. She is a beautiful, intelligent woman, who majored in death. That doesn’t make it easy to make friends. Nor does it make for small talk. She needs someone in her life that understands that. She’s never had that. Her home life growing up wasn’t…shall we say…ideal. I don’t know if there is anyone out that can handle what she’s been through, but I hope that she finds them,” he told her as he watched her put the muffins in tins he didn’t realize that he had and then put them in the oven.
“She is definitely a special specimen.”
“A specimen?” Cole questioned.
“She doesn’t come across as a person sometimes. I mean that quite literally. She goes into commando mode and there is no reasoning with her. It is like she is on auto-pilot. I’ve never seen someone move like the way she does. It is amazing and terrifying at the same time.”
“That is how it is for her, too, I’m sure.”
Angie laughed as she looked at her watch. She refilled her coffee cup and sipped it, quietly. She looked at the older man and wondered what else he wasn’t telling her about Del. He seemed to have her well-being in his interests. He was worried about her, that much she knew, but she didn’t know why. She hadn’t been in the trenches with them and she knew that she might not ever understand the mystery that was Delia Montgomery.
“Hey, what are y’all talking about?” Del said, walking into the kitchen, grabbed a mug from the cabinet and poured herself a cup of coffee.
She sipped it and watched their amused faces, still wondering why no one had replied to her question yet. She set the mug down and refilled it. She looked from Angie to Cole and back again. She cocked an eyebrow at them and watched as Angie took the muffins out of the oven.
“We were just discussing the importance of a well-balanced breakfast. Now, sit down. Cole, plates if you will? Does anyone need a refill?” Angie asked as she moved towards the table with the eggs, bacon and muffins, much to Del’s dismay at not getting a truthful answer.
Chapter 9
They were out in the pasture riding horses. Del had to admit that she hadn’t seen Angie so relaxed in days. She actually looked like she was enjoying herself, but she knew that they couldn’t stay there. It wasn’t fair to Cole and certainly wasn’t fair to Angie. They needed to get on the road. The supped up Camry was ready and Del was itching to go. She felt like they had been there long enough in Cole’s good graces. It was time to move on. It was time to find a place to hide out in the open and keep Angie safe.
She looked at Angie and knew that she wasn’t going to be happy for long. The move would require her to actually become Emily. Cole had been helping with the transition and would only address her as such. It wasn’t that Del was going to have a problem calling her Emily; it was the fact that she knew Angie’s type. She’d read her file. She was headstrong, antagonistic, and liked to challenge authority. She was going to be a handful, but it was the fact that Cole kept giving Del this looks that almost set her off. It was like they had become friends and knew something that they weren’t going to share with Del. It made her angry.
“We need to be heading back,” Del said.
“You sure? It’s a nice day. Can’t we stay out a little longer?”
“I would love to, but we need to pack. We are going to leave in the morning. We’re going to need rest,” Del told her.
“Where we going?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, I don’t. I was thinking that we could head up to Chicago, but I don’t think that is a good idea anymore. Big cities are too hard to calculate in, too hard to protect you in, and too difficult to work with if something does happen. No, we need some place smaller. And, don’t worry, Princess, I am not going to take you to Po Dunk. I need more civilization than that,” Del stated.
“Princess? Po Dunk? What the Hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“No, it isn’t ‘nothing.’ What is it? Fine, you want to be difficult, then I’ll be difficult right back. I am not going back until you tell me what is wrong with you. How about that? Do YOU like that? I am going to stay riding, until you tell m
e what I want to know,” Angie told her.
“Fine, stay out here, unprotected. See if I care. I really don’t. I’ll get paid either way.”
“But, it is your job to keep me alive and deliver me to the courthouse on time.”
“It is.”
“And, yet, you would leave me out here, all alone and unprotected?” Angie questioned, knowing that she had struck a nerve, but not caring enough as she keep picking at it.
“I could.”
“You mean that you would.”
“I would save us all a lot of trouble.”
“You don’t mean to say that I am trouble, do you?” Angie asked teasingly.
“Lady, you have been nothing but trouble for me since before we met. Yes, I have to protect you. Yes, I am going to do that, but I can only do so much. You have to help in that situation. If you want to be stupid and stay out here with no guard or other protection, then the fault will lie with you. I could care less about it. I will do my best to do it. But, I can’t do that alone. You have decided to fight me at every turn. You test me when you don’t realize that I know you are. You push back when things don’t go your way.
“Well, I am sorry, Princess, but this isn’t a trip to Mom and Dad’s place up in the Hamptons. This isn’t some wild and crazy adventure vacation. This is a shit storm of real life for people like me. And, if you want to stir the pot, then stir it, Princess. I am not going to be one you have to worry about. I am going to be the one calling your parents and telling them that you are dead because you couldn’t follow directions and keep your mouth shut. I am going to have to write a report to let the Alphabets know that you couldn’t keep your cover, because you were too busy trying to be you that you failed to notice the cartel following you. It was only a matter of time before they caught you and disposed of you.
“What you are failing to see, PRINCESS, is that you are target. YOU ARE A TARGET. There are thousands of people in the cartels just waiting to kill you. One shot, Angie, one well-placed shot and that’s it. There would be going home, no going back, you would be dead. Is that what you want? Because if it is, I can arrange it for you. I’ll call the Alphabets and let them know what you want out, you don’t care. You can go commit Harry Carry on you own. I want nothing to do with that,” Del told her as she spun her horse around and headed back to the house without really waiting for an answer.
