Copyright © 2015 Shunta Montgomery
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Publisher’s Note:
Kill List is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, event or locales is entirely coincidental.
Special Thanks
Thank you, Barb, for catching the mistakes I missed. Your assist with editing has been wonderful.
Thanks to all of my readers for showing your support for my work by buying and reading my books.
Some Other Books by Capri Montgomery
Guarding Angel
Play it Again
For the Love of Layla
Shadow Hills Returns: Revenge Justified
Shadow Ridge
Shadow Hills Returns: Breaking Point
Shadow Hills Returns: Obsession’s Curse
Forged in Fire
The Funeral Planner
Shadow Hills Returns: Family Ties
Shadow Hills Returns: The Cost of Love
The Sixth Sentinel
On the Line
When the Heart Breaks
Killing Hannah
On Thin Ice
Explosive: Deadly Connections
Betrayal of the Dove
Vendetta
Shadow Hills: M is for Murder
Seducing the Bodyguard
Shadow Hills: No Valentine
Shadow Hills: Fallen Hero
Fahrenheit
Secrets and Lies
Returning Sheba
Saints and Sinners
The McGregor Affair
The Geneva Project
The Admiral’s Daughter
Dangerous Obsessions
And Many Others…
Coming Soon:
Red Noon
Kill List
Capri Montgomery
Chapter One
Pristinely calming silk window shades in royal blue could have brushed smoothly against the soft ivory down comforter if the windows opened. A nice nearly spring breeze would have definitely been welcome to the caged smell of the posh luxury yet severely used room. Of course being this high up and the temperatures not being that close to spring at all meant the air would probably be more like freezing cold than a soft shade of warm. Still, with the sun shining she would love if the windows did open in some of these rooms. The smell, that used, slept in, copulated in, and everything else in kind of smell could really get into a person’s nose and make them want to throw up. Despite it all, it was a beautiful room and she couldn’t deny that. This hotel was at the top of the line, ranked number one for more than three years in a row and was still looking good enough to bring in the money. People had to have more money than they knew what to do with to shell out the kind of cash rooms like this cost.
Olivia Marsei looked around the suite once more. What greeted her eyes was the soft ivory fabric of the comforter and the ivory with blue border trimmed sheets that were now disheveled like a tornado had touched down in the bed. She sighed heavily. Who knew this would be her life? She didn’t. She was in college once upon a time. She was going to be a veterinarian. She was going to go work in the wild, but then it happened—life spiraled out of control. The only way to really save her family was to come back from the west to New York, New York and work. It started off okay. She got a job with a fashion magazine. Sure, she was bottom tier but she was okay with that. It wasn’t as if she cared a thing about this new age fashion so she hadn’t learned all she could about it. In the big city of fashion unbound she was lucky she had gotten the job in the first place. Everybody already working there had gone through school either to design clothes at some point in the past, to be the expert voice on fashion trends that were making waves and breaking some bankrolls, or had done the fashion photography route. She hadn’t done any of that so bottom tier was lucky to say the least. She could work from the ground up. She just needed to make enough to help get her family back on solid ground.
But then life spiraled again, and again, and then again. Her parents were killed in Chicago while trying to secure a job for her father. He needed to work so they would move if they had to and life would get back on track. Life hadn’t been easy for him. Putting her sister through college and then having to put her through college too had really tanked his savings.
She didn’t know the family was doing so badly. She went her undergraduate degree on full scholarship, but she had to take out loans if she wanted to get through the rest. Her father said no. He said there was nothing worse than a person having to graduate and start their adult life fully loaded with government debt. He had put her through her Masters and was putting her through her doctoral program too. She had gotten internships but they weren’t paid, and then she had gotten an assistant position at a kennel. She hated dogs. She wanted to work with horses and deer, those kinds of animals, but she would take what she could get and the kennel with the dogs and the cats she seemed to be allergic to was the only place she could get in that would work with her on her college required schedule. It was only going to be for a little while because she knew her program demanded a full year in the field working with the animals she was focusing her major on. She was already getting ready to send off letters to ranchers. Will work for free was basically what she was willing to put on there just to get a stint at subbing under one of their on-staff vets. But the day she had planned to sit down and get the mass of inquiries together was the day she got the call from her mother that they were going to lose the flat, that her older sister had made some unscrupulous deals with loan sharks, mafia laced loan sharks, and the only way to save her was to sign over everything to these people.
Olivia, Liv to her friends, had quit everything and gone home to help her parents. They had moved into a less than stellar neighborhood, the kind that made her feel afraid just to walk during the day let alone at night. She had sold her text books via Amazon the best she could, taking in far less money than what they were worth but she needed the money to buy food or they would starve. Goodbye textbooks, goodbye college; hello hell. At least it felt like she was giving up everything for hell, because she felt as if the future she once planned to have was now gone. But instead of getting stuck in hell-ville she kept it moving, kept working and made a vow to herself that she would not let her change in circumstances break her spirit.
When she got the job at the fashion magazine she saw things coming together. Sure she wasn’t a vet, and she could now forget about calling herself Doctor Marsei, like ever, but her parents were fine. Her sister was God only knew where, but she couldn’t worry about the dysfunctional twit when she was now the only provider for the family.
There is where she met Chogan Harjo while he was home on leave. The Cree Indian had graduated with honors from high school, gone into the military on the Marine side of the line as she called it, and he had been special ops and a whole lo
t of other mysterious things ever since. At the time she didn’t know him all that well, but she had met his sister and they had struck up a friendship so she saw him whenever he came home because of her relationship with his sister.
Amber- Sokanon, that was his sister’s name. She hated it because as she got older she wanted to embrace her heritage fully. Her mother told her getting a job would be easier with a different name and they knew that early on. So while her brother had the full Cree name of Chogan, which meant blackbird, they had hyphenated her name and always shortened it to Amber. When Olivia asked which one she wanted her to call her she told her Amber was fine since it was what everybody else called her and at her age now, post the growing up teen years, she had grown accustomed to it too.
She had met Amber by accident really. While she still had the first job at the fashion magazine. She was coming out of Lucky Brew with a cup of steaming hot herbal tea and Amber was rushing inside. They had collided but thankfully Olivia hadn’t gone butt first on the ground even though her cup of tea hadn’t been so lucky. Both women had been laughing so hard at their covered in chamomile tea clothes that they just struck up a conversation while they tried to use napkins to dry up the liquid.
They both had been lost in conversation and while Olivia wasn’t running late for work Amber must have been. Olivia had briefly thought of telling her about work but they started talking about the Cree Indian tribes and how her parents hadn’t wanted to live on a reservation. They wanted their children to be able to see the world outside of the reservation, live in it and maybe one day take back ownership of the land that was once theirs. But at the same time her parents wanted to make it easier for her. Their father, Mingan, had definitely told his wife, Alsoomse, that they were giving his boy a strong Cree name no matter the American standards. And strong is what they had given him; strong is what he had become. Their last name was an interesting tale that pretty much told her there was Navajo somewhere in their line—possibly so as Amber’s mother had said, but the name was still Native and the name was still theirs.
That morning they had lapsed into conversation when Amber’s phone rang and she beamed with happiness. “Chogan,” she had giggled so much that Olivia thought this Chogan was her boyfriend until Amber called him “big brother” with a huge smile on her face. “You’re almost home right?”
Olivia hadn’t heard the other end of the conversation but she could read expressions enough to know the answer had been a mix of yes and no.
“Soon then?” She had said. “You’ll be back for a family picnic right?” She had smiled again. “Great. I have a new friend I want you to meat. She’s so nice she dumped her tea on me.”
Olivia had covered her eyes and shook her head. Oh sure, that’s what she needed a big brother to hear, that she had dumped her tea on his little sister. Sure, she had thought, that would make him hate her before he even met her.
As happy as Amber was Olivia saw the panic on her face before the words came out of her mouth. “Crap. I’m late!”
Amber had disconnected the call and rushed away but not before exchanging numbers with her and promising to call her that night. Their friendship had started off strong and stayed that way. Perhaps it was because they had some things in common with each other and they could understand each other on some level. Perhaps it was because Olivia didn’t feel like she had much of a sister left and it felt good having a friend as close as she and Amber had become.
Amber hadn’t been so lucky career wise either. She was a good student, but never stupendously so; scholarships were hard for her to get. She got some scholarships thanks to her heritage and she was able to get through her first two years of school before she decided it just wasn’t for her anyway. She dropped out, much to her parents’ dismay and then she found her way down to the Westin Lights, a very upscale hotel with loads of high class assigned to it. That place didn’t have a room in it that went for under five hundred dollars a night.
Amber’s parents may have been chagrinned about her choice, but Olivia couldn’t complain. When her own job fell apart thanks to the company mismanaging their money and going under, she had nowhere else to go. If it hadn’t been for Amber’s service to the still fabulous hotel Olivia wouldn’t have gotten a job, and she certainly wouldn’t have gotten in at the top of the maid services level. Yes, they had levels for that kind of stuff and the bottom tier was what she would call trash collector meets waste cleanup meets sewage backup removal crew. It was gross and thanks to Amber Olivia didn’t have to figure out if she had the stuff it took to do that kind of work because she already knew her answer would be no. She would probably puke, puke, and then puke some more before running for the door.
Amber’s sweet voice and gorgeous looks had smoothed the way for Olivia to get the job. She couldn’t say she blamed Amber for using what the good lord blessed her with. The woman had curves in all the right places, breasts that were a solid D-cup, a waist that fit hourglass figure requirements and skin as Indian red-brown as one could imagine. Her skin was smooth, without even a hint of hormonal acne, unlike Olivia who had never had the dreaded bout with acne until she hit year twenty-nine of her life. They were hormonal breakouts only, but they always left a scar here or there until she could use enough Ambi to fade the dark spots on her smooth brown skin.
She had come back from the desert southwest, where she was tanned without even trying, to New York, where she lost her tan after a couple years, but thanks to being Black-Irish herself she didn’t need a tan to add color to her skin.
She was however, not the kind of woman that caused car accidents to occur just because she was crossing the street. She was five foot one, barely ninety-seven pounds soaking wet, had A-cup breasts, and soft, subtle curves. She did, however, have a very toned body. The black side of her lineage made sure she had the hips and a softly rounded behind so at least she didn’t look like a straight board. That didn’t mean people didn’t pick on her about her weight. Fortunately, she had a good sense of self.
She tried not to let any disparaging remarks bother her. She had bigger problems in her life—especially with her father and mother dead now. She hadn’t expected to lose them and in some way she blamed herself. Her father was so broken that she hadn’t finished her journey on the road to becoming a doctor of veterinary medicine and wasn’t making a better life for herself that he was desperate to find a job. If it hadn’t been for her he wouldn’t have been in Chicago on that day when he and her mother lost their life simply because they took the Chicago L at the wrong time, on the wrong day, with the wrong group of young boys—boys, not men, who had a rival gang fight in the car they had been sitting in. The cops told her that it would seem one group was on and sitting near the back and at the next stop another group, from a different gang came on, and all hell broke loose, sending her parents to the grave when the shots started being fired.
The only person left in her life was her sister and she couldn’t even find her. She hadn’t even been able to tell her about their parents so Olivia had buried them alone, mourned them alone, and tried to figure out what to do without a family alone. Amber and her parents had tried to be there for her, but it wasn’t the same. It could never be the same. They were friends, but they weren’t blood. They weren’t the parents she would one day be able to have see her get married, or tell their stories to their grandkids. Sure, she didn’t want kids, but life was life and if she had one or two she had always thought her mother could tell them about their Black-American ancestry while her father could tell them about their Irish-American heritage. Now she was the only one that could give those stories and every day it felt as if she was forgetting more and more.
“If the tips weren’t so good I would so hate these rooms.” Amber’s voice pulled Olivia out of her current state of thought.
“Yeah, how can people be so…”
“Nasty?”
Olivia laughed softly. “Yep. At least this guy doesn’t have condoms all over the floor, the chair, stuc
k to the wall.” She felt her body tremble just thinking about their last room they had to clean. It had taken them over an hour and they still had at least ten rooms on the list to check off, five of which had to be cleaned before the tree o’clock check-in deadline.
“Don’t count your blessings yet, Liv. With a bed looking like that we might find them stuck in the sheets.”
“Yuck,” she shook her head. “If that is the case then I am so glad I have bathroom and closet duty on this one.”
“Oh man. How do I get out here this time?”
“Because I took out there the last time and had to triple glove just to get all those used condoms up.”
Amber laughed. “Oh yeah. Well for you I hope the bathroom is not looking like a sexual hurricane went through it.”
“Oh man...” she mumbled as she took her bag into the bathroom area. There was a closet that attached to it and gave a second entrance and exit to the main hall of the room. She figured she would start in the bathroom and work her way back to meet Amber.
“Don’t sweat it,” she told herself. “You could be completely jobless and homeless. In New York homeless would totally suck, especially in the winter.” She was happy to see there wasn’t a stitch of condoms anywhere on the floor, walls, or other areas. Although whoever had this room had gotten some black powdery dust all over the sink and bath area. A little dust, provided it wasn’t toxic, was better than a lot of bodily fluids to clean up.
She shrugged. “Happiness is a choice, Olivia; choose it.” That is what her mother would always say to her. She would always tell her not to let the bad things in life break her. She would always tell her that happiness was a choice. No matter how bad things were she could choose to be happy. This, she looked around again, was definitely not what she planned for her life, but she could be happy; she would be happy.
She was working with her best friend, whose brother she had a serious crush on. The man would probably never look at her with a hint of desire. The last time she saw him he was nicely muscled, still had the longer hair because thanks to his heritage the government had afforded him with the “okay not to cut” blessing—not that he would have cut it anyway. From what Amber had told her, and what she had seen of him when she met him, he was strong willed like a warrior of the past. He would not be broken.
Kill List (Special Ops #8) Page 1
