by Karin Harlow
Another picture flashed up on the screen, this one of an old Indian man and a small dark-haired boy who looked solemnly at the camera. It was followed by another picture, similar setting, the two of them sitting on the steps of a dilapidated house, the boy, younger, with a man who resembled the older one in the first picture. But this man’s eyes were dead. “Cross’s old man became a classic cliché. Drank himself to death by the time Marcus was six. He had a good reason. His wife, a trust fund baby and heiress to the Taylor conglomerate, took off two weeks after Cross was born.”
Another photo flashed up on the screens. The woman was extraordinarily beautiful. She could have been Jean Harlow’s twin.
“Sophia Scott Taylor. She ran off with ‘that half-breed’ Johnny Killroy to California when she was sixteen. She lasted long enough to get pregnant, have the baby, and run home to Las Vegas, where her marriage was annulled, and Johnny Killroy and her infant son were erased from her life. Daddy hurried up and married her off to husband number two, retired ambassador to Japan, Holby Philips.”
“You say that like there are more husbands,” Jax quipped.
Godfather nodded. “Philips died of a heart attack five years after they were married. By then, the lovely Sophia was imbedded in politics. She was patient and chose her next husband with great care. There’s chatter about him becoming Calhoun’s running mate. Could mean the White House. That ups the stakes exponentially.” He clicked another picture. It showed an older but still gorgeous Sophia Taylor smiling beside Senator William Rowland.
“Cross’s mother is married to Rowland?” Jax asked, shocked by the connection. “Does he know?”
Godfather shook his head. “I thought it was an odd coincidence, so we pulled the birth certificate. It names Jane Doe as Cross’s birth mother. But we dug a little deeper and found the original at the reservation archives. We have no idea what he was told as a child. From our perspective, if you combine the circumstances and the paperwork, I’m betting he doesn’t know.”
“Does the senator know Lazarus’s top gun is his wife’s firstborn?”
Godfather slowly shook his head. “No, and for now we’ re going to leave it that way.”
“Does Lazarus know?”
“I’m not going to assume anything about Joseph Lazarus. It would be too much of a coincidence for him not to know. And I don’t believe in coincidences. I’d bet my retirement Lazarus recruited Cross solely for the blood ties to the senator’s wife. Lazarus is a manipulator. He wants it all, and he’ ll use the mother/son card if he has to.”
Jax slowly shook her head, wondering who else Lazarus would use and how. Was anyone off limits to a man like him? “I doubt Cross, if he knows or finds out about Sophia Rowland, would do much to save her. Hell, Lazarus would have to save the mother from the son.”
“That could end up working in our favor, Cassidy,” Godfather said, then clicked another frame. A picture of an angry boy flashed up on the screen. “This was right after Cross was caught coming back onto the reservation. He was twelve. He’d taken off to parts unknown for over a month. No one knew where he went. He refused to talk about it. After that, the shit really started to hit the fan.”
Jax held her breath for a short second, then exhaled. The expression on young Marcus’s face defied description. If she had to give it words, they would be a subtle combination of hate, distrust and venom. The boy who stared at the camera held the entire world in contempt.
Jax sat in stunned silence as the assassin’s pictures, one after another, flashed before her. Something deep and primal lurked behind his crystalline-colored eyes and the jagged scar that ran from just behind his right ear down his throat and across his collarbone.
“Marcus was a classic problem child,” Godfather continued. “Antisocial. Acted out by setting fires, stealing from the local bullies, and swindling whites out of their cash. By the time he was fifteen, he’d been arrested for assault with a deadly weapon three times. The deadly weapon being his fists. He excelled at an early age in martial arts, kung fu specifically. Each charge was dropped for lack of witnesses, but there were notations in each case file that he was defending reservation kids against the white kids. Once Marcus hit his teens, he was regularly in trouble. Petty theft, alcohol, truancy and fighting. In and out of juvey. Lots of fighting, and he didn’t discriminate. Delinquency seems to be a common thread with him.”
Godfather pressed the button again. Another classy image of socialite Sophia Rowland flashed before them. Marcus had his mother’s light skin, which tempered the swarthy skin of his father, but his paternal ancestry was evident in his prominent cheekbones and square jaw. He was a complex compilation of angles and planes, punctuated by dark, hawklike features. He reminded her of something otherworldly in his intensity.
“His mother deserted him when he was two weeks old, his grandmother dropped dead in front of him when he was seven, his father was a drunk, and the grandfather had his own problems. The kid was screwed from conception. The day he graduated high school with a 1.5 GPA, his grandfather dragged him down to the Army recruiter and signed on the dotted line. Cross was seventeen.”
Jax nodded. “That might draw a tear if he wasn’t a child killer.”
“Here’s the kicker. He scored nearly perfect on every ASVAB he took. He went in as a private and was in the Ranger program in less than a year. Specialty sniper. He spent ten years in the military, mostly covert stuff, but suffered what should have been a fatal injury in the mountains of Afghanistan. He was immediately discharged.”
“Why the discharge? Why not a desk job?” Satriano asked.
“He didn’t want it. After his discharge, he drifted for a couple of years. There’s sketchy intel about where he was and what he did. He’s good at disappearing. He surfaced five years ago in D.C. and was recruited by Colonel Lazarus, who was his commanding officer when he was discharged. Something went wrong on Cross’s last op. We think—but cannot confirm—his unit deserted him.” Jax stiffened at the information and couldn’t help but feel a tug of compassion for a man left behind by the unit he would have died for. They were bookends in that regard. Trust was something she held close to her vest now.
Godfather continued. “Yet someone was not willing to leave him behind as collateral damage. Personally? I suspect it was Lazarus, and because he came back for Cross, Cross owed him for his life.”
Good for Cross. Somebody cared enough to come back for him. So maybe they didn’t have much in common after all. “Boo-fucking-hoo. Sad, sad story. Still doesn’t give him the right to kill a baby,” Jax said.
Godfather looked long and hard at Jax, so long and so hard without speaking that she squirmed in her seat.
“Just remember that when you come face-to-face with him, Cassidy. He’s your mark.”
If her adrenaline had pumped before, now it shot through her system. “Take him out?”
Godfather nodded. “Eventually.” He pressed another button and more images of Marcus Cross flashed before them. Most of them in regular army greens. But the one in his dress blues, his broad chest covered in medals, would have stilled most women’s hearts.
Her suppressed rage surfaced.
He didn’t fool her. He was a cold-blooded killer of children. He had no scruples, no code, no heart. And she would have none when she dealt with him.
Godfather freeze-framed a picture of Cross as a boy. “When this picture was taken, Cross had just shot and field-dressed his first deer. He’s a killer. Don’t forget it.”
Jax nodded as the excitement she’d felt earlier heated her blood.
“Get into his head, Cassidy, get under his skin, get so deep he trusts you, then offer your services to The Solution. We need to know where Lazarus has gone to ground. Then we’ ll cut the head off the snake.”
“What makes you think I can just waltz in and make him sing?”
Godfather grinned. “Cross has two weaknesses. Weaknesses we will exploit. He’s a competitive bastard, and he likes women. Women like yo
u, Jax, who are sleek and as intelligent as he is.”
Despite herself, Jax warmed at the compliment. “So we invite him to a tennis match, I beat him and he’s intrigued?”
“Cross does a little cleanup work on the side.” Godfather pressed the button on the remote and another image popped up. “Salvador ‘Chava’ Tuturo. He runs the Vela cartel in Chicago. Our intel has it that he’s recently contacted Cross to eliminate his brother Jaime.”
“Sibling rivalry?”
“Not really. It’s just business. Jaime is a loose cannon and has been bringing the heat down on Chava’s operation. His latest screwup was turning one of the deputy superintendent of police’s goddaughter into fish bait. Even though everyone knows Jaime is a ticking time bomb, big brother can’t take out his blood brother, but he can pay someone to make it look like he had it coming, which by all accounts he does. He makes the Hussein boys look like lambs.
“Cross is scheduled to land at O’ Hare at twenty-three thirty-eight under the name of Alan Matheson. We’ ll have a man on him. The DEA has a CI inside Jaime’s circle. Gabriella Moncada. She’s his amigo, Miguel Vasquez’ s, flavor of the week. They’ re going out on the town tomorrow night. And so are you.”
Jax smiled. “You think Cross will make his move then?”
“It’s the way he operates. He’s succinct, never staying in one place more than a day or two, tops. He has few habits, but that’s one of them.” Godfather set the remote down on the table and looked hard at Jax. “I want you to rain on Cross’s parade. Do you know what that will entail?”
Jax swallowed hard and showed no fear. Indeed, fear was the last thing she felt. “Eliminate Jaime.”
Godfather nodded. “Cross will come after you.”
Jax stood and set her cup down. “And I’ ll be waiting.”
TEN
Like a hammer to his chest, the hard beat of the music pulsed through him, reverberating all the way down to his toes. Glistening bodies gyrated on the dance floor to the hip-hop tune, noxious perfumes tangled with colognes, stifling his nostrils.
Keeping to the darkened fringes, Marcus scanned the throbbing club. It was here Jaime Tuturo trolled the waters like a bottom-feeder. His prey? Impressionable women. The kind most guys wouldn’t give a second look. The kind that were so desperate for attention they’d go anywhere with anyone.
The kind that never came back.
Marcus curbed a primal growl, sensing his mark was near. He could feel the man’s arrogance. It taunted him like a waving red flag at a bull.
On so many levels it would be his pleasure to end the cocky bastard’s life. It wasn’t because Jaime Tuturo was a predator—that Marcus understood; it was what Tuturo did to his prey that provoked Marcus’s sense of right and wrong. The last girl he’d seduced from this club had ended up floating in Lake Michigan, naked, violated and mutilated, cut up like bait. Jaimito had picked the wrong girl that night. The heat had been turned on. And Jaime’s eldest brother Chava had had enough. Tuturo senior’s instructions had been simple: “Make it look like he had it coming. Make it public. Make it permanent.”
Hell, even if Chava hadn’t contracted him to take out his little brother, Marcus would have done this job pro bono. As it was, Chava had already paid him a fat down payment, and once the job was complete he’d swing by the downtown gym he’d joined last week and walk out with the two-hundred large Chava would deliver to his locker there.
Marcus scanned the dance floor again, watching, making mental notes. Through the gyrating haze of bodies, his focus narrowed on a short, fat, sweaty gangbanger dressed in a thousand-dollar suit. He could be wearing custom Versace and Jaime Tuturo would still smell like the turd he was. Marcus shook his head. The slick threads were working. Jaime was swaying on the dance floor with a chubby, innocent-looking blonde. She smiled adoringly up at him, her triumph of finally being noticed as transparent as Jaime’s sweaty leer. Marcus could see it in Jaime’s face, the way he licked his thick lips. He probably had a boner already and was visualizing all the ways he was going to hurt that girl. Anger pricked Marcus’s gut. He never had liked bullies.
Marcus planned something special for Jaimito. He’d given his death careful consideration and settled on a garrote. Quick but excruciating. While he was slicing Tuturo’s neck from front to back, he’d tell little brother it was big brother who’d hired him, and why. If he couldn’t get him alone, he’d single out one of the types Tuturo liked to prey on, give her a whirl on the dance floor, get close to Jaime, and puncture his heart with one precise jab of his custom ice pick switchblade. He’d disappear before his mark fell dead to the floor. Neither the crowd nor Tuturo’s friends worried Marcus. The adrenaline junkie in him liked a little public display of affection once in a while. But only if he had no other choice. He hadn’t survived as long as he had by being arrogant. He was cautious. Always.
Tonight he would blend in. When the cops showed up, no one would be able to describe the person standing next to them, much less Marcus, who, though taller than most men, had dressed to bore.
“Excuse me,” a deep, sultry voice said from behind him. Instantly Marcus’s acute senses went on alert, and his focus went from his mark to his dick. The full swell of breasts pressed against his back and a soft hand trailed across his shoulders. He stiffened, fighting the primal reaction to the voice, the tits and her musky perfume. She smelled exciting. Like a wild roller-coaster ride. He turned as she passed to his left, and looked down into two liquid, dark-chocolate-colored eyes. Full red lips smiled, showing straight, pearly white teeth. She moved past him toward the bar and his gaze followed. His cock thickened. She was one long drink of water. Her languid gait called to him to follow, and he automatically took another step forward.
He caught himself after two steps.
What the hell was he doing?
He was here to do a job, not get laid. Still, as he watched the slow roll of her hips and the way tendrils of thick crimson-colored hair slipped from her topknot to tease the back of her neck, he imagined coming up behind her, slipping his hands around her hips to her belly and losing himself in her heat.
And she was hot, from her shiny red hair, to the short, fiery-as-hell red dress that hugged her J-Lo ass, to her shapely legs accentuated by strappy stilettos. He’d give his right arm to have those heels digging into his back.
As if she’d read his mind, the woman in red half turned and looked over her shoulder at him, giving him enough of a view of her chest that his dick lurched against his slacks. Damn. He had to hand it to her—unlike the low-cut back, the front of her dress clung to but covered every inch of her tits, making him and every other man in the place fantasize about licking and sucking them.
Son of a bitch! The last time he’d been this affected by a woman, he’d been thirteen and had lost his virginity to Ramona Steele, a cougar by today’s standards, but to a thirteen-year-old horn dog of a kid, she’d been a goddess. He would have stood on his head, naked in the middle of the rez, if she’d asked him to. He scoffed at the memory. Mona wasn’t his first lesson in manipulative women. Suspiciously, he eyed the woman in red.
He shook off the heat. He wasn’t here to score, and he wasn’t a dumb kid to be led around by his hormones. He was here to reduce Chicago’s population by one. Dragging his gaze from the siren’s retreating backside, he cursed when he lost sight of his mark. Spinning, he scanned the dance floor again for Jaime Tuturo. He stiffened when he saw the punk, the little blonde struggling to keep up behind him, strutting up to the bar, his ever-present entourage flitting around him like flies on turd. Every one of them flying their colors with a black-and-red silk shirt. Even with his flashy threads, his slicked-back hair, and the flash of gold on his thick fingers and thicker neck, Jaime Tuturo still looked like the gang banger he was.
Marcus smiled. He fingered the yellow bandana in his trouser pocket. All hell would break lose when he left it on Jaimito’s body. The Reza cartel boys would get the blame for what he was going to do to Jai
mito, and what happened after that was none of his business. He watched Jaimito stop in his tracks, and his gaze fix and hold. The lady in red strutted across the dance floor toward the bar as if she’d been Cleopatra and everyone else in the room had been mere slaves to do her bidding.
Although this chick was way out of Jaime’s league, the gangster was arrogant enough to think all he had to do was snap his fingers and she’d roll right over. Marcus was not surprised to see Jaime send one of his lackeys over to the lady in red. Marcus smiled. Coward. For all of Tuturo’s bravado, he was afraid of being shot down in front of his posse.
Marcus grinned as the lackey stopped in his tracks, then turned back to Jaime when she snubbed him with an imperious air of disdain. A few minutes later, he watched another gangbanger attempt to plead Tuturo’s case to the lady in red.
Cold as an icicle, she reached for her drink and casually let it tip and pour on the guy’s snazzy suit. Marcus growled when the prick raised a hand to her. She stood her ground, daring him with narrowed eyes to touch her. Slowly he lowered his hand, and as he did, she turned her lovely back on him. The dude stood for a long time, rigid, angry, insulted, his machismo squashed. Finally, the guy backed off. Marcus had to hand it to her. She had balls of steel. Most chicks would have scampered away happy to have been spared. But not this one. He liked that. He bet she was a tiger in bed.
Before he could further contemplate her sexual prowess, the music changed abruptly from the one-two punch of hip-hop to a spicy salsa. Intrigued, Marcus moved around to the other side of the bar. She stepped onto the dance floor. And she did not disappoint.
Marcus stood rooted to the floor and watched, mesmerized by the slow, seductive sway of her hips and the way the little fringes on the hem of her dress rocked back and forth. The crowded dance floor thinned as those around her stopped and watched her one-woman show.
Her lush body swayed, offering illicit promises, then taking them back. Jaime materialized beside her, watching, his beady eyes blazing in lust. Turning toward him, she backed away from him. He stepped deeper onto the dance floor. Like a starved puppy, he followed. Away from his posse, away from the pouting blonde and into Marcus’s territory. Incrementally, Marcus moved closer.
