She then closed the escape hatch carefully.
At that moment she knew that Jean and Susan were doing exactly the same thing at the other two hatches.
Mary Jo moved slowly back away from the hatch until she was at a safe distance, then set the trigger to the explosive package. The plan was to set all three off at once. But now the package would explode if anyone got near it while trying to use the escape hatch.
Mary Jo just hoped the fake Carson didn’t try to leave tonight through any of the tunnels. There would hardly be enough left of him to do a DNA test on if he did.
Again Mary Jo crouched and kept completely still until a drone passed overhead, then silently she moved back into the forest.
It was almost time.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
JEAN EASED HERSELF into position between two small trees and under some brush. She didn’t need her night vision anymore because the lights of the compound gave her more than enough light to see.
She was on a ridge above the compound and could see most of the buildings and the open area and the stone guard building beside the front gate.
She had her custom-made sniper rifle set up in front of her and covered slightly in some lose brush. It was a pure black color and deadly.
The drones were going to drop in another fifteen minutes, but until then, she needed to stay completely hidden and still.
Since there had been no explosion or alarm, she knew that both Susan and Mary Jo were also now in positions, rifles ready.
Jean had kissed Mary Jo goodbye as they had parted from their staging house. They wouldn’t see each other for almost a week as they made their way back to New York, changing identities and looks a few times along the way.
They all had to make sure that there was no chance that what happened here could ever be traced back to any of them in any fashion. Being completely careful like that had kept her alive and working and out of prison for a couple thousand years now. She didn’t plan on changing that status any time soon.
And she loved how both Mary Jo and Susan were equally as careful. The three of them worked well as a team, of that there was no doubt. This entire plan would have never worked without all three of them, actually.
Jean settled in and used the scope on her rifle to study the compound below her. It looked a little like a California subdivision, with houses on both sides of a large common park area. And a large mansion set back up the hill.
Everything was clean, almost too clean, and well-landscaped. All the green grass and lush trees showed that this church didn’t believe in any water shortage.
Every morning at sunrise, Carson had a regular schedule. He came out of his mansion and led an exercise routine in the park area near the front entrance. She and Mary Jo and Susan were betting Carson would do that again today.
The evening news had been full of reports about the church after the packages of proof that it was a scam reached the news outlets. It hadn’t taken some of them long to collaborate the proof and get it on the air. So Jean had no doubt that the fake Carson knew he needed to pretend everything was all right.
It was when the fake Carson was to do his exercise that the actor they had hired was due to arrive. He would pull up and say he was Jack Kelsall and needed to talk to his partner, Carson White.
Either the normal routine or the fake Jack Kelsall showing up would be enough to bring the real Kelsall, aka Carson White, out of his mansion.
The backup plan if either of those things didn’t happen was to stay in place and kill the real Kelsall when the police came and arrested him.
To Jean that third backup felt very risky, but they all had their routes to get away carefully planned. It would work, just not her favorite option by a long ways.
Jean felt the watch on her wrist tingle slightly against her skin.
Two minutes until the fake Carson appeared and walked down to the exercise area.
Jean took a deep breath and made herself focus forward.
It was time.
Above her a drone went past without seeing her.
And from her position, far down the valley, she could see the car with the actor playing the part of Jack Kelsall coming up the valley.
Everything was in motion.
Perfect so far.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
MARY JO LAY perfectly still as a drone moved over her head and past her position. She lay covered in brush, facing the church compound below her. She was on the left of the compound main gate, Jean was on the right.
Susan had taken a spot higher on the hill toward the back of the compound.
Mary Jo had on a black suit, a black face mask with only her eyes exposed, black thin gloves and her rifle was pure black.
She felt calm and almost relaxed.
She was ready.
From down the valley she could see the actor’s car approaching the compound.
Dozens of the faithful, all in bright exercise clothes, were stretching and chatting on the large lawn area to the right of the main gate, waiting for their leader. Mary Jo wondered how many of them had seen the morning news so far.
The church they believed in, the man they believed in, was getting torn apart in the press. Mary Jo had no doubt the police wouldn’t be far behind. They police didn’t dare wait too long since they had clear evidence that the fake Carson was really Jack Kelsall who had killed the real Carson White and actually filmed his body going off the bridge.
Mary Jo hoped that the real Jack Kelsall would actually be dead by the time the police arrived.
The sun was just about to hit the tops of the Sierras behind the compound when the front door to the mansion opened and the fake Carson White stepped out.
Mary Jo sighted in on him. She could see him look around and smile as if nothing at all was wrong in the world. Then he started down his front walk toward the sidewalk that would take him down the hill to the park and his followers.
He seemed totally unconcerned that his entire world had exploded in the press and all his money had vanished into his pretend accounts and then vanished from there.
Could the guy not even listen to the news? Was it possible he kept himself and his followers that shut off from the world inside these walls?
And was it possible none of his followers checked the bank accounts every morning?
From the smile on the guy’s face, it sure seemed that way.
Mary Jo was stunned that someone this complacent had gotten away with so much for so long.
The fake Carson was about halfway down the hill to the park, strolling along easily when the fake Jack Kelsall stopped his car just down from the gate and got out and walked toward the gate.
The timing was perfect. Just perfect.
The gate was two huge iron gates with a stone guardhouse built into one of the walls to the right.
Mary Jo kept her gun trained on their target, but watched the event at the gate play out.
In ten seconds after the actor reached the gate, one of the guards came out of the gatehouse building and ran at a sprint up the hill toward the fake Carson.
The fake Carson had been about to turn to join his followers in the park when the guard reached him and indicated he come to the guardhouse.
The remaining three guards at the front gate had let the fake Kelsall stand just inside the gate and closed it again behind him.
So now, as they had planned, the fake Kelsall was facing the fake Carson as he came down the hill.
Mary Jo was thrilled that this was working exactly as planned. It was playing out as they imagined it would.
As the fake Carson got within ten steps of the fake Jack Kelsall, Jack raised his hand and Carson stopped.
Perfect.
The young actor was playing his lines perfectly.
Mary Jo, Susan, and Jean all now had clean shots of everyone participating.
About ten of the followers and the four armed-guards all stood staring at what was happening in front of them, but all kept their di
stance.
Mary Jo and Jean and Susan knew the exact words the young actor was speaking. Exactly.
Mary Jo watched carefully, the rifle centered on the chest of the fake Carson.
The actor was asking Carson why he had duped so many people, why he had pretended to be someone he wasn’t.
Carson shook his head.
At that moment, the actor pounded his chest as he was supposed to do in this part of his speech.
Mary Jo fired.
She was just a fraction of a second behind either Susan or Jean.
Carson’s chest had exploded when Mary Jo’s shot got there and blew it apart even more. A high-velocity rifle shot using hollow-point ammunition could do that to a body. Small entrance wound, huge exit hole.
And from the looks of it, another bullet tore into the fake Carson at the same moment Mary Jo’s shot had hit him.
It was lucky the three shots hadn’t cut the guy in half. But there was no doubt he was dead.
Mary Jo turned her rifle on the startled actor and shot him before the fake Carson’s body hit the ground.
“Sorry kid,” Mary Jo said. “But your last part was played to award-winning levels.”
Jean and Susan picked off two of the guards at the same time.
Mary Jo went to the guard near one wall and dropped him as Jean and Susan dropped the other two guards at the front gate.
Then a massive explosion echoed over the valley as Jean blew up the three bombs in the escape tunnels.
At that moment Susan shut down all the drones and one fell in the brush close to where Mary Jo was. And Mary Jo knew that Susan also sent a signal back to the computers controlling the drones that she hoped would destroy the computers, but it actually didn’t matter if that worked or not.
A moment later Mary Jo took out another guard coming out of one building and Jean and Susan dropped two other guards who had appeared near the parking area.
Mary Jo let herself take a moment to study the scene below. The real Jack Kelsall, who had been hiding as Carson White, lay dead in a pool of his own blood on the driveway leading into his fake-church compound.
The actor playing Jack Kelsall sprawled near him.
All the people who had been waiting to exercise with their church leader were now getting their exercise running at full speed for cover.
Susan had set up automatic calls to the local police and they would be coming up the road shortly.
The job was done.
The target was eliminated.
It was time to go.
Mary Jo eased back away from the ridge, made sure she had left nothing where she had been. Not only did she have on the black suit, but she also wore man’s boots too large for her feet.
Jean and Susan had done the same, so it would be assumed that three men of medium height and size had done this, not three small, cute women.
Mary Jo picked her way down the ridgeline, moving quickly, but not recklessly.
Twenty minutes later she dug out a small blue backpack from a pile of brush. The pack had a change of clothes in it.
Standing under a grove of dry trees, she changed out of the boots and into tennis shoes, out of the black suit and into white shorts and a low-cut blouse. She took off the black gloves, but left on thin gloves with fake fingerprints.
She pulled off the black stocking cap that had covered her hair and put on a blonde wig.
She used a wipe to take off the black from her face that the mask didn’t cover and put everything in the backpack.
She took out a bottle of water, took a drink and put the bottle back. That one simple drink of water tasted wonderful.
Then she quickly took the rifle apart and put it in the backpack as well.
Within two minutes she was walking down the trail like a college girl out for a morning hike.
In the next valley over she could hear police sirens echoing through the morning air.
She had a pretty good hike over another ridgeline away from the compound to a small rental car she had parked there at a trailhead.
But by nine in the morning she would be in Nevada and headed south toward Las Vegas.
She liked Las Vegas. She might spend time there before heading for New York.
But she had a hunch it wouldn’t be long. She was already missing Jean.
And their hot tub.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS after the attack on the church compound, Jean sat eating breakfast at a wonderful diner just outside of Spokane, Washington. The place had a 1950s feel and smelled of rich coffee and cinnamon rolls.
It had taken her about twenty minutes to get off the ridgeline above the church compound and to where she had stashed a backpack full of clothes.
Hiding in deep brush to make sure no one flying overhead would see her, she had changed clothes, taken her rifle apart, and had everything in the pack. Twenty minutes after stopping she was headed up a trail and over yet another ridgeline away from the compound.
Two hours later she reached a Cadillac she had parked there and headed back down the hill and into Sacramento.
From there, without stopping, she had gotten on I-5 and headed north toward Oregon, setting the cruise control and letting the air-conditioning keep her comfortable in the warming morning.
She had stopped for a late breakfast in Redding and a late lunch in Eugene.
Dinner had been in a fast-food place south of Olympia.
Now, after driving most of the night, stopping only to rest and catch a few naps and drop parts of her rifle in a river, she was having a wonderful and leisurely breakfast while watching the news on a television behind the diner’s counter.
It had been just over twenty-four hours.
It seemed that the story about deaths at a cult church in California led most of the news programs and there were worries it was terrorist in nature.
But saner voices on the news were saying it was revenge, clearly, for Jack Kelsall creating a false church and duping so many millions of people.
The police had no suspects at all. And no one mentioned that all the church money had vanished.
After she finished her breakfast, Jean turned away from the news and just sat thinking while she sipped a cup of coffee. Mary Jo would be in Vegas by now and Jean wished she was there with her.
And Susan had headed south to LA and then east toward Phoenix. No telling where she would be, but she had seemed excited about going in that direction for some reason.
Jean had to admit that she had really loved working with Mary Jo and Susan on this target. And having the three of them made the end of this job so much better than it would have been.
Susan had even offered to split her final payment with them, since before they had joined she hadn’t even been able to find Kelsall, let alone expose and kill him.
But both Jean and Mary Jo had turned her down. Neither of them needed the money in the slightest. Money was just how they kept score, how a life was valued in their business.
And with the fake Carson money and the church money, Jean figured they were each about sixty million richer anyway. She doubted she would ever get around to counting it.
Now, if the final part of the plan held, Jean would meet Mary Jo in their condo in New York at some point in the next week.
Susan had no plans. She had said she would see them when she saw them.
Jean understood that. Until falling in love with Mary Jo, Jean could have never imagined working with another assassin, let alone looking forward to going back to be with one.
But at the same time, it wouldn’t surprise Jean in the slightest if Mary Jo never came back. She had been independent for as long, if not longer than Jean had. Vanishing now would be an easy way to just call the relationship off.
But Jean knew, without a doubt, she would be in that condo in New York hoping that Mary Jo showed up. And she would live there for a time, even if Mary Jo decided to not show up.
Jean wouldn’t blame Mary Jo if she didn’t
return.
But Jean would really, really miss her.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
MARY JO SAT at a half-filled bar in the Bellagio Hotel and Casino and sipped a vodka orange juice. She had spent the afternoon buying new clothes and was now about as dressed up as she ever got. For some reason she had felt she wanted to put on a short dress, new jewelry, and new shoes.
All expensive.
Now, from a table about thirty feet away, two men in suits, clearly dressed down from their day job normal, were watching her as she sat at the bar, showing more leg than she probably needed to. Likely they thought she was an expensive lady of the evening and were wondering if they could afford her.
Wouldn’t they be surprised if they knew she was a cold killer?
She kind of smiled at that and turned away from being able to see the men, instead sort of staring at herself in the mirror behind the bar as she sipped on her drink.
She wasn’t sure why she wanted to get dressed up, but after a job well done, it seemed appropriate to treat herself to a good drink and a nice lobster dinner. She had even put on make-up and got her hair trimmed and styled a little.
She actually did look expensive.
After most jobs she had done something similar to this. New clothes, great drinks, and an expensive dinner in a form of celebration.
But for some reason this time it didn’t feel right.
Jean belonged here with her.
They were planning on meeting back at the condo in New York in a few days, but Mary Jo wasn’t sure Jean would return.
Being an assassin for so long had made Jean into a loner, just as Mary Jo was a loner. Mary Jo had always enjoyed the time alone, never really thought about being any other way.
But that was before Jean.
She finished the last of her vodka orange juice and pushed the change from her drink forward as a sign it was a tip for the bartender.
Then, with a glance at the two men staring at her from a side table, she headed out into the crowded and noisy walkways of the casino.
Death Takes a Partner: A Mary Jo Assassin Novel Page 10
