The Laughing Assassin [Assassin's Diary] (Siren Publishing Classic)

by Jennifer Willows

  But if she had even five more minutes, that was enough.

  Jaden forced her way back into the control room and put the compound on lockdown. The power went first, and she routed everything to the room she sat in only. By now the patron was most likely in his panic room, and she had that on lockdown, too. A few keystrokes later, she was able to export the files on the man’s hard drives, including video footage to the Jamaican compound, and when the export was complete, she crashed the system, including the compound’s link to cloud storage folders.

  Jaden desperately counted the handful of minutes remaining. She would barely have enough time to set up her diversion just before she went back for Jonah. But she raided a few cleaning supplies and ripped the legs off of her slutty girl body suit. She cobbled the chemicals together and used her jury rigged fishnet bags to hang her makeshift bombs off to the right side of the subterranean entrance.

  She only had to take the bottom of the platform shoe off to get her explosive starter from the left heel and charges from the right one.

  The net from the second stocking leg was used as a catchall for her stolen ammo concealed in a planter and also set with the second shoe’s contents.

  A trip wire was the last thing she set with the garrote from inside her top, and she anchored it to an automatic machine gun. It would auto fire once tripped, and the spray should be nice and wild. That would give her a chance to get the second and third waves of her solo assault off without a hitch. She ran back for Jonah. She had to get him away from this door before he was in the line of fire, and she only had a few minutes to do so.

  When she opened the closet door, Jonah almost fell out. He was barely cognizant, and he was unable to hold himself completely upright.

  If he died, it would be her fault. Jaden bent her knees, and Jonah’s body slung over her shoulder as she winced. He was taller than she was, but she was able to keep him off of the ground for the most part as she struggled to the beach. The going was almost too slow, but Jaden refused to stop moving.

  She was almost at the last of her reserves when she smelled the water and knew that salvation was close.

  As she reached the edge where sand met the loam of jungle grass, she dropped Jonah and left the phone with him. At least if something happened to her and she was incapacitated, Jonah could still be rescued, that was, if there was anything left of him to save, but at least his body would be able to have a proper burial. That would be more than she got with her purchase price for failure.

  It took her a minute, but she was able to construct a natural-looking swell in the sand. It took a moment to persuade him, but after she goaded then bullied Jonah with insults, he was able to crawl to the hole and lie down within it.

  Another moment more and he was covered with an armful of plants that naturally grew in the area.

  The hidey-hole would pass muster so long as he remained still, and as long as no one that walked by was too observant.

  There wasn’t even the chance to look back when she walked away from the man that had gotten into her heart. She had to set off the homemade bombs when the guards returned from the false alert to provide enough diversion for them to get safely away and without a chase.

  Chapter Sixteen:

  Napalm and Death

  She only had to walk half of the distance back, and she was within shooting range.

  That was after she climbed a tree. Or at least she hoped so. The range of her gun was being stretched to the limit from here, but she had to be as close to the beach as possible. Otherwise, she would be stranding herself amid a firefight.

  The wait wasn’t long, even though it felt that way amid the foliage. She saw a crowd of men burst in a flurry from several SUVs, and she took aim as she waited for the perfect moment. The moment came when one of the heavily armed men walked toward the entrance to the basement. He unknowingly tripped the first assault, a semi-automatic machine gun whose deadly projectiles sang a song of death and carnage.

  There was a retort of answering gunfire in the direction of the bullet cascade, and she counted to five, waiting for her initial trap to stop the men who took cover. When the men became curious enough and fanned out in search of the assailant, it was time for part two. She shot with perfect accuracy into the bag of canisters to trip the charge, and she heard the men scream when the flaming napalm rained over their heads.

  Then she moved her hand, took aim, and shot the planter before she jumped down from the branch. The second explosion was even more destructive than the first one, and she could hear the annihilation sing musically to a chorus of screams. Any men that didn’t fall back from the napalm were left to be pebbled with bullets and shrapnel from the second explosion.

  Jaden didn’t even have the precious seconds that she used for her first prayer in years.

  Please, Lord, all I need is enough time to leave the island with Jonah.

  She ran faster than she ever thought possible and reached the lean-to where she had hidden Jonah. He was still there, but under the moonlight his skin appeared waxen. And in that moment she knew everything she had done was in vain. Jaden was too shaken to even catch a hint of pulse, though she tried to feel the rhythm at first with her fingers on the uninjured side of his neck.

  That was where Juliette found her, although she had no clue how long it had been. At that point every second carried the weight of hours that she spent weeping over Jonah’s prostrate body. Armand ran up the surf and cursed in a rapid-fire combination of French and Spanish. He slung Jonah over his shoulder, and Juliette forced Jaden along even though she no longer cared what happened.

  The ravaged band of hired men behind her may as well have gotten their hands on her. She had nothing left within to care anymore whether she lived or died.

  * * * *

  Jaden had no idea how she even ended up back in Jamaica. For all she knew, Armand had grown wings and carried them all on his back the whole way.

  But here she was just twenty-four hours after the worst day of her life, sitting on Jonah’s bed with dry eyes and a blank, shell-shocked stare into the mirror. She was clean, but she had no idea when that had occurred, either.

  It wasn’t until she finally accepted that she would never see him again that she packed her clothes and prepared to leave. She couldn’t sit here in the same space she had made love with Jonah in, learned to love the man he was within. There was no way she could stay and remain sane.

  But when she looked up Stein stood in the doorway. His eyes were dry, although reddened and held more pity than she could handle.

  He opened his mouth, and his voice sounded suspiciously hoarse. “He is alive.”

  Those three simple words were more important than any other she had ever heard before.

  “He is? How?” It wasn’t possible, was it? Please Jesus, let him be alive. Please Lord, let this be real and not a dream I’ve conceived to torture myself.

  Stein smiled weakly. “Yes, and he asked for you.”

  Jaden let Stein drive her to the other side of the bay, to Jonah. But the place they went to seemed as far removed from as a hospital as one could get. It was at first sight little more than a large, spacious house. But when she walked through the front door, she was hit with antiseptic and ammonia, and the true colors of the facility became starkly apparent. Stein escorted her through a myriad number of hallways and a single flight of stairs.

  When he opened the door, Jonah was there. He was alive, but pale, and he smiled when she stumbled inside. Jaden walked to his bedside, and for some reason beyond explanation she was helpless to contain her relief, and sobs left her throat like a baby. This was the second time she had indulged in tears in years, and both were over Jonah. But the salty sting of fluid felt good and somehow cleansing.

  Jonah watched her and said nothing, even when top of his horrid green standard-issue hospital gown soaked up decades of her backed-up waterworks.

  * * * *

  “I love you, Jaden.” Jonah said the words that had burned in hi
s chest for weeks. When he closed his mouth, she abruptly finished sobbing into his good shoulder.

  Jonah didn’t say anything else. He just let her absorb the emotional blow and remained silent. He looked up to find something else to occupy him, to distract him from the lack of response on Jaden’s end. He knew she loved him, but that didn’t mean that there was any hope of a lasting relationship. The fact that she cared was a detriment to his eventual goals, as Jaden was capable of anything and everything.

  It was only as his line of sight encompassed the door that he noticed Stein was conspicuously absent. The disappearance was unusual in the extreme, as the man had only left his side to get Jaden after he woke. But for now, Jonah appreciated the privacy they were granted. And he wanted her to know how he felt. He knew she wasn’t ready to return the sentiment aloud, but her actions spoke louder than anything. She saved his life nearly at the cost of her own, not to mention that she put a serious dent in the sex ring’s activities with her ability to think quick on her feet.

  But all of that was inconsequential, and at first, he was a little perturbed at just how well she had taken care of the situation on her own. In fact, despite what he had assumed, he had become the liability. But the unusual prick to his masculine pride was easily healed when Stein reminded him that without those same skills, he would have been shipped back stateside in a pine box. If his body were discovered at all.

  As it was, she barely was able to save his life with her hastily applied field dressing. She was miraculous, no, she was his miracle. And Jonah didn’t want to lose her. But after her moment of weakness, she was just Jaden again, and he barely knew how to get through to her. She had to love him, as he refused to believe anything else based on her actions. And yet there was nothing he could do about the fact that she refused to admit it. Jonah would even bet that she hadn’t even owned up to her love for him to herself.

  She remained quiet and never even acknowledged the words he’d spoken. But she had to feel something for him. Jonah knew it and let the thought become a mantra that eradicated some of the pain from her unknowing rejection. She’d saved his life nearly at the cost of her own, destroyed the compound with her handmade weapons, and she practically carried him to the beach to safety. All of that had to mean something.

  He hoped it meant that even if she wasn’t head over heels in love with him right now, that she was well on her way into that emotion.

  If Jonah knew anything, his family was on the way, and he wanted Jaden to be at his side when they arrived. He was a lucky man. The doctors claimed as he had lost enough blood to kill him two times over, even though the wound was not severely life threatening with treatment, he had been without medical aid for well over an hour with a slow bleed.

  The only things that saved him were the quick application of Jaden’s tourniquet and the meditative state he went into shortly after being shot. The self-induced coma of introspection slowed his bodily functions similar to hibernation, and that included his heart rate. He received a blood transfusion, along with a sling and some handy stitches. The bullet was a clean in-and-out shot, so they didn’t have to do much more than clean the wound and sew him up.

  When he looked up at the clock, he and Jaden had done nothing more than hold one another for the last hour while he mulled over every random thought. The worried musings bombarded him from too many angles to count.

  A closer glance at her let him know that she had fallen asleep, and he wondered if she had slept at all in the last twenty-four hours.

  She had to love him. There was no way he could be so completely wild for a woman and the feelings be completely unrequited.

  Jonah heard the shuffle of steps still at the door of his room, and his fingers reflexively sought a weapon he didn’t have. But when the door opened hesitantly, her relaxed as he saw it was his mother. She was still beautiful, even though she was worried about him. Janice Whitmore was in her late fifties, yet she still carried herself with decorum and a permanent chignon at her nape the same way she did when he was a child. The only discernible thing he’d gotten from her in the genetic lottery was her eyes, but the rest of him was his dad all the way.

  His mom was alone, but he knew the rest of the gang couldn’t be far behind. They probably didn’t want to ambush him. Given that he hated hospitals and everything associated with physical weakness or illness, everyone around knew he would be like a bear with a sore paw. But Jaden had mellowed those sensations somewhat, and he would rather be here than anywhere else, if it meant that she would stay with him.

  “Jonah, baby, what on earth happened to you?” He knew that he didn’t look good. He had IVs in both arms and a huge bandage that was thick with tape at the neck, and he was quite pasty from blood loss. His mother had never seen him this quickly after injury, and she was queasy at the sight of blood or injuries in either event.

  “Nothing you’d want to hear, Mom.”

  “Don’t think you can get away with hiding this from me, Jonah. I want the truth.”

  “Get Dad. I don’t want to have to tell this story more than once.” His mother ran over toward the door. But Jonah assumed his father must have been eavesdropping, as the older man walked inside no sooner than requested.

  His father had acquired a few more gray hairs at the temple since he had seen him last. “Hey, Jonah. How’s the shoulder?”

  Jonah refused to feel guilty for being out of touch for the last months, but he knew that he should have made the time to have more regular visits. “I’ve had worse. How are you, Dad?”

  “I’ve been worse.” His dad smiled and then walked to the bedside. His father looked speculatively at Jaden then back at Jonah. “I know they work long hours here, but does your nurse have to fall asleep on duty?”

  “She isn’t my nurse. Dad…this is Jaden, the woman I intend to marry and the woman that saved my life.”

  His mother gasped once, but the subsequent breaths were just as laden with sound. “Her?” His mother appeared taken aback, and even his father seemed scandalized at the prospect.

  “Yes. If either of you two have a problem with it, then leave now.”

  “It’s not that, my son.” His father seemed perturbed slightly.

  “Then what?”

  “I just never imagined my eldest son with a woman like her.”

  “What, she’s too good for me or something? Believe me, I already know that, but I hope she’ll have me anyway,” Jonah said, but he knew what he had to say would probably fly over no better than a fox in the henhouse.

  “But she’s black!” his mother hissed. She appeared distraught, and he never imagined that he was raised by racists. Until today.

  “That shouldn’t matter. This discussion is over. Both of you know where the door is.” He turned away from his mother and looked out of the window.

  “Jonah, it doesn’t matter to me.” His father spoke in low voice as if he didn’t want to wake the sleeping woman.

  “Do you want the story or not?” Jonah asked, even though he knew what his father would say.

  “Of course.”

  Jonah gave his parents the entire story, starting from when he met Jaden at her shop after months of searching for her. From there he told them about the being on the compound with her. He even told them how he was disgraced in their fight with the isle guards and the way Jaden saved his life and carried him through the jungle to the beach rendezvous point.

  “So you mean to tell me that this tiny woman did all of that?” His father appeared impressed, and he knew that was his dad’s military history speaking.

  “Yes, she did, and that’s not even the whole story.”

  “So what is the whole story?”

  “Let’s just say she blew up half of the area with homemade bombs and she built a hidey-hole out of sand and native plants to conceal me while she did it. Not to mention how she carried me to safety without a care for her own life. She is the reason that I’m even able to recount these events to you now.”

 
“She sounds like an amazing woman, Jonah, but I still don’t know if she is the one you should give our name to. As most know, Whitmore is a well-known name and household brand. You cannot think the country is progressive enough to elect you into office later with a biracial marriage.”

  Jonah was perturbed. His father well knew that his eldest son was a man who preferred to stand on his own two feet. He would think that his father would have learned that much after all these years.

  Hell, his father should have learned that when his son rejected the cars and houses. Jonah had never spent a single night in the house his parents had given him, nor had he ever even driven the cars he had been given. As a matter of fact, the Audi, Hummer, and the Lamborghini all still sat in the garage of the unused house.

  He tried his best to be patient, but he needed his father to understand he was never going to fall in line with the plans made for him at birth. “Dad, those are your goals for me. I don’t want to go into politics. Working on this side of the angle is tough enough, and all politicians are good for is a bushwhacking argument. That…and getting nothing done. I prefer action to words. Either groom Elias or MacLeigh. They would be better at it than I would.”

  His father’s expression was stunned, and the man remained silent, though Jonah knew he was thinking something.

  His dad sighed once. “If that’s the way you see it, Jonah, then fine. But men that stay in the field for too long tend to find themselves in an unmarked grave. The only reason that I supported you entering the military in the first place was the political cachet that is associated with veterans. But career warriors rarely see retirement as a whole man.”

  “I know that. Once this operation is done, I will retire. I want to have a family, and I’m not getting any younger.” His father appeared resigned to the truths Jonah laid out for him so boldly. His mother on the other hand? Not so much.

  “Since you know what’s best, I will leave you to it. Do you want me to cash in a favor or two? It would only take a couple of phone calls, and I could have some CIA agents on retainer. They could probably deal with the investigation for criminal proceedings while you recuperate.”