“Ouch. I purposely avoided the chess team. Science Club was bad enough, especially when the supervising teacher made us wear Star Trek uniforms.”
She chuckled. “That’s bad.”
“Yeah, it was a pretty quick sprint home that day after school.”
“I bet.”
Rhett was silent, watching her through the telescope. “Well, I better leave you alone before you think I’m some stalker.”
“Yeah. I hope you find your friend.”
“Me too. Bye.”
Rhett hung up and watched her. She cleaned up the mess and then shuffled upstairs to change. He turned away as she stripped down and stepped into the shower, packing up his scope and receiver. As he was about to leave, he glanced in one more time and saw her nude outline behind the frosted glass.
He turned away and headed back to his hotel.
CHAPTER 7
Rhett was working out in the hotel’s gym the next morning when his phone buzzed. The black app had a one on top of it. He clicked it. It was the Messenger:
Contract must be carried out tonight. Make it happen.
I can’t do it. I’m leaving.
Why????
I told you before: no women.
It’s different killing a woman. I know. But this contract is no different than any other. Don’t delude yourself: a life is a life and you’ve taken plenty.
I won’t do it.
If you don’t do it I’ll get someone else. Someone sloppier. She’s going to a family reunion tonight. Maybe I’ll just have them set explosives and take out the whole family????? :)
Rhett thought carefully before he replied.
I will cover whatever you’ve been paid for the contract and more.
Tsk tsk, Houdini. Now you know we can’t rescind contracts. It’s bad for our reputation.
It’s not rescinding…I’m buying a new one. Tell the purchaser that I’m taking a contract out on them unless they remove hers.
Now we wouldn’t be in business long if purchasers thought we would suddenly flip and take contracts on them, would we????
Rhett thought a moment.
Don’t send anyone else. I’ll do it.
I thought you would see reason. Good luck.
Rhett hung up the phone and continued his workout.
Near 2nd Ave was a small bookstore with a picture of Hemingway up in the window. Rhett stood outside, staring in. His wife had loved this bookstore. Once they had spent over an hour here until she decided on a book of poems. They were so broke at the time, that when the cashier rang it up and it came to fifty dollars because it turned out to be a rare edition, they couldn’t afford it and had to put it back.
The bookstore was dilapidated and had three employees, none of which said hello or tried to see if Rhett needed anything. He walked to the poetry section and began scanning the books. In the middle of the second shelf was a small, brown, leather-bound book with gold-leaf trim. He took it out and read the first poem, the one that had interested his wife:
We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World’s throbbing heart shall be
One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years
Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!
He closed the book and walked to the front. The employee rang it up and the price had gone up to a hundred dollars.
“That seems pricey,” Rhett said, pulling out his wallet.
“Take it or leave it,” he said, not looking up from the comic book he was reading. “No returns either.”
Rhett paid him the cash. “Always a pleasure being back in New York.”
A woman, one of the employees, strolled up from behind him and leaned against the counter. “Nice ring.”
Rhett looked to his wedding-ring finger. A large, silver band with Celtic decorations emblazoned across it took up a third of the finger. “Thanks. I forget it’s there.”
“Your wife get that for you?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s got good taste. In poems too,” she said, playfully flipping a few pages in the book on the counter. “Unless this is for you.”
“It’s for both of us I guess.”
“Where is your wife?” She looked past him into the book aisles. “I wanna see her ring.”
Rhett took the book without a bag and tucked it into his jacket pocket, next to a little red journal he kept there. “She passed away three years ago.”
He left the store and checked his phone: the address he needed to be at had arrived in the black app.
CHAPTER 8
The Willard Estate sat on four acres of property an hour outside Albany, New York. It was a wooded area with nothing but forests around it as far as Rhett could see. He’d never been out this way, and it surprised him just how much wilderness was only a few hours’ drive away from Manhattan.
It had rained recently and the ground was wet, the vegetation glistening as the clouds parted and the sun peeked back out. It wasn’t cold but it wasn’t hot either as Rhett sat in his car two blocks down the street from the Willard in a secluded area. He was in a parking lot for people going hiking up a trail just in front of him and he had seen exactly one person in the space of an hour as he sat there killing time.
His phone’s timer buzzed. He pressed it off and slid out of the car, grabbing the backpack in the trunk. He had changed into sweatpants and a Sundance T-shirt with hiking boots and a cap. Strands of red hair from the wig he wore underneath the cap hung out, just enough for anyone looking to see and later describe his hair as red. The strands grazed the wire-frame glasses he had opted for. Two fake tattoos marked his forearms: a dragon and a bright red heart with a knife through it. Anyone as close as ten feet away would be able to see the tattoos—and also later describe them—not knowing they would wash off in a few minutes under running water.
He strapped on the backpack and headed toward the Willard Estate, walking through the trees rather than on the side of the road. The forest was quiet except for the leaves crunching under his boots, and as he walked, he stared deep inside the mass of twisting trees. Someone could hide in there and pounce on any unsuspecting sucker that happened by.
He saw danger everywhere and had a difficult time focusing on the beauty all around him. He remembered he didn’t feel that way as a kid and thought that maybe that was just part of becoming an adult. You see the things under the surface of perceived reality and it changes you.
When he arrived at the estates, he saw that there were no gates: anyone could walk up to the main house. He casually approached the back, surveying the massive white mansion as guests poured in from the parking lot. He retreated from the property line about twenty feet, remaining parallel to the house. Lifting the binoculars that hung around his neck, he looked into the home: he had an unobstructed view of every room on this side of the home, including the living room where everyone seemed to be congregating.
Rhett lay down on his stomach. The wet leaves clung to him and he felt the dampness through his shirt. He took off the backpack and unzipped it. The rifle was still in pieces. He expertly assembled it, securing the Rimfire vision scope and the infrared scope last before slipping on his goggles. With infrared, unless someone was wearing the same tinted goggles he was, no one could see the little red dot that screamed out so brightly to him.
To get his bearings, he followed the dot to the forehead of an overweight man shoving shrimp into his mouth. And then over the heart of a woman seated in a chair, discussing something with a younger woman.
Rhett took out the audio receiver and put in his earbuds. Jarring static came through at first, but as he adjusted the frequency he began to pick up the clanking of silverware and the ting of glasses. Feet were shuffling and doors were closing: he figured he was in the kitchen. He twisted the receiver twenty degrees and adjusted the frequency: he was in a quieter room somewhere on
the second floor. He could tell from the way the floors creaked as they were walked on.
Several men were having a conversation about futures and foreign exchange derivatives. In another room, two men talked about NASCAR racing. The two crowds were not the types that typically mingled. At first Rhett guessed Stephanie’s crowd of suck-ups, hoping to curry favor with a member of Congress, had decided to come to the family reunion as well. He thought this was odd until he heard someone discussing what a nice presentation they had had earlier and realized that the Willard Estate rented itself to several parties at the same time.
Moving the receiver over every room in the house he found a clear demarcation between the north side of the house and the south side, the north being Stephanie’s party. He focused his attention there.
In the corner of the room, among a group of men speaking with her, Stephanie was smiling with a glass of wine in her hand.
Rhett took out a single round and loaded the rifle.
CHAPTER 9
The infrared dot hovered over her left breast: he didn’t want her to suffer and didn’t want a closed casket.
Out of nowhere, Stephanie turned and bent down. Rhett pushed a button on the side of the goggles and they switched to normal view. On the floor next to her, a young girl with a scrape on her knee was crying. Stephanie ignored everyone and got a wet napkin. She spoke with someone near the front who soon provided her with a Band-Aid.
Stephanie kneeled in front of the child again and cleaned the small scrape on her knee before placing the Band-Aid, and sealing it with a kiss. The girl hugged her and Stephanie spoke to her a while, asking her what television shows she enjoyed and what she wanted to do when she grew up.
She stood and turned back to the group of men that were speaking with her. Rhett flipped on the infrared again. For a long moment he did nothing but stare at the red dot prominent on her chest.
He switched off the infrared and looked at her. She was smiling, pink lips spread across perfect teeth. Though she was certainly beautiful by conventional standards, there was something else about her. It was that hidden pain that made Rhett want to throw his arms around her and protect her.
He lowered the rifle, took it apart, and put it in the backpack. Rhett took out his phone and opened the black app. He texted two words: Fuck you.
The reply came quickly, as if the Messenger were expecting it:
Contract given to someone else. Cease activities.
Rhett looked up to the house and an image flashed in his mind: Stephanie on the floor with her brains spattered against clean carpet. He thought of her funeral and the little girl she had helped standing by her closed casket.
He stood and walked toward the building, tossing the backpack into a trash bin outside.
The interior was immaculate, with high ceilings and a waitstaff cycling around with hors d’oeuvre and champagne. Men in suits hung around in a separate room smoking cigars. He received odd stares as he walked through in hiking gear, and he smiled cordially and nodded hello to a few people that snubbed him.
He made his way to the north side of the building where Stephanie stood across the room. He approached her. She noticed him and smiled.
“Lemme see,” Rhett said, “Stephanie, right?”
“Yes. Have we met?”
“A long time ago. We’re second cousins actually. Hey, my mama would get a big kick outta meeting you.” He dipped into a slight drawl. “She sees you on TV and says she’s your aunt to anyone that’ll listen.”
“That’s cute. I’d love to meet her.”
“Thanks, she’s right over here.” They began walking. “I gotta tell you, though, she’s losing it a little. She may ask you the same question fifty times.”
“That’s not a problem. I went through that with my mother as well. Is it Alzheimer’s?”
As soon as they had turned a corner toward the kitchen, Rhett put his hand over her mouth and pulled her down the hall. A bathroom was to the right. She struggled and tried to scream as he dragged her in and shut the door.
“Shh,” he said, pinning her against the door. “We have some things we need to discuss. But if you scream, I can’t discuss them with you. I’m going to remove my hand so we can talk. If you scream, I’ll have to knock you unconscious and take you somewhere else so we can have this conversation. Do you understand?” She nodded. “And you’re not going to scream when I remove my hand, right?” She hesitated. “Right?” She nodded.
Slowly, he removed his hand. She was breathing heavily and a strand of hair had fallen down over her eyes. Rhett backed away just a little in an attempt to calm her.
“I have money. You can have it if you just—”
“You need to listen,” he said, “and not speak. You’re in danger. You need to get on a plane out of the country. Use that money you just mentioned and disappear. I don’t know how long you’ll have to be gone for but you have to leave tonight.”
“Who are you?” she said, her hand inching for the doorknob behind her.
“Don’t do that.” Her hand stopped. “If you want to live, you need to leave the country tonight.”
“Why? What’re you going to do?”
“I’m not going to do anything. It’s not me you need to worry about.”
“Please, look, I have a—”
The doorknob turned and there was a knock.
“Occupied,” Rhett said loudly.
Stephanie said, “They’re right outside. There’s no other way out. They’ll see your face.”
Rhett exhaled. He took out his phone and opened the app, clicking on her dossier. He held the phone up to her so she could read.
“What is this?” she said.
“It’s the contract for your life. I was hired to kill you.” She began struggling again. Rhett pressed his body against hers. “I’m not going to do it, listen to me, I’m not going to do it. But someone else will. That’s why you need to leave.”
“What the hell is this? Are you some stalker?”
“You need to listen to me very carefully,” he said, staring into her eyes, his voice flat and serious, “because no one else is going to warn you: you have a contract out on your life. The agency that handles the contracts has sent someone else. They probably sent someone else when they sent me. He could already be here. You need to leave the country.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Why would I lie?”
A voice came from outside, “You almost done in there?”
“Just a second,” Rhett shouted.
“You’re crazy. You don’t know the difference between lying and the truth.”
Rhett looked into her eyes and saw that she wasn’t going to budge. He let her go. She spun around and opened the door and ran outside. An older man was standing out in the hallway. Stephanie was about to say something to him when she turned to look in the bathroom: it was empty. She looked down the hallway. No one was there.
“You all right, dear?” the old man said.
“Fine, fine. Thanks.”
“You look like you saw a ghost.”
“I think…I maybe did.”
June 30th
I don’t remember much about those years spent in training. I remember that they made me a man. I had signed a liability waiver and was told by some of the other members of the class that they had us sign because every year, they had one death. They would only allow six students into this program and it had a fifty-percent attrition rate. So that left three of us. Of those three, one would likely die. Leaving only two in a graduating class.
We were trained in everything. Much of it I didn’t see how we could use. Facial drawing, how to follow someone without being seen, high-speed driving, martial arts with an emphasis on pressure-point fighting, lock picking…the list goes on and on. But the bulk of the day was spent on physical conditioning and weapons. The weapons training seemed to mimic history. We began with bare hands, and then moved on to simple weapons like the staff, and then the knife, sword
s and spears. By the time we got to guns, we thought we were deadly. But we had no idea what deadly was until we met the arms master.
He was lean and muscular with hair that came down to his shoulders. All of us, including the women, had to shave bald and it was surprising that they’d let someone grow their hair out. He spoke with a French accent and rumor was he came from French intelligence.
The first time we met the arms master, the title a moniker of his choosing, we were taken out to the forest. Several targets were set up hundreds of yards out, far enough that we could barely see them. The arms master laid several firearms on the ground. “Count,” he said. He took the rifle first and fired several rounds; then he took two pistols and fired simultaneously. Then a submachine gun that seemed to fire a hundred rounds before you could blink. “How many?” he said. One of the students said, “Fifty-six.” I had counted that many as well so I agreed.
He walked us to the targets. The bullets had obliterated the head and heart and touched nowhere else. “Count.” We quickly counted the holes. There were exactly fifty-six.
The arms master looked us over. “My name is Gustav, and I will show you how to kill people.”
CHAPTER 10
It was nearly 9:00 p.m. when Rhett saw a car drop Stephanie off at her condo. Her husband wasn’t with her and he hadn’t seen him at the family reunion either. She said something to the driver and he got out and walked her to the door. She turned off her alarm and went inside.
Rhett sat on the roof of the building across from her again. He had fished out his backpack from the trash and had the receiver set up, the sound of high heels on hardwood filling his ears. Stephanie closed all the blinds except for the one on the top floor. He saw her move in and out of view a few times before she appeared in workout gear with a small towel.
A van pulled up on the street below. It was white with a logo on the side. Rhett watched it. The driver exited and checked a few things in the cargo hold before returning to the driver’s seat. The van was double-parked. Rhett reassembled his rifle and peered at the driver through the scope. He went back up to the house and saw Stephanie on a treadmill upstairs. At the van, the driver was out now and smoking a cigarette. Rhett flipped on the laser scope, a small red dot appearing on the man’s throat.
Diary of an Assassin Page 3
