And Mary Jo was more confused now than she had been when Susan started her story.
And that was going some.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
JEAN STARED AT the beautiful assassin sitting on their guest bed. She had just told them a story that seemed clear and logical and very clean of problems. That bothered Jean a little, but not that much.
What bothered Jean was that the assassin was looking for help to kill a target. That meant the target was almost impossible to kill. A sniper’s bullet could take down a target from a distance and over the centuries, Jean had used that method on targets she couldn’t get close to.
Jean was sure that Susan had as well.
“You’ve been looking for me for three years to help you with a target?” Mary Jo said. “Why me, first off?”
“You are known for being the best of us all,” Susan said flatly.
Jean nodded and turned to her partner and roommate, who was looking surprised. “You do have that reputation.”
Jean watched as Mary Jo just shook her head and clearly ignored that line of thinking.
“Why is this target so difficult?” Mary Jo asked.
“Because,” Susan said, “he’s supposed to be already dead. He might be for all I know at the moment.”
Silence filled the room among the three assassins.
Jean felt even more confused, but before she could ask her next question, Mary Jo did.
“Already dead, meaning in deep hiding?” Mary Jo asked. “Or doesn’t exist as in a fictional construct?”
“Yes, yes, and also,” Susan said, clearly pained by what she was about to say, “the target is supposed to return from the dead in one year.”
“He’s in deep hiding, fictional, and a religious figure?” Jean asked.
Susan nodded, clearly pained at that response.
“Real tough to kill if the target is already dead,” Mary Jo said, sipping on her screwdriver.
“Now you see my problem,” Susan said.
Jean wasn’t sure what she saw. She needed a lot more information and getting that information was going to take time.
“Why don’t you get dressed,” Jean said, standing and indicating that she wanted to talk with Mary Jo for a moment. “Then join us in the kitchen.”
“Thank you for even considering this,” Susan said, nodding. “I’ve pretty much run out of ideas and options.”
“I can imagine,” Mary Jo said, shaking her head and standing.
Then Jean led the way out of the guest room and into the kitchen area.
“Is she nuts, playing us, or in real need of help?” Jean asked softly as they reached their kitchen. She loved the kitchen area of the condo because it had modern appliances and a wonderful eating nook looking out over a roof garden and the neighborhood beyond.
“Need of help,” Mary Jo said, sitting at the table and taking another sip of her screwdriver. “She seems as sane as either one of us, approached us perfectly, and I can see of no reason she would play us. No gain.”
“Agree,” Jean said. “So you want to help her?”
“I want to hear more,” Mary Jo said. “But if we decide to help her, I think she should move in here for a short time with us. Until we take down the target.”
Jean nodded. “I had thought the same thing.”
“So you still cooking tonight or you want me to?”
Jean smiled. “I’d love to cook and I have enough for three without a problem.”
She liked the idea of cooking for the three of them. That alone made her happy.
“Perfect,” Mary Jo said, smiling. “Let’s go for lunch down to Steven’s Deli and talk there for a time, then come back here for more talking and dinner. How does that sound?”
“Planning a target strike is always fun,” Jean said, smiling.
Mary Jo smiled and made a toasting motion with her glass. “My targets always end up dead. Never had one already dead before.”
Jean had to drink to that as well. There was no doubt the day had turned interesting.
No doubt at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
MARY JO SAT directly across a small Formica tabletop from Susan and next to Jean at a window table in Steven’s Deli. The deli was small and had only ten tables and a long meat and sandwich counter. A wall of windows along one wall made the place feel like it was almost open to the city street.
Only two construction workers at a back table were in the place at the moment.
Mary Jo loved it here, since not only did they make a great salad with radishes and cucumbers and carrots, but the corned beef was some of the best in the city and that was going some for New York.
Besides that, the place always smelled heavenly of fresh bread and roasting meat combined.
Just on the other side of the wall of windows the normally busy traffic of New York streamed past. A delivery truck sat half onto the sidewalk near the back of the deli so that it forced people on the sidewalk into single-file along the windows.
Mary Jo loved how not a person walking by seemed to mind. It was just all part of a day in the city.
All three of them were eating basically the same lunch. All three had salads and Jean used an Italian dressing while Susan and Mary Jo both used vinegar and oil with a little salt. All three drank from bottles of water.
It turned out Susan came here often as well and the owner behind the counter had even called her by name when they came in. You had to be a regular in New York before that started happening.
And that meant that Susan lived somewhere in this neighborhood as well.
After they got seated, Mary Jo put a small phone-sized device on the table among them and clicked it on. “That blocks anyone listening to or recording this conversation from anywhere around us.”
Susan nodded and didn’t seem concerned in the slightest.
“So back to the beginning,” Jean said.
“You are going to have to confide everything in us,” Mary Jo said. “I know that’s not something we normally do in the order, but if we’re going to help you, we need to know every detail.”
Susan nodded again. “I had planned on that when I started searching for you for help.”
Silence except for the two construction workers across the small deli talking about some football game that Mary Jo didn’t care about.
Susan took another bite of her salad and then started into her story. Mary Jo couldn’t imagine telling anyone about her getting hired for a target and all the preliminary stuff she did, but they needed to know it all from Susan.
“I was contracted six years ago to target a man by the name of Jack Kelsall.”
Mary Jo glanced at Jean to see if she recognized the name. Clearly she didn’t.
“I was offered three million up front and seven million if I completed the task in a public fashion.”
“Wow,” Jean said. “Way above order normal.”
Mary Jo nodded. She had never heard of any assassin being offered that kind of money before. She had never come close to that amount, actually.
“The money doesn’t matter to me anymore,” Susan said. “Just part of the job. But I took the job and told the client it would take a lot of time. They gave me seven years.”
“Why seven years?” Mary Jo asked. There seemed to be no logical reason for such a time period.
“Seven years from the time I was hired,” Susan said, “Jack Kelsall will rise from the dead and speak to his followers and lead them into the new world, or some such garbage like that. Mostly he’ll just take a lot more of their money.”
“A dead guy has followers?” Jean asked a half second before Mary Jo could ask the same question.
“Millions and millions of them,” Susan said. “More by the day now. All waiting for him to rise from the dead. If he does, it will be sensational beyond words, a long con that took twenty-five years to set up and play out.”
Susan had been talking and all Mary Jo had gotten was more confused.
“I am missing some huge bits of information here,” Mary Jo said and beside her Jean was nodding her head as well. “Explain what you mean by a long con?”
“Twenty-five years ago,” Susan said, “Jack Kelsall and a close friend by the name of Carson White started a small religion based on the belief that it was possible to return from death to become immortal. Both were archeology and history students so they actually took some truths from our ancient order beliefs, but got most wrong.”
“Okay,” Mary Jo said. She didn’t want to sidetrack the conversation by digging into order beliefs that had made the three of them basically immortal. That would be a conversation for later.
“The religion they set up is called Ever Life. It had managed to attract enough followers to make a little money with their scam. But they needed to have Kelsall die and then come back to life to make the big bucks in the con.”
“So that’s what’s behind Ever Life,” Jean said, shaking her head. “Always wondered.
“Never heard of it before,” Mary Jo said.
“You are lucky,” Susan said. “They seem to be everywhere these days as the promised resurrection gets closer.”
“So Kelsall faked his own death and went into hiding twenty-four years ago,” Mary Jo said, starting to understand the problem a little better.
“And Carson White kept running the church,” Jean said.
Susan nodded. “They faked a jump from a bridge, body never found. Then White and the remaining church members got to work on Jack’s promise to return to his congregation in exactly twenty-five years, an immortal being.”
“And they’ve been milking these poor souls for money the entire time?” Jean asked.
“They have,” Susan said. “Thousands of prep products, courses to learn balance and rituals to prepare the soul to leave and then return as an immortal being. All costing thousands and thousands. They have taken in more millions than I want to imagine.”
“A real long con,” Mary Jo said. “Just like any typical religion.”
Jean nodded to that.
Mary Jo sat there in silence as the other two kept eating. This was really an amazing scam this guy was pulling. Amazing and about to work unless they found and really put the guy into the ground first.
In a public fashion.
And if three order assassins couldn’t do that, working together, no one could.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
JEAN CONTINUED TO work on her salad as Susan filled in some details about the target. It seemed Kelsall had loved the finer things in life, had no real family to speak of, and at least before his death had never been married.
In fact, other than a degree from the University of Wisconsin Madison, and his friendship with another student, Carson White, Kelsall seemed to have a very unremarkable life until he and White decided to start their own religion.
“I got pictures and backgrounds on both of them,” Susan said. “And every bit of data I have dug up on them and their church I’ll be glad to show you, including the film taken of Kelsall making his jump from the Golden Gate Bridge.”
“Long distance images I’ll bet,” Mary Jo said.
Susan shook her head, which stopped Jean in mid-bite.
“Close-up from three different angles on the bridge from three different stationary cameras of him going off the side,” Jean said. “Then two long-shots of his fall and hitting the water, one from each bank.”
“Got any idea how they faked that?” Mary Jo asked.
Susan nodded. “Had Kelsall stand on the edge of the bridge just over a net strung from the side of the bridge. He jumped into the net. Then they cleared the net and filmed a dummy going over from a distance, weighted so it looked like a human body falling. It would be heavy enough to sink and quickly dissolve in the water.”
“Real enough that no one would question it,” Jean said. She was amazed at the skill that had taken to plan.
“What they are not questioning,” Mary Jo said, “is the twenty-five years. If he had come back in six months, the questions would be everywhere. The brilliance of this con is the twenty-five years.”
“Exactly,” Susan said.
Jean nodded to that. Then asked, “So who hired you?”
“A parent of one of the kids trapped in the deeper cult of this fake church,” Susan said. “If we can expose this as a fake, my client thinks his kid will be able to walk away.”
“More than likely right on that score,” Jean said, nodding.
“Even after six years?” Mary Jo asked.
Susan nodded. “My client is afraid that if this guy actually does come back and make it look like he’s coming back from the dead, my client’s kid will kill herself to try to gain the same immortality.”
“So where have you looked for Kelsall?” Jean asked.
“Everywhere,” Susan said, the tiredness and hopelessness clear in her voice. “I figured that following the money would be the way to track Kelsall, since he liked to live high, but no money leaves the church. It all just pours in.”
“And where does White live?” Mary Jo asked.
“In the church compound,” Susan said. “He lives the life of a king, of that there is no doubt, but I can’t find any way that money is being filtered to anyone outside the church. And I’ve done some deep tracking.”
“You mind if we double-check you on that?” Mary Jo asked.
“Please,” Susan said.
They all finished their lunch with a few more basic questions, then Susan left for her apartment to get what she had dug up in six years of searching while Mary Jo and Jean strolled leisurely back toward their condo.
Jean loved walking with Mary Jo like this. Their strides matched and neither of them minded walking in silence.
This entire thing sure felt odd to Jean. Something was very wrong that Susan, clearly a smart and well-trained guild assassin, couldn’t find Kelsall. So finally, about a block from their condo, Jean broke the silence.
“You think Kelsall is alive? Or is this Carson White and his people just milking what they can for as long as they can?”
Mary Jo sort of shrugged. “I’m betting he’s still alive and hiding. We just have to figure out where and then figure out how to get him into the open and kill him.”
“He’s slipped somewhere, right. That is what you are saying?”
Jean smiled at the woman she loved.
Mary Jo smiled back. “Twenty-four years in hiding. He’s slipped. We just have to figure out where.”
Jean took Mary Jo’s hand. “Kind of fun to be back on the chase, isn’t it?”
“Tremendous fun,” Mary Jo said. “And challenging at the same time.”
“The best of both worlds,” Jean said.
Mary Jo squeezed her hand in agreement.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
MARY JO COULDN’T believe how completely thorough Susan had been in her search for Jack Kelsall. Over a week-long period, with the three women eating together and Susan staying with them in the condo, Mary Jo and Jean double- and triple-checked everything Susan had done.
And tried a few other dead-end ideas as well.
They had set up the condo’s large dining area with three work stations, all protected from any kind of tracing. And they had covered one wall with a giant war board of print-outs and a twenty-four-year timeline.
Finally, after yet another dead-end idea panned out, Susan sighed and said simply, “I’m starting to believe that Jack Kelsall really died twenty-four years ago.”
Mary Jo turned from her work station and stared at the black-haired assassin, an idea slowly starting to form.
“Someone died that day,” Mary Jo said. “I’ve studied that film now a bunch of times and I believe that was a real body dropping off that bridge.”
Jean looked at her and Susan stopped and just stared.
Mary Jo stood and went to the files that Susan had accumulated over six years of research that were scattered on the top of the dining room table. She pulled
out a college picture of Jack Kelsall standing next to Carson White.
Both boys, not more than nineteen at the time of the picture, were the same height. Both were thin and from their arms draped over each other’s shoulders, clearly best friends. Jack had dark hair, Carson’s was blond. Jack had a smaller nose. Carson’s nose was larger and wider.
Mary Jo looked closer at the picture. She could see that Carson’s eyes were blue, Jack’s eyes were dark brown.
Jack wore his dark hair long, Carson wore his blond hair cropped short.
The picture was taken about four years before the bridge.
“What are you thinking,” Jean asked.
Mary Jo didn’t say anything. She honestly wasn’t sure what she was thinking. But without Kelsall still alive somewhere, this entire religion was going to go down in flames in exactly one year.
“You got a recent picture of Carson?”
Susan flipped open her iPad and a moment later placed it on the dining table so Mary Jo and Jean could both see the blond-haired man. He was still trim and clearly wore his money well. Same wide nose, same blue eyes.
“He doesn’t go out in public very often,” Susan said. “Pictures of him are rare. Other than the church, he has no family, never married, stays to himself mostly in his mansion on the church grounds.”
“Does he have a girlfriend?” Mary Jo asked, hoping “or a series of them?”
“Boyfriends,” Susan said.
Mary Jo liked the sound of that.
“Could that be Jack Kelsall, hiding in plain sight?” Jean asked, staring at the picture.
“As crazy an idea as any,” Mary Jo said. “It would explain no money leaving the church.”
“So what happened to Carson White?” Susan asked.
“Carson went off the bridge instead of Kelsall,” Mary Jo said. “We need to search the morgue records from the time in the entire area for anyone pulled out of the ocean that would match Carson’s basic description.”
Without another word, all three of them turned back to their own work stations.
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