by Audrey Faye
The dots were connecting in a thunderous herd now. “He wants us to be two people trying to protect a hundred.”
Carly’s smile was vicious. “We make him the hunted. With a hundred people on his tail.”
It sounded horrible and dangerous and fifty kinds of wrong. A rattlesnake was still dangerous in a crowd. “He’ll find someone to bite.”
“He won’t,” said Rosie quietly. “We’ll pull his teeth out when he’s busy watching someone he thinks is weak.”
The final dot fell into place. “Like Lelo.”
The gypsy warrior nodded. “You can’t save her on your own. But we’re going to make him swim in an ocean with a lot of sharks who want to chomp his ass.” She smiled, just a little. “And I’m thinking he might find out that some of the little fish have teeth too.”
If the kid had her way, those would be the teeth he’d feel first.
15
It was like someone had put together a SWAT team from an extras casting call. Not a single person in the very crowded bar looked like anyone you’d normally meet on the street.
And every last one of them was here simply because we’d asked them to be.
There was a crew of truckers in the corner, with Lelo plunked on a table in the middle of them, wrapping them around her skinny self just like she’d done with the bikers.
Rowena sat in the opposite corner, holding court with a bunch of people in black who looked like they never saw the light of day. “Carly’s hacker buddies,” said Rosie over my shoulder. “A couple are possibly vampires. And I think there are a few bikers in there too.”
Probably. Bikers came in lots of flavors, just like lesbians and assassins and florists. The ones who had adopted Lelo were currently hanging with Loralee and her man, who had made the long trek from Seattle. Danno had hooked up with Gramma Clo and was manning the part of the bar that had somehow turned into a potluck buffet line.
It was as eclectic a sea of humanity as had probably ever graced this bar. And yet all of them were here because they had three things in common with a couple of assassins. They cared more about what was right than what was legal. They could take care of themselves. And somewhere, sometimes buried deep under the exterior trappings, they had marshmallow hearts.
Rosie was right—gathered here like this, it was hard to miss. We weren’t two assassins on the road and under cover. We had somehow managed to connect ourselves to half the planet, and this was only the tail-stepping half.
Carly stood, and the bar gradually quieted. She waited until you could have heard a peanut drop, and then cast her voice loud enough for even the slightly deaf guys in the back corners to hear. “Thanks for coming, everyone. I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time talking. I know you’ve all been briefed on why you’re here.”
Rosie and I had quietly been taking care of that as folks arrived. We wanted to mobilize an army, not a mob.
Carly held up a sheaf of paper. “We’ve divided folks into teams. I’m going to hand these out to the team leaders, and they can assemble their groups.”
The next five minutes were a weird mix of elementary school and prison-yard soccer match as people found their groups, sized each other up, and gaped at their designated leaders.
Lelo grinned from a group in the middle of the room, sheet of paper in her hand. She had a particularly broad assortment of characters on her team.
When things finally quieted down again, Carly hopped up on a chair. “I’m guessing you’re all wondering what the plan is.”
“Duh,” said a voice from the back. Half the bar laughed.
My partner raised an eyebrow at the troublemaker. “Micro, you’re in charge of the people with a certain expertise in online environments.”
“We get to hack stuff?” Micro’s team started exchanging high fives.
“You get to do clean up.” Carly ignored the groans. “You’re going to help anyone James Turking is looking at who needs help making themselves safe and secure on the Internet.” She grinned. “Some of them have AOL email accounts.”
Micro flopped her head down on the table. “You’re cruel.”
“Totally.” My partner was loving every minute of this. “But once you clean up your rooms, you can spend some time following our friend James around the Internet.”
Micro’s head snapped back up, eyes gleaming. “Can we be annoying?”
“Oh, yeah.” Carly’s eyes were pure hunter now. She turned to a group of people who looked entirely dangerous. “You guys have the same job, but in the real world.”
Riker stepped to the front of that team, sheet of paper in his hand. “Helping people stay safe and annoying the asshole, right?”
My partner nodded. “Just keep it legal.”
He grimaced.
Micro’s team liked that news even less.
“This is important, people.” Carly looked around, making eye contact with every single person in the bar. “James Turking is a snake, and he needs to be neutralized, but nobody is going to be a hero, okay? Including me. We’re going to overwhelm him with sheer numbers. Nobody takes unnecessary risks, nobody hangs their ass out in the wind, nobody puts an innocent person in harm’s way.”
Some rumbles, but low level. Rosie and I had hammered very consistently on that one message in our initial briefings.
It was the closest thing to anti-venom that we had.
Carly raised an eyebrow. “Be creative, people. Mail him glitter. Give his email address to all the scammers in Nigeria. Deliver pink love letters to his office. Park in all his usual parking spots. Cough on him and sound like you have the plague.”
Lelo’s eyes gleamed—half that list was her ideas.
“Is that gonna be enough?”
I couldn’t remember the name of the man speaking, but he had impressed me with the thoughtfulness under his crew-cut exterior.
“Yes,” said Carly quietly. “James Turking doesn’t scare the usual ways. But he needs to be in control, of his own life and the lives of the people he targets. You guys are about to totally screw with that. There is no single blow that will take this guy down—but a thousand small ones will.” Her smile was long and slow and radiated megawatt power. “He’s about to discover that there’s someone watching him every single minute, and that all of you are a little crazy.”
The rumbles this time were pleased ones.
Carly pointed at the biggest team, mostly long-haul truckers. “You guys are transport and protection. If we think someone might be in danger, you park your rig outside their door or bring them to the nearest truck stop and feed them burgers until someone can stomp on Turking’s tail again.”
A dozen people who knew every inch of this country nodded.
The smallest team, tucked into the shadows, wouldn’t get mentioned. They were the people who would be crossing lines. Very carefully, and at their own insistence. Making sure Turking didn’t go any further into the dark—because we knew exactly how much havoc he could wreak if he decided to go. Hacking to rob child support instead of paying it. Telling violent dads where their kids were. Planting evidence of crimes people hadn’t committed. So far, Turking’s pathology insisted that he manipulate his victims while staying on the right side of the law. The stealth group’s job was to make sure he stayed there.
Lelo stuck her hand up. “What’s my team doing?”
“Intake and assessment.” A job handpicked for our little fish with teeth—and the team Carly, Rosie, and I would be watching the hardest. “You guys will keep your ears on the ground, sort out what’s happening, and then pass that intel over to Rowena and Loralee.” The street-wise forum owner from Seattle had bonded with Rowena in about five seconds. Their group was the brains. They’d make sure this odd organism stayed steady and got the job done—without hanging any asses in the wind.
Lelo grinned. “Cool, we’re the spies.”
“Are you tall enough for that, Shortie?” Riker picked up a beer and toasted her with it.
The kid just
stuck out her tongue.
Riker changed targets, looking over at Carly. “It’s like a James Bond movie around here. Do we get fancy doodads soon?”
She smiled sweetly at him. “I have a purple silk tie that would look great on you.”
He paled and shut up.
A hand in the back flew up. “Can I have the purple tie?”
Carly growled. “Focus, people.”
“This is a lot of fire power to take down one guy.” Rowena’s crew-cut friend again.
It was. But everything else had failed. This time, good was going to have to triumph over evil through sheer volume and persistence.
“We’ll need a few days to get everything in place.” Riker was sitting back at Micro’s table now, and if the paper spread out in front of them was any indication, they were already getting busy.
My partner nodded, and voices sprang up all over the bar. Planning. Logistics. Motion.
I stopped listening to the words. It was the images catching me now.
Carly’s, her cheeks flushed with victory. We were going to take the bastard down—she could smell it.
The kid, knowing in every way that mattered that no one would ever sit on her again.
Rosie watching Carly, her eyes proud—and sad.
And me. I couldn’t see me, but that didn’t stop my picture from taking itself. I could feel the deep dark fingers of depression curling around my heart, because I smelled something entirely different from victory in this bar.
The one dot we hadn’t laid on the table yet.
The one that absolutely needed to happen.
The one that would make all the others matter.
The one that was mine to start.
16
I glanced down at my feet and shook my head. “Is this really necessary?” I had other things to do—my last dot was under way and needed my attention. All of it, and then some. I didn’t have time for distractions, even important ones.
“Yes.” My partner didn’t even slow down. “He needs to know we’re messing with him.”
I wasn’t totally convinced of that, but I knew she needed to let Turking see the victory in her eyes. I could give her that much—it was the costumes I took issue with. I could barely walk in the knee-high boots that had been deemed the required accessory to my outrageous get-up.
Carly flashed me a grin, sexy and dangerous in her head-to-toe black assassin garb. “One of us has to be the hot chick.”
Damn them all to hell for deciding it should be me. I tugged at the shimmery dress, uncomfortable in every inch it covered, and all the ones it didn’t. Rosie and Lelo had burst into a dance of unholy glee when I’d tried it on.
“You look hot and totally distracting,” said Carly, heading us toward a path that presumably led to the eighteenth tee. “Ready?”
Distraction was my primary job. We were about to tap dance on Turking’s tail, and one of our best moves was going to be surprise. Two assassins, about to act entirely out of character.
Dear asshole—the world as you know it has just entirely changed.
I tried not to curse as my three-inch spike heels dug into the dirt and made me walk like a sloshed duck. The entire clubhouse would be watching by now—we’d verified that the view of the eighteenth tee from the bar was excellent. Our target was conveniently finishing his morning round at lunchtime. The clubhouse was packed.
“Walk on the balls of your feet,” whispered Carly, mostly managing to hide her amusement.
That isn’t a skill they teach kids in Vermont. I did the best I could and managed not to fall flat on my face.
Through sheer dumb luck, I happened to be looking the right direction when we rounded the corner and laid eyes on Turking. Or rather, when he laid eyes on us. He stood behind a golf ball at the tee, leaning on a club and looking like he’d fallen out of a golf magazine ad, except for the look of gaping shock on his face. The three men with him looked varying degrees of disgruntled. I presumed that meant they were losing.
Perfect. Our guys in the woods had done their job. Time to knock Turking off the pedestal of his carefully engineered victory.
I took a deep breath, threatened my shoes with dismemberment if they tripped me up, and made my way across the fairway to the man at the tee. Three sets of eyes watched my progress with looks ranging from appreciation to hunger.
The fourth set was angry and trying not to show it.
I could have trounced the lot of them at the poker table. “James. How nice to see you again.” I marched right over and planted a big kiss on his cheek. My lips would never be the same again. “We were just leaving, and I saw you over here and just had to come say hello.” I kissed his other cheek for good measure and hoped it unsettled him at least as much as it did me. “You don’t mind if we stay and watch you play the last hole, do you?”
“Heck, no.”
It wasn’t Turking who had answered. I fluttered my very fake eyelashes at the guy who never would have given me a second look in my flannel. “Thanks, darling.”
He reached for his golf clubs, flustered.
I never had that effect on men. I looked over at Carly, hoping the next lines were hers.
She walked over to stand next to one of the remaining two guys, casually ignoring the man we’d come to see. Trying her best to be a wallflower.
I managed not to roll my eyes, and got back to business. “Is it your turn to hit the ball, James?” I peered off into the distance, feeling exactly like the dumb golf floozy I was trying to be. “That looks like a really long way to make it go.”
“He’s had insane good luck with his driver today,” said the man I’d flustered. “The guy is three strokes under par.”
I didn’t have any idea what that meant. It was, however, totally puffing Turking up. He nodded graciously at the guy who had spoken. “You’ve made some good shots yourself, Milt.”
Milt looked ready to kick him in the knees. “We’d better play through—there’s a group right behind us.”
There wasn’t anyone else in sight, but I totally understood wanting to ditch Turking’s company as quickly as possible. I positioned myself out of the way of swinging golf clubs and sulking egos and waited for our target to do his thing. He lined up club and ball, ostentatious flourishes in every movement. And then he stilled and pulled his club back, swinging through in a way that suggested he meant business and had a pretty good idea how to get it done. The ball flew straight and high, on a direct course for the light green grass of the putting green and the yellow flag waving in the breeze.
And then it started to curve.
Turking hissed in a breath. I managed not to smile as the small white orb landed on the very edge of the green and bounced itself into the convenient nearby duck pond.
The ducks weren’t nearly as annoyed as the man standing beside me.
Milt stepped up to his ball, looking positively buoyant. “Your luck had to end sometime, James. That pond’s a mucky mess at this time of year—I got stuck in there for four strokes last week.”
Milt’s ball flew straight and true and landed about ten feet from the yellow flag. From the look on his face, that didn’t happen very often either.
I hoped our guys in the trees with their gizmos didn’t try to show off too much. This wasn’t illegal, but only because nobody had ever thought to outlaw it.
Turking waited for the other two in their foursome to hit their balls and then stomped off, golf bag over his shoulder and look of murder on his face. I slung my hand through Milt’s elbow. “Help a girl walk, will you? I had no idea golf courses were this treacherous.”
The look he gave me nearly earned him a kick in his orange plaid pants.
We made our way down the fairway toward the putting green. Carly motioned discreetly at the clubhouse. I squinted, trying to make out whatever she was pointing at, and saw the crowd gathering in the windows. Apparently, a ball in the duck pond was good for live entertainment.
Excellent. Turking was a psychopath
who cared a lot about appearances. A rapt audience would help mightily with the ungluing we were engineering.
A phone rang as we were about a hundred yards from the green. I hid a grin as Turking dug in the pocket of his golf bag—so far, this op had impeccable timing. Score one for the kid.
He looked at his screen. “I have to take this—it’s the senior VP of marketing.”
“Saved by the old fat guy,” muttered Milt under his breath.
I didn’t bother to correct him.
We all watched as Turking’s face went from self-important to concerned to mottled and angry. All while trapped in the middle of the fairway with all of us avidly listening to both ends of the conversation.
Old fat guy was loud.
Which meant we all knew there had been an error found on a client spreadsheet. The kind that was big enough to cause embarrassment, and small enough to keep one asshole his job, as long as he fixed it yesterday.
The kind of thing that happened to regular human beings at least one day a week.
The kind of thing Turking let happen exactly never.
By the time he extracted himself from old fat guy’s patronizing reassurances, James Turking was as furious as I’d ever seen him. And as shaken as I’d ever seen him.
He glared at Carly. “What did you have to do with this?”
The three guys walking with us looked totally confused.
Milt leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Does she work for James?”
Not in this lifetime.
My partner managed a fairly convincing look of innocence. “I think it’s your turn to putt.”
Turking’s face would have scared lesser assassins silly.
I waited through his tantrum at the pond as he swore vengeance on ducks and those foolish enough to put them on his golf course. I stood patiently while he carefully noted the penalty shots on his scorecard, and I managed to avoid wobbling off my damn boots when his truly excellent putt took a sudden turn right before the hole and rolled itself down an incline into a sand pit.
