by Lisa Hughey
Faith I’d lost long ago. Perhaps never had.
“Do you have a name?”
Somehow I’d expected him to ask other questions first, like why, who was he, what did he mean to me? But Zeke got right to the point.
My heart thumped in my chest. My hands trembled as adrenaline flooded through my body. I wasn’t sure I could do this. My throat constricted, my mouth was dry. And I was freaking stalling.
“Of the person who you think is after you,” he clarified, as if he thought I didn’t know what he was talking about.
I hadn’t spoken the monster’s name aloud in thirteen years.
When we left, we’d looked back but we’d never, ever, ever said his name again. As if by uttering the words we might conjure him up.
The thought was terrifying and crazy. And I felt like I was seven years old and fleeing for my life again.
“Do you have a name?” he asked again.
I couldn’t stall any longer. The terror gripping me gave way, broke over me like a wave. If he was working with my stepfather, I would know in a minute. Watching him carefully for any sign of recognition, I quietly spoke the name of the devil. My devil.
“John Stanley.”
Seventeen
John Stanley.
Sunshine had said his name as if waiting for Zeke to recognize the guy.
There was an expectant pause in her body language, and he knew he needed to tread carefully over the next few minutes. She was so damn skittish that he thought if he showed even a slightly overt interest she would bolt.
“Okay.” To begin, he touched the top, the exact center of the left edge, the exact center of the right edge, and the bottom of his laptop keyboard. “That’s the guy we just saw?”
She pressed her lips together tightly, swallowed, then nodded.
“Let’s start with the license plate.”
He’d memorized the full plate number. First Zeke accessed the California DMV database. But when he pulled up the information on that plate number it was for a late model Lexus. Not an old Ford truck. The Lexus had been reported stolen two days ago.
Zeke sighed. “That was a dead end.”
She slumped. “Do you think he got your plate number?”
“Even if he did it will take a while to track down the rental information and then my credit card information. You’re safe.” For now.
Sunshine stiffened her shoulders. “So that’s it?”
“Of course not. It just means this will be a little more difficult.”
So Zeke tried some basic internet search stuff.
It was a pretty uncommon name but several names came up ranging all over the country. “Do you have any idea where he lives?”
Her face was white, her gray eyes large granite pools in her face. “Ah, he used to...live in Kansas.”
Zeke scrolled through the names, clicking on page after page, but no one with his general characteristics popped in Kansas. “Can I ask for more information?”
She licked her lips. “Like what?”
“What are you willing to give me on him?”
She sat there as if paralyzed. She was truly terrified by this guy.
Finally he couldn’t stand her fear any more. Zeke asked gently, “What did he do?”
If Sunshine was this terrified, the threat was real.
She shook her head. A strand of her black hair escaped her loose braid and curled along her neck, momentarily distracting Zeke from his questions.
Couldn’t tell him? Or wouldn’t?
“I need more information.” Or he needed to contact someone else to get the information. “Or I’ve got to use a contact within the NSA to dig deeper.”
Which would expose him and the fact that he’d made contact with Sunshine. At this point, he should probably call Carson, and come clean. About Sunshine and Susan.
Zeke thought that Carson would keep his secret. But he couldn’t be sure. Dammit.
Of course yesterday he’d suggested Carson assist Jordan and Staci with a sting. He hadn’t heard from his pal today, but that wasn’t surprising. Especially if Jordan was still with Staci. He knew that Zeke needed to stay far away from the fugitive.
He would need to call Carson at home. Away from the office.
“No! Don’t call anyone else.”
“Why are you looking for him?”
“He...killed my grandparents.”
Zeke reared back. She knew the name of her grandparents’ assassin? On the heels of that thought, he connected the pieces into a pattern that had him salivating for more information. What he wouldn’t give to talk to this guy. “Is he out of prison?”
She laughed bitterly. “Who said he went to prison?”
So he’d killed her grandparents and gotten away with it. And then suddenly he realized what that meant. This guy was a sleeper sent specifically to murder her grandparents.
Just like his Grandpop had been murdered.
And there too the murderer had gotten away with it. But Zeke had no idea who had murdered his grandfather. Then another connection fused. “Honey, if he killed your grandparents, you’re safe.” He had no idea how he was going to explain it all to her but he’d have to try. She wasn’t in any danger. The subtle tension that had gripped Zeke when he thought about her being in jeopardy eased its constriction around his lungs. All of the sleeper assassins had killed their targets, sometimes with collateral damage, but no one had come back for the descendants years’ later.
Sunshine threaded her fingers together in her lap and worried at the chipped lavender polish on her index finger. Her head was bent at such an angle that he couldn’t see her face, couldn’t see her eyes.
A tear dripped on her clenched hands.
He wanted, no needed to reassure her, but based on the level of her terror, she wasn’t going to be easy to calm down. Although he knew she was safe, she didn’t have any reason to believe him. “You don’t need to worry about him anymore.”
She whipped her head up. “You’re wrong.”
“How did he kill them?” he asked gently. The report indicated that they had drowned after their tire blew out.
“He shot their tire. The car went into the creek. We’d had unprecedented rain that year. The creek was angry, swollen almost to the banks, and they were swept away.” She wrapped her arms around her middle and rubbed her biceps briskly as if trying to get warm. The anxious move brought his attention to the slender strength in her arms. And his brain kept trying to make the connection between this fragile woman and his muscled bulk.
He shifted gears, thinking about last night. “How the hell did you ever get me out of the water?”
She shrugged. “Physics.”
“Thank God for science nerds,” he murmured.
She snorted, her silver eyes brightened for a second. Then fear dampened their glow and a guilty expression crossed her face. She was thinking about her grandparents again.
“At least you had closure.” He couldn’t help but think that she was lucky. She knew her grandparents were murdered. After all, until a few weeks ago, he’d believed his grandfather had died in a climbing accident.
“God should not allow monsters to live and angels to die,” Sunshine said bitterly.
“God didn’t have anything to do with your grandparents’ death.” Zeke countered, trying to keep the snap out his words. “They were murdered.”
But how did she know exactly what happened when, according to the info he had, the coroner had ruled it an accident? “Are you sure about what happened?”
“I saw him do it.”
Shock, sharp and unexpected, surged through his body. His vision blurred and a chill rippled down his spine. “You saw him?”
She nodded.
Jesus.
But even so...she should be safe. The assassin had completed his task.
Except, she’d seen him. And she knew what he’d done. Was that why he was after Sunshine and her mother? Although it didn’t explain how she knew his name. Or why,
years later, he would still be after her and her mother?
“It was thirteen years ago.” Zeke pondered, “Why is he still after you?”
She surged up from her perch on the generic bedspread, then fluidly reached into her long hippie bag, pulled out a small SigSauer P229, and cocked the trigger with the barrel pointed straight at his sternum.
“How do you know how long ago it was?”
***
“I assume you know how to use that?” Zeke nodded his head toward the Sig, not moving anything else.
Not even twitching.
He was motionless. He wasn’t sweating and he wasn’t screaming. What the hell that meant, I had absolutely no idea, but he wasn’t reacting the way I’d anticipated. Usually people were afraid of guns. I was afraid of guns and I was holding the damn thing.
“Answer the question.” I held the cold, black, anodized metal steady using both hands. I might be shaking like a palm tree in gale force winds on the inside, but my hands were rock solid and sure on the outside.
After his initial blink of surprise at the gun, he hadn’t looked at it since. He kept his gaze squarely on my face. But he still hadn’t answered my question.
I couldn’t decide if I was impressed or pissed. Pissed won.
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll shoot you?” I wanted him cringing in fear, cowering before the might of my weapon. His uncanny calm only made me more angry.
“You know, yesterday I probably would have said go for it. But today I have new reason to survive.”
He didn’t say live.
I wondered if he even realized the distinction. I sure did. For too long, I’d been surviving rather than living. And I was tired of it.
“You still haven’t explained how you knew about my grandparents.”
Zeke sighed, rubbed a hand across his neck. “It’s complicated.”
“I live for complicated.”
“Ah, can you lower the weapon first?”
I kept the Sig Sauer pointed at him. But the reality of pointing a gun at a real person, a human being, especially a guy like Zeke with his broad chest and ripped abs, strong biceps and lean forearms, generated a roiling mess in my stomach.
“Please?” He cocked his head to one side, his unruly blond curls brushed one shoulder and drew my attention right back to his body. The deep ocean blue of his eyes and the serious set of his mouth told me he understood how close to the edge I stood and how much I was teetering.
“Explain.”
“I knew about your grandparents because thirteen years ago yesterday, my grandfather died in a climbing accident,” he responded evenly.
“What does that have to do with my grandparents?”
“Their deaths are connected.”
“Connected,” I said flatly. “How?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a matter of national security and you don’t have clearance.”
I snorted. “You have got to be kidding me.” My shoulders slumped. Why had I come with him? Given in to him? Clearly he was crazy.
National security? Clearance? My stepfather had been a farmer in Kansas.
“Goddess,” I whispered. I’d let my longing for a connection with a man override thirteen years of caution and borderline paranoid isolation.
On the other hand, the good news was Zeke couldn’t possibly have anything to do with John Stanley. I wanted to relax into a puddle of relief. Zeke wasn’t after me or Mama.
Mama.
My brain was still examining, calculating, processing. And that’s when I realized that I still couldn’t relax.
We weren’t safe. The monster had found me in San Luis. Which should have been impossible.
And I was right back to where I’d started. My stepfather was still after us. And I was on my own again.
Zeke clearly didn’t know who John was. There had not been an ounce of recognition, no flinch, no flicker of an eyelid, in his response to John’s name. He’d just written the name down and then started looking for John Stanley on his computer.
I really was on my own. Zeke was crazy so he clearly couldn’t help me with him. Mama was safe with Blue. And I had the overwhelming urge to just let loose and cry. Sob until my grief was gone, and I was empty of all the wants and needs I’d had to suppress for thirteen long years. Worries I was unable to reveal, and hopes I was forbidden to indulge, chained to my psyche and dragged me down. But I was afraid if I let go, I might not be able to pull myself back from that edge. He’d given me hope and then snatched it away. The sense of loss was startling.
So my crying jag would have to wait. I had to go. Had to find out why my former stepfather had been in Cambria this morning and how he had found us. We’d been safe for nine years, so why now?
I carefully stored the gun back in the pocket I’d sewn into my patchwork purse.
I didn’t look at Zeke. Couldn’t really. He’d been a wisp of an idea. A longing to connect. A wish for something ephemeral that was just that. A silly childish wish. I would never be free until he, John Stanley, was dead.
Neither would Mama.
“Thank you for your time,” I said formally. My gaze shifted around the impersonal hotel room, mentally collecting my belongings and packing up my life. Again.
“Wait, what?” Zeke jumped up, blocked my path.
He’d stepped closer. So close in fact I could see the striations of aqua and navy in his blue gaze. He’d invaded my personal space. As close as he’d been when he’d kissed me. Given me a gift. There had been tenderness and desire in our brief contact this morning.
Now that I knew what they felt like, I resolved to experience those sensations again. I just had to take care of my problems first. And then, I vowed, I was going to chase that feeling again.
“I need to leave.”
The heat from his body was intense as he curled his fingers around my bicep. “You can’t.” Zeke edged closer. His warmth surrounded me like a comforting hug.
“Sure I can.” I tugged at my arm.
“I can help you. But you need to tell me why you think this John Stanley would come after you.” Zeke tilted his head, his brows scrunched in an adorable frown. “And how you know his name.”
It shouldn’t matter if I told him. Since he didn’t know who John was. I purposely swallowed down my fear and tried to keep my voice even, calm, unemotional. “I know his name because he is, was, my stepfather.”
Eighteen
Zeke opened his mouth. Closed it. The assassin was her stepfather? That was a sleeper who was way too close to his intended targets. He couldn’t wrap his brain around that kind of illicit intimacy.
“He married the daughter of his target,” he spoke the words aloud as if trying to make sense of what she was telling him. The act held a level of evil that was hard to comprehend. What exactly had happened?
“Target?”
And Zeke knew he was going to explain to her. Even if it was a breach of national security. She deserved to know.
“He was a sleeper.” He forced the words out of stiff lips. If he didn’t share something, she was never going to believe him.
She snorted. “A sleeper cell? A person or persons who are inactive for years until suddenly tasked with killing or initiating the murder of a target? You really believe a sleeper was responsible for my grandparents’ deaths?”
“Yes.” Zeke hesitated. Fuck, could he really tell her about this? Then he thought about the last few hours and wondered if could he really afford not to tell her about this. Would she feel violated from the truth that her stepfather was an assassin who specifically targeted her grandparents and in some weird twist of improper conduct married her mother? Or would she be relieved that now she had a reason for why he had killed her grandparents?
“On October nineteenth and twentieth, 1995, a group of sleeper cells eliminated twelve targets around the world.”
“John? Sleeper cell? My grandfather was an insurance salesman and my grandmo
ther was a homemaker.” She stepped back, away from him, so slowly and carefully that he knew she was trying hard to be as nonthreatening as possible. “Why would they even have an assassin after them?”
He didn’t answer. How could he? Did he really want to get into the whole World War II history of the targets and the ultra-secret joint committee, TICOM, that had captured, interrogated, and then released German code breakers? Could he? He was already breaking the rules as it was.
“So see.” She tried to tug away from him, her scorn evident as she denied what he knew to be fact. “You are clearly mistaken.”
Zeke was silent while he ran through scenarios, thought about the other people whose families had been killed by sleepers, and the many secrets of the past.
“It’s Occam’s Razor,” she said impatiently.
“Yeah, in normal random circumstances, I would agree.” Zeke ran his fingers through his unruly curls. “When two explanations are offered for a phenomenon, the simplest full explanation is preferable.”
And if her grandparents hadn’t been part of a very exclusive group of targets who were all killed within a twenty-four hour period, around the world, Zeke might have agreed with her. But, no way in hell were their deaths on that day and within that time frame only the result of an murderous son-in-law. Their deaths were not just a coincidence.
However he wasn’t authorized to share the circumstances behind the order given to eliminate twelve specific targets thirteen years ago.
And without that information, she would continue to believe that John Stanley was just her stepfather. But that still didn’t refute the fact that both Sunshine and her mother had been living in relative obscurity for years and out of the blue John Stanley was after them again.
“Why do you think he’s suddenly coming after you?” It didn’t make any sense. The whole point of a sleeper was a random anonymous killer that waited never knowing if they’d be called on to follow through with their orders. However, once they completed their job, they were supposed to fade into the background and disappear.
The sleepers who killed the targets thirteen years ago had literally been in place for years.
So why would John Stanley come after Sunshine and her mother after he completed the assassination? Especially now.
