In Too Deep: A Romantic Suspense Novel

by Landish, Lauren

  Sophie, who was drying off the plates, shook her head and kissed me on the cheek. "No, I totally understand. The only thing I would have done differently is give Tabby the option to come with us, but if you want to come back, well, that's okay too."

  "She means a lot to you, doesn't she?" I said, finishing the pan and setting it to dry on the hook on the rack.

  "She's like a sister to me,” Sophie said softly, in a tone that told me she cared for Tabby deeply, although it wasn’t something I didn’t already know. She's the second most important person in my life."

  "Then she's the second most important person in mine too," I said simply. "If you want, we can talk to her about all three of us leaving, but if she can get by for three or four months without us again, we'll be back. Besides, if things go right, there's another reason I'll want to be back in town by then."

  "Oh, what's that?" Sophie asked, putting her towel away.

  I put my hand on her belly, smiling. "If things go right, Tabby can become an aunt."

  * * *

  William Henry Harrison High School was one of the oldest, most prestigious private high schools our entire part of the country. Graduates routinely were admitted into Ivy League universities, and sported a performing arts program that was so strong it routinely was compared to New York's LaGuardia High School. In fact, the school counted five Grammy winners among its alumni.

  Getting on the grounds wasn't too hard, actually. The school used janitors that were outside contractors, one that despite claims to the contrary, used a lot of day laborers. It was pretty easy to use a bit of special effects makeup to add a scar to my cheek, some temporary hair color to turn my hair a two tone brown and blonde, and fake a contract with the day labor company that dispatched the janitors.

  That morning, I used my freshly minted ID badge to scan my way through security just like the other three guys on the cleaning team. It was getting late, just after five thirty in the evening, but I knew that Han Faoxin would still be at work. Despite her second life as one of the biggest crime lords (or Lady) of the city, she was a pretty good teacher, and that day she had debate team that lasted until six o'clock. Afterwards she would probably stick around another hour before any of her night time work began.

  My plan was simple, to take her out in her room when she wasn't prepared. Unfortunately, the school's scanners were much more advanced than a simple metal detector, so I couldn't even bring a ceramic knife onto the grounds. Instead, I had to made do with what I could get within the school.

  I was pushing a mop bucket slowly down the hallway when "Anita Han" came around the corner, chatting with one of her students.

  "So next week I want you to focus on tightening up your rebuttals. You have the facts down, and your rhetoric is good, but you tend to ramble a bit too much in between points. Remember, debate isn't quite the same as public speaking where you can keep the audience in the palm of your hand for twenty minutes. In debate, you're being held to a very strict timeline, and the moderator will cut you off if you go over that time."

  "Okay Ms. Han," the student, a pretty little girl who was probably a junior or senior, replied. She looked like the sort of girl who was probably involved in student government, and in a more innocent time would have been dating the quarterback of the football team. She had that sort of innocent sweetness to her. "Is there anything else?"

  "Not at all Stacey," Faoxin replied. "Just remember that next practice you're doing the moderator's role, so I want you listening and giving good feedback to your teammates. They kind of let you down today, so that's why I asked you to stay late. See you tomorrow."

  Stacey disappeared around the corner, and I waited another minute before making my move. Pushing my mop past the now open door to Faoxin's room, I saw her sitting at her desk, checking a pile of papers that looked like they might have been a set of tests or something similar. In any case, her head was down, which is what I wanted. Pushing my mop and bucket inside, I went inside the room.

  "One of you guys already got the garbage," Faoxin said, not raising her head. I was glad, since it meant there was a greater chance of her not being totally focused on who I was.

  "Mopping," I said, intentionally pitching my voice soft and slightly lispy. I didn't want her knowing who I was just yet. "Sorry."

  Faoxin kept her head down, and I took the opportunity to pull the door closed behind me. I didn't know if the other door to the room was locked or not, but it at least cut off the room visually. Faoxin looked up when she heard the door close, her eyes wary. She looked at me for the first time, her eyes widening as she realized who I was. "Snowman."

  "Fao," I replied, using the shortened name we had used years before when I had been her bed partner. "Long time no see."

  Faoxin set her papers aside, keeping her hands where I could see them. That didn't mean I didn't think she wasn't hitting some sort of panic button with her foot, and we had less than five minutes to finish this. "I didn't think I'd see you so soon," she said, smiling. "I was kind of hoping that our history would have given me a bit more time to enjoy my life, or maybe you'd let me walk away without having to be killed."

  "After what you've done since your father died, did you really think that was an option, Fao?" I asked, setting my foot against the shaft of my mop. I stepped hard and twisted, snapping the wood a bit shorter than I would have liked, but still giving me a stick that was just over two and a half feet long. "Han Faoxin, you have failed this city."

  Faoxin rolled her eyes and got to her feet, picking the pen up off her desk. She reached down and pulled a long metal ruler from under her desk blotter, and even from across the room I could see the glitter of the sharpened edge. I suspected that while perhaps not as sturdy as a real sword, the wrapped end and relatively hefty weight would give her more than enough cutting ability to inflict major damage if she had the chance.

  "You know, that was one of the reasons I stopped seeing you," she said as I closed the distance between us. She swung her blade, and I pulled back, just out of range before trying to dart in with my own thrust with the partially sharp point of the break. "You were never short for cheesy one liners."

  "You always said it was cute when we were out together," I retorted, whipping my thrust to the side and smacking into the hand that held the pen. I knew that once the distance was closed between us, she would use it like a shank, stabbing me with it.

  I had to circle around her desk, or in some way get it from between us. Stepping to my right, I saw Faoxin retreat to her own, starting to circle. I kept it up until we switched places when I went for it, using what I'd been hiding in my left hand. It had hurt, but it was effective, a handful of thumbtacks. It caused Faoxin to at least try to ward off the projectiles for a moment, allowing me to dive over the desk and tackle her to the ground. The impact drove the wind out of her, although she retained enough sense of mind to lift her legs and push me over, flipping me. I rolled through, shoving a desk out of the way as I went.

  Finding my feet, I spun, pouncing back on Faoxin just as she was getting to her knees, her face red and gasping from the pain of the tackle. Taking her back, I wrapped my arm around her throat, not for a choke but rather to bring her chin and around to the locked position. From there I could twist and easily break her neck. Faoxin clawed at my arm, but the janitor's coveralls I was wearing prevented her from doing much, especially with my weight bearing down on her back.

  "Goodbye, Han Faoxin," I said sadly, twisting. It had to be done, but it didn’t mean I had to enjoy it. A sharp brittle crack reached my ears, and she collapsed, face first onto the floor. I looked in her eyes, and could see that there was still a glimmer of consciousness in her eyes. I could see her still trying to form words, even as her lungs failed to breathe, and her heart stopped getting the signals it had gotten for over thirty years. She mouthed something, I wasn't sure what, and then the light faded as her brain slowly died.

  "Eighty one."

  Chapter 45

  Sophie

>   When Mark left that day for the hit on Han Faoxin, I was in one of our strike bases near the red light district of the city. It was a crummy tenement actually, one that Mark had owned since before he had met me, and the strike base was actually the basement, which was only reached from an outside steel door that for most people was rusted shut. Inside the basement, I found what Mark had told me was there, an AR-15 configured in a heavier caliber than the normal M-16. We were using it because Mark had trained me so much in Europe on the AR-15 and it's main rival, the AK-47. With the ability to attach a scope the same way each and every time, all I had to do was bring the scope that I had already adjusted for my own uses. It wasn't going to put a bullet through a playing card at half a mile, but it would do its job.

  Checking the cabinet, I pulled out the heavy caliber AR and attached the scope. Bringing it up to my cheek, I sighted down the dimly lit basement, impressed. The scope wasn't super powerful, only magnifying things by a factor of seven, but it was enough. I could easily see the writing on the paper down at the end of the basement which was taped to the wall.

  "Remember, find the cold place," I repeated to myself before smirking and pulling the rifle away. It was one of the lessons Mark had taught me, and perhaps the hardest for me to internalize. Watching Mark, even when we were sparring in martial arts or working out, it was easy to see when he went to his cold place. There was something in his eyes, something in the way he held his jaw that told me the warm-hearted man that I knew had dropped away, and I was looking at another side of Mark, the survivalist side that would have no problems slaying a thousand men if it meant they were in his way. I once told him that if there ever was a zombie apocalypse, that was the side of him that would make sure the two of us survived.

  For me though, finding the cold place when it came to violence was more difficult. Sure, I could do it, I had done it when the Russians had attacked us, but it was much easier when I was saving lives rather than taking them. The most recent time I could think of was when I had stitched up Mark after the Russians had shot him, and I had to not only stabilize him but dispose of the bodies and evidence. Once I'd treated Mark, staying in my cold place was easy. Getting there however was difficult.

  Still, I thought I could do what needed to be done. In a lot of ways, Mark had given me the easier of the two hits. Illyusas Petrokias was the biggest controller of the sex trade in the city. Whether it was men, women, old, young, or even more "exotic" if you wanted it, chances were you'd find it under Petrokias' control. He was of course also heavily involved in the sex slave trade, trafficking girls and young boys both in and out of the city. When the newspapers came out with a story of a young undocumented immigrant found dead, if they carried it at all, nine out of ten times they were a worker for Petrokias who had outlived their usefulness.

  So it was very, very easy to want to put a bullet in the man's head. I say head because I doubted he had an actual heart with the disgusting things I read he was involved in. There was still a challenge however in setting aside my disgust to complete the shot.

  I triple checked the rifle, then checked that the sound baffles were still good in the basement. While I was sure the scope was good, my training taught me to always confirm the zero on any attachment to a rifle, especially if I was taking a shot over two hundred meters. Since our plan called for me to make a shot that was close to three hundred, I retreated to the far end of the basement, where a small pile of sandbags waited. Setting the rifle down, I then went to the other end of the building. The building was only a little over forty meters long, and the padding and absorbing material at the far end meant I could only make a thirty meter shot, but that was enough. Taking out a small paper target, I pinned it to the foam, which could absorb anything short of a fifty caliber shot or an elephant gun. I went back to the rifle, and put in a twenty round magazine. I wouldn't need all twenty rounds, I was hoping to need no more than two, but still, better to be prepared than to be sorry.

  Getting down on the floor, I got into the prone position, the most stable position I could get. I looked through my scope, centering on the small X in the middle of the target. I chambered a round, took the rifle off of safe, and reacquired my target. The trigger was touchy, barely taking more than a caress of my finger to fire the rifle. The target blurred in my vision as the recoil shifted the rifle, but I quickly found the spot again, with a neat little hole just a shade over the X. Considering I was firing a hot round that was going to fly high at only twenty five meters, I knew I was ready. Even if I aimed at the head, I'd only miss low, dropping one right into Petrokias' torso.

  Who knew? If I aimed for his chest, I might just blow off his balls.

  The thought, while a little sick, comforted me as I removed the magazine and cleared the rifle, making sure I was ready to go. Concealing the rifle and my backup weapon, a Glock 19 pistol, in a electric keyboard case, I shouldered the heavy bag along with a small bag of other supplies and checked the way I looked in the mirror. My purple hair was concealed under a black wig and baseball cap, while my pants and outfit made me look like any of the other thousand struggling musicians in the city. As opposed to Mark, I couldn't use any sort of makeup, I was going to be sweating too much, but my skin tone was nondescript anyway.

  Leaving the strike base, I hiked the near mile over to my shooting position, a cheap hotel that was often used by Petrokias' lower priced whores who would bring their johns over for the cheap hourly rates. I rented a room for five hours, laying down an additional fifty bucks to ensure the clerk at the desk wouldn't bother me.

  "What's in the case?" the clerk asked as I scribbled an illegible muck of a name in the register.

  "Piano and a CD player," I said, tugging at the thin leather gloves I had been wearing since unlocking the strike base. It was another one of Mark's rules, and one I had learned to work with. "I have an audition next week. Need to practice."

  "Here?" the clerk asked. "Why in the hell would you want to practice at this dump?"

  I shrugged. "It's better and quieter than where I live," I said. "Music is okay, right?"

  The clerk shrugged. "As long as you don't mind a thumping headboard back beat, I don't care," he said, handing me the key. "Here you are, room five fifteen, just like you asked. Has a western view so you can get your sunset and everything. Hope you're inspired."

  "Thanks," I said, picking up my case. I trudged up the five flights of stairs, glad that working out with Mark got me in such great physical condition. The girl who'd met Mark Snow over a year ago wouldn't have made it, not with the thirty pounds of stuff on my back. As it was, my legs were still a bit pumped up when I got to the fifth floor, which was the top floor. Mark had chosen it for two reasons. First, the top floor had the least amount of visibility to surrounding buildings. Secondly, I could escape both up and down. The cheap hotel was so close to its neighbors that I could leap from rooftop to rooftop for close to two blocks to make my escape. It was my preferred method of egress, actually. Going back down five flights of stairs and out the front or the most likely malfunctioning fire door would be too dangerous in terms of being spotted, especially since I planned on carrying the Glock with me.

  Setting my case down, I went out of the room and over to the stairs to the roof, quickly checking the access. The door was locked, but I was able to pick it quickly, leaving me with a clear path. I went back to my room and locked the door, taking out the CD player. The main purpose of the player wasn't to give me background music to play piano to, but rather was an hour long mix of synthesizer heavy music from the eighties, which was enjoying a resurgence in certain hipster circles in the city recently. Anyone who listened would think I was playing along with the tracks. It would also hopefully, if someone was a total idiot, mask the rifle shot as well, since a lot of the tracks also had a lot of snare drum in them as well. I wouldn't notice, since I would be wearing heavy hearing protection for the shot itself.

  That ready, I set up my sniper shot. Petrokias was one of the more predictable
members of the Confederation, having dinner and drinks at the same one of his so called "gentleman's clubs" every night starting at seven. He had created "Pollux and Castor" to cater to his more wealthy clientèle, along with some of the best Cretian cuisine in the state. A very deep fondness for the Greek dish moussaka had him eating at Pollux and Castor five or six nights a week. He always took the balcony table, where he could look over his ill begotten empire and enjoy the finest Greek wines.

  Looking out the window, I could see the building. Taking out my rifle, I looked through the scope, and even through the late afternoon glare, I could see the small white "reserved" tag on the table. I looked around the room for something to use for a rifle rest since I didn't want to stick the muzzle out the window. Finally, I decided to use the two chairs that were in the room. The taller one, a mostly straight backed wooden affair that looked like it came out of someone's old dining room set, had little knobs on each side of the back that created a rest I could wedge the barrel against. With the heavy weight of the piano itself sitting on the seat, it was a very stable rest. The other chair was a shade too tall for me to sit straight in, but by reversing it and leaning into it, my upper body was also supported for the shot. I was ready, I just had to wait for Petrokias to arrive for dinner.

  Setting up my CD player, I started the music, listening along as Dire Straits filled the minutes, along with Kenny Rogers, a bit of Van Halen, Bonnie Tyler, and a-ha!. As bad as it was, at least it wasn't nineties boy bands. I might have had to shoot myself if I had to listen to that too much. As the CD repeated, I turned it up a few notches, hoping the johns with their girls didn't mind listening to Total Eclipse of the Heart. Just as the CD was starting for the third time, I saw movement at the club, and I looked through my scope.