The questions were the usual bland ones. Did she feel she was on her game today? Who cares!? What do you think the key point in the match was today? Who gives a crap!? Do you feel your serve has improved enough to win Wimbledon this year? Yawn!
The next question came from the red-haired man with the bad sunburn, who announced himself as Peter Foye. She wasn’t interested in his questions either—she wanted to interview him.
“Who are you with again, Peter Foye? I want to make sure I read your article on me.”
“Second Serve,” he replied weakly.
“A second serve in tennis is a failure. I don’t want to answer questions from a failure!”
The man looked beaten, but not defeated, and pushed on.
“I thought I said I didn’t want to talk to a failure!” Natasha interrupted him.
“I’m sure most people here seem like a failure compared to you,” he tried to get on her good side. Too late!
“I don’t think that everyone is this room is a failure. The only people I think are failures are tabloid reporters. What do you think of tabloid reporters, Peter Foye?”
His long pause told her everything she needed to know. Her prey was set up for the kill, and she smelled blood.
“So let me guess … there’s no such magazine as Second Serve, is there?”
His eyes bounced around like he was looking for an escape route.
“The truth is, you are a parasite who has no life of his own. So you follow me around trying to get some dirt on me. And then when you can’t find any you go home and do whatever perverted thing you do to my pictures!”
“Oh, suddenly you’re real quiet.” Natasha looked around the room, playing it out like there was a script. “So is that what you want? Do you want to know who I’m dating? Who I’m sleeping with behind that person’s back? All the dirt you can get on Natasha?”
Foye’s shoulders slumped. She had dominated another opponent. She caught her mother’s glare out of the corner of her eye—so what’s new?
Feeling like she’d finished a satisfying meal, Natasha answered the final questions from a few brave souls. Every time she embarrassed someone, she found the questions got a lot nicer. When there were no more questions, she glided away from the podium like a beautiful setting sun.
Tatiana met her. “You’re bad,” she whispered, and they giggled like the teenage girls they were. “Who is he, Nat?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. He has been following me around … Cincinnati, San Diego, and now here.”
“Do you want me to have security check him out?”
“No, I want you to tell him to meet us at Butte Head’s tonight.”
Tatiana looked strangely at her. “You want to party with your stalker?”
“You heard what I said. Now I must go meet with the Wicked Witch of the West,” she said, peeking at her mother, who looked like her head was going to explode. She could only hope.
“How do you know he even will want to come, after you just beat him up like that?”
Natasha grinned. “He will, I guarantee it.”
Chapter 7
Butte Head’s was a popular bar in Tempe, Arizona—a favorite of the forty thousand students that made up Arizona State University.
Tim waited amongst the tanned youth in the long line. He never felt so old—suddenly thirty-four was the new two hundred, or so it seemed.
If his job was to fit into the surroundings without notice, he wasn’t doing a very good job. Besides the age discrepancy, his lobster colored skin was a neon sign advertising him as a tourist.
Patience wasn’t his best trait, and he grew frustrated by the slow pace that the line inched toward the entrance. When he finally reached the muscular bouncer serving as the gatekeeper, he was surprised by the amount of time he studied his ID—he was probably one of the few in line who wasn’t using a fake ID. But when he was given an escort past the crowd and told to wait in a roped-off section of the bar, he understood that it was Natasha related. A woman approached him, introducing herself as Natasha’s assistant, Tatiana. She didn’t look happy to see him. “Take me to your leader,” he said in his best alien voice, which got him another dirty look.
Moments later, he was standing face to face with Natasha Kushka. She wore a revealing fishnet top that exposed her midriff. And to say she had on a pair of short-shorts would not have done justice to the term short. He trailed her athletic, tanned legs down to a pair of old-school Converse high-tops, similar to the pair Tim had when he was a kid. He expected another tongue-lashing, but “I’m glad you could make it,” she said with a knee-weakening smile.
Her voice mixed in a little Russian, and a bit of Florida, where she moved when she was twelve, to work at one of the world’s top tennis schools. But mostly, she had the cadence of a typical American teenager.
Tim didn’t know what to make of this change in temperament, but he didn’t trust it. She sent Tatiana to get Tim a drink, leaving them alone. It’s what he’d been craving for weeks, but he sensed it was also what she wanted. He got the idea he might be in trouble.
“So what do you think of Butte Head’s?” she asked.
He looked around the room that was crammed with college students clinging to their plastic cups of beer. “Seems like a happening place,” he said, as if he had any idea what that was, or if anyone actually still used ‘happening’ to describe such things.
“It’s total shit,” Natasha corrected. “So what is your real name, Peter Foye?”
He decided to give honesty a try. “Tim O’Connell.”
She reached out her well-manicured hand and they shook. He felt the calluses from the endless hours of tennis—the toughness beneath the pretty packaging.
“Nice to meet you, Tim O’Connell. So what do you want with me?”
“I’m doing a story on you.”
Partial honesty.
“What if I don’t want you to do a story on me?”
“My editor assigned it to me, and if I don’t come back with a story, I’m as good as fired. But I was hoping that you could help me out with it, and make it your story.”
“Is that why I keep seeing you? Cincinnati, San Diego, today. And what’s with this Second Serve BS?”
Tim returned a “busted” shrug. As he looked at her, he thought she was even more beautiful up close. And when he peered into her surprisingly vulnerable eyes, he understood why almost the entire male race was in love with her. He would have succumbed to her as well, except his heart was off the market. He was very much in love with Anna Stepania, who happened to be the reason he was here in the first place. He knew she didn’t have the same feelings for him, but he’d always proved persuasive if given time.
“No, I’m not with Second Serve. There is no such magazine, as far as I can tell.”
“I knew it—so which tabloid do you work for?”
Tim forged a sad look. “I’m sorry for trying to deceive you. But I didn’t know the proper approach, since, well, it’s kind of a difficult subject. I actually write for a parenting magazine. I’m doing a story on children of suicide. I thought the success you’ve had after what you went through with your father might inspire other young girls.”
The mention of her father turned Natasha deathly serious, and Tim braced for the inevitable eruption. But she gathered her emotions and politely said, “I don’t want to talk about my father tonight, Tim O’Connell.”
“Fine with me … what do you want to talk about?”
Displaying the attention span of a gnat, Natasha searched out Tatiana, and announced, “This place is so childish. I want to be around adults … Let’s get out of here!”
Ironic.
Playing the role of loyal soldier, Tatiana led Natasha through the thick crowd. Like the rest of the Butte Head’s crowd, Tim stopped and watched her head for the door. He probably should have tried to stop her, but he was spellbound.
She turned abruptly. “Are you coming, Tim O’Connell?”
> Tim gave a “who me?” point at his chest.
“I guess it’s your lucky day,” Natasha said with a smile, and then disappeared out the door.
Once Tim found his bearings, he made a dash for the exit, bumping into students and apologizing for spilled beer along the way. They appeared too stunned by the sunburned “old guy” being anointed by Natasha Kushka to take offense.
The chase continued, no different than the past few weeks. She was hard to catch … just like her father.
Chapter 8
Blake Fisher drove his truck up I-17 toward his Sedona home. The cab was painted white, with large lettering advertising Fisher Auto & Recovery. The back was a long flatbed used for the recovery portion of the business, which the treacherous Oak Creek Canyon, and its untimely falling rocks, had helped turn into a lucrative business.
He had no desire to go directly home, so he made a pit-stop at Maxwell’s. He would need a few stiff drinks to get through another night of Jineane’s nagging.
It was a decent crowd for a Sunday evening, and they gave him a warm greeting. He took a seat next to his good friend George at the bar.
George grinned as the female bartender pushed a Corona in front of Blake. “So, did you have fun checking out the gorgeous young women in Scottsdale … I mean the tennis match?”
“It wasn’t much of a competition. Natasha Kushka won in straight sets,” he said, taking a refreshing sip of the beer.
“I’ve seen her on ESPN—she is quite a talent, if you know what I mean.”
Blake smiled; not feeling compelled to inform George that her talent was inherited … from the man who was sitting right next to him.
While attending the match, Blake ran into a few people he knew from Sedona, where he’d become a very popular figure since moving here almost ten years ago. It wasn’t uncommon for the sports-lover Blake Fisher to make the ninety-mile journey to the Valley to see a big sporting event, so he wasn’t concerned that they’d learn his true reason for attending. There was only one person in that stadium who would know he was Alexander Kushka, and that was his ex-wife, Irina. Although, since they’d never been officially divorced, she would still technically be his wife. He made sure to stay clear, but she probably wouldn’t have noticed him if he’d sat right next to her—she was too busy screwing up his daughter’s career.
They married when they were just teenagers. But the young intelligence soldier, who many believed would become the greatest Olympic athlete in the history of the Soviet Union, would soon be sent to the United States on a secret mission. They never told him that the mission would stretch into two decades, and would include an unexpected layover in Cuba.
He returned to Russia some years after the end of the Cold War, and tried to rekindle things with Irina. But by then they were far different people, and his heart belonged to someone else. The reunion was ill-fated, but he couldn’t deny that one good thing came of it—Natasha. And with his other children disappointing him in so many ways, he felt she was his last hope for his legacy to be carried on.
Setting up camp in such an isolated outpost like Sedona was necessary for survival, but after living minute-to-minute in the world of international espionage, it remained a constant adjustment for him. Restlessness often overtook him at night, and he rarely slept. To manage it, he called on the self-discipline that made him one of the world’s most lethal spies, but he knew there was only one cure.
He didn’t miss the killing—he wasn’t some sadistic monster—it was done out of duty to his country, no different than for any other soldier, including those deemed heroes by the US. What he missed was the time he’d spent as Jack Myles. It combined the competitive arena that drove him to be the best in the world at his profession, with an element that could never be replaced, and was the thing that infiltrated his mind during those sleepless nights … the cheers.
And Katie.
After finishing his second beer, he said goodbye to George and made his way to the parking lot. But before heading home, he did a thorough inspection of his truck, including underneath. He couldn’t afford to become comfortable. One slip and he was facing a life rotting in a federal prison. And then his dream of returning to Katie would be over. He would never let that happen.
He thought of his longtime nemesis, Lee Henson, a relentless FBI agent who never completely bought the story that Jack Myles died in that accident. He’d never met Henson, but always figured they would come face-to-face one day. Which was why, even though Henson rode off into retirement last year, he still checked under the truck. The biggest lesson he’d learned over the years was to never underestimate your opponent.
The drive home from Maxwell’s took less than five minutes. He pulled the truck into the driveway of the house on Sandpiper Street, which he shared with Jineane, along with her twelve-year-old son, Trent.
The house was deliberately modest and plain, except for Jineane’s new age crystal and rocks that were scattered around the place. Such items were very popular in Sedona, and Jineane could easily be swayed into things.
She stood barefoot in the kitchen, clearing the dishes from the dinner he’d missed. “That smells good, baby, I’m sorry I missed it,” he said as he strolled through the door. He spoke with perfect English, no hint of an accent. Between his Russian upbringing and his years in Cuba, maintaining the proper dialect was always a challenge.
She turned to him. She wore a baggy T-shirt, a pair of denim shorts over the bulging rump she still blamed on her pregnancy from twelve years ago. She didn’t compare to the many beauties he’d been with throughout his travels, but it was important that she fit his cover.
Their biggest commonality was having a past they wanted to leave behind. She had escaped an abusive ex-husband in Nevada. He’d made up a story about being in prison “back east,” after protecting a friend in a bar fight. Neither of them wanted to talk about it, so they didn’t. And ten years later, they were still together. There was something to be said for not sharing everything with your partner.
He could tell that she was annoyed he’d missed dinner, but was too timid to call him on it. She was never happy about the amount of time he spent away from home. When he wasn’t running Fisher’s Auto or coaching Trent’s youth baseball team, he was working as an emergency medical technician, and had become known locally for a couple of daring rescues of tourists who’d got trapped in the canyon. Anything to get him out of the house.
Blake moved to the kitchen table where a few remaining hamburgers were calling his name. He picked up a cold one and ripped a bite from it. It hit the spot. Jineane mentioned that Trent had grilled them on the barbecue, and he was impressed. Just the way he’d taught the boy.
Speaking of the devil, the twelve-year-old appeared from his bedroom. He claimed to bunker himself in the room so that he could concentrate on his homework, but the Cs and Ds on his report cards told a different story. He spent most of his time texting his friends and listening to music on his iPod. Unlike most of his friends, he preferred classic rock to the new generation of boy bands and rappers. Another thing that Blake had taught him.
“Hey, Blake,” he excitedly greeted his return. For all intents and purposes, he was his father.
He caught Jineane smiling at them. After the disaster that was Trent’s father, Blake Fisher must have seemed too good to be true. And he was.
Blake and Trent took a seat at the kitchen table. Trent talked about the upcoming baseball season that was less than a week away—they shared a love for the game and could have stayed up half the night discussing its nuances. Trent had improved a lot over the past couple of years, but wasn’t blessed with the Jack Myles talent like his sons, Cam and Teo, had been. But he made up for it with a relentless work ethic, and it couldn’t hurt that a man who was once the biggest sensation in all of baseball was tutoring him.
The party was broken up by Jineane’s shrill shout, “Trent, if you don’t get your butt back in that room and study for that test there ain’t gonna be no bas
eball!”
While non-confrontational with Blake, she was the opposite with Trent. Her idea of discipline was screaming threats without attaching accountability. All it accomplished was to give Blake a headache.
“Come on, Mom, the test isn’t until Wednesday. I haven’t seen Blake all weekend.”
Blake’s head was about to explode. He needed to take over the discipline before he was forced to introduce Jineane to the Jack Hammer, and that wouldn’t turn out so well for her. In a soft, but authoritative voice he confronted Trent, “When your mother tells you to do something, you don’t ask questions ... you do it.”
While he was willing to go toe-to-toe with Jineane, Trent always respected Blake. And he’d gotten a glimpse of what it was like to cross him. A few months ago he caught Trent sneaking cigarettes with his friends. He shook the boy so hard he thought he would break him into pieces. But he was sure he hadn’t even thought of a cigarette since.
“Let’s go!” Jineane continued shouting, even though Trent was already on his way to his room. Blake just shook his head at the dysfunctional disaster before him.
“And make sure you brush your teeth!” she continued her yelling.
Blake had to act. He moved behind her, putting his hands around her waist. He kissed her neck and he felt her shiver.
“I’ve missed you, baby. Soon as the kid goes to sleep, I’m going to rip those clothes off and make love to you all night.”
Blake knew this might buy him a few moments of peace and quiet. He slid his hands from around her waist, pulled her around, and planted a deep kiss on the mouth.
Works every time, he thought as he moved away from the panting Jineane. He stopped off at the refrigerator, and grabbed a bottle of Corona. He then retired to the safety of the living room, where he would drown his sorrows and think about the cheers.
The Jack Hammer Page 3
