Vacation to Die For

by Josie Brown

  “Yep, saved him from three—count’em three—assassins. A career highlight, for sure.” Yippee, I found the ice pick!

  But then the plane sways in turbulence, and I drop it. I watch helplessly as it skitters under the dishwasher. In no time, I’m crawling on my hands and knees. I’ve got to retrieve it.

  “Well, one night during the mission, Babette—Breck’s wife—came on to me.” Jack shakes his head forlornly. “It was right after Breck found you in his office, and was all over you. Apparently she saw the videocam feed of him attacking you.”

  “Ah yes, good times.” I wish he’d quit yapping and give me a little help. His arms are longer than mine. He could reach that ice pick in a jiffy—

  Wait…got it! I run to the cockpit door with it.

  “I guess Babette was jealous, and was looking for a little tit for tat. More like tit for tit, from her pick-up moves, pardon the bad pun.” Jack chuckles. “Well, one thing led to another. And since our mission was to do everything we could to stay as close to the Brecks as possible—”

  “You’re telling me you made love—to Babette?” I’m so shocked that I break the ice pick in the door.

  Dismayed at my lack of progress, Teddy whimpers and thrashes. He looks as if he wants to throw himself out one of the airplane’s exit doors. To that extent, he’s almost ripped the chair from the floor.

  I may push him, just to put him out of his misery.

  I’ll push Jack, too, because he deserves to be miserable.

  Jack snorts. “No, of course I didn’t take her up on it! All she needed was someone to listen to her. You know, a shoulder to cry on. I only kissed her on the forehead. Very brotherly. Still, I felt a little guilty that I never mentioned it to you.”

  By now the plane’s engine is sputtering. We’re dipping down. Not quite a nose dive, but the angle is something I’d expect on a rollercoaster, not flying the friendly skies.

  “Jack, you’re forgiven, okay? Capishe?” Life is too short for this stuff.

  And getting shorter every second.

  Oh my God! The last cabinet in the galley holds just what we need—a parachute.

  But there’s only one.

  Too bad. If Jack wants a ride, he’ll have to hold on for dear life.

  Considering the grief he’s giving me, it’ll be a debate as to whether I’ll let him.

  “In fact, it’s why I feel at peace telling you about the biggest shame in my life—something I never told you, regarding the last time I saw Valentina.”

  In unison, my jaw and the parachute drop to the ground.

  Ah. Here it is.

  Jack’s ex, Valentina, no longer walks the earth—thanks to my ex, Carl—but her ghost still hovers between us.

  Terrorism makes strange bedfellows.

  Jack takes a deep breath. “You see, she and I—”

  “Please,” Teddy screams. “I’ll talk! I swear!” Tears are streaming down his face.

  I can’t say that I blame him. I’d cry, too, but now I want to hear what Jack has to say.

  Teddy points out the window.

  Both Jack and I turn to see that the horizon has come into view, albeit at a cockeyed angle. We are just a few thousand feet above the water, and dropping fast.

  Teddy is hanging onto Jack’s ankles. Between sobs, he screams, “I’ve got the intel in a thumb drive. It’s waiting for me in a post office box in Quito, Ecuador.”

  Jack nods. “Keep talking. Any takers for the intel?”

  “Both China and Russia have agreed to deposit funds into separate Swiss bank accounts, at midnight tonight. The minute they do, the intel goes live in different secure clouds on private servers, where they can access it.”

  As if he’s willed the plane to straighten up and fly right, suddenly the nose of the Gulfstream lifts very gently until it looks as if we’re gliding a hundred feet off the water’s surface, before it rises up again into the sky.

  I glance out the window. “What the hell, Jack? You mean to tell me we weren’t going to die?”

  Jack cocks his head to one side and grins. “Of course not. This little beauty has a state-of-the-art collision avoidance system. It practically flies itself.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me that all of this—this terror—was the game plan?” I ask as Jack jerks Teddy up by his collar and goosesteps him over to one of the chairs facing the dinette table.

  Jack looks up, confused. “I did, when you walked to the galley, to get Teddy water to take his anxiety pill. You mean, you didn’t hear me?”

  “No...Oh my God, I guess my earbud cut out, right as you were relaying the message.”

  Jack laughs. “And all this time I thought you were just acting as if you were scared—which is exactly what I wanted. Doll, I’m not teasing you—it was truly an Academy-Award worthy performance.”

  It’s too much to hope for, but I have to ask. “In other words, all that stuff you said about Penelope and Babette wasn’t true?”

  “Oh, it was true, Babe.” He winks at me. “But I’m sure you’ll agree I responded like the loyal and loving boyfriend I am.”

  A grudging nod is all he gets. Okay, now the moment of truth. “What was that you were going to say again—I mean, about Valentina?”

  “Huh?” Jack frowns. “Oh…Just that she asked me to run away with her—”

  “She…what?” My heart drops into my stomach. “Why didn’t you tell me this, before now?”

  He takes my face in his hands. “Because it never happened. The only reason I’d say so was to get Big Sack of Shit here”—he elbows Teddy in the gut “—to think that he had every reason to piss his pants.” He looks at Teddy’s crotch. “Yep. It worked.”

  I look away so that he can’t see my tears. “You went too far, Jack.”

  He runs his hands through his hair. “Jeez, Donna, cut me some slack! Our relationship is built on our mutual trust, remember? It’s you, always and forever.”

  To prove his point he pulls me close, so that I’m breast to chest with him.

  So that, when I look into the depth of his eyes, the reflection I see is one of—

  Me.

  Yes, this is how it should be, always and forever.

  Well that, and his lips on mine.

  Like….now…

  Joy.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Teddy inching his way toward the galley. My sidekick puts him in his proper place.

  On the ground, face down.

  Jack laughs and shakes his head as he yanks Teddy back on his feet and tosses him onto one of the cabin’s couches. Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a taser gun.

  “For the next ten minutes or so, we’ll still be far enough away from US airspace. If old Teddy here tries anything funny, zap him with this. We can’t have bullets flying all over the place. The last thing we need is an air pressure breach. I’ll be watching on the monitor.” He walks to the cockpit door and unlocks it, closing it behind him.

  I perch on the chair opposite our captive, and point to the television screen on an opposite wall. “Wave at the camera, Teddy. It caught your confession on video. We’ll be sharing it with the CIA and the Department of Justice, to help them in their case against you.”

  “What you heard was given under duress! It won’t stand up in a court of law.”

  “We’re not officers of the court, so yes, we can certainly be called as witnesses regarding any statements you made to us—which include your comments to me prior to our near-fatal fall.”

  Teddy is paler now than he was during our nose dive over the Pacific. “But—but the Ecuadorians have promised me a secured mountaintop to live on!”

  “Oh, you mean that villa you purchased a few months ago, on Iliniza Sur?” With a click of the remote, prime real estate on one of Ecuador’s seaside cliffs appears on the TV screen. “Even if you’d gotten away, sometime within the year you would have had visitors. Seal Team Six is always jonesing for another Abbottabad.” I shrug. “But you didn’t, so you�
��re next home is the Allenwood Federal Correctional Complex. Or as we like to call it, Dead Traitor Walking.” Seeing him blanch, I add, “Don’t worry. No one’s been put to death for treason since the Rosenbergs. That was more than sixty years ago. For some reason the courts like handing out life sentences to traitors, as if they’re gumballs or something.”

  His eyelids close, weighted by the reality of his situation. “They’ll kill me anyway.”

  “Who? The Chinese or the Russians?”

  “No! Some private group. It calls itself the Quorum. It was their plan to sell the unwarranted surveillance intel to foreign nations. I just thought I’d cut out the middle man and collect the hefty payday myself. But when the Quorum threatened to expose me to the NSA, I fed the reporters just enough so that the public would view me as a hero, and for Russia and China to realize the intel is legit.”

  “Who’s your Quorum contact?” I hold my breath for his answer. It’s been six months since I shoved my soon-to-be ex-husband, Carl, over a four-story banister and into the Gulf of Mexico. No one has seen or heard from him since. I’m used to his role in my life—that of a deadbeat dad and husband who went AWOL—but he has the most annoying habit of showing back up at the most stressful times.

  I pray that now is not one of them.

  “All contact was done via a blind Skype account,” Teddy continues. “The guy who called wore a mask, and he never gave his name.”

  “Could you recognize his voice, if you heard it again?” Considering his recent Gitmo trial, we’ve got enough video footage on Carl to give me nightmares for the rest of my life.

  Teddy thinks for a moment. “I doubt it. He was using some sort of voice-altering software.”

  Too bad. “If that’s the case, then you better hope they put you in solitary, because one way or the other the Quorum will get to you. My advice: don’t drop the soap in the shower, make your cellmate your bitch, and have him double as your food tester.”

  Teddy’s jaw goes slack. He knows as well as I do that if anyone is going to be the bitch, it’s going to be him.

  For the first time since he boarded the plane, he seems small, deflated. He closes his eyes as if the sight of me is too much to bear.

  So much for his plan to have me introducing him to the Mile High Club.

  “You never did get me that water,” he mumbles. “I think I need it now.”

  I nod, and start for the galley. His wrists are cuffed, so he’s not going anywhere.

  I am half-way there when I hear bang and whoosh. The whole plane is rattling, as if it will come apart any moment now.

  “Aw, hell, he put on the phony parachute and hopped to the exit door, then used the cuffs as leverage to yank it open,” Jack yells in my ear.

  The chute wouldn’t have opened?

  And Jack is just telling me this now?

  “I’ve May Day’ed Air Traffic Control,” he continues. “SEA-TAC is prepping now for our emergency landing, so hold tight. Donna…Donna! Answer me! Are you okay?”

  “Kinda busy right now!” Everything—including me—is being sucked toward the center cabin.

  My arms flail as I reach for something—anything—that will keep me from following all the stuff flying out the door.

  Just in time, I grab hold of a cabinet locker.

  If I could, I’d crawl inside.

  My life is a series of close calls.

  I need a vacation.

  Chapter 2

  Assassination Vacation

  There comes a time in every housewife’s (or for that matter, in every female assassin’s) life when she needs to take a breather.

  In other words, she needs a vacation.

  The key to the ideal sabbatical is, quite simply, leaving your work behind, and with it the stress that has you frazzled in the first place.

  Yeah, yeah, I know: easier said than done—especially if your job entails accurately throwing sharp knives, or crack shooting of semi-automatic weaponry, or the covert dropping of poison pills—you know, whatever it takes to bring around the untimely demise of Thugs Behaving Badly.

  Yours is truly an exhausting schedule! But it can be remedied via the following actions:

  Action Number 1: Get away. Just. Do. It. Seriously, drop everything. (Unless you’re drowning a bad guy in a bathtub, and he hasn’t yet lost consciousness. In that case, carry on!) Hit the road. Being impulsive is part of the fun!

  Action Number 2: Take along someone fun. A gal pal. The new man in your life. Your spiritual guru. Just don’t be tempted to drag along your latest hit, because this little getaway isn’t supposed to be Weekend at Bernie’s.

  Action Number 3: Don’t worry, be happy! If your room looks nothing like the one in the brochure, go to a different hotel. If the airline loses your luggage, buy a thong (bikini), a sarong, and thongs (flip-flops), since that’s what you’ll be wearing 24/7 anyway.

  Even if some mark recognizes you as the femme fatale who almost did him in, relax and enjoy the sunset.

  Then go finish the job.

  “Must I go away to camp this year?” It’s the fiftieth time in the last five days in which my twelve-year-old daughter, Mary has asked me this same question. “I can’t stand the thought of it—doing the same old things, with the same old people!”

  Those “same old people” are her best friends, Babs and Midge. And those “same old things” are sleeping in tents with her besties, hiking through the woods before stopping to build forts; jumping into the lake from a tire swing; and roasting marshmallows next to a blazing campfire while telling ghost stories on a star-bright night.

  I look up from folding freshly laundered sheets and towels. My scowl should warn her that I’m not up for this argument yet again. “Why? Because every year for the last three years, you’ve begged me to let you go to Camp Inch. Because your friends, Midge and Babs, will be there, too. Because I’ve already paid for it, and there are no refunds, and I’m not made of money. And because if you stay home, you’re likely to...I guess I’m afraid you’ll do something that you’ll regret.”

  Like letting her middle school-soon-to-be-high school crush, Trevor Smith, roam onto third base.

  Then I’d have to kill him.

  Mary crosses her arms and mutters, “I see. So what you’re telling me is that you don’t trust me.”

  I sputter, but then I force myself to calm down. “Of course I trust you!”

  What I don’t add (only because I know she’s waiting for it) is, it’s Trevor I don’t trust.

  I have to watch what I say because my youngest daughter, six-year-old Trisha, has snuck into Mary’s closet in order to play with her older sister’s abandoned Barbie collection. Mary knows Trisha covets it, but she’s not yet willing to pass them forward. At twelve, Mary is too old for Barbies, but too young for boys.

  And that’s what this is really all about.

  I want her to stay innocent as long as possible.

  I pull her down on to the bed beside me and hold onto her hands—not because she needs a lifeline, but because I do. “Mary, honey, next year you’ll be too old to attend Camp Inch. Seriously, do you want to miss out on one last chance to make some wonderful memories with your best friends? We’re talking about a mere two weeks, which will be over in a blink of an eye! Let this be the summer of no regrets.”

  No regrets.

  I vow to make that my goal, too. How I long for a quiet summer, filled with days of nothing but peace and quiet. To hear about the fun experiences my children had while away from me, and to share other just as wonderful experiences with them.

  To make a few intimate memories with Jack.

  Mary’s face flickers through a myriad of emotions: anger; stubbornness; hurt; acknowledgment—

  And finally acceptance.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she mutters. “Okay…but just so you know, Trevor isn’t like…well, he isn’t like that.”

  Ha. Famous last words.

  “I wish I could go to sleep away camp,” Trish
a declares mournfully.

  Mary jerks her head in her little sister’s direction as if to say, See? Told you! It’s something for babies.

  Still, I’m not letting her off the hook—especially now that she’s acquiesced to go. I smile sweetly at Trisha. “Soon, honey—when you’re a little older. But right now, if you were gone for a full week, I’d be too lonely without you.”

  “No you wouldn’t. You’d still have Daddy.”

  For all intents and purposes, Jack is their father—not just because he’s the only one they’ve ever known, or because he goes under the alias of “Carl Stone,” my ex-husband’s name. Jack is their father because he coaches their league teams, and he helps them with their homework.

  And because he’s home with them when I’m sent on solo kill missions.

  Should I never come home, he will be their comfort. Their most precious memories of me will live on because of him.

  Should he pass before me, I will do the same for him.

  You see, we are his family, too.

  I cannot do it for their real father—the real Carl, who abandoned them, and me, for life as a terrorist.

  Make that a pirate. He uses terrorism to extort ransom from the countries or companies affected. His unconscionable acts have nothing to do with patriotism or a heartfelt mission or even revenge.

  It’s all about money.

  And anyone who stands in his way—including me—is fair game.

  Thank God my children don’t know him.

  Yes, they have met him. He’s made sure of that. But he has been smart enough to stay incognito, to let sleeping ghosts lie.

  He was that ghost.

  And by default, Jack is the man they know as their father.

  A whistle draws me to Mary’s window. Below on the backyard lawn, Jack waves up to me, then points to the double hammock tethered between two legacy oak trees.

  I get it. Yes, I’ll meet him there.

  Then I blow him a smooch.

  Before walking out the door, I kiss my eldest on her forehead. “You’ll have a blast. Trust me, you won’t regret it.”

  She shrugs.

  I’ll take that as a victory. One of many this summer, I hope.