Handsome Rob Assassin

by Blaze Ward

  Rob had a better idea. No clue if it would work, but Mac didn’t think that they had the entire month to search.

  At some point, news would arrive letting the locals know that Guadarrama had been busted. Nobody would expect the Service to be involved, or to move that quickly to follow up. Cops usually had to fight red tape and inertia to do things. Warrants. Explanations to superiors.

  It helped that Miguel was doing this as a favor for someone in the Interior Ministry. He was far less bound by bureaucracy, as long as he got results.

  Taking down an arms smuggler, even as publicly as they had, counted.

  And sending a follow up team immediately, on the fastest ship available, got them here a few days before anyone would expect cops.

  Esme and her boy toy would be part of the scenery by then. Anyone asking would plot the flight times from Ramsey and decide there was no way the rich widow could have gotten here from there in time, so she must be safe.

  Rob could have told them how dangerous Mac really was, under that soft, glowing skin, but they weren’t likely to ask. And he felt like playing a surprise on them.

  He got back to Mac, taking up his spot guarding her before some other pool-boy grifter decided to try his luck. Rob’s comm chirped and he pulled it out to inspect the message.

  Alicia.

  Seriously? it read. Followed by an unsmiling face, then a dozen smiling and laughing faces.

  She’d been staying up in the suite, supposedly terminally allergic to sunlight, to hear her talk. And had apparently hacked the hotel’s entire electronics system, if he was reading her body language correctly in a string of icons.

  “Having fun?” Rob typed back.

  Might have set a new record, was her reply.

  Rob chuckled and went back to ogling the goddess beside him, especially as she had rolled onto her back and EVERY head had turned their way at least once. A few seemed to be drooling, so Rob didn’t feel bad.

  “What’s so funny?” Mac asked without opening her eyes.

  “Your niece was apparently underwhelmed with the entertainment options,” Rob replied cryptically. “Not enough of a challenge.”

  “Are you aware of how she originally joined the Service?” Mac asked quietly, eyes cracked open just long enough to make sure that nobody else could hear.

  “No,” Rob offered, also watching out of the corners of his eyes, but the closest person was a pool steward looking their way and going to head over to take drink orders shortly.

  “She printed her resume on Dillon’s personal printer, in his office,” Mac chuckled. “From her apartment. Dolf sent a strike team, but Dillon convinced them to knock politely instead of kicking it in when they got there.”

  Rob could only imagine the chaos and finger-pointing that must have generated. He didn’t understand systems security, but knew that it was just as elite and complex as being an assassin, only with different weapons.

  Alicia Sepeda was obviously another kind of killer.

  The steward arrived, breaking off conversation. Rob ordered something bright and iced with a lot of juice and not much rum in it. The day was warm, but not hot. He wanted to remain hydrated.

  Mac ordered the same.

  They settled back and worked on their cover stories.

  And their tans.

  9

  Mac had enjoyed a couple of days of nothing but sun and the worshipful adulation of strangers when she went down to the pool or to the restaurant. She’d been on duty and in character for the better part of three months before this, so time to relax and not worry about things was nice.

  This was still a mission. She and Rob were just in different characters, but nobody was coming after her.

  At least not until now.

  They’d talked this through a number of times, working out scenarios and outcomes. All of them had risk, and few of them looked to yield the results she wanted, but Rob had dug into his fancy gear and come up with something that hopefully would get the attention of an arms dealer.

  She was in silk tonight. A shiny, dove gray that made her eyes pop a hard azure when they sometimes wanted to turn to cold steel instead. Or so she was told. The weather never got chilly at night, from all the ocean around them, so she didn’t need the scarf, except to drape and look good.

  Four inch heels made her taller than Rob, but until you got close, she might appear seven feet tall. Long and lanky, with one side slashed to the hipbone where if you were lucky enough you might catch a flash of anything.

  Mac was back to her modeling career. Making love to the camera, as one of her better teachers had told her. She had the knack then, and hadn’t lost it. Turn just so, shoulders pulled back so the silk got tight across your chest, suggesting translucency without delivering.

  Pout with the eyes and not the mouth, to draw the watcher in close. Hair long and loose, flowing down her back.

  Handsome was in black. A tuxedo that Jorge Royo had designed for certain agents, and only the ones he approved, regardless of what Miguel had to say on the topic. If her dress drew men, Rob had every woman tripping over her tongue.

  Dinner had been off-resort, back on the mainland. Slumming, if you will, although the steaks were five-star. It was the middle-class neighborhood around them that suggested a step down. And that only because a lower-class section of town abutted abruptly.

  All the men and women who lived nearby worked at the various resorts. Very few civilians could actually afford to live on the islands, and that mostly important, upper staff. This neighborhood held the cooks. The waiters. The people changing sheets and rooms on a daily basis, for enough money to survive, and maybe make it up with enough tips that they could aspire to something better or at least to get off world after a few years.

  Rough, but not a criminal slum. The Salonnian Syndicate that owned this planet, in fact if not in law, would never allow it.

  But she was a rich widow who carried cash with her at all times. Lots of it. Flashed it and tipped well. Word would have gotten around.

  Mac had been in close combat training for six months, but that wasn’t the same as a lifetime. She had an alert pinger in the hem of her dress that would go off if her wallet got more than fifty yards away, with the other half of the circuit.

  Alicia was to call the authorities at that point and pray nothing bad had happened.

  Mac had Rob. Or rather, Esme was being escorted by her boyfriend as they enjoyed the moonlight and breeze alongside a street that wasn’t as well lit as the resort.

  Rob was a different man tonight as she held his elbow and murmured and chuckled at his jokes. Hard. Focused.

  More like the man who had been hunted through the streets of Puerto Peñasco before she came along, right at the point where he had been able to turn on the hunters.

  A whisper of sound behind her.

  Mac didn’t react, but felt Rob tense.

  Shadows detached themselves as her heels clicked on the sidewalk. Three of them ahead. Possibly two more behind.

  The street was wide and straight, but there was no place to run, even had she wanted to kick off her shoes and rely on bare feet.

  “You in the wrong part of town,” the first man said.

  The accent suggested he was born on Cerano, which made sense. Nobody was actually from Shravishtha Prime. They just passed through for a time.

  Rob didn’t reply. Mac cringed helplessly at his side. Or at least that was what she tried to portray.

  A glance back and a quick gasp. Two, like she’d thought.

  Five on one was rude, but she could see the calculations in their eyes that she was just the rich widow. Take her money.

  Mac wondered if they would work up the courage to try for more. She did bite. No wound in the universe worse than human bites that break the skin. No infection worse afterwards, either.

  Rob stood perfectly still. Mac stayed with his elbow, but relaxed her hold and balanced her weight.

  “I said, you in the wrong part of town,” the m
an repeated.

  The front three were spread out a little. One arm’s length apart, but not two. The two in back were wider, like a net driving prey.

  Rob remained silent, almost goading them.

  “We want your money,” the man said. “Then you scurry back to the island and stay safe. M’kay?”

  Rob’s head tilted a little, like he was weighing his odds against five men.

  “No,” he announced with a disdain so blatant that she might have buttered toast with it.

  “You no understand, pretty boy,” the leader continued. “No asking. Telling.”

  Another pause. Chuckles from the five as they thought they were being intimidating.

  Probably were to most tourists.

  “Okay, fine,” Rob announced.

  He reached a hand into his jacket like he was pulling out his wallet.

  A pistol appeared instead and Rob shot the leader in the chest.

  10

  Rob felt all the adrenaline go into such an overdrive that time itself seemed to slow down. A decade of martial arts training under a series of scary men and women, most of them Jorge’s age or older, left him with a clear understanding of the phenomenon, but it still happened so rarely that it was interesting to study as it happened.

  The pistol, one of Nigel’s special editions, didn’t cycle fast, so Rob didn’t rely on it for a second shot.

  Instead, he surged ahead, using his forearm and elbow, rather than his fist, to hammer the man on his left as he went by. The sound was not quite wood splintering, but maybe the bull going into the chute meeting the man with the hammer.

  Rob planted all his weight and pivoted enough to start back into the third man, the only one in front of him still a threat. Leader was falling. Sidekick, too. Both were unconscious, but neither had hit the pavement yet.

  Rob kicked the third man in the back of the leg. Not hard enough to drive steel-shod toes through tendons, but enough to flip the man backwards on his ass before he knew what hit him.

  The pistol came up and number four took the next beam as he started forward, a knife in his hand that had been concealed earlier.

  If the victim will give up his money on threat of violence alone, the charges were always far less than if you threatened them with a knife. Even bullies and muggers knew that.

  The knife fell point down and somehow managed to land in the exact crack between slabs of pavement, staying upright like it had fallen into dirt.

  Number three finally landed, his head cracking hard enough against concrete as he went over backwards that he would have a concussion at a minimum. Assuming Rob wasn’t mad enough to stomp that knee when this was done.

  Or the skull.

  Number five was the only smart one. He’d stepped up and grabbed Mac, one arm around her chest and neck and the other holding a knife out at Rob like a magic wand.

  His eyes had gotten big enough that Rob could see the whites from here.

  “Stay back, man,” the last man said in a shaky voice.

  Rob looked around him, but the other four were no longer a threat. None of them were dead, or even seriously injured.

  Not yet, anyway.

  That might change.

  “Drop the knife and start running,” Rob ordered the man in a calm, hard voice he’d stolen from one of Jorge’s mid-career movies, back when he was still a serious thespian with meaty roles, before comedy made him famous, and rich.

  “Or what, man?”

  Rob didn’t answer. Just smiled at the man.

  Mac leaned forward and then snapped her head back into the man’s face with a sickening crack that suggested a broken nose. Her hand went down and she grabbed the poor sod by the balls, squeezing so hard that Rob cringed.

  Number five screamed. Rabbit-dying kind of scream. Everyone within a few blocks probably heard it, since you kept your windows open at night while you slept.

  Most of them probably thought it was Rob screaming.

  He shot the guy just to shut him up.

  “How are you?” he asked Mac as she stepped away from the man’s twitching body.

  “Thought about putting a heel through his foot,” she smiled grimly. “But I was afraid I’d snap it off and then have to walk back barefoot or wait here for a car, at which point the police might finally show up and ask questions.”

  “Have Roxy’s lady make you some shoes,” Rob suggested. “They’re made for that sort of thing, specifically.”

  “Good to know,” Mac said. “Now what?”

  Rob shot everyone who hadn’t gotten a taste of his pistol and smiled at her. He offered her an arm and put the little beam away.

  “They’ll be out for a while,” he said. “Probably about the time we get back to the restaurant and catch a cab back to the resort. Then we’ll see what makes the news.”

  11

  Of course that idiot had bled on her after she’d broken his face.

  By the time she and Rob had gotten to the resort, the police were waiting. The maître-d’ had called them after getting a taxi sent over.

  Now, they were in the resort manager’s office. Her, Rob, the manager, and two police detectives, neither of which reminded her of Ahmed’s level of competence.

  Fools with badges. But she supposed a planet owned by a criminal Syndicate didn’t necessarily want a competent gendarme force.

  And she needed a shower to get the dried blood out of her hair. The scarf and dress would be fine once she had them cleaned. She wanted the smell of hoodlum off her skin.

  “So you walked north from the restaurant?” the first detective repeated. “And were surrounded by five men intent on mugging you, correct?”

  “That’s right,” Mac said, forcing herself to sound panicky instead of pissed.

  You know how emotional women get, officer, right?

  “And then what happened?” the man continued.

  “And then I shot several of them and beat the others bloody,” Rob said in a voice that suddenly slipped into the clipped, lower-class accents of Anameleck Prime, the industrial world at the core of Aquitaine.

  The sort of place a rich widow might recruit a bad boy to entertain her.

  “You are aware that firearms are illegal on Shravishtha Prime, Sri Segura?” the detective had the decency to look chagrined.

  Someone must have told him what they estimated Esmeralda Morgan’s net worth to be. It was an astonishing number, based on lies the Service had provided for her.

  “So is armed robbery,” Rob challenged the man. “They had knives. Are you arresting them?”

  “Indeed, sir,” the second detective spoke up. He seemed the more senior of the pair. Possibly smarter than a teacup Chihuahua, but Mac wouldn’t bet on it. “They have been taken into custody, but three of them are currently at the hospital.”

  She liked the way Rob preened at that, like a prize fighter turned gigolo. Or maybe the other way around.

  “We will need to take the weapon into custody for now,” the second detective said. “It will be returned to you when you depart Shravishtha Prime.”

  Rob scowled and grumbled.

  “We can get you more later, dear,” Mac leaned in and kissed him on the cheek.

  It looked effective, from the way the people in the room followed her movements.

  “Fine,” Rob said in a disgusted tone.

  He reached into the tux jacket and pulled out the nasty piece of work he’d brought with him. One of Phipp’s constructions, apparently, although Mac had never seen anything like it.

  Apparently, neither had they.

  “What is it?” the first detective asked.

  “A class one heavy pulse stunner,” Rob informed the man.

  Both cops and the manager repeated the words under their breaths. Combined, it was just loud enough to be one person whispering the words.

  “Class one heavy pulse stunner?”

  Rob smiled. Perked right up like a prize pupil who knows the answer to the headmaster’s question.

>   “Slow to fire,” he explained helpfully. “That’s the tradeoff for a shot that will put any human down for about fifteen minutes, depending on where you shoot him. Powerpack is usually good for about twenty shots, depending on the weather and air pressure. Never leave home without it.”

  “You will not need such a thing on Shravishtha Prime, Sri,” the manager explained carefully. “But I might advise against sightseeing in certain areas of the mainland after dark?”

  “Noted,” Mac said in the shaky, emotional voice of a badly scared woman. “I’ll make sure we come straight home, next time we eat there.”

  Heads nodded. First detective nervously took possession of the custom pistol Phipps had made. There were actually three more stowed in their luggage, broken down and invisible to anything but a professionally-paranoid inspection run by Dillon’s people in Research and Development.

  Again, no Syndicate wanted competent cops, so they would never find anything.

  But someone would talk about that gun. Hopefully, news would get to other someones. And eventually, an arms dealer would hear about it and want to know more.

  Mac felt like a spider building a web, but that was nothing new.

  She was just after more dangerous prey this time.

  12

  Rob had waited to take his shower until after Mac was done. She’d been in there longer than normal, but everyone came down from stress differently. She hadn’t been panicky, so much as chewing-nails pissed.

  Not that he could blame her. It had been her idea. This was her mission, her case.

  Handsome Rob was just muscle on this mission, however weird that was. A gunman protecting her operation, even though he was senior in terms of actual rank.

  Mac emerged from the bathroom looking like a drowned rat when she unwrapped the towel from her hair and pulled on an old T-shirt and panties.

  She seemed calmer, so he went ahead and got clean.

  When he emerged, Alicia was there, so both women got to watch him get dressed enough to fix himself some whiskey. Mac looked better. Not great, but better.