CHAPTER TWELVE

 

 

AFTER MARY JO came back once again, Jean went to the panel in her closet and pulled out a police scanner. If Sam miraculously showed up, she would explain where it had come from, if she couldn’t hide it in time.

Or she would just kill him and abort this job. Something clearly had happened and she had no idea what.

She was shocked when she turned on the police scanner. It was going crazy.

It took her a few minutes to piece it all together, but it seemed that while responding to the report of a body in the rock quarry (more than likely Sam’s) just outside of town, Chief Hanson had been killed along with two other detectives by sniper fire.

No suspects at all.

“Well I’ll be a bitch’s bastard,” Jean said, standing and pacing in the living room.

She knew exactly what had happened. The bastard who had hired her to kill Chief Hanson had hired another assassin as well.

And the other assassin had used poor Sam as bait to get Chief Hansen into a dead zone at the bottom of a rock quarry for an easy kill.

And that other assassin was none other than Mary Jo, the chief’s wife.

Jean had married or slept with her target many times over the centuries. It was a very easy way to get close enough to the target to know how to deal with finding an easy way to kill the target and not have any evidence lead to you.

And sometimes it was actually fun.

Jean stared down the quiet suburban street at Mary Jo’s house. Jean was sure that Mary Jo had no idea that she had just killed the husband of another assassin. Jean wouldn’t hold that against Mary Jo, but it was something just not done.

In fact, assassins never worked together. Or as far as Jean knew they didn’t.

And they were never hired for the same job and never sent to compete. Jean had no doubt that the bastard who had hired the both of them was going to pay and pay large.

But now Jean had to figure out if she was going to let Mary Jo know she was part of the same ancient order of assassins. Over the centuries, Jean had met fewer than twenty of the other assassins. All of them had been women like her, most were small, like her and Mary Jo.

And all looked like they could never hurt a flea.

Jean had no idea if there were male assassins with the order. She had never asked. In fact, the last time she communicated with anyone directly in the organization had been long before the First World War. The assassins were just independent contractors, living and working on their own terms and in their own ways. Killing when the money was good enough, but never just for sport.

The bastard that had hired them both was going to pay. But the question now was should Jean contact Mary Jo or just let events play out?

At the moment, she needed to just let events play out. She had no other choice. She had to play the surprised and suddenly grieving widow.

And she had to play it perfectly.

She wasn’t worried. It was a part she had played many, many times over the centuries.