CHAPTER THIRTY

 

 

MARY JO SAT in a desk chair across the room from the black-haired woman. They had brought her into the apartment, stripped her and found no weapons, put her underwear back on and then put zip-ties on her hands and legs. She was on the bed in their guest room, looking almost radiant against the tan spread.

Sun from the one window in the room beamed through the closed blinds, warming the room a little.

As a trained assassin, the woman was still dangerous, but Mary Jo wasn’t worried about her at all. If she had wanted them dead, chances are they would already be dead.

No, this woman had allowed herself to be seen for some reason and Mary Jo was dying to find out why.

“Awake yet,” Jean asked as she came into the room and handed Mary Jo a screwdriver, then took the other chair facing the bed.

“Yeah, she’s been awake for about ten minutes now, but pretending to still be out.”

“Tricky,” Jean said.

“Why did you take me?” the woman on the bed asked, opening her eyes and staring first at Jean, then at Mary Jo.

Mary Jo was stunned at the intensity of the woman’s dark eyes. She was built almost exactly the same as Mary Jo and Jean, but seemed to have an energy that felt slightly different.

Independent, actually, and a little feeling of being a trapped animal. Mary Jo wouldn’t have liked being tied up as she was either.

“She speaks,” Jean said, tipping her glass in a toast to Mary Jo.

“Why were you shadowing us?” Mary Jo asked.

“You would not believe me if I told you,” the woman said.

“Give us a try,” Jean said. “Amazing what we might believe.”

“I wanted to ask for your help.”

Mary Jo glanced at Jean, then back at the woman on the bed. Of all the things she might have said, that wasn’t one that Mary Jo had expected.

“Start at the beginning,” Jean said, sitting forward. “Your name and your order name.”

“I go by Susan at the moment. My order name is Leila Dark.”

Jean nodded and stood. “I’ll check with the order to make sure you exist.”

Jean left and the woman looked at Mary Jo. “She talks with the order?”

“She does,” Mary Jo said, smiling.

“I was hoping she would,” Susan said. “Even though I seldom do.”

Mary Jo said nothing. She sat sipping her screwdriver in silence as the two waited for Jean to return.

Mary Jo didn’t know what to think of this assassin they had captured. But at the moment Mary Jo wasn’t getting a bad feeling about Susan. And since no one had paid to target either Mary Jo or Jean, there had to be another reason Susan had shown herself as she did.

Jean came back into the room after just a minute, walked across the room to the bed and sliced the bindings, then returned to sit next to Mary Jo, taking another sip of her drink as she did.

“She checks out with the order,” Jean said.

Susan sat up in the bed and put her back against the wall, propping herself up with a pillow but not bothering to ask for her clothes.

Mary Jo wouldn’t have either in Susan’s position.

“I assume,” Mary Jo said, “that you let us see you so you would get this meeting. Correct?”

Susan nodded.

“Took a chance we wouldn’t kill you,” Jean said.

“No order assassin kills without cause and you had no cause with me,” Susan said.

“She has a point,” Mary Jo said. “But you could have just knocked on our door and introduced yourself.”

“No fun in that,” Susan said, smiling. “But besides, I still wasn’t sure you two were who I was looking for. It is not often you find two assassins living together.”

Jean shook her head and Mary Jo decided right then that she was going to like this woman.

“So how did you find us, first off?” Jean asked.

“I have been looking for you, Mary Jo,” Susan said, “for almost three years.”

Mary Jo was stunned at that. She started to ask why, but Susan held up her hand so she could finish her story.

“When I heard about the killings in the northern part of the state, I knew that had the markings of an assassin. So I started looking at the victims and it became clear that your target had been the sheriff. He was the only one who made sense out of all the ones who died, including the writer.”

Mary Jo was impressed.

Susan went on. “So I next researched the sheriff’s wife and the other victim’s families first. Learned about both of you, but honestly didn’t suspect either of you at that point.”

“Good to know,” Jean said.

Susan nodded. “Then I backtracked who would have hired any assassin to kill the sheriff and found a piece of trash named Stanton Cobble the Third. So I staked him out until I noticed the sheriff’s wife also staking him out. I wasn’t surprised when I discovered it was you, Mary Jo. That hit on the sheriff was so perfectly done.”

Mary Jo nodded and let Susan continue. But it wasn’t often an assassin got complimented on a job. In fact, for Mary Jo, that was the first time in centuries.

“And then I was even more surprised,” Susan said, “to find that Jean was also helping. So I figured the idiot Stanton had hired two assassins for the job and then shorted you both. Right?”

“Got that exactly,” Jean said.

“I loved what you both did to Stanton,” Susan said. “Elegant. Completely elegant. It was a joy to watch.”

“Thank you,” Jean said, smiling.

Mary Jo toasted Susan and nodded her thanks as well. But the story still hadn’t gotten to why this woman had been looking for years for Mary Jo. And what help did she need.

“So for the last year I stayed out of sight, occasionally tracking your movements. Finally, this last week I decided it was time to show myself. I am running out of time, it seems.”

“Time for what?” Mary Jo asked.

“Time to kill my target,” Susan said. “What else?”

With that, the three of them just sat there in silence.

And Mary Jo was more confused now than she had been when Susan started her story.

And that was going some.