Chapter 31

January 8, 6:45 p.m.

Dorothy sat up in her narrow camper bed and looked back over her right shoulder at the sleeping Charlie. He had been a good fuck. Young, strong, obedient, and long winded as well as long lasting. And he was able to repeat his performance three times. The man may not have been a field soldier, but he had been a damn fine way to kill five hours. She quietly got out of bed and walked to the small kitchen and made herself a cup of tea from the hot water in the electric tea kettle. She sat down at the small plastic topped table and hoped things worked out the way they were supposed to, though she doubted they would. She had learned as a soldier a few years after she began her career as a soldier things never went the way they were supposed to go. Her parents well planned attempt to leave the Society when she was a baby had failed because things didn’t go as they had planned, and ended in their horribly painful deaths had proven to her, when she learned of their deaths, things never went the way they were supposed to go. She had taught herself always have a second plan. But if there was a problem with this assignment she didn’t have an alternate plan if things didn’t go as planned.

She had been taken in by a powerful member who knew the loyal service her ancestors had given the Society over the centuries, and raised as a part of the member’s family and trained to be a skillful and obedient soldier, and she had become exactly that. As far as her teacher knew she had never once disobeyed an order. But she had. At the age of twenty she’d managed to use her computer skills – they were far better than anyone in the Society knew because she didn’t tell anyone, to get the secret computer code of her foster parent, gotten into his personal files, and had learned what had happened to her real parents. But she didn’t let it affect her.

Seeking revenge for the deaths of her parents would have been foolish and would have accomplished nothing. Her foster parents had been good loving parents who gave her the best that life could offer. The only thing they couldn’t give her was a position within the Society as a member, because she had been born to soldiers. Anyway her real parents were long dead and buried, and there was nothing she could do about that. She devoted her life to being a soldier and thought nothing else about her parents’ deaths. She didn’t even bothering marking on a calendar the day they were killed. What would have been the purpose?

Derrick had recruited her twelve years ago as his special assassin because of her excellent record as a killer, and she had worked out well. He had no reason to doubt her loyalty. She had always done exactly as he ordered and without question. And she intended doing exactly that until Derrick dismissed her and told her to wait until he had further orders for her.

Wait till he has further use of me, she thought as a smile formed on her lips. Smiling was something she seldom did anymore. Smiling was so rare with her she couldn’t remember the last time she had smiled on her own. All the other times she smiled the smile was used to put a person, a target, off guard making it easier for her to kill the target. How many times have I smiled then killed? She thought for a few seconds. Sixteen since I was twenty-one. I’m forty-seven now. That’s all I have to show for forty-seven years of living.

Dorothy sighed, and got up and walked to the sink where she poured the remains of the tea down the metal drain, put the cup in the sink, and then got dressed. She left Charlie sleeping in her camper as she opened the door and walked outside.

It was dark outside. She carried, hung around her neck on her left side, a small black cloth bag. She was thinking maybe she could get some more of him when she returned to her camper if he was still there. If he wasn’t, she’d just watch TV or read one of the two hundred books she’d downloaded on her Kindle Fire tablet.

She walked toward a boulder dominated hill that overlooked the Simpson Park Mountains. When she reached it she looked around to make sure no one was watching her, and then started the slow steady climb to the top making sure to remain out of sight of Karl and Willow.

Dorothy’s life was far from empty. Though there were times when she felt it was just a hollow ball with nothing of importance in it except killing people who were never more than targets for her.

Since she was twenty-one she had been to every major European capital, Paris four times, and stayed in the best hotels. Ridden in the most expensive luxury cars, and had access to all the money she wanted. She had worn the finest clothing the fashion world had to offer. Including expensive Paris designed evening gowns which she didn’t like because they made her look shorter and fatter than she actually was.

But she couldn’t carry on a small talk conversation with anyone, she had no friends, the only lovers she had were those she paid for or just offered to sleep with, and she had no family. The member who had raised her never mounted to more than a killing instructor though he had loved her as if she were his child. She had lived in twelve different three bedroom luxury condos over the last twenty-six years, and had never known her neighbors. She had never made any attempt to know them. What was she going to do if she had met them and became friends with them? Tell them she was a professional killer working for a secret society of money mad, power hungry people?

What was she going to do? Invite her neighbors to dinner and tell them how to strangle a two hundred and fifty pound man who was six feet seven to death in less than thirty seconds? Explain the exact spot on the human body to put a regular bullet or an electric bullet to get an instant kill? Or where to place a thin blade knife in the base of a person’s skull to get an instant silent kill?

The best Dorothy could say about her life was that while it was empty of people, if you didn’t count her victims, or her one night stands, it was interesting. She just couldn’t talk about it at an all-girl tea party, because she never went to all-girl tea parties. Dorothy’s life was far from empty because her life was filled with thoughts about people she’s killed without knowing why they had to die.

When she reached the top of the hill, she’d made sure not to expose herself to the heat detecting unit she knew Karl and Willow had, she found a comfortable spot behind a boulder where she could see, but not be seen, and opened the bag she carried. She took out a compact pair of powerful electric binoculars that had night vision and gave her vision a range of ten miles. Even the military didn’t have these. The Society always kept the best in weapons and military equipment for itself.

The woman who had developed these binoculars, worked for a private microscope producing company that produced electron and proton microscopes as well as regular microscopes for private, public schools, and government labs; had been murdered after the plans were stolen from her apartment. Dorothy had killed her.

A greedy member who had a competing microscope producing company had learned about these binoculars from a man working for the company who needed money for a gambling habit. He told a member he’d met at a party one night, the man had no idea he was talking to a member of the Society, about the binoculars. The member immediately sent Dorothy to kill the woman who developed the binoculars and get the flash drive that contained the diagram of the binoculars, and then to kill the man because he knew about them. The member didn’t want the death of the woman traced back to him. She had kept this experimental pair, which she had found in the woman’s apartment, for herself. No one knew she had them. They were powered by a powerful solar energy battery with a backup nine volt battery just in case the first one was drained of energy, and used electric current to increase the magnification of the special lenses inside them.

She raised them to her eyes and looked at the Simpson Park Mountains. At the exact spot Derrick would have had her killed if he knew she knew what was there. He would have killed her if he knew she listened in on his private calls without his permission.

Dorothy wondered if he was stupid enough to think she didn’t. No, she decided Derrick would never suspect her of listening in on his private calls. He was too arrogant a man to suspect someone as common looking as her would have anything remotely resembling initiative. During the years she’d worked for him, she’d made sure he never thought of her as nothing but an obedient soldier who knew her place when in his presence. By acting like a mindless soldier who did exactly as she was told.

Charlie Daniels had not only been a good fuck, but a talkative one, too when he wasn’t pumping her. He had told her about the information center at the base of the Simpson Park Mountains, and where it was. He had even told her how to get inside the information center. Charlie was the sort of young man who liked to impress the women he screwed how important he was. What a wonderful boastful boy he was, and not very bright.

After twelve years of killing for Derrick she knew him better than he knew she did. She knew Lester Painter and Charlie Daniels were both dead men even though they had been loyal to him and the Society. They were the only two soldiers who weren’t required to kill. Their jobs were to keep an eye on the Society’s secret depository of knowledge. And their knowledge of what was hidden in the manmade extension of the natural cave in the

Simpson Park Mountains made them a liability for Derrick. Even though neither man knew exactly what information was in the information center. And she knew Derrick didn’t like liabilities.

She looked to the left at some hills that were at a right angle to the Simpson Park

Mountains and smiled. Her years as a killer for the Society had given her sharp instincts of survival a predator needed in order to survive.

That’s where I’d be if I were Karl and Willow and they‘ve been there since at least one this morning, she thought. She looked to her right at a narrow gap in the Simpson Park Mountains. And that’s where I’d come through the mountains if I were this Marlene Done and her friend. All that thick brush would be a perfect way to hide their body heat.

Dorothy had an edge. And nobody but she knew it, especially that arrogant, self -indulgent megalomaniac Derrick.

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