Then she stopped, fell completely silent.
Jacko stood by her side as she reached out to touch her front door, as a primitive tribesman would a talisman. Touching it as if it contained special magical powers. And maybe it did because her face just shone. Something was touching her, deeply.
She glanced up at him and opened the door with the key in her purse. The door swung wide and she gestured with her hand for him to walk in.
She wanted him to go in first because—because this was going to become his home too. It hit him with full force right then. She’d agreed to living together, to sharing a home. This home, which was now by some twist of fate going to be his home.
Shit. He’d never had a real home before. He’d moved from his mother’s trailer, which was never clean and grew only more desolate and battered with each passing year, to barracks. The barracks were a huge improvement but basically he had a cot assigned him in an enormous space. Nothing was his, not even the cot. Just the navy-issue trunk at the foot with a few belongings. Not many.
The navy had been his home until he retired and rented his place in Portland. It wasn’t his home. It was where he slept and watched TV and listened to music. If ASI had set up bachelor quarters somewhere, that’s where he’d have lived.
And now...this. He hadn’t had much of a chance to look at her space. He’d been way too blown away by Lauren herself.
But looking around, feeling tense muscles relax, drawing in air that still smelled of flowers and her, it hit him like a sledgehammer that for the first time in his life he was home.
Lauren switched on the lights and turned the heat on. Somewhere a boiler kicked in. She trailed a hand along the back of the couch in the pretty living room, picked up something soft across the back of it, lifted it to her cheek.
“I thought I’d never see this place again.” Her eyes were shiny when she turned to him. “I thought I had found a safe haven so I worked to make this place my home, and the other day when I left—” she gave a faint smile, “—when I tried to leave, it hurt. It felt like something was cutting me up from the inside. I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving this place. Leaving Suzanne, Allegra, Claire. Leaving you.”
Jacko let out a long breath. “I would never have let you go. I would have found you, wherever you went.”
She smiled. She was crisscrossing the house, touching things, touching him when she passed by.
Though Jacko wanted more than anything to pick her up and throw her onto her fancy bed with the billion pillows and flowered sheets, he understood she needed to do this. Needed to connect by touch with the life she’d lost, but now was hers again.
“That’s a nice thought, Jacko. But Felicity is good. Very good.”
He cocked his head. “Felicity?”
She sighed. “I guess now I can talk about it. Felicity isn’t her real name. It’s sort of her internet handle, after the character in Arrow.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Felicity Smoak?” She laughed at his clueless expression. “Very pretty and very smart character on a TV show. My Felicity is just as smart as the character. She gave me a new identity and even my secret job.”
Jacko did impassive very well. Or thought he did. But apparently Lauren saw right through him. She laughed again, which was good. Great even. If he could make her laugh, she could laugh at him for the next hundred years.
“You’re dying to know—I can tell.” Lauren pulled out her MacAir from her big purse, put it on the coffee table and switched it on. She sat down on the couch and patted the seat next to her.
He didn’t need another invitation. He sank into the cushions, happy to be sitting next to her. Happy she was here. Happy he was here with her.
“Okay, pay attention. Felicity lives in the darknet. You know what that is.”
“Yeah.”
She pursed her lips. “Yes, you would. Of course you would. I don’t know what she does for a living—I suspect she’s involved in computer security. I’ve often thought that she might work for the NSA. For some reason, she understands innocent people on the run. She got me my new identity and she’s really good at it. She spent a lot of time creating Lauren Dare, giving her an impeccable background and supplying perfect ID. She said she hoped I could be Lauren Dare forever.”
“You can.” Jacko reached out, wanting to cup her face. He settled for tucking a lock of dark hair behind her ear. Who knew if she wanted to go back to being blond? He didn’t give a shit. She could go purple, or shave her head like him for all he cared. “You can be anything you want to be. Anyone you want to be.”
“I can, can’t I?” Lauren smiled. “Maybe I will just stay Lauren Dare. Anne Lowell wasn’t too happy a person. Lauren Dare is. And there’s yet another person inside me.” She brought up Google and typed quickly. “Voilà!”
The screen showed a website in French, of all things, www.chenet.fr. She clicked on the small British flag on the upper right-hand corner and the site morphed into English. There was a carousel of pictures floating right to left. On the top of the site was a name in flowing script: Fabiola Chenet.
Jacko pointed. “Who’s she?”
“My avatar. My alter ego. Here.” She clicked on Bio and there was one of those Facebook-type photos that hid more than revealed. Half a face, the other half hidden by a long fall of platinum hair, dark sunglasses, face cropped just below the nose. Completely unrecognizable yet alluring. Jacko would never have been able to connect her with Lauren. “There you go. Meet Fabiola Chenet. She studied graphic art at the Paris Design School, did a year at the Royal College of Art, so her English is very good. If you check the schools, you’ll find her CV. Got very good grades.” She smiled faintly. “Though Felicity gave me some Bs, for authenticity.”
Jacko leaned forward, acutely aware of the heat of her body next to his. “So...what am I looking at here?”
She smiled secretively and clicked on a thumbnail image. It suddenly filled the monitor and Jacko sat back. “Whoa.”
A beautiful woman seen from the back, face in profile. Long black hair piled on top of her head. Arms out, in the process of twirling. She was dressed in a long black dress laced up loosely along the back, showing plenty of smooth satiny skin. As she twirled, the hem of her long black dress lifted and became sleek blackbirds. Like crows only with thinner beaks. The blackbirds lifted from her graceful hands, too. The overall effect was stunning, a woman who was magic.
“That’s beautiful.”
The smile broadened. “Thanks. It’s the cover of a fantasy novel about a shape-shifter woman who can command animals. She has been exiled and must make her way back to the castle.” She pointed a finger at a misty fortress on a granite hilltop in the background. “See?”
This was something entirely different from what Jacko had seen her do. This was artwork that told a story, that grabbed you and pulled you right into the picture. You could see the woman’s power, the trek ahead of her, the wild animal kingdom that was hers to command.
“You did that.” Jacko shook his head.
“I certainly did. Watch.” She clicked and the carousel of images continued floating across the monitor, enlarging as they reached midpoint then reducing again to a thumbnail. Many of them were fantasy images, magical and enticing. Some were portraits, the faces always interesting, with an element on the cover that showed whether this was a tragedy or a comedy. The colors were perfect—sharp and clear and glowing.
She sat back, satisfied. “These are all book covers. So—that’s how I’ve been earning my keep, thanks to Felicity who set me up, created me, created Fabiola. If anyone checked the website’s IP address, it’s in France. Fabiola is very successful and she pays all her taxes in France.” Lauren wrinkled her nose. “Nobody should complain about taxes in this country. Not after being stuck in the French system.”
“No, it wasn’t thanks to Felicity. It was thanks to you and your talent,” Jacko growled. “She just allowed you to use it.”
Lauren sober
ed, turned to look at him, utterly serious. “I thought I’d lost it all. If I’d been forced to run I don’t know whether I’d have had the courage to keep this business up, and it’s just now taking off. I have more commissions than I can handle. And I love it. I love interacting with the author, reading the book to get the feel of it, giving the book a face. I was on the verge of losing everything and now—” She stretched out her hand to him and he took it. “Now I think I have everything I could possibly want.”
Keeping his eyes on hers, Jacko brought her hand to his mouth. A romantic gesture, but it was not out of romance. He didn’t have a romantic bone in his body. He just wanted to feel her skin on his lips.
Lauren sighed and without changing tone said, “What took you so long?”
Jacko blinked. “What?”
“You hung around me for four months. Every time I turned around, there you were. Apparently we drove Allegra, Suzanne and Claire crazy because you weren’t making your move. Why not?”
Time for honesty. “You scared me,” he confessed.
Lauren’s eyes went wide. “I—I what?”
“Scared the shit out of me. You terrified me.”
She looked him over and he knew exactly what she was seeing. He was 240 pounds of pure muscle, a trained killer. Though he didn’t have the many piercings he’d had a few years ago, he was still heavily tattooed. Shaved head, the works.
Lauren, on the other hand, weighed less than half what he did and she was an artist. And a sweet woman on top of it. She probably had never hit another human being in her life. He’d grown up fighting bare-knuckled until he got into the navy. Then they armed him.
Her eyes narrowed, face lit with mischief.
“I like the idea of terrifying you. I like it a lot.”
Jacko fought a smile. “Yeah?”
“Oh yeah.” She leaned forward, a few inches from his face. She pursed her lips and he thought she was going to kiss him but instead she said, “Boo!”
He jumped, gave an exaggerated shudder of terror. She laughed. God it was good to hear her laugh. Light, carefree. A laugh of delight.
Then she sobered and her hand tightened around his. “That was fun.” She searched his eyes. “But I don’t want to do that. I don’t like to dominate.” He gave a small nod. Her eyes remained steady on his. She was telling him something really important now. “And I don’t like to be dominated.”
“No.” Fuck no. He didn’t want to dominate her. BUDS training had been all about breaking strong men. Or trying to. Everything had been thrown at him—physical, verbal abuse, cruel punishments, DIs screaming in his face. They hadn’t broken him, not even close. But he did understand bone deep what it was like to have someone try to break you.
He didn’t want one molecule of anything like that near Lauren. In the same room as Lauren. She was magic. She made him feel better just being around her. He didn’t want that magic gone. He wanted to protect that magic from the outside world; he didn’t want to crush it. God no.
And maybe all things considered she was as unbreakable as he was. Maybe more. Because, shit, he couldn’t have taken the pressure of being hunted for two fucking years. Looking over his shoulder day after day after day. He’d have taken the fight to the enemy, that was his nature and he’d been trained to do it, but Lauren couldn’t do that. Two women had died. If he didn’t shave his head, every hair on his head would have stood up when she told him that. She didn’t have the tools to resist armed men so she’d done the only thing possible—run.
He couldn’t say all that. He didn’t have the words for that, but what was on his face must have been reassuring because she nodded sharply. “Okay.”
“Okay.” Something in his voice made her smile.
“So.” She stood. He stood, too. “I’m hungry—how about you?”
It hadn’t even occurred to him but now that she talked about food... “Starving.”
“Good thing when I was running away from home I didn’t take the time to empty the fridge out completely. I’ll cook, you’ll set the table.”
Another thing he’d been taught in the navy. Tactics.
“This is a test,” he said. “You’re seeing how domesticated I am.”
“Bingo.” She smiled but was still watching him carefully.
Well, this was easy. “I was in the military.” He looked down at her, wanting to dispel the slight anxiety that he saw in her beautiful face. He reached out, smoothed the small furrow between her brows. “I take orders well.”
Chapter Eleven
Being operational was exceedingly tedious, Frederick thought. There was so much damned interaction with the physical world. He hated it. His world was virtual, rational and reliable binary code. It either was or it wasn’t. And in his hands, it mostly was.
He could sit in his very comfortable, climate-controlled study with every possible convenience at hand, and shift the levers of the world.
Instead of sitting in his $800 Eames chair that did everything but make coffee for him, he was sitting in a freezing cold midrange rental waiting for his pilot to bring the briefcase.
The driver had taken Paul Andrews to the airport. Ten minutes later, Lawrence E. Macy rented a sedan, drove two miles along the perimeter of the airport and parked. That had been an hour ago. It was pointless calling the pilot. He knew he was supposed to be here an hour ago. He knew he was in trouble.
Snow was falling softly, visible only in the cones of light of the streetlights, invisible otherwise, until it fell on the windshield. Frederick glanced up sourly at the sullen gray sky, seemingly an inch above the roof of the car. He changed his mind about the charm of Portland. Miserable town. Provincial and cold. Frederick vowed never to go to a northern city in winter, ever again. How did people stand it?
He could switch on the engine, put on the heater, but he preferred to keep the full tank of gas. He didn’t want to pull into any gas station with its video cameras. The plan was to drive to Anne Lowell’s house, shoot her boyfriend if he was there, inject her with a syringe of fentanyl, bundle her in this car and drive straight to the plane. But anything could happen and he wanted to keep as much gas in the tank as possible.
But it was damned cold. And he was bored.
The thought of the half million dollars warmed him, though. Down to his bones.
It would have taken him two years of Alfonso to make half a million dollars and now look at him. A simple twenty-four-hour mission to Portland and 500K was going to be deposited in his account. Of course, Frederick was going to have to kill the bodyguard/boyfriend, and Anne Lowell would be smoked, but still.
And the Caymans deal. Man, if he played his cards right that was going to be a real moneymaker. Maybe he could establish the servers directly in the Caymans and—
He jumped when someone rapped sharply at his window. The pilot, holding out the briefcase. Frederick buzzed the window down irritably, face impassive, heart still racing.
“Here, sir. I apologize for the delay. The access road was blocked and has just been cleared.” The pilot glanced up at the sky, snowflakes falling on his face, then bent down to Frederick again. “The control tower said that if it keeps snowing like this they’re shutting the airport down by 10 p.m. So whatever business you have, it would be best to be back here in two-and-a-half hours at the most.”
Frederick nodded. He intended to be very fast. Anne Lowell’s house was about a thirty-minute drive away. Forty, maybe, in this weather. She didn’t have a landline but he had checked power contracts in the name of Lauren Dare and bingo! One had come up. Then some more rooting and he came up with a cell phone number.
His business once at her house would be fast. Shoot the muscle, drug her and carry her outside to his car. Then drive to the airport, get her onboard, wait while the pilot drove the rental to the long-term parking lot—he was resigned to sacrificing his ID as Lawrence Macey—and took the shuttle back.
They should be wheels-up by 8:30 p.m.
“There will be another
passenger on board on the way back,” he told the pilot through the open window. The pilot nodded. He was being paid three times the usual price for this trip. He wasn’t going to question an unconscious passenger. Not if he wanted to be paid.
Frederick waited until the pilot left to open the briefcase. Not being an operator, he was more interested in the five insulin-sized syringes in their foam cutouts than the gun. Five syringes was overkill, but better to be safe than sorry. He’d bought the syringes from a dealer who also supplied Florida’s professional elite. Fentanyl was a powerful drug that had to be calibrated carefully but it also guaranteed sleep, because fentanyl was a form of anesthesia. If you suffered from massive insomnia, as two of the dealer’s clients did, you used fentanyl or one of its opiate precursors and you could be guaranteed sleep. Too much of it and you could be guaranteed death. But the kind of insomnia suffered by the clients was cocaine-induced so they were used to dancing on the abyss.
Frederick’s dosages were carefully calibrated.
He hefted the gun with distaste. Beyond some lessons at a gun range he wasn’t proficient with firearms. But that was okay. He wasn’t going to try for a headshot. He’d aim at center mass. The boyfriend had a really broad chest. Frederick couldn’t miss.
Frederick texted his client to expect to pick “the package” up at a private airfield near Palm Beach around 4 a.m. the next morning. All in all, he didn’t expect to be responsible for Anne Lowell for more than eight hours. Everything had gone smoothly so far. This would all be over very soon.
Tomorrow morning, Frederick would be on his terrace, sipping an espresso in the sunshine, half a million dollars richer. And Anne Lowell would be singing like a bird, after which her dead body would probably be dumped into the big, wide ocean.
* * *
Jacko did take orders well. She told him what to do and he did it quietly, with no fuss, and extremely efficiently. She had splurged on a set of crystal wineglasses and crystal water glasses, which she’d left behind because crystal wouldn’t go well with her new life on the run. Now she could use them again.