Assassin
Authors: Nadene Seiters
Assassin
A
story of true change.
Nadene
Seiters
Text copyright © 2013
Nadene N Seiters
Front Cover
Photography Copyright © 2013 by FXQuadro
All Rights Reserved
This is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either
the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely
coincidental.
For you
“Your name is now Troy Red. Don’t forget it. Here’s your identification,
your new social security card, and don’t
ever
slip up and tell someone
your birth name!” The man hands over the driver’s license, the social security
card, and a birth certificate. Troy’s not being given a passport for a reason. He’s
a flight risk.
His lip twists into a smile of contempt as he pockets the
items into his jeans, and turns to face the agent that will be escorting him to
the new premises. Her pretty blonde hair is up in a ponytail for a reason. He
met this woman yesterday, and they spent a terrific night together getting to
know one another. Perfect blue eyes sparkle at him as he puffs out his chest as
he walks past her.
“Don’t forget, it’s Troy now!” A hand rises up into the air,
and Troy waves once with his signature flag, the middle finger.
The woman escorts him to a black SUV where he’s loaded in quickly,
and she takes her seat at the front beside the driver. They exchanges glance,
and Troy wonders if her boyfriend knows she slept with him last night. Judging by
the way she’s glancing back at Troy nervously, her boyfriend has not a clue.
He’s about to find out.
“So you want to have another go around, Nancy Drew?” He lets
the devilish grin play across his face as she tries not to widen her eyes when
her boyfriend glances in her direction.
“What’s he talking about,
Nancy Drew
?”
This ought
to be good;
Troy sits back with a satisfied grin on his lips with his bulky
arms crossed over his chest. He’d like to see her get out of this one. Troy’s
pretty sure he’s not the only eyewitness she’s slept with while on the job, and
the poor guy ought to be told about it sometime.
“We played chess last night.” She looks at Troy in the side
mirror as the boyfriend starts up the SUV. He pulls out of his parking space a
little jerkily and glances in his rearview mirror at Troy, too.
“Yeah, we played chest.” The smile is widening as he waits
for the woman to correct his wording.
“Chess,” She says heatedly with warning.
“Jesus Christ, Maggie! Again?”
So he knows, what an
idiot.
Troy looks out the side window as the argument and accusations begin
to fly. It’s not that he loves breaking up couples, but the guy had a right to
know. Maggie needs to learn a lesson.
The city of Los Angeles is bustling this gorgeous, Monday
afternoon with the tourists on vacation during August. Waves of heat are
wafting off the pavement as they drive along, and Troy can hear the way the
tires are sticky because it’s so hot. He tries to count the amount of women
wearing purple tops as the man continues to argue with his girlfriend. They don’t
stop, even when they pull up to the airport and they’re escorting Troy to the
plane.
He holds out his hand for his ticket, and it’s handed to him
without a word. The boyfriend, Nick, is still attempting to understand why his
girlfriend made the decision to sleep with Troy Red. He’s about to open his
mouth to pipe into the conversation, when he realizes that it’s hopeless. This
guy will never understand why this woman is walking all over him. It’s because
Nick is a ‘nice guy’. He’s one of the men who finish last.
Shaking his head with false sadness, Troy pushes his way
through the small line, slaps his ticket on the counter, and hopes that the
next person to escort him at the end of his flight does not fall for the usual
antics. The young, fair woman at the counter narrows her eyes when she looks up
at him, and he gives her his best ‘I’m going to get my way’ smile.
“Excuse me but did you not see the thirty people behind you
waiting in line patiently?” He turns around, glances over the heads of the
glaring customers waiting and turns back around to the brunette with a bob cut.
Who gets those anymore?
He idly wonders.
“Did you see the two assholes I came in with that can’t shut
their traps? Could you just let me on the plane before they catch up with me?”
She glances at the two agents who are still yapping at the back of the line,
unaware that their eyewitness has just slipped out of their grasps. The tallest
man in the crowd squares his shoulders and pushes his glasses up on the bridge
of his nose as if he’s going to say or do something about the bully at the
front of the line.
“Sir, I’m going to have to call security if you don’t get to
the back of the line.” An officer is already waltzing through the facilities
with his hand on his Taser. Troy feels another smile parting his lips as he
chuckles, but the woman doesn’t seem to understand his mirth.
“That’s alright, I’ll just get another name from those two
bozos and everything will be alright. Just look at the ticket, and let me board.
I’m getting tired of this cat and mouse game,” he looks at her nametag,
“Sharia, that’s a pretty name, by the way.” It’s not use.
Someone must have
pissed in her Cheerios this morning
; Troy takes his ticket off the counter
and gives an insubordinate solute to the officer who is just arriving.
Maggie and Nick finally realize that Troy has been missing,
and they’re watching him walk back to their spot at the end of the line. The
female agent’s fair skin is flushed with her embarrassment and rage. Her
counterpart, the blonde, male agent with striking green eyes, has a frown on
his face that makes it look as if someone shoved his nose in a pile of dung.
Neither one of them say a word when Troy stands behind them with his arms
crossed behind his head, tapping his foot nervously.
Sharia is much more polite than before when Troy gets back
up to the front until she realizes it’s him. The same, deadly calm, tone
overtakes her voice as she narrows her eyes again. The prim, proper, white,
button down shirt she’s wearing shows what she’s hiding beneath, but it’s not
much to look at. She’s wearing a camisole that covers most of her assets, so
Troy turns his attention elsewhere.
He could go for a quickie in one of the bathrooms right now,
but Maggie’s not up to it, and Sharia will be as cold as a Popsicle. The hot,
dark haired woman in small shorts and the sequin top might be willing to take a
ride though. Half his lips twitch up into his classic grin, and the woman rolls
her eyes as she struts by.
Bitch
, he keeps his thoughts to himself. That
one probably would be pretty cold, too.
Unfortunately, the two agents are escorting him to his next
flight from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. From there, he’ll be hopping onto a
private plane that will double back to a hick town in Ohio, from where he will
be driven to his destination. They haven’t told him where that will be, but he
remembers it must be on the driver’s license. Troy pulls it from his pocket and
studies the town’s name, Eldred, Pennsylvania.
Where the Hell is that?
He wishes he had his
cellphone again so he could look it up, but that will have to be acquired when
he gets to his destination if he’s allowed to have one.
“I can’t believe you slept with
him
! Of all the
people to cheat on me with,
again
, some asshole from the mob that has
probably killed, really Maggie?” His voice is hushed, but the angry tone
attracts several people’s gazes. Troy wishes for his headphones again. This is cute
kittens and puppy kisses arguing compared to what his parents used to sound
like, but it’s too much of a sore reminder.
“Would you two shut up? Maybe she slept with me because my
dick’s larger. Get the fuck over it and find a woman you can trust, you fucking
idiot!” Troy Red doesn’t bother keeping his voice down. A few of the women nearby
cover their little children’s ears. Their cheeks redden as their eyes bug out
of their heads, and some of the men give him wary, sideways glances. No one
likes to hear a tattooed, very large, muscular man cussing in their vicinity. It’s
as if they think he’ll just snap, and break their necks like a gorilla. Who
knows, maybe he would.
“Asshole!” Maggie at least has the dignity to keep her voice
low, but some people are still nearby enough to hear. A woman starts mumbling
about people these days and hurries her kids through the metal detectors so
that she can board the flight.
“Is it true? Is his dick larger? Is
that
what matters
to you?” Rolling his eyes, Troy smiles calmly at the security guard operating
the metal detector and stands at the ready as the wand waves over him. It
reminds him of the prison system, but he’s trying to forget those days.
“Jesus Christ, Nick! Really?” Now she’s shrieking, and the
security guard raises his hand in the air for her to stop.
“I’m going to have to ask you two to continue this
conversation elsewhere. There are young children here, and adults, who don’t need
to hear that kind of language.” Troy turns around with a fake glare.
“Yeah, shut the Hell up!” At that point, they’re quickly
ushered through the metal detectors and up the stairs of the plane.
Upon sitting down and viewing the close quarters, Troy
starts to feel sweat building up on his forehead. He pulls his white t-shirt collar
away from his neck and fans it as if he’s in a sauna. The air starts to grow
thicker around him as it becomes harder to breathe and Maggie stops midsentence
to look at her ward. She’s never seen him actually look
nervous
.
“You’re afraid to fly?” She asks with an incredulous voice.
She won’t carryover her kindness from last night to today, not anymore.
“No, I’m afraid of
death
.” Troy mumbles as he looks
around for the seat belt. He puts it on dutifully and reaches into his pocket
as if he still has the iPod his six year old niece gave him for Christmas two
years ago. It was confiscated from him along with all of his other belongings.
He’ll never see that iPod again.
It’s not the fact that the device was expensive for his little
niece to have purchased, or the fact that he will never see her again because
of the eyewitness protection program. He won’t see her again because she’s dead,
along with the rest of his family. That gets under his skin more than any of
this and would put a sour note in anyone’s outlook on life.
“Not so big and bad after all, are you?” Nick asks with a
sneer. Maggie shushes him with a look, but it’s not working. Troy flags down
one of the flight attendants, and kindly asks for a pair of headphones. Then he
makes a point of ogling her as she sashays away to do his bidding. Thinking
about women helps him forget about the pain of reality.
The argument continues. It carries on periodically
throughout the flight, and occasionally lapses to the relief of the other
passengers. To pass the time, Troy begins to count all the men wearing black. Then
he counts all the women wearing the same color and continues on through the
spectrum of colors until he knows twelve men are wearing black, seventeen women
are wearing black, and so on and so forth.
When he’s finished with that, he begins to attempt a
guessing game at the size of women’s breasts. He’s about to ask the lady
sitting across the aisle from him if she’s a size D or E when the plane begins
to descend for landing. Taking off the headphones, Troy grips them so tight
that he cracks the plastic. His teeth clamp together so hard he’s afraid he
might shatter them, and he feels the sweat starting to pop out from his pores
again.
It’s a lull in the argument as they land. Maggie sways her
hips as she exits the plane in front of Troy suggestively, and he feels a pang
of guilt that her partner had to find out she was a slut this way. Nick puts
his hand on the larger man’s shoulder and stops him from exiting the plane.
Just before Maggie can turn around to see what’s happening, Nick leans in close
to Troy’s side.
“I was going to marry her.” Troy looks up at the sky just on
the edge of the steps to the plane, and wonders if Nick will try to push him
down the steps.
“Be glad you didn’t because I wasn’t the only one.” He takes
the first step down, and Nick follows him with a sour look on his face.
Troy follows Maggie through the doors to the Philadelphia
Airport, and quirks an eyebrow when he sees a young boy holding up a sign that
has his new name on it. The letters are painted with flames coming off the top,
and he’s wearing a Pantera t-shirt. The kid has taste. Without waiting for his
escorts to take him towards the kid, he wanders that direction himself. The kid
asks him for identification, takes his driver’s license, and studies it exceedingly
hard with furrowed eyebrows.
“It’s real, Dad.” He must be seven or eight years old, and
hands the driver’s license back to a man who appears behind him. Troy looks the
new member of his escort team over. He’s a tall man but not quite as tall as
Troy, with silvering hair at the temples with the rest a dark brown. His eyes
match his hair, and by the way the whites of his eyes are starting to yellow,
Troy guesses the man is going through some type of liver failure.
“You can call me Marty Summers. That’s not my real name, but
it will do for now. This is Kyle Summers, not his real name, but it suits him
just fine. I’m not actually his Dad. In fact, I don’t know the kid at all. But
you probably know all of this, so why don’t we skip the pleasantries and get
you on that private plane to Ohio?” The fake Marty Summers doesn’t bother
holding out his hand, leaves the kid standing with a bewildered looking woman,
and to Troy’s relief, he leaves Maggie and Nick behind, as well.
“Thank God, they were starting to make my fucking ears
bleed.” Marty spins around and points a finger in Troy’s face, and then motions
around at all the people surrounding them.
“There are ladies here with their children. Save that kind
of talk for the saloons, or I’ll throw you into the detention cell where
they’ll give you the prostate exam of your nightmares.”
Hard ass
, Troy
lets his lips curl up into his lazy grin, which is the one that people see
right before their head hits the floor. Marty doesn’t back down. That is until
Maggie and Nick start approaching. Both men glance at Maggie’s fuming face and
Nick’s sadistic expression and they start heading for the exit as quick as
possible.