Kill Code

Kill Code

Kill Code

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 by Joseph Francis
Collins

Cover and art copyright © 2014 by Joseph
Francis Collins

Layout: Cheryl Perez,
www.yourepublished.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are either products of the
author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is
entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this
publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from
Joseph Francis Collins.

For my lovely wife Louise—for believing me
even when I didn’t.

It's almost old hat to say that a novel can’t be
written alone although writing is mostly a solitary pursuit. I am
especially indebted to my wife Louise and Cindy Gerard who both
read the really rough version of this book and helped a great deal
in getting it into readable English. And, of course, my family also
provided much-needed support. Other contributors to this work, some
unknowing of why I was asking so many odd questions include Dave
Anderson, Gene Boyd, Jordan Dane, Diana Jones, Dan Collins, Rob
Groene among others including the cast of characters who hang out
on [email protected]. Ted Taylor put up with my
strange requests in designing the first cover, Diana Cox for line
editing, Cheryl Perez for layout and for file conversions. Joe
Simmons for the new cover. And a hat tip to Joe Konrath for
providing the inspiration to take this particular publishing
path.

An ideal form of government is democracy tempered
with assassination--Voltaire

Leo Marston hadn't killed anyone
in ten years, but when the man stepped into his coin shop, and the
hair on the back of his neck rose, he knew that could change today.
He didn’t recognize the man, but he knew the look of a professional
killer;
he’d been that man not so many
years ago.

He watched as the man took expressionless note of
the dust motes dancing on the sunlight filtering through the
blinds. Piles of coins on glass counters waited to be sorted. On
the counter opposite Leo, a pile of foreign coins that his partner,
Rob Gates, had purchased earlier in the week, would have to be
sorted when Rob came in later.

It was a dusty, cluttered coin store, a little
frayed at the edges, but Leo liked it just as he liked the location
on the Northern edge of Albuquerque, New Mexico. North enough from
the more prosperous, touristy part of town but close enough to the
seedy edge that the store was able to purchase interesting things
from people living on the downside of the economic edge.

The man appraised Leo, then turned, locked the door
and flipped the sign over to “Closed.”

Leo gulped, trying to still his pounding heart while
appearing nonchalant.

This man was unlike the 'coin dinks' that he was
used to seeing. Men, primarily of low social standing and even
worse bathing habits, often shuffled through his inventory looking
for something that might have been misgraded that they could sell
for more money. It paid to entertain them as their money was as
good as anyone's. This man, however, was wearing a three piece
pin-striped suit—that was the first thing that felt wrong about
him. Who wore a suit in the middle of summer in infernally hot
Albuquerque?

His brown, buzz-cut hair and muscular face
complemented a build that filled the suit almost to the bursting
point—which pretty much made it impossible for him to conceal the
gun he was carrying beneath it. That was the second thing that
raised the hair on the back of Leo's neck. 

He gripped a yellow envelope in his beefy hand. Clue
number three. In his experience, nothing good had ever arrived in a
yellow envelope.

“Can I help you?” Leo asked.

“Max Jennings?”

Well fuck. Leo felt an arctic
chill numb his body. Max Jennings, assassin, died a long time ago,
at the promising age of twenty-one.
Old
enough to drink, old enough to die.

At least the organization he had worked for was
supposed to think so after he’d barely escaped death from a car
bomb in Bogota, Colombia, ten, almost eleven peaceful years
ago.

How had they found him? You didn't retire from this
business; you were killed at the end of your usefulness either by
being sent on a suicide job or by becoming a training exercise for
a future generation of assassins.

“Max Jennings?” Leo repeated conversationally.
“Never heard of him. I'm afraid you have the wrong person.”

“No. I don't.” The man’s
glacial
blue eyes watched him with the
stone
cold
look Leo knew was that of a
professional killer. 

The man set the envelope on the counter. Leo slipped
a letter opener that he had been using to open coin flips into his
hand and down below the counter.

“We have a job for you.”

“I’ve got a job. You lookin’ for a
specific coin? I’m your man. Otherwise, like I said, you got the
wrong guy.” The air conditioner
kicked on, filling the room
with an ominous hum.

“Let's not play games, Jennings. You know why I'm
here. We have someone for you to take out
and we
need your specialty—
the long kill.”

This man, whoever he was, knew way the hell too much
for Leo's comfort.

“They are still talking about you
taking out that Colombian at 1162 yards. Some sort of record or
something....”

Yeah. It had been a record all
right. That shot took out a Peruvian Interior Minister at 1272
yards, but Leo didn't correct the man. It had been a very difficult
shot, in gusting winds, but he’d p
ut the bullet exactly
where he aimed—in the center of the chest. Of
his
eleven operational kills, all were at over six
hundred yards. Yeah, he was an expert at the long kill.

“Let’s say I know how to find this
guy—this Jennings,
was it?” Leo said. “Who
do I say is looking for him?”

“You know who’s looking for you,” the man said with
a chill edge to his voice.

Yeah, he knew. At least he knew it
was the same shadow organization that had doled out his assignments
back in the day. He’d never known much about them—including the
name. Travel itinerary and contact details had all been handled
vi
a the US mail. Payment was always via electronic bank
transfers.

“Sorry,” Leo said again. “I can’t help you.”

“Look. I asked nice. I’m about through with
nice.”

Leo smiled. “I can relate to that.” Then he lunged
over the counter, grabbed the guy by his shirt front and stabbed
him in the heart with the letter opener, twisting it as the man
went down.

###

Jackie Winn stared at the glinting gold of the DVD
in her hand in the dim light of the computer room, half listening
to Patrick Lackey, the company accountant.

When Nathan was alive, he
had mistreated Patrick, often yelled at him and insulted him. There
was a history between them Jackie didn't understand and that
neither Nathan nor Patrick would elaborate on.

As co-owner of the company with
Nathan, she had always treated Patrick with respect and found that
he was competent in his job, intelligent and always seemed eager to
pitch in and help even beyond his areas of expertise. In a small,
quickly growing company, everyone had to be prepared to
cover every task from meeting customers,
answering the phones and even janitorial services.

“Are you going to run that?” Patrick said, dragging
her back to the present.

“Yes,” she said, swallowing back the lump in her
throat.

Nathan had made her promise to run the DVD after he
died. Nathan—blond, brilliant, almost as good a hacker as she was,
now gone forever.

And she was still missing him. No, she was not going
to cry any more. There had been a fountain of tears at the service
and a numbness that left her feeling permanently out-of-body. All
she could think about was the crater left in her heart. It wasn't
like the love of her life had been perfect, nor his death
unexpected, but that still didn't make his absence any easier.

“Do you have any idea what’s on it?”

Jackie said nothing.

Softly, he said, “I know how tough it was watching
him die. But because of you, he lived a full life.”

And a miserable, drawn out death before the
pancreatic cancer killed him, Jackie thought grimly, dropping her
head to her hand.

Patrick reminded her, “He knew he wasn’t alone. Even
at the end.”

The end. It didn’t get much more final than that,
did it? 

She stared at the DVD. A piece of polished metal and
plastic was all she had left of him. They’d had so many hopes. So
many dreams. One of those dreams had been this computer security
business. They’d built it together from the ground up. And it had
been so exciting to see the encryption algorithms they had
developed now in use in banks and financial institutions all over
the world. Even lowly credit card swipe machines contained their
code. It had been Nathan's last project, begun just after he had
been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Jackie had wondered why he had
taken on such an ambitious project after his diagnosis—but he had,
sometimes by sheer will alone, accomplished the project, on time
and under budget.

“Why don't you take a few days to gather yourself?”
Patrick asked.

Still trying to hold back tears, she said, “I’m
sorry. I can’t. At least not right now. There’s so much work here.”
That, at least, was true. With Nathan gone, she was running the
business herself—which was why she was here late again tonight.
“Maybe in a couple of weeks or so, after I get a handle on things,
okay?”

“The place practically runs itself. You should take
some time off.”

“Speaking of which, I need to do this. Alone.”

He briefly touched her shoulder. “I'm sorry to have
intruded.”

Giving her one last hurt look, he left, closing the
door behind him.

She didn't mean to lash out at Patrick, but she felt
like someone had sandpapered her skin off, leaving raw nerves that
screamed in agony even with a loving caress. Not that she could
ever love again with this hole in her chest. 

Staring at the closed door for a moment, she knew
she couldn’t handle both Patrick's well-intended hovering and her
own grief over losing Nate.

She looked back at the DVD. He’d
spent hundreds of hours on it. Whatever
it
was. At least the project had
taken Nathan's focus away from his anti-government
rantings.

No, he hadn’t been perfect, but when you loved
someone, sometimes you overlooked things. Jackie had learned early
on not to discuss politics with Nathan. It invariably ended up
being a shouting match he always managed to dominate. She didn't
really want to deal with the distractions that resulted in fighting
the system. Nathan seemed to thrive on it. He was a strict
Constitutionalist and hated all forms of the current government
ranging from the local building inspector, who had once denied the
company's expansion plans, to the IRS and almost every member of
Congress.

She remembered his words as he had given her the
DVD. “This will fix the bastards.”

Those were the last words that he ever said to her,
and she’d been so numb with the impending loss that she could only
wonder fleetingly what the hell that meant.

“Guess it’s time to find out,” she said aloud to the
empty room and, with equal measures of trepidation and excitement,
loaded the DVD into the computer. 

Whatever was on it, the program had been important
to Nathan. So important, he’d been secretive to the point of being
spooky. She wanted to work with him during his final months, to
help him, but he wouldn't have it. Instead, he’d shut her out and
she’d had to watch independent contractors come and go, leaving the
computer lab at all hours of the day and night.

She hadn’t liked being out of the loop but she
hadn’t fought him on it. He’d been so sick. And so determined to
surprise her.

Her stomach felt a little jumpy as she waited until
the auto-run icon popped up. On a deep breath, she clicked on it
and watched the green light on the DVD drive start flashing.

It hadn’t been easy, but per his wishes, she hadn't
looked at it before running it. As a hacker, she was intrigued; as
his long time lover, she was positively trembling. Taking a close
look at the DVD's contents was the closest thing to being with
him.