Stand By Your Hitman

This book is dedicated to the memory of Adrienne Alma
Boquet Johnson—my grandmother—a talented and very
creative woman who had big dreams for me.

THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT

Lex shook his head. “I don’t have it all together like you. Maybe I never will. My biggest goal would probably be just to find happiness. That’s all that really seems to matter.”

Damn, he had me there. Wasn’t that what everyone wanted in life? Sure, some people wanted fame and fortune. But this gorgeous hunk of man just wanted to be happy. How cool was that?

“There is one thing we both seem to be good at.” He grinned and leaned toward me.

My lips met his and oooh la la! As Lex’s arms slid around me I chastised myself for going all these years without a man. My hands were just sliding up his muscular arms when we heard shouting down the beach.

I wanted to ignore it until I recognized the word, “help” being screamed over and over. Lex and I jumped up and ran down the beach toward camp…to find our shelter in flames.

I stared at the letter in my hand. I was making the same face I’d made a few moments earlier when checking my phone messages. It’s not a pretty face. You wouldn’t like it.

Well, that wasn’t right. I’d never applied to be on
Survivor
. True, it was one of my favorite shows. But I think I’d remember submitting an application. It’s not like I go around videotaping myself defusing bombs every day. Okay, there was that once, but I just wanted to see what it looked like in the third person. It was my little egoist guilty pleasure. No one knew I had it. Or at least, I thought no one knew.

So, maybe that’s what Bob is talking about. Hmmmm.
If I didn’t send it in, who did?

“Mom!” The unanimous shout came in unison from my two teenaged sons, Montgomery and Jackson Bombay. My name is Mississippi Bombay, but I prefer Missi.

“In here,” I responded suspiciously. Did they do this?

Monty and Jack popped their heads through the doorway simultaneously. Fraternal twins, you’d never look at them and even think they were related. Monty was tall and gangly, with dark hair and green eyes. Jack was short and stocky with a shock of unruly red hair and freckles. In spite of their physical differences, the boys shared one obnoxious personality.

“Do I need to ask?” I waved the letter at them.

Monty snatched it out of my hands and began to read. “Cool! Mom, this rocks!”

Jack grabbed it from his brother and scanned the page. “Ohmygod!” He shouted it as one word. “How cool are you? Why didn’t you tell us?”

From the looks on their faces, I surmised they didn’t do it.

“So you had nothing to do with this?” I had to ask just to make sure. I haven’t survived this long as a single mother of twin boys without confirming everything. Usually twice.

They shook their heads. “We would’ve if we thought you were interested—” Monty started.

“But we never dreamed you’d want to go on the show!” Jack finished.

I swiped the letter from Jack and put in on the table. “Well, it’s obviously just a joke, so we’ll forget about it.” I now had other ideas. After all, I came from a family of assassins. A prankster or two in the gene pool was to be expected.

You heard me right. Assassins. The Bombay family has had a monopoly on the biz since ancient Greece. Every blooded member of the family begins training at the age of five and works until…well, forever. My grandma was just forced into an early retirement or she’d still be taking on contracts. Not that she needed to. She was on the Council. That’s the geriatric crew who runs the operations, dishes out assignments, and kills off renegade family members. That’s right. This family business isn’t exactly optional. And if you screw up or screw over the family, the Council will take you out.

I broke free of my mental meanderings to find the boys gone. Oh well. Where could they go? We live on a small, private island off the coast of South America.

Speaking of mental fragmentation—I’ve been experiencing that a lot lately. Maybe it has something to
do with being forty-five. Or it could be that I haven’t had sex in a long, long time. Being widowed will do that to you. Well, that and the isolation of being on an island no one but my immediate family lives on. Or it could be the bizarre nature of my work. Besides killing people for a living, I’m a bit of an inventor. It’s my only creative outlet. And it was one more service I could offer the Bombays.

What do I invent? Oh, this and that, really. Hairdryers that can blow your head off, lilies that can suffocate you, explosive jockstraps…the usual bric-a-brac, I guess. My mind began to meander again and I started thinking about Pop-Tarts. I LOVE Pop-Tarts. But only the chocolate-fudge ones. I could eat those for every meal.

The Pop-Tarts made me think of Kleenex, which reminded me that I still had a few finishing touches to make on my latest explosive device. I headed for the lab.

Mantisnuts
was the secret word I spoke into my security system. The door popped open and I went in thinking it was time to change my password. Maybe something like
bananaface
. Did praying mantises have testicles? I wasn’t sure. At least in the figurative sense they did. It takes balls to make love to a woman you know will bite your head off afterward.

On a table in the middle of the room was one of those Wacky WallWalkers. Remember those? Real big in the eighties. I had several back then. Anyway, for those of you who are big hair and shoulder pad challenged,
they were these sticky little octopuses (octopi?—what is the plural anyway?) you threw at a wall or sliding glass door (sliding glass doors were also very big in the eighties) and it kind of flopped, ass over, um, tentacles all the way down the wall. You’d think something like that would be a failure, wouldn’t you? But the inventors of that stupid little toy (did I mention that I owned several?) made millions. You never know what will hit it big.

It was with that in mind that I decided to work with the gummy little bastards as some sort of explosive device. Remember Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in
Mission:
Impossible?
The first one—not the crappy sequels. Anyway, he had that stick of gum he just had to fold in half and stick on the aquarium at that restaurant in Prague, and it blew up? Of course, it was ridiculous. Have you ever tried to fold a stick of dry gum in half? It snaps in two, doesn’t stick to itself—doesn’t stick to anything really, so it wouldn’t have worked in real life. But that’s okay, cuz I liked the movie.

The trick with the Wacky WallWalkers was to get just the right compound that would ignite as it struck a solid surface and wouldn’t affect its inherent gumminess. I didn’t want to overdo it, but I wanted something that would do the job. I wasn’t sure what the job was yet, but it didn’t matter. I loved working in my lab. I could work with whatever I wanted and the family didn’t give a damn. Ha.

An hour later found me behind my blast shield as I blew up my fifth piece of glass-coated drywall. I was
having a pretty good time too. That is, until the alarm went off. I’d set it to high because I wanted to know if anyone came into my lab unannounced.

“Hello, Mississippi.” York Bombay stood in the doorway. I couldn’t stand that man. My mom’s cousin York was a creepy old dude. Of course, his father, Lou, was much worse. Thank God he’s still locked up with Grandma and the other former Council at that maximum-security nursing home in Greenland. I folded my arms across my chest and made up my mind to definitely change my password. How the hell did he get it, anyway?

“What’s up, Uncle York?”

He forced a grin and reached over to fondle Charo from my B-list bobblehead collection. I made a mental note to scrub them with Clorox later.

“Well, my dear, the Council requests your presence. Tonight at seven.”

I dug my nails into my arms to keep from reaching for the remote control on my top shelf that could electrocute him. Then I tried not to smile thinking about that.

You see, York’s been pissed off at me since I had to deal with his favorite nephew, Richie, one year ago. That’s when I minorly electrocuted the old Council too. I’d secretly installed a mechanism in all five members’ elbows under the pretense of getting their biometric info. It was kind of a backup plan, but it came in handy when the Council kidnapped my favorite cousin, Gin’s daughter, and my generation was locked into a sort of Mexican standoff with the old guys. My little invention took them out and they still don’t know why. In fact, the new Council didn’t even raise their eyebrows when I injected them with the same device. Of course, they thought I was just giving them malaria shots (never use the same lie twice—it always backfires). I’d say what they don’t know won’t hurt them, but in this case it actually will.

“Fine. I’ll be there.” I said stiffly. I watched him walk
out of my lab and did that little full-body shake you do when you walk into a spider web. Then I changed my password to
deaduncleyork
.

“What do you mean, you got me on
Survivor
?” I was in shock from what the Council had just told me.

“I called an old friend of mine,” my mother explained. “You were a shoo-in.” She smiled like she’d just told me I looked nice in this shirt—which is usually followed up with “why can’t you find a man/ woman/dog?” That’s right, my mother would rather see me as a lesbian instead of single. “And it’s
Survival
, not
Survivor
, dear.”

“What?” I asked.

Mom smiled at me now like I was about to get on a special bus to go to a special school. “It’s a brand new Canadian show. But it’s pretty much the same thing as
Survivor
.”

I folded my arms over my chest. “You got me onto a cheap, Canadian knockoff of
Survivor
? Are you nuts?” It was an odd question, considering that most of the time people thought
I
was nuts.

Aunt Carolina nodded. “Of course we are. But it’s a good assignment nonetheless.”

Huh?

Mom added, “I think it will be good for you. You should get out more, meet people. And you are a bit on the pale side dear. A little sun will make you look healthy.”

I rolled my eyes and thought about the remote control
in my workshop. No, I had to save that for when I really needed it. And in this family that usually meant when your relatives pointed guns at you.

“Is there really a job, or is this another one of your blind date schemes?” I asked. “Cuz I’ve got to admit, you really went above and beyond on this one.”

Uncle Monty spoke up. “Yes, Mississippi. It really is a job. An important one too. You are the only one who can do it.”

I crossed my arms. “Cut the flattery and tell me the truth.”

The Council members all looked toward the media booth, where I noticed York was struggling with the A/V equipment. I hated when they tried to do stuff without me. Most of them were still afraid of computers.

“I got it!” York called out.

The big screen came down from the ceiling. Then it stopped midway and went back up again. I threw up my hands and went to the booth to straighten everything out. I have a knack for technology. It’s one of the things I really like about myself. Well, that and the ability to hang four spoons off my face at one time. I worked my whole freshman year in college to be able to do that.

“You guys should spare me the drama and just let me do this.” I muttered to myself as I pushed the right buttons to make the screen come down and the PowerPoint presentation run. I’m sure York heard me, but wisely chose not to respond.

I rejoined the Council, who acted like I didn’t have to bail them out…again. On the screen was the photo of a man about my age. Reasonably attractive, with dark hair and a nice smile, this guy must be the Vic (the family’s nickname for our victims), I thought.

“Isaac Beckett.” Uncle Pete took over. I liked Uncle Pete. He had a neat, rumbly sort of voice that was warm and comfy.

“Our client believes Beckett is an arms dealer who knows the names of several undercover CIA agents and has threatened to reveal his list to some rather unfriendly nations. He went missing a month ago, and through some genius research on Burma’s part”—he nodded to his cousin Burma (an Englishman)—“we found that he’d gotten onto this show.”

“So why do I have to get on the show? Can’t we just take him out before they ship these idiots to wherever?” I didn’t want to go on
Survival
, dammit. I wanted to stay at home, making cult toys from the eighties explode.

Mom gave me that look again. “Because we still don’t know where he is and won’t until he ends up on-site.”

“Okay,” I shrugged. “I’ll just go and take him out after the show wraps.”

Monty shook his head. “For one month, he’ll be inaccessible to us and have full access to a television crew. We can’t risk the fact that he could leak information to millions of people. Information that should be buried with his dead body.”

It’s funny how my family talks. To someone not
familiar with the Bombays, our conversation might seem a tad threatening.

“And you want me to be a contestant on the show and take him out.” I waited for them to nod like my bobblehead dolls. “Except that you forget, I’d have to kill him in front of millions of viewers, worldwide. How, exactly, do I do that?”

Burma’s crisp accent cut in. “That is why you are the only one for this job, Missi. As an inventor, you will most likely be able to stay on the program while others are voted out. And you can figure out a unique way to kill him that will look like an accident. That is,
if
he is who we think he is.”

“And it’s not millions of viewers, dear,” Mom said. “It’s more like thousands, actually.”

“Wait a minute.” Sometimes my brain processes information at lightning speed. This, however, was not one of those moments. “What do you mean
if
?”

Mom sighed as if I were a complete idiot. “We already told you—our client isn’t entirely sure Beckett is a bad guy.”

That’s weird. I’ve never heard of a Bombay assignment that wasn’t pretty clear-cut. “So do I kill him, or not?”

Mom smiled. “We’ll let you know. Basically you’ll be on the show to keep an eye on him until we get more information.”

It was hard to digest this information. I guess what they were saying made sense, but it still pissed me off. I like a good reality television show like anyone else.
And like anyone else, I’d rather watch it at home, sitting on my couch, sipping red wine with the air conditioner on.

“You have some time to prepare before you’re needed in Toronto. I’ll e-mail you the dossier on Beckett and everything I have on the show.” Mom winked at me. It was as if she were a normal mother talking to her daughter. Not an assassin ordering her daughter to stalk and
maybe
kill a man.

Back in my lab, I continued to blow up panels of drywall, but my heart just wasn’t into it. I quit early and made my way to my apartment in the main building on the island.

My workshop is sacred to me, a place of peace and quiet…well, except for the explosions and stuff. I have a lot of strange paraphernalia in there, but mainly that is for inspiration. From the stuffed black jaguar to my collection of
A-Team
DVDs to my “Hang In There” poster featuring an adorable kitten hanging from a tree—it all makes perfect sense.

My home, on the other hand, is different. Being strange is one thing. Letting that impact my kids is another. Me and the boys have a great condo on the island. And this may sound weird, but I’ve worked really hard to make our living space look totally normal. It was tough at first, since it was completely against my nature to have fine art, leather furniture and Tiffany lamps, but I managed. I used a lot of color on the walls to compensate.

I just didn’t want the boys to grow up too weird.
They lost their dad before they were old enough to remember him and they lived on a remote island where they were trained since age five to be assassins. A little normalcy was required.

Monty and Jack were sitting on the couch playing video games as I came in. Neither of them looked away from the screen, but both shouted, “Hi, Mom.”

The fact that they looked like two kids from opposite sides of the gene pool always got people’s attention. Monty resembled his father, Rudy, in looks and disposition. He was more cautious, more intellectual and at times could be more serious than his brother. Jackson’s red hair was a recessive Bombay trait that skipped every generation. His shorter, athletic build came from my dad. His wicked sense of humor and penchant for getting in trouble came from me.

And I loved them like no other mother could. For seventeen years, they’d been my whole life. It would be really tough to give them up for college in the near future. Then I’d be alone. Huh. I’d never thought about that before. I hastily pushed that thought from my mind.

It occurred to me that I’d have to leave the boys here for a month while I was on the show. That was an unpleasant idea. The boys had just turned seventeen and were hell on wheels. If we’d had wheels in the jungle, that is. There was no way I could leave them.

I toyed with making Mom watch them, sending them to live with their father’s parents in the States or
for a brief stint in military school, or possibly just rendering them unconscious for a month. I could have done that last one, but there were some side effects involved and I didn’t want them to have excessive facial hair or golf ball–sized warts.

I pulled a beer from the fridge and sat down next to them on the couch. Figuring out what to do with two adolescent, hormonal, teen assassins would be worse than doing the damn show. Either way, I was pretty sure that the one person who wouldn’t survive in either case was me.