The Laughing Assassin [Assassin's Diary] (Siren Publishing Classic) (26 page)

Jonah had to own up to the disgust that rolled over him as one of the interchangeable steroid junkies cuffed his wrists behind his back. Before he was led away, Black gave a last order.

“Remove that mask, will you? And make certain to leave something for me to interrogate later.” The command chilled Jonah to the bone as he tried to cobble a plan that would leave him and his operative alive to see another day. When the satin fabric was lifted over his face, Jonah battled the urge to squint, as if the unveiling left him blinded by sunlight.

Black gasped audibly at the reveal, and the errant inhalation was a mere hiss of air that spoke volumes. But the sound seemed stunned to Jonah’s ear, and in that moment he learned something of vital importance. Black knew who Jonah was. And the relationship between them was more than that of simple acquaintances, or that of a person who read the newspaper and had seen him on the society pages during Jonah’s notorious youthful antics.

“Actually…” Black paused as if unsure what he was going to do next. “Take him away. But don’t hurt him just yet. I want to ask him something first.” The men complied, but their handling of him was rougher after the request was made by their employer for an eleventh-hour appeal.

But that still left the question, who was Black exactly? And just how did he know Jonah?

As much as Jonah paid attention to the world around him, he couldn’t determine who Black was. Nothing about the man rang a single bell. What was visible around the edges of the domino could belong to tens of thousands of white males between the ages of thirty and fifty across the known world. Black’s voice was not even distinctive enough to make a determination as to the man’s real identity. But if he lived through this, Jonah would find out who this man was if it was the last thing he did.

As Jonah was certain he knew the man before him personally. Black could have very well met his sister MacLeigh and decided to take her the same way he’d taken Jewel. And his family would have never known that the monster responsible lurked within their midst. Who was he? The question peppered him over and over until he had a headache from his own mental bludgeoning.

It would take him only a minute to pick the lock on the handcuffs with the links holding the shirtsleeve closed, but at least five more to dispose of the men. In that amount of time, there would be additional reinforcements rallied. Not to mention that he had to get back to Jaden before he could make his great escape. And every second that passed by reduced the already-slim window he worked with.

Damn it, Jonah thought as he balled his fists in frustration. He just needed some of the men behind him to pay a little more attention to something aside from him. Even a moment’s diversion would do, but he knew one thing for sure. Jonah couldn’t afford to let the guards take him to wherever they were headed. If he was herded to the chosen location, his chances of escape would be reduced to nil, as they would have all the advantages instead of just some.

He caught a whiff of vanilla, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Jaden was near. He could feel her, smell her. How did she manage that? Only a split second later he heard a sickening crunch that could only be one thing. He had heard the pop of broken necks several times before, and usually it was an up close and personal type of sound. The best way he could describe it was the crunch of a chicken wing, when the cartilage was torn away from the bone during consumption.

But just a second after the crackle of vertebrae, all hell broke loose. There were two guards in front of him. Both turned swiftly, they pointed their weapons behind him, and he knew they were gunning for her. But she had a handle on the situation. From the pained grunts and meaty thuds, he knew she used one of the men behind him as a shield and the man took each bullet aimed at her.

Jonah crooked his ankle and pulled the guard to his left off of his feet. The falling guard took his companion out by accident on the way down, and the other guard tumbled to the ground. He gave a swift punt with his leg to the man’s chest that sent the unlucky recipient into the brick wall to his back. The man didn’t bother to get up, as he was incapacitated with a healthy blow to the head on the way down.

He dislocated his shoulders and looped his arms around his head so that he could get the limbs in front of him where they could be of some use.

Jaden had quickly disposed of the other three guards, and as she turned in his direction, he saw the one man left aimed his weapon at her. Everything seemed impossibly slow in that moment, and his body raced through a quagmire of quicksand into action. Jonah no longer had time to free himself, and he jumped, a ricochet of motion using the wall as a catapult with his arms extended. The full force of his body rammed the guard in the side and sent them both flying. Jonah saw the gun change directions as the guard jostled from the blow. The man’s hand squeezed the trigger pointed toward him, and he knew that he was about to take a bullet.

“No!” he heard Jaden scream as she fired a quick retort with her weapon, and he tried to turn, but the projectile was faster than he was.

He crashed to the floor, and the first thought he had was that he got lucky yet again. The bullet passed through his shoulder, and if he was a hair slower he would have been shot in the neck.

But on second thought…

Jonah could feel himself bleeding much faster than he could really stand to lose. Jaden dropped her stolen gun at his side just before she ripped the sleeve from his shirt and wrapped the fabric under his armpit then tied the cloth wicked tight over the wound.

When she finished cobbling together his makeshift tourniquet, Jaden helped him stand up. His motions were clumsy, and he mentally blamed the floor slick with his blood. But that excuse was exposed for the thin lie it was when she grabbed the gun with sure movements and no hesitation. As they walked away, she tucked the semi between her breasts in the bandeau top. He only had enough time to hope she had the safety on before she shot herself.

It hurt like hell, but hopefully the quick tourniquet would be enough to slow the blood loss. She grabbed his uninjured arm with her free hand and kicked her shoes off. She ran fast as the wind, navigating the turns and twists in the labyrinth as if possessed. She refused to let him slow down and even dragged him even at some points.

When they were close to the exit, she put a finger to her lips and opened a closet door just feet from the entry.

“Wait here.” She only took a split second to pick the lock on his cuffs before she handed him the pistol, still warm from her skin, and kissed his fingers on both hands.

Before she could turn away, he stopped her. “No, Jaden, don’t go. Just let me come up with a plan. We can make this work.” He hated the fact that he was too weak to help her the way she needed to be helped. There had to be something he could do, even injured as he was.

“Jonah, all you can do right now is slow me down and get us both killed in the process. You’re lucky to be standing right now. You’ve lost too much blood, and we left a very noticeable trail.” With those words, she was gone, and the scent of vanilla slowly vanished with her departure. He knew she was right. Even now his heart beat much too fast, and the flurries in his vision told him that he needed medical attention.

One minute turned into two and then five. Jonah was worried, and he was fading fast.

* * * *

Jaden knew Jonah was going to be worried, but her plan would work. All she had to do was backtrack to her shoes and lead a few false trails along the way. The faux tracks were created with Jonah’s blood and her own bare feet. She didn’t have the time to make the dead end of tracks too intricate, but the added step should have given her the few extra minutes she bartered for.

Jaden knew what she was looking for, and she opened the door to the basement exit. It wasn’t at the same end of the subterranean floor as the closet she left Jonah within, but Jourdain had one just like it in his compound. As a matter of fact, it was the one she used to gain entrance to the deceased’s lair in the first place. Security measures always were for people breaking in, but not usually for those exiting, and she hoped that she was right in this case as well.

Along with the guns she had taken from the dead guards, she had also taken the man’s phone. She texted Armand and Juliette with the emergency message and her personal agent code, as they would be the only members close enough to help her with Jonah.

The reply message was brief and distorted from code, but it let know her what she needed to, namely the GPS position tag for rendezvous and the ETA of their arrival. Jaden ran back through the basement and got ready to roll a few heads. The operations room was close-by, and she needed to get the data first. The security office she passed by on her search for Jonah, and she had already sent out a fake message to patrolling guards to check a problem on the south side of the isle amid the departing purchasers. Although luck shone on them, as half of the hired men were in the process of transporting the buyers and auctioned stock off the island. That was the only reason there was as little opposition as there was before, and she was sure her ruse would be discovered shortly.

But if she had even five more minutes, that was enough.

Jaden forced her way back into the control room and put the compound on lockdown. The power went first, and she routed everything to the room she sat in only. By now the patron was most likely in his panic room, and she had that on lockdown, too. A few keystrokes later, she was able to export the files on the man’s hard drives, including video footage to the Jamaican compound, and when the export was complete, she crashed the system, including the compound’s link to cloud storage folders.

Jaden desperately counted the handful of minutes remaining. She would barely have enough time to set up her diversion just before she went back for Jonah. But she raided a few cleaning supplies and ripped the legs off of her slutty girl body suit. She cobbled the chemicals together and used her jury rigged fishnet bags to hang her makeshift bombs off to the right side of the subterranean entrance.

She only had to take the bottom of the platform shoe off to get her explosive starter from the left heel and charges from the right one.

The net from the second stocking leg was used as a catchall for her stolen ammo concealed in a planter and also set with the second shoe’s contents.

A trip wire was the last thing she set with the garrote from inside her top, and she anchored it to an automatic machine gun. It would auto fire once tripped, and the spray should be nice and wild. That would give her a chance to get the second and third waves of her solo assault off without a hitch. She ran back for Jonah. She had to get him away from this door before he was in the line of fire, and she only had a few minutes to do so.

When she opened the closet door, Jonah almost fell out. He was barely cognizant, and he was unable to hold himself completely upright.

If he died, it would be her fault. Jaden bent her knees, and Jonah’s body slung over her shoulder as she winced. He was taller than she was, but she was able to keep him off of the ground for the most part as she struggled to the beach. The going was almost too slow, but Jaden refused to stop moving.

She was almost at the last of her reserves when she smelled the water and knew that salvation was close.

As she reached the edge where sand met the loam of jungle grass, she dropped Jonah and left the phone with him. At least if something happened to her and she was incapacitated, Jonah could still be rescued, that was, if there was anything left of him to save, but at least his body would be able to have a proper burial. That would be more than she got with her purchase price for failure.

It took her a minute, but she was able to construct a natural-looking swell in the sand. It took a moment to persuade him, but after she goaded then bullied Jonah with insults, he was able to crawl to the hole and lie down within it.

Another moment more and he was covered with an armful of plants that naturally grew in the area.

The hidey-hole would pass muster so long as he remained still, and as long as no one that walked by was too observant.

There wasn’t even the chance to look back when she walked away from the man that had gotten into her heart. She had to set off the homemade bombs when the guards returned from the false alert to provide enough diversion for them to get safely away and without a chase.

Napalm and Death

She only had to walk half of the distance back, and she was within shooting range.

That was after she climbed a tree. Or at least she hoped so. The range of her gun was being stretched to the limit from here, but she had to be as close to the beach as possible. Otherwise, she would be stranding herself amid a firefight.

The wait wasn’t long, even though it felt that way amid the foliage. She saw a crowd of men burst in a flurry from several SUVs, and she took aim as she waited for the perfect moment. The moment came when one of the heavily armed men walked toward the entrance to the basement. He unknowingly tripped the first assault, a semi-automatic machine gun whose deadly projectiles sang a song of death and carnage.

There was a retort of answering gunfire in the direction of the bullet cascade, and she counted to five, waiting for her initial trap to stop the men who took cover. When the men became curious enough and fanned out in search of the assailant, it was time for part two. She shot with perfect accuracy into the bag of canisters to trip the charge, and she heard the men scream when the flaming napalm rained over their heads.