The Laughing Assassin [Assassin's Diary] (Siren Publishing Classic) (3 page)

The woman-child lacked enough meat on her bones to even put up a good fight, and the only saving grace was the lack of track marks on her body. Given how clean the girl’s mouth was, she wasn’t smoking anything either. It was more than most people had to make their fresh starts with.

But she did feel responsible somehow. Jaden knew well the feeling of being alone in the world and no one else caring if there was a meal or not. A bed or not. Love or not.

“I don’t want to go to the police. Just leave me here please.” Jaden stopped the car on the side of the road and looked out the window. They were on I-40, and there was nothing for miles in either direction. What was this scrappy child going to do? The girl was naked and wounded to boot. Would she Dumpster dive and get hooked on drugs to hide the pain of what her life had become? The same woman Jaden could have been if not for her Rōnin master? This girl had spirit and deserved the same chances that everyone in the world had for a fresh start.

“So where are you going to go then?” Jaden knew that she had just broken the number one rule of her life. Don’t get emotional or personally involved. And the tenuous attachment with this girl certainly had already done that in spades.

“It doesn’t matter where I go.” But somehow, now it did. Jaden found that she actually cared. That was the very reason she avoided these situations like the plague.

A scant hour later, Jaden had the girl ensconced in her apartment. It was a downtown loft over an empty store front that she also owned, but she could never decide on a business to fill the lower space with. So the empty front remained a shell of building with just cardboard over the windows to keep out prying eyes. She still didn’t know the young woman’s name, but that would have to be hashed out later.

A trip to a major chain department store gave her someplace to put together a bundle of clothes and toiletries for her new roommate. All of the garments seemed too big or too short, but Jaden would at least get something for the girl to cover herself with. She had no idea what to offer the girl to banish some of the sadness in her eyes, but she did remember the joy of making cupcakes with her mother as a child. So Jaden grabbed a few boxes of cake mix and frosting to bring back as well.

On the way back she made a phone call to the one person she trusted to check over the girl and not report her to the authorities. She wasn’t physically in need of emergency medical attention enough to warrant a trip to the hospital, but it was best not to leave anything to chance.

As the weeks progressed, habits formed and her friend had a name. Krisliva, which was a hybrid of her real name of Kristine Oliver meshed together. Kris was smart and strong willed. Jaden was able to prop together a set of documents that were good enough to fool the government so Kris could complete her GED and place her one step closer to the fresh start that was well deserved.

They mostly began baking due to the fact that Kris was laid up healing from the scabbing brands and scrapes. Kris was vain enough that she didn’t want another person to look at her while she was at her worst. But they continued because it was fun and solidified a bond that both of them sorely needed. The cupcakes they made at first were from the box until adventure struck and they began baking scratch-made ones while watching Food Network at two a.m. The flavors grew out of control, as did the experiments with taste and scent.

Jaden’s personal favorite was rum cake with buttered wasabi frosting. Kris, however, loved carrot-cinnamon topped with granola and Greek yogurt.

Nowhere to Hide

Present Day, Somewhere in Jamaica

“You know we’re running out of time here right?” Toro asked the single question that Jonah didn’t want to acknowledge. He could make this happen. He had to.

“You let me worry about that. I’m close, I can almost taste it.” If Jonah could just get his mind on track and put the puzzle that was
her
together, that was.

“You said that yesterday and the week before that. Oh actually, you said that last month, too. We can send Anatta to the auction. She would get the job done, and Stein is capable of reining her in with a little work.” Toro smiled. The expression was unusually smug, as if Toro had discovered the cure for world hunger with his unorthodox solution.

“I’d rather not trust half my covert operation to our resident Ms. Planters, but you are more than welcome to do so next time.”

“Hell. No. I like having a left and right nut, Jonah.”

“Well then, stop trying to make me work with her. You vetted her, Toro, and even with what you knew, chose to bring her anyway. That makes you responsible for her.”

“She makes the best weapons in the world. It seems like you could accept a little crazy with her résumé.” Toro shook his head from side to side, and Jonah felt his annoyance factor ratchet sky-high. There was no way he was going to let Toro be right. He was going to find
her
and prove everyone wrong. “Fine, but if we’re not ready for the auction, it’s your fault.”

Jonah pinched the bridge of his nose. “Toro…” His voice trailed off as he tried to hold on to the last shred of patience he had at his disposal. “Just get the fuck out of my office. Please.” The last word was an attempt to be polite, even though that was far from how Jonah felt in the moment.

But Toro left as requested, and Jonah hunched back over the keyboards to his left and right as if the multicomputer held every answer to life’s invariable questions. For him it did.

Hours later, he looked up and saw it was nearly the end of the ninety-seventh day of his search. Yet another day to add to his tally, and another point against him in the chess match he had with a woman that didn’t know he even existed. The main compound where the Human International Trafficking Unit, also known as HIT U, called home was quiet at this time of night.

This was his preferred time to work, as he didn’t have thirty things to concentrate on or the melee of questions he fielded from the operatives on a daily basis. Sebastian Jonah Whitmore stretched in the supposedly ergonomic leather chair in front of his desk. His back was killing him, and he had the makings of a monster headache.

He had been at his computer twelve hours a day for the last three months in an attempt to ferret information out of his hard drive and the World Wide Web. He was sick and tired of clicking away at the damn thing as if it would give him the answers to life. The worst part was his only real clue was a photo taken from a security camera at Pietr Jourdain’s vacation manse.

Not only was the photo years old and she may not look the same, but she was covered head to toe in black. Armed only with the picture, he had nothing to go on but height and approximate weight.

He sought one of the deadliest women on Earth. That was, if half of the work that was attributed to her was honestly hers. And no matter what he did or what rock he looked beneath, she was more elusive than ever.

The longer he was forced to look, the more his admiration for her grew. He was a master hacker, and he still had more questions than answers about her, although he just now figured out who she was. She would be perfect for his plan. But based on how hard he had to work to find her, either he was looking for a ghost or she didn’t want to be found. He couldn’t blame her, as she had assassinated some big fish in her day, and there would be many people seeking their righteous pound of flesh from her hide.

After weeks of frustration, he saw her carefully concealed identity begin to unfold. But in order to find her, he had to backtrack the last ten years and find the jobs attributed to her. She would have had to enter and leave the country the target was in at some point during the operation. No matter how good she was, killing someone from another country was nearly impossible.

Until he found himself on the right track when he combed the airport security cameras for a week before and after the handful of jobs he was sure she actually performed were complete.

First, he discovered that she used a fake passport on entrance to the USA, as he wasn’t able to find anything resembling her using the name she checked in with at her prior connections. He found a grainy photo from an airport security camera at ILM. She would have been coming back stateside from a job in the Ukraine, and he knew he had hit pay dirt. She left using the arrivals gate, and she didn’t fly back out for several months. So he knew she had a home based within the area for certain, but it gave him a start, as there were only a handful of passengers on the flight from Miami that continued to Wilmington.

After eliminating the other travelers as his quarry, he saw she was slick enough to register a different name for the last connection. She made it appear as if her debarking alias was a local that had gotten off at her destination even while she checked back in and flew homeward under yet another assumed name. But with a bit of fact-checking, he found the real Susan Jennings who lived at 145 Sycamore Lane was nowhere near similar in appearance to the identity of the woman who flew into Miami. The actual Susan was a five-foot-ten-inch bottle blonde, and his prey was just over five feet and Afro-American to boot.

But he was able to use profiling software based on the passport photo to unearth a driver’s license issued in North Carolina, and then he had her. The photos he found confirmed not only that she was the woman he sought, but that she was far from photogenic. But the last part had no bearing on what he needed her for.

Even better, he next found tax records and zoning permits under the same owner. She was a small business proprietor for a bakery in a city along the North Carolina coast. After that point it was a cakewalk to dig up what he needed to know. He had finally tracked down one of the most feared women in the world. And after a peek at the time, it had only taken him ninety-eight days and thirty-two minutes. Jonah sent a message to Toro in part to gloat and asked him to come to his office. He had a flight to catch, and he needed Toro to get Dayna and Johannes on board as well.

Toro cracked open the door. “So you found her?”

“Yeah.” It was all he needed to say.

“So am I doing the usual bag and tag?”

“Not this time.” Toro cocked a brow, and Jonah could see the questions ready to fall from the other man’s lips. “I will go and retrieve her.” Toro had the right to look shocked. It was usually the other man’s job to go and proposition future agents.

But this time, he wanted to be the one to meet her in the flesh. Jaden Bishop was one of the smartest women alive. The fact that he hunted her for three months and one week nonstop had his interest piqued. He had to find out if she was as smart as he thought she was, or if she was just that lucky.

He knew one thing for sure. She was the one that botched the Jourdain job all of those years ago for his team’s recon. If nothing else, Jonah knew that simple fact was leverage he could utilize to his advantage. That was if, Jaden wasn’t jaded from years of for-hire murders and stealthy assassinations.

* * * *

Jaden watched as Krisliva walked to the front door of the bakery with a backpack slung over one shoulder headed for the college campus.

“Make sure you’re back by seven tonight.” Kris gave a rushed agreement on the way out, and Jaden just hoped the girl wouldn’t forget.

“I will. Oh yeah, by the way… I had a dream last night.”

Not now, Jaden thought.
I need this like I need another hole in the head.

Kris had a tendency to see things when she was asleep that always came to pass eventually. The last time Kris had a dream of that nature, she told Jaden that she couldn’t leave town. It was at end of March 2011. Jaden was supposed to fly to Sacramento with a transfer in Phoenix. But Kris was frantic and begged her not to go.

Jaden spent the entire day calming her best friend and opted to wait until the following day to depart ILM. When April 1
^st
came around, Jaden watched the news with Kris, and they both looked on in horror as the featured story was about the connecting flight to Sacramento. No one was killed when a six foot hole opened into the cabin of the plane. But the flight was aborted and forced to land in Yuma.

“What is it?”

“You’re going to meet a man.” Kris winked and walked out of the door, which was the only point in the younger woman’s favor. Otherwise, Kris would get the blessing out of a lifetime.

It’s not possible.

For Jaden to meet someone, she had to actually be visible to other people.

Between the bakery, everyday life, training Kris on the fine arts necessary for an assassin, and the occasional mercenary job that she took to keep her skills honed, Jaden had her schedule so packed that she was barely able to keep her legs shaved, let alone actually have a man test out the smoothness of her skin.

And tonight was no different. Jaden and Kris had to practice their latest cake recipe for an upcoming wedding, and they were just a handful of weeks away from the big event.

The bride had some issues making up her mind about what she wanted. At first, it was red velvet cake, and then she wanted blueberry. After that she asked to taste the chocoholic until she decided on champagne. It was already out of hand at that point, but there was no choice other than to pacify the woman.

Not to mention the order was huge. As there were a little under eight hundred guests, and the order per dozen was thirty dollars without decorations, there was quite a bit of money to be made. For the sixty-six dozen cakes, she was going to net two grand before the first pearl was made to go on top. The fee for the decorations, fondant, and the like would make her another fifteen hundred, so she tried to make whatever the rich customer wanted work out.