Second Sight (12 page)

He waited for an answer; yet, the silence stretched. He had a feeling Joe hadn’t been used to being put in his place.

“Very well, Zachary. But let me make myself clear. A lot of my time, energy, and resources have gone into this. This is a Group Nine operative we are talking about here. Every single one of us at this table has been affected by those fuckers. So when you say you need to be certain that you are doing the right thing for you, it might be prudent to also realize that this isn’t solely about you. This is about all of us, and many, many more people.”

Zach grinned, hearing the glacial tone of Joe’s voice, and surprised at the profanity. He tried to recall hearing Joe swear, but couldn’t. Apparently, the man meant business.

“I understand, but my original statement stands. For all we know, he could be nothing but a driver or part of the cleaning crew.”

Joe scoffed. “You and I both know that’s not true.”

“Probably not, but I want to do my own research.”

“Very well.”

Joe’s wheelchair tires squealed on the kitchen floor. “I’ll expect an answer in forty-eight hours. I have a lot of pieces that need to be put in place in order for this to work. I’m ready to go, Thomas.”

He hadn’t even known Thomas was in the house. As the front door closed, he put his head in hands and wondered exactly what type of assassin he would be on this assignment if he couldn’t even sense another person in the room.

“Are you okay?” Ella asked.

He nodded. “You sure were horrible.”

“I know, and I’m sorry.”

“Why did you act that way?”

“I just don’t want Joe to think anything is off.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, and the doorbell rang.

“That must be one of the designers,” he mumbled as he stood.

“Yes. Let’s get this over with.”

They walked to the front door together, their shoulders brushing. They didn’t hold hands or touch each other in an intimate way.

“Before we answer this, I just have a couple words of advice,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Choose the black one.”

Chapter 20

As the designer slipped a red silk gown over her head, Ella had to admit she was enjoying the experience. She’d been living in sweatpants and t-shirts for the past five years, and playing dress up this afternoon had been fun.

She narrowed down her choices to the simple, red silk sheath, which skimmed her curves nicely to her knees, but she wasn’t sure if it looked classy enough. The strapless, ocean-blue dress beaded with pearls also appealed to her, but in the end, she kept going back to the simple, yet very elegant long black dress.

The delicate, over-the-shoulder sash really made her collarbone stand out, and the dress fit her perfectly. There wouldn’t be any alterations as would be necessary with the red dress, which had too much room in the bust.

“Now with this, you can wear some red jewelry, or you could even go with black,” Liz, the designer, a woman in her early fifties, said. She’d hand-crafted all five of the dresses she’d brought with her.

Ella had immediately dismissed the pink dress with the tight bodice and the flaring skirt, as well as the neon-purple halter dress. The pink reminded her of fairy godmothers; the purple, hookers.

Too bad they didn’t make a dress specifically for an assassin’s escort.

“You know, Liz, I think I really like the black.”

Liz smiled, her green eyes glittering. “I agree. I knew that would be the one for you the second I laid eyes on you, but I learned a long time ago that clients need to see everything for themselves.”

“Do they always agree with you, in the end?” she asked as Liz pulled the sheath over her head.

“Most of the time. If they don’t, I usually get a phone call telling me that they should have listened to me.”

Ella laughed and reached for her robe, all while realizing how much she’d enjoyed the afternoon.

As she pushed her hair back from her face, Liz asked, “What happened, honey?”

She flinched away before Liz’s fingers could touch her face.

“I-I was in an accident.”

Liz gave her a sad smile. “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope you weren’t hurt too badly.”

She frowned, thinking about how she’d almost been destroyed from the inside out. “I’m okay.”

Liz nodded as she turned to gather up the dresses splayed across the bed and hang them on the movable rack she’d brought with her. “I know from experience that sometimes, the scars on the inside hurt worse than anything on the outside.”

She wanted to know what the woman meant, but then, a knock sounded at the door.

“Just a minute!” she yelled as she tossed the robe on the bed and pulled on her sweatpants and a tank top.

She went to the door and opened it. Zach stood there in a tuxedo, his hair perfectly coiffed, her own reflection staring back at her in his glasses. Her gaze traveled over his broad shoulders, his mid-section, and down to his shiny shoes. The man looked like he could walk any Hollywood red carpet.

She let out a low whistle as she straightened his bow tie, and he grinned.

“I take it I look okay?” he asked.

“You look very nice.” It seemed to her the tux had been made specifically for him, fitting him perfectly across the shoulders and throughout the chest.

“Very nice?”

She laughed. “Handsome?”

“Dashing?”

“Dashingly handsome?”

“That’s what I was looking for,” he said with a smile.

“You could definitely give George Clooney a run for his money in the suave, dashingly handsome department.”

“Excellent.”

“I’ll be leaving now,” Liz said as she came up behind Ella. “Oh, my. He does look good, doesn’t he?”

“We’ve agreed on dashingly handsome,” Ella said.

“And suave. I like that suave part, as well,” Zach murmured.

The two women both laughed, and Ella shook her head at his endearing arrogance.

“You two enjoy the rest of the afternoon,” Liz said as they walked her to the front door.

Ella shut it and turned to Zach.

“Come here,” he growled as he pulled her toward him.

His mouth claimed hers in a passionate kiss, and she slipped her arms around his neck. Placing his hand at her lower back, he held her close.

“We were so rudely interrupted before,” he said a moment later.

“Yes.”

“I’m thinking we should continue fucking each other senseless. What about you? I can’t seem to get enough of you.”

His hand grazed over her hardened nipple, eliciting a shiver through her. She pushed away all the thoughts of Group Nine, what she’d gotten herself into while wallowing in her hatred, and concentrated on the man in front of her who brought her such pleasure, she could barely remember her own name when they were intimate.

“Yes,” she whispered as his lips met the column of her throat. “Fuck me senseless, Zach.”

Chapter 21

Zach sat on his bed with the door shut. He needed to concentrate on the file Joe had given him, not be constantly distracted by Ella. The woman had definitely gotten under his skin, and he’d be a happy man to never have to leave her for the rest of the day. However, things like the need for food, using the bathroom, taking care of Savannah, and deciding whether or not he would kill someone had to take precedence at some point.

He ran his hand over the papers slowly as he interpreted the Braille.

His target’s name was David Foust, age forty-two, and a former Marine. Foust had had an excellent record in the military up until three years ago, where it appeared he’d simply vanished off the face of the Earth. No wife or kids and both parents dead, it had been a clean break. There didn’t exist so much as a gas receipt from him, and if Joe were to be believed, that was an indicator that he definitely belonged to Group Nine. From what Zach understood, they kept their operatives close and covered their tracks very efficiently.

He flipped the page and memorized the man’s file—he’d served for twenty years in the Marines, with no significant issues. His record wasn’t spotless, but overall, he’d been a good soldier. The infractions included a couple of fistfights, and he’d back-talked a superior once.

“Certainly nothing to get over-excited about,” he murmured.

Now Ella,
she
was something to get over-excited about.

“Focus, man. Focus.”

The next section told of David’s service. He’d been to the Middle East on six tours, about nine months each, give or take a few months. Again, not any issues, until the last time—the Fall of 2012, in Iraq.

On patrol in a small northern village, his unit had been given intel a small insurgence of Taliban had invaded the area. According to the report, the platoon had gone from house to house, finding most of the villagers agreeable.

That all changed when they’d arrived a
t
Abdul-Bari Mohammed’s house. The man had not been pleased to see the soldiers, and that had seemed to ange
r
Sergean
t
David Foust quite a bit.

According to the interpreter, Foust had argued with the man, but Abdul-Bari had stood his ground and would not allow the soldiers in his house. Finally, the unit had left and continued their rounds. On their way back through town, the unit had decided to break off into groups of two, and Foust had been paired off with Peter Troy, a corporal from Tennessee. As they’d passed Abdul-Bari’s hut, Foust had screamed and run for the door, taking it down with such force, it had flown across the small room. According to Troy, Foust had then opened fire on the whole family, killing all ten of them within seconds. The file said that Troy had been put in a psychiatric hospital shortly after that with severe PTSD and mumbling about mutilated babies.

The family members had included Mr. Mohamed, his wife, their daughter and her husband, their two kids, including an infant, along with Mr. Mohamed’s son, his pregnant wife and their two sons, ages two and three.

Troy had managed to put a bullet in Foust’s side before a few other members of the unit showed up and stopped him from outright killing the Sergeant. Foust had been taken to a hospital, and had disappeared from there.

Zach sighed and dropped the papers on the bed. He took off his glass and rubbed his eyes, then decided to lie down.

He needed to think.

Wartime tended to be ugly for all those involved. Suicide and PTSD ran rampant among the veterans in the United States from the wars in the Middle East.

During war, it was also kill or be killed.  He’d seen calm, composed men become completely unglued when being shot at, either crumbling into tears or deciding to go all Rambo over everyone. It took a special kind of person to maintain a level head in the midst of the bone-chilling fear that being under fire could bring.

What David Foust had done had been wrong on so many levels, and although Zach’s first instinct screamed to take the job and get rid of this scumbag, he still had a bit of lingering doubt. What if David had simply snapped? Yet, the government had scooped him up and put him to work as a black operative. If that hadn’t been the case, the man would have been court-marshaled, and perhaps that was exactly what Group Nine recruite
d—
those who had gone off the deep end, whose moral judgements stood questionable at best, yet could still be controlled.

He reached for the papers and sat up again, throwing his legs over the side of the bed. As he found where he’d left off, he dug his toes into the plush carpet and wondered what color it was. He’d have to ask Ella.

Taking a deep breath, explored the report further.

Next came a list of clandestine missions Joe and his people believed David had been on, and the number of bodies left behind turned out to be substantial.

An American scientist living in China, who supposedly sold biological warfare secrets to the Chinese.

A NSA Specialist in Russia, again for traitorous activity.

A friend of the Vice-President who had threatened to expose his affair with an eighteen-year-old man.

He found a couple others—a drug lord in Cambodia, a human traffic smuggler from Honduras. Zach felt nothing as he read the list.

However, his blood boiled at the description of the next victim.

That eighteen-year-old boy the Vice-President had been banging? Apparently, Tyrone Silva had been gunned down in his apartment, as had his whole family, including his mother, grandmother, and his younger sister, ten years old. As far as Joe’s people could tell, the hit hadn’t been sanctioned by Group Nine.

Zach sighed and squeezed the bridge of his nose. He understood that bad things needed to happen to bad people and sometimes, the innocent got caught up in the middle. However, David seemed to be spiraling out of control if the hit hadn’t been ordered, and even if it had been, it was an unwritten assassins’ rule that you didn’t take the innocents if you didn’t have to. Not that there existed a written rule book, but even assassins had to live by a code of ethics. Just like in Iraq, David had been out to destroy anything in his path, and killing a ten-year-old girl and a grandma violated the code.

Lying back on the bed, the decision solidified in his mind. This guy definitely was a danger to not only the bad guys, but a lot of average, everyday people, as well. It was one thing to play in the clandestine underbelly of the world, but you didn’t involve anyone you didn’t have to.

Standing, he picked up his glasses and moved to the bedroom door, opening it. “Ella?”

“Yes?”

“Could you please call Joe for me? I need to speak to him.”

He heard her soft footsteps coming down the hall. “Did you make a decision?”

“I did.”

“And what is it?”

He imagined her standing in front of him with her arms crossed over her chest, her head tilted to the side as she waited for his answer, her inquisitive gaze boring into him. He shut his eyes, wishing he could see her. Yes, after the accident, all his senses had been heightened, but sight had been the most precious to him. He could tell so much about someone through body posture and the look on their face. When he announced they were going to murder someone, he hoped he would hear her true feelings in her voice.

Opening his eyes, he felt just a tinge of disappointment that his wish hadn’t been granted. He’d prayed for the return of his sight many times, and it had never been answered.

“I need to do this,” he said, his voice soft.

“You aren’t God, Zach. You don’t get to decide who lives and who dies. You don’t have to do anything.”

He nodded and crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the doorframe. “I know. But this guy is bad. He’s killed a lot of innocents, Ella. Kids and grandmas. That shit doesn’t fly with me. He deserves to die.”

She remained silent for a long moment. “Okay. I’ll get Joe on the phone for you.”

He heard her turn and take a couple of steps down the hallway. “Ella?”

“Yes?”

The words ‘I love you’ sat on his lips, but he couldn’t get them out. They’d come out of nowhere, and he didn’t know if that had been spurred in response to the tension between them on his call, or if the past couple of days had just made him all gooey inside.

“What is it, Zach?”

He grinned, hoping the smile hid his discomfort. “I just wanted to tell you how glad I am I met you.”

“Me, too.”

It had been a short time, but he felt it in his bones—something more than friendship or ‘friends with benefits’ toward Ella. Was it love? Or just his cock talking?

He honestly couldn’t say as he’d never really stuck around in one place for enough time to get attached to a woman. Yet, here, he’d been kind of abandoned, and he’d made it his mission out of pure amusement to break down Ella’s walls. What he did know was that he liked what she did to him. She made him happy, made him think that nothing stood in his way that he couldn’t beat.

Still, it had only been a few days. Being in love after such a short period of time seemed so ridiculous. Also, how did she make him feel that way? Was it just because of the sex? Frankly, he didn’t know.

“I’ll go get Joe on the phone for you, okay?”

“Thank you.”