The chopper was a bit obsolete, but that wasn?t a surprise. A lot of regular army units dumped their surplus at reserve posts whenever they upgraded. But she liked the looks of it.
She was probably a little rusty, but did anyone ever really forget how to fly a helicopter?
* * *
Nikki Enders paced the long halls of her family?s Garden District home, her footfalls echoing off the high ceilings and hardwood floors. Mother was somewhere knitting her scarf.
She paused in the library, stood beneath the sway of her father?s one-eyed gaze. The long windows on either side of the portrait made it seem as if Lordly light were pouring down from Heaven. Today his likeness in oil looked puzzled, as if he glared down at a stranger in his domain.
And that was the problem. She didn?t have immediate answers to those increasingly pertinent questions. Her prolonged downtime had facilitated the onset of a slow and uneasy revelation.
She did not, in fact, know who she was or what she was about.
Yes, she was a world-class killer, but there was something machinelike in the way she dispatched her targets, and lately that machine was breaking down. She absently rubbed her injured wrist. It was getting better.
Who she was as a person was something of a mystery even to herself. She looked for a book to read in the library but realized she did not know her own taste in literature. She could not remember the last thing she?d read that wasn?t a technical manual. If asked, she would not have been able to tell anyone her favorite film or musical group or even a television show she was fond of.
As a junior at Loyola, she?d had a boyfriend. They?d been sexually active. She strained to remember what it was like.
She gazed up at her father?s portrait, set her jaw. Yes, there would be a change. She would reintroduce herself to life. She could not have done it when her father was alive, but there was no Lord now to cast out upstart angels.
Meredith. Her sister had to come through for her, had to finish it. Nikki drifted back into the house?s dark depths, her ears open for the clicking of her mother?s knitting needles.
Ortega was angry and afraid.
That he was afraid was what made him angry. Stupid CIA whore. He had a good setup in the United States. He did not want this pissed woman to pull strings with her government friends and have him deported.
He sighed. For the moment it was out of his hands. He could only turn to other business. It would not be professional to let other opportunities lapse just because he?d blown it with Meredith.
He spent an hour making phone calls, checking on his investments, overseeing several projects currently being carried out by underlings. He sent a bundle of cash in a brown paper bag to a detective sergeant with the Oklahoma City Police Department. The price of doing business. He looked at his schedule for the week. In a few days he would take his private jet to his other home, in San Antonio, where he would repeat the process of managing all of his local interests.
In short, he was on top of things.
Ortega turned his attention to the kill team he?d put together to eliminate the target in New Orleans. The men he sent were not subtle. They were vicious bar brawlers and street fighters. Not geniuses, but they were hard as nails and relentless.
And if they failed, then there were always the Sprats.
Little Miss Nikki Enders wouldn?t know what hit her.
21
Meredith Cornwall-Jenkins grinned wide, the Cayuse helicopter roaring through the shallow valley a mere ten feet above the scrub oaks. She had to admit it. The stick felt good in her hands. She?d missed the rush, the earth flashing past below.
