support, he might’ve held on a bit longer. Might have… what? Managed to retire and slip quietly away to a foreign beach where he’d spend his days trading tequila body shots with a naked beauty or two?
With a low, cynical laugh, he stubbed out the cigarette he hadn’t really wanted in the cheap plastic ashtray. Flipped the lid on his lighter. Open and shut. Snap. Snap.
The prickle on the back of his neck warned him that the joyless screw he’d indulged in last night could very well be the unremarkable period on the end of an otherwise exciting life. And if so, he wanted to know why, nosy, self- destructive bastard that he was.
He continued to pick apart the classified information on the screen, more vital for what it didn’t say than for what it did. The facts seemed complete on the surface, and the job appeared to be highly justified, a no- brainer, as it involved protecting American citizens from terrorism through the machinations of a traitor. Absent was the usual moral dilemma he weighed with each assignment before executing a flawless kiss of death.
“Kiss of death?” Jude whispered. “I’m a killer? Sweet Jesus, no.”
Why had he been chosen? The fact was, his days had been numbered before Dietz dumped this dossier into his lap, and with it an order that should’ve gone to another operative. One who wasn’t beginning to crack around the seams, who hadn’t nearly botched dispatching his last tango.
Which meant SHADO needed a fall guy, and who better than a man who’d become unstable and therefore expendable?
But Dietz had made a couple of mistakes. For one, Jude wasn’t so far gone that he hadn’t clued in on the almost imperceptible discrepancies between the information they’d fed him and his own sources. Just a little more time, and he’d solve the puzzle. Second, he’d prepared long ago for just such an emergency. An elaborate ace up his sleeve even an asshole like Dietz would appreciate.
If only Jude could make sense of this maze of half-truths.
As afternoon melted into evening, he poured two fingers of Jim Beam into a Styrofoam cup and ignored the rumbling in his stomach. The whiskey blazed a path to his gut and, unfortunately, to his groin. His unsatisfying encounter the previous night had left him hungry for the darker, richer pleasures to be found at home, where the sharing of flesh was like savoring various types of wine. Some sweet, others crisp with more bite. All heady.
God, he missed Liam. His friend hated it when Jude disappeared for weeks with no explanation. Worried himself sick. And what Jude wouldn’t give right now to be buried balls deep in that tight ass-
“Stop, you idiot,” he muttered.
He refocused his mental energies. It wasn’t only his life on the line here, but the lives of thousands. Danger, closing in on Americans from all fronts. Hell, just last month there was that theft of-
The answer came, ripping the breath from his lungs. His heart slammed against his rib cage, and for one moment, the cold assassin was nothing more than a frightened man. Horrified and nowhere near prepared for the path set before him.
Jude slumped, curled in on himself. “No. I don’t want to remember. Please.”
But the dam had burst wide, and there was no stopping the flood.
“Sweet Christ.” Elbows on the desk, Jude dropped his face into his hands. In the wake of this terrible exercise of connect the dots, he’d be goddamned lucky if he didn’t wind up at the bottom of the Atlantic. In five different oil drums.
Because Dietz was coming for him. No doubt about it.
If he had a whisper of a prayer of avoiding a grisly fate, he had to work fast.
Clicking the X in the top right corner of the laptop’s screen, he closed the classified file and opened another. Fingers flying, he activated a program he’d hoped never to use, but was damned glad he’d put into place. Next, he composed a simple coded message a ten-year-old couldn’t decipher, yet not so difficult a trusted operative couldn’t, either.
“Okay… got it.” He blew out a deep breath. It wasn’t perfect, but would have to do.
Last, he opened his e- mail and hit Send. He waited, every muscle tense, while the new files, along with the classified one, shot to six different destinations and burrowed into six different hard drives. A high- tech worm that would make any hacker cream in his shorts-and just might save his ass.
Action complete.
“Thank fuck.” Jude attacked the keyboard again, clicking rapidly. His instincts screamed Get out, but he didn’t dare leave the last two tasks undone.
Precious seconds were whittled away, scraping his nerves raw, as he accessed the script file he’d written to initiate the virus that would destroy his hard drive. The final box popped onto the screen, and he executed his CTRL+F+U command.
Jude gave a grim chuckle at the double entendre in his chosen three- finger salute and wiped the sweat from his brow. Time to make like a ghost.
The door to his motel room burst open, hitting the inside wall like a gunshot. Jude spun, the SIG from the desktop already in hand, arm leveling at the leader of the traitor’s cleanup crew.
Too late. A pop split the air, and pain blossomed in his chest. He stumbled backward, managing to get off a shot, the explosion deafening in the tiny space. The leader went down with a grunt as Jude trained his gun on the second man, tried to squeeze the trigger. And couldn’t. His arm fell limp and useless to his side.
The second man crossed the room, a smirk on his ugly, pockmarked face. Cold overtook the pain, spreading from Jude’s chest to his limbs. Numbing every muscle. Looking down, he stared in fascinated horror at the dart embedded in his left pectoral.
He swayed, speaking quickly. His life depended on it. “Tell your boss I know everything. I put safeguards in place, and he’ll never find them without me,” he rasped, the drug freezing his vocal cords, fast. “If I die… the whole world will know… what he’s done.”
Jude’s legs buckled and he slumped to the floor, completely nerveless. Aware, but paralyzed, along for the ride and at their mercy. A nightmare.
A pair of heavy-soled leather boots appeared in his line of vision as the second man paused, obviously peering at the laptop. “You smart-ass sonofabitch,” Crater Face hissed.
Jude pictured the cartoon gopher dancing across the screen, shooting the finger at the henchman, and a hoarse laugh barked from his dry throat. The boots backed up a couple of steps.
Jude’s last image was a snapshot of the man’s right shitkicker rocketing toward his face.
And Jude had awakened in a strange hospital. Had been told he’d been in a terrible car accident.
Blind. Confused.
All a lie.
“I work for Michael Ross at SHADO. I’m a fucking
By Robert Dietz, the motherfucker.
Thank God for Liam and-
Lily.
Lily Vale.
Agent Lily Vale. Fellow assassin. Black widow.
They’d never formally met. But he’d brushed past her at SHADO’s compound, seen her at meetings and debriefings. He’d been intrigued at the thought of getting closer to her, but their assignments had always taken them in opposite directions.
Until now.
Jude began to laugh. Harsh, bitter laughter, agony spearing his chest, and not just from the poison she was feeding him.
Dietz had sent her to find the files.
And eliminate him.
How pathetic am I? How sad is that?
He laughed until tears streamed down his face, and the laughter became something else, splitting his chest in two.
The irony killed him. He’d spent months after the “accident” wishing he would’ve died.
And Lily, who had breached his defenses, made him fall in love, was going to see he got his wish.
Fifteen
