“I’m sorry—” he begins.
Billie sighs to herself, but she knows what she has to do. She lets the coat fall open a little, just enough so that the clerk can see the distinctive satin costume, the collar with its trademark bow tie, the shadow at her cleavage. “Look, he’s my boyfriend, and we had a fight before he came to Chicago. I just want to surprise him with his favorite fantasy,” she tells him in a breathy tone.
His hands are shaking as he looks up the number. “612.”
“Thank you,” she says, pulling her coat closed. She’s broken every rule of their organization. She’s gone alone to finish a group mission. She’s made herself obvious, memorable. She’s guaranteed that if the desk clerk is ever questioned, he will be able to describe her down to the little freckle on her collarbone. But she doesn’t care. She is allowing anger to fuel the job, and it feels good.
She rides the elevator up to the sixth floor and heads for the room. She tests the door handle—a shocking number of people forget to lock up when they leave—but it doesn’t give. She is just about to pick the lock when a cheerful voice calls out from down the hall.
“Ma’am? Are you locked out?” It’s a housekeeper, about twenty, too young to be tired of the job yet. Most hotel maids hurry past with their eyes down, worn down by drudgery, but this one is still shiny and bright as a new penny as she approaches.
Billie gives her a smile and rolls her eyes in mock annoyance. “I forgot my key and my husband must be in the shower. So stupid of me!”
The maid reaches past her and uses the passkey. “No problem.”
“You’re a doll.” Billie blows her a kiss as she slips into the room. She closes the door behind her, careful to lock it again. She’s not surprised to find the nephew is a slob. Traces of cut lines powder the coffee table, and empty champagne bottles are upended into a potted tree in the corner. Heaps of discarded clothes litter the floor. She steps over the pile nearest the bed, noting the pair of skid-marked underwear on the top. She kicks them aside and surveys the room. Outside the bathroom door is a small alcove with a vanity and a pair of marble sinks. The complimentary toiletries are all open, some spilling their contents onto the counter. She flicks all the lights off, plunging the room into darkness. She’s left the curtains slightly parted, and the only illumination in the room comesfrom the street outside. She has prepared the trap. There is nothing to do now but wait.
It’s only a quarter of an hour later when the door opens. The man who enters fumbles with the light switch but can’t manage it, swearing softly. Billie can smell the liquor fumes as he stumbles towards the bathroom, and her eyes, accustomed to the darkness, can just make out his silhouette. Silently, she slips off her shoes and lunges, crossing the space between them in three steps, and gathering just enough speed to vault herself upwards, using his thigh as a launchpad. In one fluid motion she wraps her legs around his neck and twists her entire body, whipping him onto his back as she lands in a crouch over him. The air is knocked out of his lungs, leaving him gasping and disoriented. Before he can recover his breath, she flips him onto his belly, grinding his face into the carpet. With one knee in the small of his back, she brings her arm around his neck, clasping her elbow with her other hand, drawing it tight and cutting off his air. The whole maneuver has been completely silent and executed in almost total darkness. It has taken less than ten seconds. If she had been in a better mood, she would have held him gently in that position until he slipped into unconsciousness, then strangled him.
But Billie is not in a good mood. Just before he loses consciousness, she grabs either side of his head, using his chin for leverage as she jerks her hands in opposite directions. The snap, she always thinks, sounds like cracking a stalk of celery. He goes boneless and soft in her arms and she lets his torsofall to the floor. It will be simple to make it look like a drunken accident, a fall into the coffee table, maybe. She switches on the light, planning where to stage the body. She will have to slam his head into the corner of the coffee table to get a little blood flowing, but that doesn’t bother her. She turns him over, and when the light falls on his face, she stares at him for a long minute, realizing just how much trouble she is in.
“Well, shit,” she says as she slumps onto the sofa, considering her options.
Billie Webster has just made the biggest mistake a professional assassin can make.
She has killed the wrong man.
Chapter Two
“Isn’t this where you tossthings out of my suitcase and beg me not to go?” I asked, throwing a pair of boot-cut jeans into my mini-duffel.
“No,” Taverner answered calmly. He was propped against the headboard, eating an apricot and letting the juice drip through his fingers. The shutters were closed—it was too early in the spring to let in the sea breezes—but if they’d been open, I could have seen the broad blue spread of the Aegean rippling away below the cliffs. It would have been a hell of an inducement to stay, but the man in my bed was an even better one.
“You don’t seem upset that I’m leaving,” I said evenly.
“Because I’m not. You’ll go, you’ll do the job, and while you’re away, you’ll miss me.”
“I’m retired,” I reminded him. “This isn’t a job.”
I said it more for my benefit than his. I’d been summonedby the head of the organization we’d both worked for as long as either of us could remember. I had taken forcible retirement a few years before, but good training never dies. The summons hadn’t been much, just a thin, old-fashioned airmail envelope with no return address. Honestly, I hadn’t even known they still made those. I liked the jaunty little blue-and-red stripe around the edge. Inside was a postcard of Colonial Williamsburg with a scribble on the back—Wish you were here! N.Clipped to the postcard was a ticket on the next international flight out of Athens and a printout of a reservation from a cheap car rental at Dulles. They’d left it up to me to make my way to Athens. The ferry ran twice a day, and I had about twenty minutes before the morning boat left.
Taverner took another bite, chewing thoughtfully. “But you hope it’s a job.”
There was a silk blouse in my hands, and I kept folding, but my hands moved a little slower. “Maybe.”
I’d known his smiles for forty years. The one he gave me was gentle, pitying even. “Billie.”
I sighed and gave up folding, chucking the blouse into the bag after the jeans. “Fine. Maybe I miss it.”
“Maybe?” He laughed. “If you’d ever missed me half as much as you miss the job, we’d never have split up.”
“We split up because you married someone else.” I turned back to my packing, throwing a handful of underwear on top of the blouse.
He chose his next words carefully. The subject of his marriage was a minefield, suitable for tiptoes and whispers only.“I married her because I wanted things that you didn’t. That you still don’t.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but he shook his head. “Don’t. You’ll either say something you don’t mean or something I don’t want to hear. So, I’ll talk.” He paused and I shrugged, gesturing for him to go ahead. “You like this paradise you found for us. You like living with me. You might even love me. God knows I love you. But that isn’t enough, is it?”
“Taverner,” I began.