In Too Deep: A Romantic Suspense Novel (33 page)

Mark Snow no longer existed, but instead, there was Marcus Smiley of Green Bay, Wisconsin. I was now Sophie Warbird, his girlfriend and a naturalized citizen originally from Canada. When I asked Mark about the similarity of our new names to our old identities, he nodded. "We've spent a very long time being called our old names. The fact is, while our family names could go away, we've spent too long being called 'Mark' and 'Sophie' to not slip up and ignore when someone says something to us, or to call each other those in public. The same with our signatures. The smaller the change, the easier it will be for us to adapt."

That day, I went one better than my goal of hitting seven of the ten swinging bottles. I actually hit eight, but Mark called it a non-fatal shot, as it just winged the bottle. "In a human, that would bleed like a stuck pig, but he wouldn't be out of action, and he'd recover," he explained. "A great day for you."

I smiled, a warm feeling in my chest at his compliment. It was something that I'd come to accept, the separation of Mark, my boyfriend and love of my life, and Mark the teacher and former contract killer. As a boyfriend, he was affectionate, warm, and kind. He would do all the little things that meant so much, and in terms of intimacy.... well, let's just say I'd lost weight due to more than just the Parkour running.

But Mark the teacher was different. It wasn't that he was cruel. It was just that he was all business. He didn't break me down, but he was a focused taskmaster. If I made a mistake, especially one that could have cost me my life, he made sure I knew in exact detail what I'd done wrong and how to do it right. We would then repeat it as many times as needed until I got the skill or the action down right.

For example, when he taught me how to shoot a pistol, he didn't start with a real pistol. Instead, we started with a BB gun, learning the different parts and how to aim and squeeze the trigger. From there we'd gone up to a .22 caliber round, his favorite training round because it was not only easy to get and cheap, but because it had a very small kick. Only after I could shoot the .22 properly did he move me up to a larger round. I particularly liked the 9mm, but we both knew that sometimes I wouldn't have a choice in what we might need to use.

He'd done the same for every weapon that I had learned how to use, going from small to larger. He'd even compensated for things like learning how to handle rifle kick by stifling any sort of recoil suppression device in the smaller rounds.

We shot in abandoned old buildings, and backwoods areas that nobody would come to bother us. Eastern Germany and Croatia were full of them, and we kept on the move often enough that no local police would get curious about us anyway. It was basic training, laying the foundations for a new life, and a vacation all rolled into one.

That night, we went back to the small inn where we were staying for a hearty dinner of what the locals called z
agrebački odrezak
, a veal steak that had ham and cheese stuffed inside before it was breaded and grilled. Absolutely delicious, and the glutton inside of me was well satiated. I looked at Mark, who was steadily working his way through his own, along with a bowl of the local polenta that the locals called z
ganci.
"Is living this life going to mean I can eat like this every day and still lose weight?" I asked, patting my much firmer stomach. "This is amazing."

Mark chuckled and shook his head. "Sorry my love, but no. Eventually, your body will adapt, and we'll be back to eating normally. However, we should be back in the States by then, so I wouldn't worry about it for now."

It was the only undecided part of our plan. While Mark and I both wanted to launch our two person war on organized crime in our city, the fact of the matter was, I wasn't ready. I may have already killed a man, but that was more due to chance than anything else. The longer we could stay out of the city, and me training, the better off we'd be later on. It wasn't that we were lacking for funds, Mark had millions stashed in various accounts along with a core seed of money that he had invested in stocks, bonds, and various companies through aliases, shell corporations, and numbered accounts.

After dinner, we went back to our room. Croatian inns are not the same as American ones. Our bed was rustic, with a handmade comforter on top that most likely had been made by the owner's wife or mother. It had beautiful patterns interwoven into it, and smelled like it had been stored in a cedar chest when it wasn't being used. The bed itself was soft and thick, suspended on a real rope frame that actually worked better than any metal springs or frame I'd ever had.

Mark pulled out our tablet and turned on our little satellite uplink system. The speed wasn't exactly good enough to stream high definition video, but we didn't use it for such. Instead, we used it for keeping track of Mark's financial packages, read news, and keep in touch with certain people via e-mail. Tabby Williams, my best friend who we had saved from the Confederation, sometimes e-mailed us information about goings on in the city that you couldn't get from the local television stations. She'd become a good little intelligence officer. I hated involving her, but once Tabby sets her mind to something, you might as well agree or you're wasting your breath. The rest of the time we just swapped stories, although we were careful not to give away too many details.

"Anything new?" I asked as I quickly washed up and changed into light shorts and a tank top, not wanting to go to bed with the smell of gunpowder on my hands.

Mark sat silently for a minute, his brow furrowed. Finally, he turned to look at me, and nodded. "We need to go back. Take a look." He passed the tablet over, open to our secured e-mail. What I read shocked me. "See what I mean?"

Dear guys,
the message began. Tabby was careful not to use names at all in the messages she sent us, and the address was nothing more than random numbers and letters. We had sent her the e-mail link through one of our burner phones, so there couldn't be any way to trace it back to us.

There’s rumors that a certain party is about to bring in some interesting imports from out of town. Apparently, the current market share with his nearest competitor wasn't enough for him, and he wants to have the entire market to himself. The people I know don't have a lot of details, they just know it's going to be big, and it's coming into town soon. I'd say sweeps week is upon us!

That was another thing about Tabby, she always tried to write using circumspect language. Not that it helped, even a beginner could see what she was talking about. "So what do you think she means?"

Mark thought about it for a second while he turned the tablet off and shut down the satellite link. "Most likely Owen Lynch is making a play. The Confederation doesn't trust each other enough for them to allow a member to bring in an outside party into town, it would disrupt their own internal balance as much as the city-wide balance. And they have enough ears amongst their own that nobody could pull it off without the knowledge of the rest of the Confederation. But Owen Lynch operates his group with him at the top. He doesn't need to answer to anyone. I'm not saying the Confederation couldn't be doing it, but more than likely it's Lynch."

I thought about it for a moment, then tilted my head. "So why not let him do it? He takes out the Confederation, we only have one enemy to worry about, right?"

Mark shook his head. "No, unfortunately it’s not that easy. If Lynch can consolidate power, he'll be able to put himself in a position where our chances of taking him down dwindle to nothing. We're only two people, we can't stop everything at once. He'd have the manpower and the overall power to just flood the streets and take us out by sheer force of numbers. Secondly, if we take him out directly.... well, put it this way. Let's say a week after we get back, I find out he's going to be in public and I take him out. What do you think happens the very next day?"

I nodded, seeing where Mark was going. "All of his lieutenants and underlings go nuts trying to overtop each other, fighting for their scrap of his empire."

"Exactly. It would be a street war the likes our city hasn't seen since the Roaring Twenties. It'd make the Los Angeles Gang Wars of the eighties and nineties look like patty cake. There would be out-of-towners coming in, street gangs trying to move up the pecking order, and general chaos. There would be a lot of innocents caught right in the middle."

"So we go back."

S
tepping
off the Lufthansa Airlines jetliner, it felt strange being back in the city. I knew that Sophie and I weren't being hunted by the authorities. After all, Mark Snow had never been fingerprinted in his life, and Sophie White had apparently accepted a job with a Christian missionary group providing health care in Southeast Asia, thanks to a little maneuvering. Besides that, the passports for Marcus Smiley and Sophie Warbird were totally legit, and totally clean. I'd paid good money for them, after all.

Still, we were back in enemy territory. Regardless of if the belfry tower was still secure or not, there wasn't any place in the city that we couldn't be found. Not between the Confederation and Owen Lynch. So, our plan hinged on something totally different, hiding in plain sight.

"Mr. Smiley! Mr. Smiley!" the newspaper reporter called over as soon as we left the baggage terminal. "Do you have any statement about your coming to town?"

"Of course," I said, grinning. "I'm glad to make this city my new home. With the opportunities that have been provided for me, I am certain I can provide plenty of opportunities for the people of this city as well."

To get this, you gotta understand my new identity. Marcus Smiley was an Internet millionaire. Starting with a small website, he built it to massive levels of traffic before cashing out, and reinvesting in various technology firms. Moving capital strategically around the globe, every company he touched seemed to turn to gold. Similarly, every company he pulled out of turned to dust almost as quickly. He'd been investigated by financial agencies all over the world, and with each of them he was as clean as freshly washed sheets.

The reality is, most of that money was pushed around within my own network of shell corporations. I'd always had Marcus Smiley in mind when I set up my retirement plan, along with a few other identities, and my accomplishments in his name were enough to set the media abuzz when the "reclusive business mogul" suddenly declared he was setting up his newest venture, along with a new home, within the city. He was even buying the old Mount Zion property from a local corporation and turning it into his personal home. The buzz within the technology sector, and the buzz within the society pages ensured our arrival would get local press.

The reporter looked next to me, where Sophie was smiling through a pair of sunglasses. "And who is this lovely woman next to you?" he asked, his eyes continually pulled to her hair. It was the most effective element of Sophie's disguise. As Sophie White, her most noticeable feature to most men were her large, perfect breasts. As Sophie Warbird, however, while still perfect, attention was diverted from her breasts to a shock of electric purple hair that ran all the way down to the middle of her back.

"This, my good man, is Sophie Warbird, my fiancee and vice president of Smiley Holdings. As you can tell, she's not only beautiful, but has the best sense of personal style on the entire East Coast." The purple was Sophie's choice, and I have to give her credit, I was inspired. We had both dyed our hair, but Sophie decided to go super extreme. Not exactly inconspicuous, but that was our plan, to stay in the open. In our bags, though, she also had a long black wig that she would use when she needed to not be recognized. That and a tight sports bra would hopefully combine to make her invisible at times. "We're both excited to be in town."

"Miss Warbird," the reporter said, swinging his little tape recorder away from me. "Anything you want to say to the people?"

Sophie smiled, and I could see the reporter's eyes glitter, enchanted. I could understand the sentiment. The three months we'd spent abroad had allowed her to blossom. She was pretty confident before, smart and lively, and sexy as hell, but now all of those qualities were dialed up to eleven. She had become the type of woman who walks into a room, and everyone stops to see what she's doing. What self-consciousness she did have before seemed to have disappeared. I had to intentionally become overly bombastic and attention grabbing just to get the first comments from people. "Well, like Marcus said, I'm glad to be here," Sophie said. "I'm a huge fan of football, and let's face it, no team has better fans than the Spartans."

The reporter smiled and nodded. He looked like he was getting ready to ask another question, but Sophie cut him off. "I'd love to talk more, but I'm very excited to see our new home. Maybe your office can contact us directly later?"

"Sure," the news guy said, mollified. He took out his business card and handed it to Sophie, who passed it along to me. "I know our style editor would love to talk with you about that hair."

Outside the airport, our rented BMW was waiting for us. It was one of the most frustrating parts about assuming the new identity of Marcus Smiley. As Mark Snow, I had various cars, properties, and other equipment ready for use. But, since the Confederation and probably Owen Lynch knew where most of it was, my tools were reduced to what I had in the Mount Zion belfry, and purchasing new equipment. A lot of it, like guns, was easily replaced, if a bit of a hassle. There was some of it though that was very difficult to replicate or replace.

"You know, I miss the Electric Dream Machine," Sophie said as we pulled away. I nodded. My all-electric Mercedes was one of the most noticeable trademarks of Mark Snow. It had gotten to the point that I didn't even need to do much more than drive it by the business or house of my target and they would fold. That is, if intimidation was my goal. Floating by silently, the blue GT-S got attention. Sadly, I'd never get to drive it again, it had been sold off through a third party, the funds donated to a charity to throw off any traces. I liked that car, too.