The Housewife Assassin's Hostage Hosting Tips (Housewife Assassin Series Book 9) (26 page)

Our instructor is a woman who is slim but muscular. She introduces herself as Amity. “Blessings, all! It is an honor to have you join me.” She bows slightly. The rest of the class follows her lead, and I follow theirs.

“And we are all honored to have Yogi Rothchild with us today. He is observing me, and therefore you too, as part of my ascension as an instructor.” She bows at him.

The class turns and does the same.

I don’t because I’ve never seen a yogi with a potbelly and wearing a tracksuit.

The lights go low. Gentle music wafts over us. Amity moves us through a warm up of various positions that stretch our muscles and free our minds. Amity insists that once we take a new position, we pause and close our eyes as she counts slowly to ten, “The better to reach inner peace.”

Try as I might, it’s still hard for me to break free of my survival training, so I compromise and keep only one eye open.

As the positions get more complex, I notice that Yogi Rothchild is roaming the room. Every now and then, he squats so that he’s eye level with someone’s comely ass.

In one position–the downward dog–mine rates his attention. He’s not expecting my eyes to be open. That’s okay. I’m not expecting him to be wearing smart glasses that take pictures, which I presume will soon find their way onto the Internet.

And he’s certainly not expecting me hook his leg with mine so that he falls backward. Then I yank his glasses off his face and crush them under my heel.

At least I didn’t smash his face, too.

His howl brings Harmony into the room. “What the hell are you doing?” she screams at me, somewhat inharmoniously.

“He’s taking pictures of us!” I pick up his glasses. “See? These are smart glasses.”

“No, they’re not!” Harmony points to the lenses.

I’ll be darned, she’s right. “Oh…um, sorry,” I stammer. “I guess the fact that they’re super ugly threw me off.”

“They’re tri-focals!” Yogi Rothchild shouts, not very serenely. “They cost me six hundred bucks!”

Harmony grabs my arm and pulls me out of the studio.

I hand her my credit card again, to pay for my mistake.

“Since you’re a bit too tense for our normal classes, I suggest private lessons,” she says coldly.

As I walk out the door, I show her that at least one part of my body is quite supple: my middle finger.

For the most part, Hilldale is a happy place. It isn’t all that old, but its homes and buildings are reminiscent of those you’ve seen a million times in Norman Rockwell paintings. The trees lining Hilldale’s wide avenues are tall, broad and lush. The birds that make their nests in them chirp happily, as if they’re escapees from a Disney cartoon.

The illusion that this is the perfect place to forget your troubles and be happy is reinforced by the placid smiles on the faces of those I pass as I walk down the sidewalk to my car. They exchange niceties with the town librarian. They nod to neighbors. While waiting for a Popsicle from the roving ice cream truck, they chuck the plump cheeks of their children and they trade harmless gossip with their friends.

But we who walk in the deep dark shadows of those who harm the innocent know better: all is not as it seems.

For example, the clueless don’t see the ice cream vendor’s sleight of hand as he passes encrypted messages. The unaware don’t realize that when the librarian reminds a patron of an overdue book, she may be relaying a coded message that could save lives.

The innocent will never know that the neighbor who makes the best cherry pie in town is a hitwoman who anonymously defends them and others.

As I walk down the street, it dawns on me: I should be happy too, but I’m not.

For those I love, I can’t afford to be clueless. With all I know, I can’t pretend to be ignorant.

Try as I might, your friendly neighborhood hitwoman will never be innocent again.

I’ve got to face facts: I may not be cut out for retirement.

Thank God it’s only taken me thirteen days, eleven hours and three minutes to figure that out.

And now that Jack needs me more than ever, I should discuss re-entry with Ryan and him.

I head over to Acme.

“Have you seen Jack?” I ask Ryan’s assistant, Natasha.

“Great question. Half an hour ago, he and Ryan were heading toward Martial Arts.” Her brow furrows into two tense lines. “Everyone is running around like chickens with their heads cut off.”

She need not say more. I get it. The mission is going down, maybe even tonight.

Yikes.
Yes, they need me now, more than ever.

I run downstairs to the MA studio.

Mara is in there, warming up.

Mara? ...But...

Jack kept her on his mission team?

I’m too stunned to do anything but stare at her.

“I dare say, she’s quite flexible!” Dominic can’t seem to keep his eyes off her.

When her lunges elicit a sigh from him, I can’t stand it anymore. “Don’t you have anything better to do than stalk the poor woman?” I growl.

To indicate that he’s miffed at my jibe, he juts out his dimpled, square jaw and he pushes his broad shoulders back, the better for me to be awed by all six-feet-two-inches of him.

Well, one of us is, anyway, if the grin and wink he gives himself in the room’s mirrored wall is any indication. “My dear Mrs. Stone, if you must know, my presence here is sanctioned by our fearless leader. More to the point, Jack specifically asked me to audit Mademoiselle Portnoy’s physical readiness as it pertains to the mission at hand–something I plan to do quite thoroughly.”

As Mara folds at the waist in order to touch her toes, Dominic tilts his head sideways in the hope that doing so gives him a better view of her pert backside.

I move forward, so that I block his view. “You’re lying. She won’t have time to get up to snuff for a mission this important!”

A half-turn gives Dominic the view he covets, albeit through the mirror. As mesmerized as he seems to be, he has enough wherewithal to retort, “Then the dolly will have to wing it. ‘
Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.’
”

“What the hell does that mean? You mean, this mission goes off in three hours?”

“From what you’ve just said, it means your education in Shakespeare leaves a lot to be desired.” He shrugs. “To be expected. The American academic system–”

“Spare me the lecture, you Oxfordian snob!”

Without turning his head, he mutters, “How dare you! I’m a
Cambrian
snob.”

I’m wasting my time here. I run back upstairs.

I’ve tried to be subtle about Mara, but it’s time Jack knows what I really think. I feel guilty that I wasn’t more forthcoming before now. It was the one thing he asked of me and I almost failed him.

I can’t let him make a stupid mistake just because he can’t have me at his side.

I find Jack huddling with Ryan, Abu and Arnie in Acme’s largest conference room, the one ironically referred to as “the Cone of Silence” because of its lack of recording devices and steel construction, which deters anyone who may want to hear what goes on in there.

I walk in just in time to hear Emma, who is speaking via speakerphone. “–facial recognition has in fact verified that she is now in the vicinity of–”

Seeing me enter, Jack immediately disconnects Emma. He nods to Arnie. “Text her, and tell her we had an unexpected breach. We’ll resume in a few moments.”

So, that’s what I am now–an
unexpected breach
?

By the time I’ve counted to five in my head, he’s wearing his poker face and I’ve quelled the urge to tell him how much I hate him–

Let alone knee him in the nuts, which would be the unexpected breach he’d least expect.

Instead, I smile pretty and ask sweetly, “Might I speak to Ryan and Jack– alone?”

There is not an inch of my being that Jack doesn’t know intimately. Be it the look in my eye, the gait of my walk, the turn of my head, or the tone of my voice; he reads me quicker than the latest James Patterson bestseller in the hands of a devoted fan.
 

In other words, there are no surprises.

Yes, I am that obvious to him.

Jack nods toward the door. Abu and Arnie have been around us too long to argue.

Ryan looks as if he wishes he could follow. Well, that’s just too bad. We’ll need a referee, and he’s elected.

Should shouting commence, I can only thank my lucky stars that this confrontation is taking place in the Cone of Silence.

Jack bides his time until I begin.

Fine. I won’t show any emotions, either. It’s unladylike, not to mention it’s unbecoming of a covert operative–

Fuck it. I’m pissed, and I deserve answers.

I flop down into the conference chair directly across the table from him. “I don’t get it. When I asked, you assured me that Mara wasn’t going to be part of this mission!”

At first, Jack frowns, but then realizing that I’ve gotten under his skin, he takes a deep breath and starts again. “I changed my mind.” He gives me an exasperated look. “Why should it matter all of a sudden?”

“Because…well, because if something should go wrong–if she loses her life because she wasn’t ready for the challenge, or if any one of you should lose your lives because she isn’t up to snuff, I’d…” I throw up my hands in frustration. “I’d never forgive myself. In fact, I–”

“Wait!” He grimaces. “For once, this isn’t about you. It’s about me. It’s
my
decision, based on the time constraints and our infiltration plan.”

“Yes, it is about me,” I insist. “You see, I want to–”

Before I can finish my sentence, before I can explain that I’d like to come back, he growls, “No, Donna!
 
For once, what you want doesn’t count. It’s my prerogative as this mission’s leader”–he takes a deep breath–“and I want Mara.”

Mara, who feels nothing.

Mara, who has a death wish, and seeks revenge.

Mara, who still blames Jack for Kiril being lost to her.

The warmth of the single tear rolling down my cheek awakens my urgency to make him understand all of this. “But, Jack–”

“Donna, I’ve no doubt that Mara will live up to the highest standards there are”–Jack’s grimace softens–“
yours
.”

But that’s the problem:
no other woman is like me.
 

She’ll never have my history with Acme.

She won’t know the nuances of my mission team.

And she certainly will never know Jack as well as me.

I walk over to him, so that we’re eye to eye. “I want to go on record that I think you’re making a terrible mistake.”

He nods nonchalantly. “Duly noted. Now, if you don’t mind, my team has to get back to our briefing.”
 

He turns his back on me and clicks on his iPad–his way of showing me I’m being dismissed.

I look to Ryan, the fearless leader.

Oops, spoke too soon. The best he can do is shrug and nod toward Jack.

Coward. Thanks for nothing.

I slam the door on my way out.