Jack Mars - Assassin Zero

Jack Mars is the USA Today bestselling author of the LUKE STONE thriller series, which includes seven books. He is also the author of the new FORGING OF LUKE STONE prequel series, comprising three books (and counting); and of the AGENT ZERO spy thriller series, comprising seven books (and counting).

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Copyright © 2019 by Jack Mars. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Jacket image Copyright GlebSStock, used under license from Shutterstock.com.

LUKE STONE THRILLER SERIES

ANY MEANS NECESSARY (Book #1)

OATH OF OFFICE (Book #2)

SITUATION ROOM (Book #3)

OPPOSE ANY FOE (Book #4)

PRESIDENT ELECT (Book #5)

OUR SACRED HONOR (Book #6)

HOUSE DIVIDED (Book #7)

FORGING OF LUKE STONE PREQUEL SERIES

PRIMARY TARGET (Book #1)

PRIMARY COMMAND (Book #2)

PRIMARY THREAT (Book #3)

PRIMARY GLORY (Book #4)

AN AGENT ZERO SPY THRILLER SERIES

AGENT ZERO (Book #1)

TARGET ZERO (Book #2)

HUNTING ZERO (Book #3)

TRAPPING ZERO (Book #4)

FILE ZERO (Book #5)

RECALL ZERO (Book #6)

ASSASSIN ZERO (Book #7)

DECOY ZERO (Book #8)

I can’t locate Sara.

That was what Todd Strickland had told him over the phone. Zero had barely been home from Belgium for a full day, after exposing the Russian president as the puppeteer behind an attempt to annex Ukraine with American interference, when he got the news. Strickland had been keeping tabs on Sara ever since she had become an emancipated minor and moved to Florida, but now she had seemingly vanished. Her cell service was cut off and location inactive. Even her roommates at the co-op where she rented a room claimed they hadn’t seen her in two days.

Text me her home address , Zero had ordered him. I’m going to the airport.

Just shy of three hours later he stood outside the ramshackle house in Jacksonville, Florida, the place Sara had been calling home for a little more than a year. He marched up the cracked concrete steps and pounded on the front door with the flat of a fist, over and over again without pausing, until someone finally answered.

“Dude,” groaned a lanky blond teenager with tattoos up and down his arms. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Sara Lawson,” Zero demanded. “You know where she might be?”

The kid’s eyebrows knit quizzically, but his mouth curled in a smirk. “Why? You another Fed looking for her?”

Fed? A chill ran up Zero’s spine. If anyone who claimed to be FBI had come around, it could mean she’s been abducted .

“I’m her father.” He stepped forward, shoving the kid back with his shoulder as he pushed into the house.

“Yo, you can’t just barge in here!” the kid tried to protest. “Man, I will call the cops—”

Zero spun on him. “It’s Tommy, right?”

The blond kid’s eyes widened apprehensively, though he didn’t answer.

“I’ve heard about you,” Zero told him, keeping his voice low. Strickland had given him a full briefing while he was en route. “I know all about you. You’re not going to call the cops. You’re not going to call your lawyer dad. You’re going to sit there, on the couch, and shut your damn mouth. You hear me?”

The kid opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something—

“I said shut it,” Zero snapped.

The lanky boy retreated to the couch like a kicked dog, taking a seat beside a young girl who couldn’t have been eighteen if she was a day.

“Are you Camilla?”

The girl shook her head frantically. “I’m Jo.”

“I’m Camilla.” A young Latina girl came down the stairs, dark-haired and wearing entirely too much makeup. “I’m Sara’s roomie.” She looked Zero up and down. “You’re really her dad?” she asked dubiously.

“Yeah.”

“Then… what do you do?”

“What?”

“For work. Sara told us what you do.”

“I don’t have time for this,” he muttered at the ceiling. “I’m an accountant,” he told the girl.

Camilla shook her head. “Wrong answer.”

Zero scoffed. Leave it to Sara to tell her friends the truth about me. “What do you want me to say? That I’m a spy with the CIA?”

Camilla blinked at him. “Well… yeah.”

“For real?” said the blond kid on the sofa.

Zero held up both hands in frustration. “Please. Just tell me where you last saw Sara.”

Camilla looked at her roommates, and then the floor. “All right,” she said quietly. “A few days ago, she was looking to score, and I gave her…”

“Score?” Zero asked.

“Drugs, man. Keep up,” said the blond kid.

“She needed something to even her out,” Camilla continued. “I gave her the address of my guy. She went there. She came back. Next morning she left again. I thought she was going to work, but she never came home. Her phone’s off. I swear that’s all I know.”

Zero almost saw red at these irresponsible kids, barely adults, sending a teenager alone to a drug dealer’s house. But he swallowed his anger for her. He needed to find her.

She needs you.

“That’s not all you know,” he said to Camilla. “I want the name and address of your guy.”

Twenty minutes later Zero stood outside a Jacksonville rowhouse with grimy siding and a broken washing machine on the front porch. According to Camilla, this was the dealer’s house, some guy named Ike.

Zero didn’t have a gun on him. He’d been in such a rush to get to the airport that he’d run out the door with nothing but his car keys and his phone. But now he wished he’d brought one.

How do I play this? Burst in, kick ass, demand answers? Or knock and have a chat?

He decided the latter would be a better way to start—and he’d see where things took him from there.

On the third brisk knock, a male voice called out from inside the house. “Hang the fuck on, I’m coming!” The guy that appeared at the door was taller than Zero, more muscular than Zero, and far more tattooed than Zero (who had none). He wore a white tank top with what looked like a coffee stain on it, and jeans that were too big for him, hanging low on his hips.

“Are you Ike?”

The dealer looked him up and down. “You a cop?”

“No. I’m looking for my daughter. Sara. She’s sixteen, blonde, about this tall…”

“Never seen your kid, man.” Ike shook his head. He had a frown on his face.