Russell Blake - Betrayal

By the time the police arrived, there was no trace of her, a phantom come to exact a terrible retribution before disappearing into the night.

She looked at her watch as she pedaled hard through the woods. She would be at the second target’s home within ten minutes. Jet turned onto the pavement a quarter mile away and pointed the handlebars east.

The assistant director of the CIA stirred and turned onto his side, his small frame dwarfed by the ornately-wrought headboard of the king-sized bed. An antique that had been chosen by his third wife, he’d battled her for the bed during a bitter divorce and eventually won. It wasn’t so much that it was important to him as it meant a lot to her. She loved the damned thing. Not that she ever seemed to enjoy being in it with him.

Something caused him to start, and he slowly came awake, opening his eyes to see the shadowy outline of a figure standing at the foot of the bed. A figure dressed entirely in black. He tried hard to focus without his glasses and saw that it was a woman. A beautiful woman.

Pointing a gun at him.

He sat up.

“I…I have some money in my wallet, and my watch is a Piaget,” he stammered.

“That figures. Piagets are crappy watches for rich morons with no taste.”

“It’s…worth a lot of money. Take it. And I have a few thousand dollars here.”

“That’s good to know.”

Confused by her tone, he reached for the bedside lamp.

“Move one more inch and I blow your head off.”

He froze, then slowly resumed his sitting position.

“What do you want?”

“I’m here with a message.”

“A message?”

“Yes. It’s a short one. Either you die by the gun tonight, or you die by the needle. Your choice.”

He swallowed with difficulty, his throat suddenly dry.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m here to kill you. But I’ll give you a choice. Do you want a bullet, or a shot of the heroin you’re responsible for selling to millions of kids all over the world?”

“Look, lady, you’ve got this all wrong…” The pistol didn’t waver. “Do you have any idea who I am? You’re making the biggest mistake of your life,” he snarled.

She ignored him.

“What’s it going to be? Bullet or needle? I don’t have all night.”

He lunged for the bedside table, and she shot him in the leg, shattering his kneecap. His scream was cut off by another round directly between his eyes. The back of his head blew onto the coveted headboard. She stepped to the bedroom door and flipped the lock closed, then moved to the window and slid it open. His scream would bring his two bodyguards and his maid within seconds, but by the time they got in, Jet would have vanished.

With a final look at the dead man on the bed, she climbed through the window and lowered herself until her feet were ten feet above the grass, then dropped softly, rolled backwards, and took off at a full run to where she’d left her bike in the dense cover of the park.

Five minutes later, she was in the Explorer, driving the speed limit on her way to Washington.

“Yes?”

Silence greeted Arthur’s interrogative. He held the handset out and stared at it, then clenched it to his ear again.

“Who is this?” The line was unlisted. Perhaps a wrong number?

“Wake up, Arthur,” Jet finally said.

“Who…where are you? I haven’t heard from you for a week,” Arthur demanded into the phone.

A sound rattled from downstairs, and then the line went dead.

Arthur rose from his bed and wrapped a robe around his pajamas, then slid his nightstand open and removed a small pistol — a Ruger LCP 380. He lifted the handset again to call for help, but there was no dial tone. And he’d left his cell phone downstairs to charge overnight, as was his custom.

Mitzi, his pug, whined and stretched, peering up at him in confusion. Was it time to wake up and go for a walk?

He crept cautiously down the steps and turned the corner at the base, entering the living room, where Jet sat in the dark in one of his colonial-era chairs, a briefcase in her lap, one foot swinging lazy circles. He flipped on the light and regarded her, the pistol trained on her head. Mitzi yelped happily and ran to her. Jet reached down and scratched her furry little head. Mitzi pushed her face into Jet’s hand and then lay by her side with a plop.

“You won’t need the peashooter,” she said with a smile.

Arthur looked worse than she remembered, the mottled skin puckered around his neck, which had thankfully been covered by his shirt and tie before.

“Perhaps. But this is highly irregular.” He appeared to consider the situation and then dropped the pistol into his robe pocket — but kept his hand in it, she noted.

“I suppose. So is having your baby kidnapped and being blackmailed. I guess we live in an irregular world…”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“I lost the number.”

He studied her calm face, and then took a seat across from her with a sigh.

“And?”

She lifted the briefcase and put it on the coffee table between them, and then lifted the lid, turning it towards him.

The freezer bag of diamonds twinkled in the ornate chandelier’s glow.

“There are your diamonds. Next to them, you’ll find snapshots of Hawker. He’s been neutralized. Now, where’s my daughter?”

Arthur leaned forward and picked up the photos, taking his time to scrutinize them suspiciously before dropping them into the briefcase and lifting the diamonds out.

“What is this? Some kind of joke?”

“What do you mean? Those are your diamonds. Now it’s time to end this charade. I’ve done as you asked. Time for your end of the deal. Where’s my daughter?”

“That’s only…maybe a quarter of them. Do you take me for a fool?”

“That’s what he had. I looked online and calculated the number and carats. It’s over fifty million, wholesale. It’s all there. Now, where’s Hannah?”

He stood and pulled the pistol from his pocket. “This is all he had?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it? Now put the gun down, tell me where my daughter is, and get ready to hand me a million dollars.”

“Not so fast. I need to verify they’re real.”

He hadn’t dropped the gun.

“Fine. They are. That’s what he had. You can pay me once you check them. But for the last time, tell me where my daughter is.”

His skin tightened as he grimaced, and she realized he was smiling. He raised the Ruger and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

His eyes widened as he tried to chamber a round, but the gun was empty.

“Now that definitely wasn’t the deal,” she said, pulling her silenced Beretta from behind her and leveling it at him. “I didn’t think you’d honor your part of the bargain, but I figured I’d at least give you the chance. More than you gave me.”

Arthur flung the Ruger at her and sprang for the hall. The impact of Jet’s feet slamming into his side sent him reeling into the wall with a crash. He dropped to the floor, groaning.

Jet got up, brushed herself off and then walked to the table and closed the briefcase, locking the latch with a soft snap. She eyed Arthur’s quivering form and approached him.

“Now we’ll do this the hard way. I actually hope you don’t tell me where Hannah is until I’ve had a real opportunity to convince you. I’m usually ambivalent about torture, but in your case, I’m looking forward to it. I suppose all that expensive surgery on your face will get destroyed by the acid, but before it does, you’ll wish for death a hundred times over.” She kicked him, hard, in the stomach. “I even went shopping for items to use. You know, I once kept a subject alive for six hours before his heart gave out? I mean, he was unrecognizable as anything human by then, but still. It’s an art, really. I’m sure you’ll appreciate it. By the time I’m done, you’ll have not only told me where Hannah is, but you’ll have told me anything and everything you can think of just to get me to stop.”