Austin Camacho - The Payback Assignment

Despite some difficulty concentrating, she made several phone calls and moved off to her room to get dressed. She moved through these motions almost unconsciously, her mind awhirl with recent happenings. Why had she fallen into such a trusting mode with this tall dark stranger? Sure, he had proved worthy of her trust last night when she was too tired to think straight, but why oh why had she taken him so to her heart in the first place?

He weighed on her mind while she flipped through her closet. He was a mass of contradictions, this Morgan Stark. Even his name conjured up different images. Morgan, as in the pirate. Stark, as in raving mad. Perhaps she found him so easy to trust because he was so open, so “up front” as he Yanks liked to say. He was certainly outspoken. There seemed to be no subtle side to this one. And so proud, he was. And yet, she had no idea who he was, and knew nothing about his life. He had revealed only the barest bones of his past.

Facing a full-length mirror, Felicity held a dress in each hand. She held one in front of herself, then the other, but was at a loss about which would be the better choice. Morgan, she reflected, seemed totally competent and never at a loss. He could be as cold as a Norwegian winter night, and then turn around and be as warm and soft as a sheepskin coat. And how could he be so intuitively intelligent, yet so socially unsophisticated? And how did she seem to have some sort of emotional connection with him, almost a psychic link? Was it some side effect of her, now their, danger sense? Was it just her romantic reaction to being rescued, protected, defended and comforted by a heroic stranger, like in those cheesy novels? Or, and this was the big question, was she falling in love with this regimented, stubborn, black, ill-mannered professional soldier? Damn!

Because the texture appealed to her fingers more that day, Felicity chose the long sleeved, cream colored, wool dress. She pulled the garment over her head, stepped back, and turned so that she could check herself out in both her wide dresser mirror and the full-length looking glass on the other side of the bedroom. She was dressed to the limits of elegance for her luncheon downtown. The dress was just this side of too tight. The back was a drape, which hung low on her tanned back, almost to the swell of her ample hips. She had put her hair up for the occasion and applied the slightest hint of makeup. She smiled at her image. This look would take her to the world’s most stylish eateries.

Minutes later, she pulled her 1966 Corvette Stingray coupe out of the parking garage and slid smoothly into traffic. She hated driving in New York, but she had to admit it was better than trusting her fate to any cab driver. And if she was going to drive, it was a joy to pilot this classic bit of transportation, so she pulled it out whenever she was in the city. The day’s brilliant sun would make her glossy, tuxedo black machine hard for passersby to look at, but she knew they would want to stare. Dipped in chrome and airbrushed with twelve coats of paint, the agile vehicle seemed to slip like quicksilver through traffic on the wide one-way avenue. A twist of the knob of the factory installed AM-FM radio filled her cockpit with Van Morrison’s folksy blues sound. After all these years, she still found “Domino” to be great driving music. Humming along, she pulled a pair of Dragonfly sunglasses out of the glove compartment and slid them into place. Life was good.

But less than three blocks from home, she started to get fidgety. That odd, intuitive discomfort always had a cause. She glanced in the rear view mirror. Was someone following her? She switched to the far left lane, signaling for a turn. Yes. The little Fiat four cars back was jockeying to get behind her. She suddenly darted to the right lane and the Fiat nearly ran a Lexus onto the sidewalk getting to the right also.

No style, she thought. A rank beginner would have spotted him. She could see two men in the car. Were they police? She knew they put a tail on her from time to time, hoping to get lucky. Then she saw the passenger side man hold up a pistol and charged back the slide.

“Nope, you’re not the police, are you?” she said softly to herself. “Who, then? Friends of the two killers I met in my apartment on the West Coast, perhaps? Well then, no time for games now.”

She could find out for sure why the men in the follow car wanted her later. Now she had to shake these guys in a hurry, and she knew how. A couple of years back, Felicity took an offensive driving course. Her instructors thought she was a bodyguard in training, but in fact she needed the skills of an expert evasive driver to escape police pursuit. That was also the reason she replaced the 327 turbocharged engine the factory put into her little Corvette with the 426 blown hemi under its hood now. The same reasoning led to the button on the side of her Hurst T-shifter, but she did not need that now. Her own driving ability would do the trick, along with her knowledge of New York streets, and New York drivers.

She slowed just enough to let the Fiat gain on her. Her pursuer, predictably, pulled up next to her on her right. He rolled his window down as if to yell to her. To her surprise, the passenger leaned over the driver to point his gun at her. These guys were a lot more serious than she thought and for the first time she realized she was in real danger.

Morgan spread his hands on the table, hoping to reassure the man holding a gun against his neck. “This is hardly a combat situation, J.D. You got your boys killing on contract now?”

“Stone wants to see your corpse, buddy, and that’s a fact,” Griffith said, “but I think, if your behavior is reasonable, we’ll take you to him as is and let him do the dirty deed himself, if he can.”

Morgan found Griffith’s grin infuriating. He was too damned confident. He controlled the street, but Morgan wondered if he had covered the inside of the little cafe. He hoped not, because it was his only option. He would have to play it that way and hope something turned up. He started his ploy by grimacing and clutching his stomach in apparent pain. He rose slowly when Griffith did. The waiter/gunman began patting Morgan for weapons.

“You going to wave your hardware and mine around out here in the open?” Morgan asked.

“Good point, sport. Let’s move this party into the cafe.”

Morgan groaned again, and continued to reach for his gut as they walked into the small Greek luncheonette. A counter stood on the left and half a dozen tables crowded the floor, too close together. Each table was dressed in a long white tablecloth and surrounded by four chairs. The smell of burning garlic rose out of the floorboards but no lunchtime chatter greeted them. To Morgan’s dismay, the place was deserted.

“Were you expecting somebody in here to use as a distraction?” Griffith asked, locking the door behind them. “I rented the place for the afternoon. You know, for a private party.”

Morgan could not believe how quickly the opposition had moved. Oh well. At least the gun-toting waiter had become accustomed to Morgan reaching to his waist. Morgan was no longer getting jabbed in his back each time his arm moved. But now Griffith, facing him, pulled a forty-five caliber automatic from a side rig.

“Okay, sport,” Griffith said with a smirk, “what are you carrying?”

“How long you known me, man? You know what I carry. I’m a creature of habit.”

“That’ll be the death of you one day,” Griffith said. “Now, unzip that jacket. Tommy, there’s a Hi-Power under his left arm. Grab that will you?”

The waiter reached under Morgan’s windbreaker and slid the nine-millimeter out of its holster.

“I’m pretty sure that’s a knife on the other side,” Griffith said. Tommy nodded and pulled on Morgan’s left shoulder to partially turn him. Morgan turned just enough, and Tommy reached forward awkwardly, his left hand going across the front of Morgan’s body as it slid under his windbreaker. This was the moment.