Assassin Read online

  Assassin

  A story of true change.

  Nadene Seiters

  Text copyright © 2013 Nadene N Seiters

  Front Cover Photography Copyright © 2013 by FXQuadro

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  For you

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Looking For More?

  Chapter One

  “Your name is now Troy Red. Don’t forget it. Here’s your identification, your new social security card, and don’t ever slip up and tell someone your birth name!” The man hands over the driver’s license, the social security card, and a birth certificate. Troy’s not being given a passport for a reason. He’s a flight risk.

  His lip twists into a smile of contempt as he pockets the items into his jeans, and turns to face the agent that will be escorting him to the new premises. Her pretty blonde hair is up in a ponytail for a reason. He met this woman yesterday, and they spent a terrific night together getting to know one another. Perfect blue eyes sparkle at him as he puffs out his chest as he walks past her.

  “Don’t forget, it’s Troy now!” A hand rises up into the air, and Troy waves once with his signature flag, the middle finger.

  The woman escorts him to a black SUV where he’s loaded in quickly, and she takes her seat at the front beside the driver. They exchanges glance, and Troy wonders if her boyfriend knows she slept with him last night. Judging by the way she’s glancing back at Troy nervously, her boyfriend has not a clue. He’s about to find out.

  “So you want to have another go around, Nancy Drew?” He lets the devilish grin play across his face as she tries not to widen her eyes when her boyfriend glances in her direction.

  “What’s he talking about, Nancy Drew?” This ought to be good; Troy sits back with a satisfied grin on his lips with his bulky arms crossed over his chest. He’d like to see her get out of this one. Troy’s pretty sure he’s not the only eyewitness she’s slept with while on the job, and the poor guy ought to be told about it sometime.

  “We played chess last night.” She looks at Troy in the side mirror as the boyfriend starts up the SUV. He pulls out of his parking space a little jerkily and glances in his rearview mirror at Troy, too.

  “Yeah, we played chest.” The smile is widening as he waits for the woman to correct his wording.

  “Chess,” She says heatedly with warning.

  “Jesus Christ, Maggie! Again?” So he knows, what an idiot. Troy looks out the side window as the argument and accusations begin to fly. It’s not that he loves breaking up couples, but the guy had a right to know. Maggie needs to learn a lesson.

  The city of Los Angeles is bustling this gorgeous, Monday afternoon with the tourists on vacation during August. Waves of heat are wafting off the pavement as they drive along, and Troy can hear the way the tires are sticky because it’s so hot. He tries to count the amount of women wearing purple tops as the man continues to argue with his girlfriend. They don’t stop, even when they pull up to the airport and they’re escorting Troy to the plane.

  He holds out his hand for his ticket, and it’s handed to him without a word. The boyfriend, Nick, is still attempting to understand why his girlfriend made the decision to sleep with Troy Red. He’s about to open his mouth to pipe into the conversation, when he realizes that it’s hopeless. This guy will never understand why this woman is walking all over him. It’s because Nick is a ‘nice guy’. He’s one of the men who finish last.

  Shaking his head with false sadness, Troy pushes his way through the small line, slaps his ticket on the counter, and hopes that the next person to escort him at the end of his flight does not fall for the usual antics. The young, fair woman at the counter narrows her eyes when she looks up at him, and he gives her his best ‘I’m going to get my way’ smile.

  “Excuse me but did you not see the thirty people behind you waiting in line patiently?” He turns around, glances over the heads of the glaring customers waiting and turns back around to the brunette with a bob cut. Who gets those anymore? He idly wonders.

  “Did you see the two assholes I came in with that can’t shut their traps? Could you just let me on the plane before they catch up with me?” She glances at the two agents who are still yapping at the back of the line, unaware that their eyewitness has just slipped out of their grasps. The tallest man in the crowd squares his shoulders and pushes his glasses up on the bridge of his nose as if he’s going to say or do something about the bully at the front of the line.

  “Sir, I’m going to have to call security if you don’t get to the back of the line.” An officer is already waltzing through the facilities with his hand on his Taser. Troy feels another smile parting his lips as he chuckles, but the woman doesn’t seem to understand his mirth.

  “That’s alright, I’ll just get another name from those two bozos and everything will be alright. Just look at the ticket, and let me board. I’m getting tired of this cat and mouse game,” he looks at her nametag, “Sharia, that’s a pretty name, by the way.” It’s not use. Someone must have pissed in her Cheerios this morning; Troy takes his ticket off the counter and gives an insubordinate solute to the officer who is just arriving.

  Maggie and Nick finally realize that Troy has been missing, and they’re watching him walk back to their spot at the end of the line. The female agent’s fair skin is flushed with her embarrassment and rage. Her counterpart, the blonde, male agent with striking green eyes, has a frown on his face that makes it look as if someone shoved his nose in a pile of dung. Neither one of them say a word when Troy stands behind them with his arms crossed behind his head, tapping his foot nervously.

  Sharia is much more polite than before when Troy gets back up to the front until she realizes it’s him. The same, deadly calm, tone overtakes her voice as she narrows her eyes again. The prim, proper, white, button down shirt she’s wearing shows what she’s hiding beneath, but it’s not much to look at. She’s wearing a camisole that covers most of her assets, so Troy turns his attention elsewhere.

  He could go for a quickie in one of the bathrooms right now, but Maggie’s not up to it, and Sharia will be as cold as a Popsicle. The hot, dark haired woman in small shorts and the sequin top might be willing to take a ride though. Half his lips twitch up into his classic grin, and the woman rolls her eyes as she struts by. Bitch, he keeps his thoughts to himself. That one probably would be pretty cold, too.

  Unfortunately, the two agents are escorting him to his next flight from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. From there, he’ll be hopping onto a private plane that will double back to a hick town in Ohio, from where he will be driven to his destination. They haven’t told him where that will be, but he remembers it must be on the driver’s license. Troy pulls it from his pocket and studies the town’s name, Eldred, Pennsylvania.

  Where the Hell is that? He wishes he had his cellphone again so he could look it up, but that will have to be acquired when he gets to his destination if he’s allowed to have one.

  “I can’t believe you slept with him! Of all the people to cheat on me with, again, some asshole from the mob that has probably killed, really Maggie?” His voice is hushed, but the angry tone attracts sever
al people’s gazes. Troy wishes for his headphones again. This is cute kittens and puppy kisses arguing compared to what his parents used to sound like, but it’s too much of a sore reminder.

  “Would you two shut up? Maybe she slept with me because my dick’s larger. Get the fuck over it and find a woman you can trust, you fucking idiot!” Troy Red doesn’t bother keeping his voice down. A few of the women nearby cover their little children’s ears. Their cheeks redden as their eyes bug out of their heads, and some of the men give him wary, sideways glances. No one likes to hear a tattooed, very large, muscular man cussing in their vicinity. It’s as if they think he’ll just snap, and break their necks like a gorilla. Who knows, maybe he would.

  “Asshole!” Maggie at least has the dignity to keep her voice low, but some people are still nearby enough to hear. A woman starts mumbling about people these days and hurries her kids through the metal detectors so that she can board the flight.

  “Is it true? Is his dick larger? Is that what matters to you?” Rolling his eyes, Troy smiles calmly at the security guard operating the metal detector and stands at the ready as the wand waves over him. It reminds him of the prison system, but he’s trying to forget those days.

  “Jesus Christ, Nick! Really?” Now she’s shrieking, and the security guard raises his hand in the air for her to stop.

  “I’m going to have to ask you two to continue this conversation elsewhere. There are young children here, and adults, who don’t need to hear that kind of language.” Troy turns around with a fake glare.

  “Yeah, shut the Hell up!” At that point, they’re quickly ushered through the metal detectors and up the stairs of the plane.

  Upon sitting down and viewing the close quarters, Troy starts to feel sweat building up on his forehead. He pulls his white t-shirt collar away from his neck and fans it as if he’s in a sauna. The air starts to grow thicker around him as it becomes harder to breathe and Maggie stops midsentence to look at her ward. She’s never seen him actually look nervous.

  “You’re afraid to fly?” She asks with an incredulous voice. She won’t carryover her kindness from last night to today, not anymore.

  “No, I’m afraid of death.” Troy mumbles as he looks around for the seat belt. He puts it on dutifully and reaches into his pocket as if he still has the iPod his six year old niece gave him for Christmas two years ago. It was confiscated from him along with all of his other belongings. He’ll never see that iPod again.

  It’s not the fact that the device was expensive for his little niece to have purchased, or the fact that he will never see her again because of the eyewitness protection program. He won’t see her again because she’s dead, along with the rest of his family. That gets under his skin more than any of this and would put a sour note in anyone’s outlook on life.

  “Not so big and bad after all, are you?” Nick asks with a sneer. Maggie shushes him with a look, but it’s not working. Troy flags down one of the flight attendants, and kindly asks for a pair of headphones. Then he makes a point of ogling her as she sashays away to do his bidding. Thinking about women helps him forget about the pain of reality.

  The argument continues. It carries on periodically throughout the flight, and occasionally lapses to the relief of the other passengers. To pass the time, Troy begins to count all the men wearing black. Then he counts all the women wearing the same color and continues on through the spectrum of colors until he knows twelve men are wearing black, seventeen women are wearing black, and so on and so forth.

  When he’s finished with that, he begins to attempt a guessing game at the size of women’s breasts. He’s about to ask the lady sitting across the aisle from him if she’s a size D or E when the plane begins to descend for landing. Taking off the headphones, Troy grips them so tight that he cracks the plastic. His teeth clamp together so hard he’s afraid he might shatter them, and he feels the sweat starting to pop out from his pores again.

  It’s a lull in the argument as they land. Maggie sways her hips as she exits the plane in front of Troy suggestively, and he feels a pang of guilt that her partner had to find out she was a slut this way. Nick puts his hand on the larger man’s shoulder and stops him from exiting the plane. Just before Maggie can turn around to see what’s happening, Nick leans in close to Troy’s side.

  “I was going to marry her.” Troy looks up at the sky just on the edge of the steps to the plane, and wonders if Nick will try to push him down the steps.

  “Be glad you didn’t because I wasn’t the only one.” He takes the first step down, and Nick follows him with a sour look on his face.

  Troy follows Maggie through the doors to the Philadelphia Airport, and quirks an eyebrow when he sees a young boy holding up a sign that has his new name on it. The letters are painted with flames coming off the top, and he’s wearing a Pantera t-shirt. The kid has taste. Without waiting for his escorts to take him towards the kid, he wanders that direction himself. The kid asks him for identification, takes his driver’s license, and studies it exceedingly hard with furrowed eyebrows.

  “It’s real, Dad.” He must be seven or eight years old, and hands the driver’s license back to a man who appears behind him. Troy looks the new member of his escort team over. He’s a tall man but not quite as tall as Troy, with silvering hair at the temples with the rest a dark brown. His eyes match his hair, and by the way the whites of his eyes are starting to yellow, Troy guesses the man is going through some type of liver failure.

  “You can call me Marty Summers. That’s not my real name, but it will do for now. This is Kyle Summers, not his real name, but it suits him just fine. I’m not actually his Dad. In fact, I don’t know the kid at all. But you probably know all of this, so why don’t we skip the pleasantries and get you on that private plane to Ohio?” The fake Marty Summers doesn’t bother holding out his hand, leaves the kid standing with a bewildered looking woman, and to Troy’s relief, he leaves Maggie and Nick behind, as well.

  “Thank God, they were starting to make my fucking ears bleed.” Marty spins around and points a finger in Troy’s face, and then motions around at all the people surrounding them.

  “There are ladies here with their children. Save that kind of talk for the saloons, or I’ll throw you into the detention cell where they’ll give you the prostate exam of your nightmares.” Hard ass, Troy lets his lips curl up into his lazy grin, which is the one that people see right before their head hits the floor. Marty doesn’t back down. That is until Maggie and Nick start approaching. Both men glance at Maggie’s fuming face and Nick’s sadistic expression and they start heading for the exit as quick as possible.

  “I thought I was getting on another plane.” Troy complains as they slide into a taxi. The Indian cab driver smiles at them, asks how their day is going, and where they would like to go.

  “Morgantown, Pennsylvania. Just drive, and don’t ask any more questions.” Marty hands the man a hundred dollar bill to get started and they pull out into the sea of taxis. Nick and Maggie are left standing on the sidewalk as they both pull out their cellphones, no doubt to call headquarters and let them know that their mark has defected.

  “You slept with her, didn’t you?” Troy leans back in the seat that smells like Febreeze, and closes his eyes with his hands behind his head. The radio station, WMMR, is playing quietly in the background.

  “Of course I did. She practically laid herself out like a buffet on the hotel room floor and begged me for it. Who wouldn’t take up that opportunity?” What he wouldn’t give for his headphones right now. He doesn’t want to get into the discussion of morals with this guy. That’s what a confession booth is for, and he’s never been to one.

  “A man with integrity who knows that the woman who is begging for it has a long term boyfriend, that’s who wouldn’t take up that opportunity.” Marty Summers crosses one leg over the other and puts both hands on his knee as he looks from the front windshield to the left, and then to the right. He repeats this process all the way through the
city, which takes them an hour and forty five minutes in the current traffic.

  “I never said I am a man with integrity.” Mr. Summers doesn’t form a rebuttal. Instead, he hands the driver’s license back and remains silent for the remainder of their journey. Troy’s exhausted from lack of sleep the night before, and the stress of being on the run, but he doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t complain either because he could be spending his time in a jail cell, waiting for one of the Boss’s cronies to shank him.

  “Are you hungry?” Troy wrinkles his nose at the smell of cow shit and decides he’d rather eat in Hell.

  “No, I’m not hungry. I had a pretty decent breakfast. Let’s just get out of here and to Ohio, shall we?” Marty looks at the cab driver, who is dutifully staring straight ahead at the road, and then glares at his ward. They’re not supposed to discuss the itinerary for this mission in front of the citizens.

  “Right, then please take us to the Morgantown Airport.” The cab driver takes the exit after he plugs that information into the GPS, and Troy’s mouth waters when he sees the Burger King straight ahead. The parking lot is only half packed, so it would be a quick stop. Yet Marty seems determined to get to the airport now that Troy has leaked pertinent information.

  The roads are patched and bumpy, nothing like city streets. Locals are setting up small vegetable stands with signs that instruct the purchaser to leave their cash in the box. How can they be so trusting? Troy wonders as he tries to find a woman in something other than a pair of jeans and a t-shirt or blouse. A few of the younger ones are wearing shorts, but there is something about them that screams country. Feeling out of his comfort zone, Troy stares at the passenger seat in front of him. His stomach is clenching and roiling as he wonders if his destination is like this place.

  They pass by antique shops, a few local bars and then turn down a dirt road. Troy hangs on for dear life as the cab driver tries to slow down enough that the shocks aren’t ruined. The Morgantown Airport is a small building with glider planes outside, and Troy quirks an eyebrow as he wonders if they’re going to attempt a flight to Ohio in a glider plane.