Deadly Dossier Read online

  The Housewife Assassin’s

  Deadly Dossier

  A Novel

  Josie Brown

  © 2014 Josie Brown. All rights reserved.

  Published by Signal Press

  San Francisco, CA 94123

  [email protected]

  V122214AMZ

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 A Hard Man is Good to Find

  Chapter 2 Raven

  Chapter 3 Ghost Story

  Chapter 4 Burn Notice

  Chapter 5 The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

  Chapter 6 Dossier

  Chapter 7 Collection

  Chapter 8 Black Bag Job

  Chapter 9 Ambush

  Chapter 10 Compromised

  Chapter 11 Double Agents

  ONE YEAR LATER

  Chapter 12 Enigma

  Chapter 13 Open-Source Intelligence

  Chapter 14 Naked

  Chapter 15 Pocket Litter

  Chapter 16 Passive Probe

  Chapter 17 MICE vs. RASCLS

  Chapter 18 The Take

  Chapter 19 Bona Fides

  Chapter 20 SERE

  TWO YEARS LATER

  Chapter 21 The Hit

  RIGHT NOW

  Chapter 22 Unavoidably Detained

  Chapter 23 Disciplinary Actions

  Chapter 24 Swallow

  Next Up

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  HOW TO REACH JOSIE

  NOVELS IN THE HOUSEWIFE ASSASSIN SERIES

  OTHER BOOKS BY JOSIE BROWN

  PRAISE FOR JOSIE BROWN

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Chapter 1

  A Hard Man is Good to Find

  In espionage parlance, a “hard man” is an assassin: someone whose profession is to kill those stealing others’ secrets or spouting inconvenient truths.

  Should one appear on your doorstep with a mission to exterminate, any attempt to outrun your caller will earn you a bullet in the back.

  Think you’ll stave off the inevitable with an offer of “Coffee, tea, or me?” He may take you up on all three, but the bottom line is that his mission comes first.

  Then again, so does your lust—for life.

  Instead, invite him in and offer him a cuppa joe, along with something that will even the playing field:

  A sprinkle of lye, as opposed to creamer, followed by going off the grid for good.

  Carl Stone almost missed his flight out of Vancouver because his target refused to die.

  It should have been an easy hit. The target, a portly Canadian defense contractor with a heart condition, was selling his country’s missile launch codes—not only to an international terrorist group, but to the Chinese as well.

  A traitor was one thing. A traitor who double-dipped on what was supposed to be exclusive intel was an accident waiting to happen.

  Fat Ass’s life insurance policy was about to be cancelled.

  The man’s medical charts showed that his enlarged prostate sent him to the john at least twice an hour. And since he was a stickler for getting to his departure gate at least an hour before wheels-up, all Carl had to do was wait until Fat Ass was hit with the urge to take one more bathroom break. After the extermination, Carl would hop his own flight home to Los Angeles, which was scheduled out of YVR around the same time as Fat Ass’s flight.

  He didn’t have to wait long. Five minutes after Fat Ass checked in with the gate attendant, he went in search of the nearest men’s room.

  Carl was a step ahead of him. He was dressed in a janitor’s uniform, so no one questioned him as he rolled a mop and bucket in front of the door and placed an OUT OF ORDER sign on the handle. After he rousted the two guys zipping up in front of the urinal, he went back outside so that he could greet Fat Ass with the assurance that “the floor should be dry by now, so go on in.”

  Fat Ass barely acknowledged him with a nod, let alone a thank you.

  Carl left the sign on the doorknob and followed Fat Ass into the restroom with the mop and rolling bucket, locking the door behind them.

  Fat Ass was mid-whiz when Carl pricked him in the back of his thigh with the needle filled with succinylcholine—probably not the best time to do so, because Fat Ass’s response was to turn around, dick in hand.

  “What the hell!” they shouted in unison—Carl because Fat Ass sprayed his very expensive John Lobb brogues with urine, and Fat Ass because, let's face it, that needle hurt like hell.

  Fat Ass was shocked, but Carl was angry. The shoes were a thou a pair! Still, he resisted the urge to punch the guy in the throat, which would cause him to double over, at which point Carl would bash his head against the wall and toss him onto the tile floor to stomp to a bloody pulp—

  But only because that would defeat the purpose of making the hit look like an accidental death, as per his client’s instructions.

  By now, Fat Ass was onto the fact that Carl was there to kill him. Having no lethal weapon, but fully aware that Carl was concerned about the condition of his shoes, he brandished his spraying organ in his assailant's direction.

  In the best of all possible worlds, by now the guy would have fallen backward into Carl's arms so that he could drag him into one of the stalls and heave him up on a toilet for some harried traveler to find. An autopsy would reveal he'd had a heart attack when he sat down for a grunt.

  “Die already, you son of a bitch," Carl hissed at the man as he dodged the spray as best as he could. If his fancy footwork couldn't save his shoes, maybe it would wear out Fat Ass, who seemed to have the constitution—not to mention the pissing power—of a rhino.

  Carl’s light-footedness seemed to do the trick. Fat Ass's chest must have started tightening up on him because one hand dropped limply to his side.

  Finally, thought Carl.

  Noting that the Canadian was leaning back, he positioned himself to catch the slumping hulk—

  Only to have to leap in front of the man in time to cradle him before he fell to his knees or cracked his head on the tile.

  Metaphorically speaking, with death comes relief. But in this case, Fat Ass also relieved what was left in his bladder all over Carl's shoes.

  "Damn it," Carl swore again.

  His damp shoes squeaked as he hauled the body into the nearest stall and shoved it up onto the john. By bending Fat Ass's knees and positioning them far enough apart, the body might just resist the gravitational pull to fall to the floor long enough for Carl's plane to be wheels up.

  He had just mopped up the puddles of piss when he heard the sob. He froze. Was it coming from Fat Ass's stall? How the hell could that be?

  He stayed perfectly still. Minutes went by that seemed like hours.

  A flushing sound came from one of the next stalls.

  Shit, Carl thought. He slowly removed the knife concealed in his trouser leg and flicked it open. His steps toward the stall were slow and silent.

  The door creaked open.

  Out popped a head.

  It belonged to a boy. He couldn’t be any more than nine years old.

  Still, the boy had heard everything. Maybe he'd even seen what happened through the crack between the door and the stall.

  Having a witness to one of his hits was a first for Carl.

  The boy shook while Carl thought through his options. In this case, a knife wasn’t necessary. He could pinch the boy’s nostrils and suffocate him in less than two minutes. But if he killed the kid, it would be too much of a coincidence that two people had died in the same restroom on the same day.

  I’m no monster, Carl told himself.

  For the first time since he’d become a hard man, he had a chance to prove it.

  No one had jiggled the restroom door’s lock, so the sign was certainly keeping everyone away. Bu
t surely the kid’s parents were looking for him by now and beginning to panic as well. Carl knew he’d be freaking out if it were one of his children. He had two kids of his own: his daughter, Mary, was seven. His son, Jeff, would be five tomorrow. This was one of the reasons he had to make it home tonight.

  He wondered what Jeff would do in the same situation.

  Just at that moment, the boy raised his head. His eyes sought out Carl’s. Then the boy reached out to him. He held something in his hand—a Wolverine action figure. “You…can have it, if you want.”

  Carl stared down at it. Finally he muttered, “Thanks.” He kneeled down so that he was eye level with the boy. “What did you see?”

  The boy blinked once and pursed his lips. “Not…nothing,” he whispered.

  “It’s time to go.”

  The boy nodded. Carl guided him to the door, opened it and followed him out.

  The boy ran off to the left. Carl bent down and pretended to tie his shoe, but he watched as a woman, perhaps three gates down, shouted at the boy. He turned. Finding her, he ran into her arms. The look in her eyes went from frenzy to relief. Whatever he said to her had her looking back toward the restroom.

  By then, Carl was buried deep in the throng of travelers crisscrossing the terminal.

  A moment later, he was in the janitor’s closet, where he changed back into his business suit.

  Carl’s Air Canada flight to LA was out of YVR’s international terminal. On the way, he passed several Canadian Air Transportation Security guards. To make his flight, he knew he’d have to make a run for it. Instead, he forced himself to walk as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  When he got to his departure gate, an Air Canada agent was already in the process of locking the door to the jetway. Carl practically threw his boarding pass at the woman as he ran past her.

  Once in his seat, he pulled out a cell phone and texted his client contact, EW, the signal that the extermination went off without a hitch:

  Have a nice day!

  But because this wasn’t exactly true, Carl sent a second text, this one to his employer, the black-ops organization known as Acme Industries. It read:

  Clean-up on Aisle Five

  No doubt the airport’s security cameras would validate the young boy’s tall tale of a janitor assassin. Carl’s boss, Ryan Clancy, would have to alert the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service about the hiccup in the mission.

  The last thing either Carl or Ryan would want is for the client—an organization known as the Quorum—to know something had gone wrong. Otherwise, the Quorum would never trust Carl again. After all, he had been hired as a freelancer.

  He’d done so in order to infiltrate the organization, at the behest of Acme’s first and foremost client, the Central Intelligence Agency.

  Noting the evil eye from the flight attendant who had already given him a hard time for holding up the plane, he snapped off his phone.

  He slept on the three-hour flight home. Those he exterminated never haunted his dreams.

  But this time, he dreamt of the little boy.

  As always, Carl’s wife, Donna, was waiting curbside at LAX’s passenger arrival door. His children, Mary and Jeff, ran up to their father. As they smothered him with kisses, he lifted one child in each arm and hugged them to his chest.

  When they finally let him go, he reached down into his valise and pulled out the Wolverine doll. “A birthday present,” he said, as he handed it to Jeff.

  The little boy held it up, then ran with it back to the car, where his mother was waiting.

  “What did you get me?” Mary asked her father as she curled her hand in his.

  He held up her hand and kissed it. “I came home, safe and sound.”

  “But you always do that, Daddy,” she said with a pout.

  “And I always will,” he promised.

  It never once bothered Carl Stone that he led a double life. In fact, he took pride in the ease in which he brushed off the cold emotionless demeanor that came with his job as a paid killer.

  The same meticulous planning that went into his kills had been used in wooing his wife, Donna, whom he loved unconditionally. She was the rock on which his ideals were based. She was the beacon of light that guided him through the dark and treacherous undercurrents of his chosen profession, where money talked and power ruled supreme. Despite having neither, Carl vowed to, one day, reign supreme. His plotting and scheming skills would assure this, too.

  The warm, welcoming smile that had Mary and Jeff leaping into his arms also lured his targets closer to him without ever realizing their lives were in danger.

  And the index finger that slowly but firmly pulled the trigger on his M40 was the same one he used to bring his wife to ecstatic climax during foreplay—although arguably at a more frenetic and sustained pace all the way through the lovemaking that followed.

  The kids had fallen asleep on the trip back from the airport. He’d picked up Mary, who was the heavier of the two, while Donna draped Jeff over her chest and followed him into the house.

  It took Donna and Carl just a few minutes to tuck the children into their tiny bunk beds.

  It took a few seconds for them to strip out of their clothes and fall into the king-sized bed they shared.

  He took her in his arms as if he’d never let her go. Eventually, his hands would roam over her body, his fingertips lightly skimming every curve—her plump breasts, her rounded hips, then onto the soft valley of her belly—before gently probing the sweet spot between her thighs.

  In turn, her kisses revived him.

  He never failed to feel a charge of anticipation when her lips roamed down onto his chest, or when her tongue circled his nipples, before moving down the taut ribbed plane of his abdomen.

  Her touch never failed to harden him.

  When finally he was inside of her—when he could feel her heart pounding practically in his chest, when he felt her hot breath rise in his nostrils—he felt they were one body.

  As was always the case, it was after making love to Donna that he felt closest to her. During this precious moment between them, he wondered if she could read his thoughts, too. Why else would she give that deep, shy laugh that always made his heart skip a beat, and whisper into his hear in a singsong sort of way, “I know what you’re thinking…”

  No, you don’t, he was tempted to say. But boy, wouldn’t it be interesting if you did?

  He wondered how she’d react to the news that he’d murdered Fat Ass just a few hours ago. Or that just last week, when he was supposed to be in Chicago, he stalked a woman through the Bolivian jungle, taking her down with an eight-hundred-foot shot to the back of her head.

  Would Donna be shocked or repulsed—or worse yet, scared of him?

  Would she see him as a monster?

  Maybe it would turn her on.

  Just the thought made him hard again.

  As if reading his mind, Donna whispered, “I have a confession to make."

  Maybe the timing was right after all.

  To face her, he raised up on an elbow. “So do I.”

  “Trust me on this, I should go first.” She lifted her eyes to meet his. “Carl, I’m…we’re pregnant. The doctor confirmed it yesterday, but I wanted to wait until you got home, so that I could tell you in person. I’m seven weeks along—”

  He couldn’t remember what she said after that. Her words were drowned out by the wave of joy washing over him. When it subsided, he realized he was stranded on the barren reality of his dual existence.

  “Honey, are you alright?” She took his hand in hers. “I know this pregnancy wasn’t planned, but we’d always talked of having three children—”

  He silenced her with a kiss.

  Then with another.

  Soon she was crying and laughing at the same time.

  She led him back inside her. This time, there was an urgency–no, more like a savagery to their lovemaking.

  As they climaxed in each other’s arms,
it dawned on him that she could never know the truth. Even if he tried to level with her, she wouldn’t believe him.

  And deep down in his heart, he knew if she did believe him, she could never love him. How could she love a killer?

  She couldn’t. Case closed.

  Maybe it was for the best. If being in his line of work had taught him anything, it was that life was fleeting, so live it well, and hold onto what you have with both fists.

  A hard man, in particular, always had a target on his back. During a hit, anything could go wrong, and usually something did. This last trip was a perfect example.

  Granted, when it came to covering his tracks, Carl was second to none. He had to be. Otherwise, he’d have to kiss the best part of his two worlds goodbye—the universe filled with the love of Donna, Mary, and Jeff.

  But now Donna had given him yet one more reason to stay alive at all costs.

  The thought of losing the world they’d built together was all the incentive he needed to keep his mouth shut, and to busy himself with the next best thing: enjoying the precious time they shared.

  Donna was surprised when his trigger finger found her, once again.

  When she came, she gave that gasp that reminded him of the sound his targets made as they died.

  Not that he could ever tell her that.

  There are just some things you have to keep to yourself.

  Carl’s phone was buzzing.

  It was a stupid move on his part—leaving it on his bureau, and still turned on, no less. Until now, he’d never forgotten to turn it off the minute he came home.

  At first, he didn’t hear it. He’d just gotten out of a hot steamy shower and was scrutinizing the bruises he’d earned while raising Fat Ass onto the toilet. By the time he opened the bathroom door, it was too late. Donna, who had been brushing her hair in front of the bedroom mirror, instinctively reached over and picked up his cell.

  A second later, Carl was at her side—close enough to hear the man on the other end of the line chattering away in German.