The Assassin's Wife Page 10

  The bus jolted to a stop. She got off, and a man followed her. She turned on the sidewalk to face him, her handgun aimed at him through her purse. She blocked his way.

  “Excuse me, miss, can I get past?” He stepped by her and hurried down the sidewalk.

  Meg sighed. “Sure, go ahead, sorry.”

  She walked in a zigzag pattern for a few blocks, changing directions twice to make sure she wasn’t followed. She crossed the street to the city library and found a desk in a back corner. She held the envelope under the desk, flipping it over in her hands. Finally, she sliced it open with her nail file, slowly, quietly. She unfolded the cotton paper she was holding. It was blank. She turned it over. Nothing.

  She was standing up to go when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  Meg flinched like a wild horse touched for the first time.

  “I’m so sorry to have startled you.” It was the blond man from the bus. “Meg, it’s me, John.”

  Meg gasped. “How do I know that?”

  The man reached into his pocket and removed a photo of Eric.

  “How do I know you’re not his killer?”

  John looked up and down the aisle. “Meet me back here tomorrow at 10 a.m.”

  “Why tomorrow? Why not right now?”

  “Meg, you’ve got to trust me.”

  “No, John, talk to me now.”

  “It has to be this way. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He turned and walked away. She wanted to run after him and grab him and make him stay. But he kept walking. How could she trust him? No, she wouldn’t trust him. He set her up at the park. Why should she trust him now?

  CHAPTER 33

  Meg hailed a taxi and told the driver to just drive. When they drove by the most run-down used car lot she could find, she asked him to stop. Paying cash for a ‘94 Honda Accord, she hoped it wouldn’t attract attention.

  She got in the musty smelling car and returned to the storage unit she had rented. There she loaded the car with the basics – files, DVDs, guns, make-up, disguises and money – the items she needed to survive. Just after dark, she drove the Accord until she found what she was looking for. She parked across the street from the Windhover Motel and scanned the windows with binoculars. Only two rooms had lights on, and that made sense given there were only three cars in the parking lot. Over the next several hours, only one more car showed up.

  The design of this hotel reminded her of a place she and Eric had stayed once for a short getaway. Even the name was similar. Of course, money was tight, so they had driven to the Oregon Coast and found an affordable place called the Windjammer. It was a stormy weekend, and they’d spent most of the time indoors watching huge crashing waves from the warmth of their room. They’d also walked on the beach and gotten soaked while collecting shells. Those two days and nights were some of the best memories of Meg’s life. It was one of their few vacations together. In the ten years they had been married, there was never enough money for trips. Fortunately, they’d had their cabin. Their one indulgence in life…memories now stained forever.

  Even when she was a child, she never went on vacations. Once her father offered to take her and her reluctant mother to Lake Tahoe, but he turned off in Reno instead and drank and gambled the whole time. She counted the experience as more of a nightmare than a vacation. Meg tried to put it out of her mind. Her father’s lies, Eric’s lies. At least Eric was trying to right his wrongs. He tried to plan for her. Tried to help her escape the fate he willingly imposed on her. Her father had died leaving her nothing. He never even asked her for forgiveness.

  At 11:00 p.m., Meg got out of the car and crossed the street. She went to the hotel room at the opposite end of the building from the office. She stood in the shadows for a few minutes, trading her attention between working the lock tumblers and keeping an eye on the street. She cradled the lock with her body as she worked. When a car turned into the parking lot, the lights swept over her. She froze. Tiny tremblers in her legs turned to rumbles. Meg saw that it was a police car. Her leg muscles stopped shaking and tensed, ready for flight, but then she saw the cruiser turn around. The shaking returned full force.

  Meg realized that to the cop she looked like a normal guest unlocking her room for the night. With her knees still shaking, she went back to work.

  The room was dark, and she didn’t turn on the light. She opened the box-sized refrigerator, and the light illuminated a king-sized bed. Meg turned to look at the room. It seemed as if the walls were moving in on her, and the shiny brass door handle was turning and a polished assassin was entering the threshold.

  Meg ran for the door.

  She lunged for her car and drove away from the light, to the most remote road she could find. She followed a dark curving, rising road for at least sixty miles. Finally, she came upon a tall wooden structure, probably fifty feet high with a wooden ladder built into it. She drove the car off the road and into the dense underbrush. Pulling off some low hanging branches, she covered the car with them and began her ascent up the ladder.

  Nobody would look for her here in an abandoned fire-lookout tower in the Wenatchee National Forest. She picked the lock and opened the door. The room was simple, a cot and a desk. No toilet, but well-stocked with food. She was safe for now. A castle in the wilderness.

  She fell on the cot sobbing. What did she do to deserve this cruel fate? She cried for more than an hour, not wanting to stop. She knew that when she did stop, she would have to face reality again. She kept the tears going as long as she could.

  Eventually this wave of grief and emotion faded into exhaustion. She thought about Eric and their honeymoon. She remembered how she’d always felt comforted by his presence at night. She missed him. She missed his soft, reassuring voice. She missed having someone to confide in, someone who listened to her feelings and told her that everything would be alright. She missed his strong arms holding her tight. Now he was gone and she was alone. When she heard a thump on the roof, she shot bolt upright and leaped across the room, drawing her handgun and holding it up. She peeked out the window. A great horned owl swooped into the night. It had just perched on the roof for a moment. Searching for prey.

  Meg laid back down wondering if she would ever be able to relax again. Would the shaking ever stop? Would she always be afraid of every sound?

  “How could you do this to me?” she screamed as if Eric was still with her.

  Her thoughts returned to waves crashing on the beach in Oregon and tears ran down her cheeks. “I loved you,” she said.

  The sound of those waves on the beach lulled her to sleep. She lost consciousness, aware that what she had to do in the morning was far different than what she’d looked forward to in the hotel ten years ago.

  Meg woke up at 4 a.m. clutching a gun to her breast. She got up and made a quick breakfast, savoring the relative safety. It wouldn’t be long before some forest service ranger found her. Meg hooked up Eric’s laptop and spent the early morning hours watching Eric’s training tapes. She watched his DVDs over and over again—videos on anti-surveillance, escape and evasion, self-defense, and the use of combat handguns. On other tapes, she watched Eric as he went into reading body-language, man-hunting, building files on adversaries, discovering their patterns and weaknesses, and more details about his extortion scheme.

  “These videos contain just the very basics that you will need to survive,” Eric said. “To stay alive over the long run, your training can never end. Research these areas as diligently as you studied Ibsen critics and stage direction. Don’t ever let up because your enemies never will. You’re smart, Meg. Don’t ever forget that or underestimate your own potential. Use your brains.”

  As Meg watched, she repetitively took apart her handgun and put it back together without looking. At 7 a.m. she descended the ladder.

  CHAPTER 34

  Wearing day old makeup and clothes that smelled like a wet dog, Meg drove to Wenatchee and bought shorts, a t-shirt, and a bathing suit at the local St. Vincent’s de Pau
l’s second-hand store. She put on the used bathing suit and threw out the smelly rags she had been wearing. After a fifteen minute drive, she arrived at Lake Wenatchee. She removed as much make-up as she could with baby wipes and then dunked herself in the lake to get cleaned up. She swam for a few minutes in the cool, refreshing water and then drove to a secluded spot to change into dry clothes. Finally, she practiced some of the offensive kicks that Eric had taught her on the DVDs and then reapplied her stage makeup. This time she was an unassuming red-head with a drooping sun hat.

  Meg drove into Spokane and arrived at the city library at 9 a.m., one hour before Lomax was supposed to meet her. The library was mostly empty, except for a few employees that milled about.

  Meg took the elevator to the second floor. She walked down a long, dark row of shelves towards a solitary desk that was planted in the corner of the building. She sat down at the desk, which had a view of the city. Her back was to the bookshelf-lined chute she had just walked down. Atop the desk was a computer, and when she clicked on the search engine, an image of a woman in a bikini popped up. “Wanted” was the caption. Meg was horrified. It was her face attached to a body she didn’t recognize. Who were these people that were after her? She frantically dug in her purse until she found a little black mirror no bigger than a clam. Her disguise was good. She didn’t look anything like the attractive woman on the computer. At least, the average person wouldn’t be able to tell it was her. She now understood more deeply what it meant to take on a role. When the stakes were high, the actor had an edge. In her case, the stakes couldn’t be higher. She used the Stanislavsky method to help her focus. Nobody could have imagined the feelings that invaded her at that moment, emotions like an arctic storm.

  She needed to figure out who these people were—and soon.

  She checked the email address that Sikes had given her. To her surprise the coward had kept his word. There was an email from him. Apparently he had come across a rancher named Sims who had leases on thousands of acres of government land. He used the land to graze cattle. Recently Sims was knocked off his tractor by a 7.62mm bullet. Not coincidently, the Harding Corp. had taken up leasing federal land in Idaho. Seemed like the type of tactic the Harding Corp. might employ to get what they wanted according to Sikes. He suggested Meg visit Sims’ widow. She lived on

  Blinder Road in the Palouse. Meg looked behind her. Still no library patrons. She

  Googled Blinder Road and everything else she could find on the Sims family. She shot an email back to Tom asking him to keep digging and that she would honor Eric’s promised payment to him if he delivered the information she needed to escape her living hell. A soft voice whispered her name. Meg spun around.

  Lomax stood above her, smiling. “I told you I would come.”

  “Yeah, right. Like I should trust you,” Meg said. “You already set me up once.”

  “Well, I’m here.”

  “You’re late.”

  “Can’t be too obvious, can I?”

  Meg looked down the long aisle. The library was still empty.

  “So you knew. You knew what Eric was really up to.”

  John sat on the desk, keeping his eye on the dark row. “Yeah, I knew. He told me.”

  Meg crossed her arms and turned to face him. “Tell me.”

  “What do you want to know?

  Meg leaned back. “Why did he do it? And how were you involved.”

  John spoke in a soft voice, switching between looking at her and the long row he had just walked down. “I’m sure he didn’t tell me everything. I suspect there is a lot I don’t know.”

  “Go on. Tell me what you do know.”

  “Well, Eric and I played football together in high school and college, but after that, we didn’t keep in touch. Then a couple of years ago, I ran into him in Panama.”

  “Panama?” Meg grit her teeth. Of course, she never knew Eric had ever been to there.

  “The man I found in Panama was so different. It was really sad.”

  Meg clenched her jaw even harder. “What do you mean by that?”

  “You know, in college I had really admired Eric for his confidence and unshakable belief in success. I used to get energy just being around him. The guy was always on a roll. He used to believe that every play was going to be the big play that could win the game. He never doubted for a moment that it would succeed. You should have seen some of the trick plays he did that won us games. Like when he took us to the Rose Bowl our senior year. I was so impressed by him that he actually inspired me to start Help on the Way.

  “Please get to the point. He was no saint.”

  “Alright, well, the man I found in Panama was miserable. He wouldn’t tell me what he was up to, but I could tell it was weighing on him heavily. He was dealing with a lot of self-loathing and desperately needed someone to talk to. Seeing me reminded him of the good old days, sort of broke him in a way. Made him even more desperate and pitiful. He kept asking me about what I was doing. So I took him over to my ship and convinced him to volunteer. I told him it would help him with his depression, and it did. He told me that he’d made a couple of mistakes. He was vague, but I got the general idea. Not only was his conscience eating him alive, but so was his guilt over the deception that he took home with him.”

  “Yeah, right. Somehow he managed to hide his guilt from me.”

  Lomax was quiet for a minute. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing. There was a bright spot in his life and it was you.”

  “Right, a real shining star. Turns out he was a better actor then me.”

  Lomax paused. “You were everything to him. You were what kept him going. As it turns out, working on the boat also worked some healing on his soul. He had a deep need to forget about himself and his own failings, to help others. I’m not saying he was suddenly the guy I knew in college again, but…”

  “Okay, I get the point. He was suffering from guilt.”

  Lomax nodded. “The fact is he saved a lot of lives, and you need to know that. He was going to walk away from it all, but he made a mistake. It created a nightmare situation from him. He could not forgive himself. By the time he realized what had happened, it was too late. He planned on finishing one last job so he could leave it all behind.”

  “And now it’s up to me to finish the job,” Meg said coolly. She pressed her lips tightly together and sat in silence for a couple of minutes. “Look, are you here to help me or not?”

  “I told Eric I would…”

  “Good, then we need to visit a widow in the Palouse.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Meg drove through the scattered mounds and troughs of the Palouse that stretched from Eastern Washington into Central Idaho, this time in Lomax’s truck. With her husband’s college buddy snoozing in the passenger seat, Meg stared out the window at the rolling hills that stretched until they met the blue sky. The rising sun illuminated lush wheat grass mixed with fields of yellow rapeseed flowers.

  There was a time when she would have enjoyed a drive like this. An escape from the everyday burdens of life, burdens that now seemed so trivial. She rolled down her window and took in the rich scent of nature.

  Lomax started to stir, interrupting the fresh silence. “This widow we’re going to see, she’s not the only one.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Eric left me this.” He handed her an obituary that was cut out from a newspaper last January. Meg read it over. “A farmer died in a car wreck. So what? That’s different than a farmer who was shot on his tractor. What’s your point?”

  “The point is that it looks like a typical obituary. Nothing extraordinary at all.”

  “Right.”

  “Eric killed him. Ran his car off the road into the Payette River in December.”

  Meg threw the article on the floor. Heat flushed her face. “You’re saying Eric killed an innocent man?”

  “It appears so.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  �
��I guess I didn’t want to see you hurt more than you already are.”

  “Lies are what hurt!”

  John turned away from her and looked out the window at the bright yellow fields that covered the hills in perfect squares.

  Meg grabbed his stubbled chin and turned it toward her. “I need to know everything. Now.”

  John pulled his chin away from her grip and massaged it.

  “You know what? I’m here to help you. I’m only doing this for Eric. I promised him I would, but you got to deal with your own stuff. Don’t take out your problems on me.”

  “Don’t ever keep anything from me again and I won’t have any problems. Get that? Now, what else do you know?”

  Lomax looked back out at the hills patched with yellow that filled the Palouse. “Eric told me he talked to the man’s wife, and she said she was simply a rancher’s wife and that she’d lost her desire to go on living now that her husband of fifty-five years had died. In fact, Eric said the sanction made no sense at all. The widow told Eric her husband had no enemies, was not into anything illegal. He was a rancher. At the time of his death, he’d been on his way to deliver a bid on a lease of federal land for grazing rights for his cows.”

  “Federal land leases? What’s the deal with these leases?”

  Railroad tracks rumbled under them as Meg pulled off

  Blinder Road and down the driveway of a run-down farmhouse nestled in the hills. A For Sale by Owner sign hung on a leaning post. Dozens of blooming rose bushes dominated a sprawling overgrown lawn. Not far off, Meg saw a tractor parked inside of a barn. A thin woman opened the door. She wore Bermuda shorts that revealed brittle-looking knees. She made a weak effort to smile, but wasn’t very successful in her attempt.

  “Can I help you?” she said in a shaky voice.