The Assassin's Wife Read online

  “Wait for me in the cabin,” Neil said. “I’ll get the keys. Be patient. I’m not sure what to tell him.”

  “I’m not going in there alone.”

  “You have to. If he sees you, then he’ll be involved in this mess, and I don’t want that.”

  “He’s already involved if we’re borrowing his car.”

  Neil’s cheeks tensed. “I don’t want to make it worse. He doesn’t need to know what’s going on, and I hope you’d do him the courtesy of not putting him and his wife and children in danger.”

  Meg thought about what he was saying for a moment. “I’m sorry. Fine, I’ll wait in the car.”

  “I need you to wait in the cabin. He leaves it unlocked.”

  Meg grabbed the wood box, thinking she might have a minute to explore its contents. Really she just wanted to get out of the area as fast as she could, but Neil was right. She didn’t want to put his cousin at risk. The world was a terrible place, but there were also good people who would help each other in crisis. She went into the cabin, and found it to be cool inside, almost too cool. It was small and neat and clean with a mini- frig and a television. She stood with her back to the wall and cried.

  CHAPTER 4

  So cold. The mountain air seemed to permeate her clothes like ice. She heard a noise outside, and pressed her back to the wall. She stood unmoving, listening. Could they have been followed? She remembered the intruder, the deafening shots, and the need to get out. Now she was shaking again, and the walls penned her in. She sunk down onto the floor. With shaking fingers, she dried her face with her fingers. Eric, Eric, Eric.

  The door swung open and a gust of cold air filled the room. Meg jumped up, the shaking taking over her whole body now.

  “Ah, hell. Sorry I startled you,” Neil said. “Come sit down and let me make you some tea.”

  She shook her head. “We need to go. I want to get out of here. Far away from here. Let’s call the police. They will help. Let them figure this out.” She grabbed her purse and started rummaging for her cell phone. She started to lift it out of her purse.

  Neil grabbed her wrist gently but firmly. “Meg, there’s no cell reception out here. I’ll tell you what. I’ll go call them. Why don’t you wait here and rest.”

  She looked at his hand on her wrist, then into his eyes. “I’m so scared. Who would kill Eric? Why would they kill him? He was the most kind, honest man I’ve ever met. He loved me.”

  “I don’t know, Meg. But we will find out. I’ll be back in a little while.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Sitting on the bed in the dim light, Meg ignored the sounds—the owl, the distant coyote, the clicking of the electric heater. The wood box was smooth and had a shiny finish. The oak, the smooth, round, routered corners, the light colored finish—these were Eric’s signatures. He had made this box in his woodshop. It was probably the last piece of woodwork he’d made. What kind of gift was so important that he insisted she take it as she ran from a sniper? Why would it be sealed with a lock that she didn’t know the combination to?

  Lying on the bed, Meg fed numbers into the combination lock. She tried Eric’s usual passwords without luck. She tried his birthday, her birthday, his old license plate number and various other numerical combinations that he might have thought of. Nothing worked. She tried to come up with a password for ten minutes without success and finally put the box aside.

  Images of Eric struggling to communicate replayed in her mind. “I’m not who you think I am.” Meg couldn’t stop the voice in her head. She was angry, yet she clung to her love for Eric. Sobs overcame her. She thought of her childhood, when her father had regularly lied to her and her mother. Once, the sheriff came to evict them from their home because her father had lost it due to his compulsive betting. He was nowhere to be found. They saw no more of him until he showed up at their rented home several months later and forced his way in. He begged forgiveness and sprinkled his remorse with what turned out to be a new round of fabrications.

  Meg’s hatred of lies was only eclipsed by her anger over liars. She and her mother had become so used to her father’s deceits that they learned to never trust a word he said, especially when he was drunk. The most important characteristic she had admired in Eric was that he was nothing like her father. He was the most genuine and honest person she had ever met. He was selfless and vulnerable. In ten years she’d never once found a crack in his sense of honor and truthfulness.

  Until tonight.

  The door handle rattled vigorously. Neil pushed the door open, stepped inside, stopped abruptly, and glared at her. He was breathing fast even though he’d been driving, not running. His eyes flitted around the room.

  “We’re clearing out—now.”

  “Did you call the police? Did they get the sniper?”

  “Come on. I’ll tell you in the car.”

  Neil ran towards the Jeep. Carrying the box, Meg followed, wondering why they weren’t taking his cousin’s car. Neil lunged himself into the driver’s seat of the Jeep and spun the tires in the gravel.

  “What is going on?” Meg said. “What did the police say?”

  Neil looked over at her. “Why did they kill your husband?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Neil flicked on the bright lights as they raced down the dirt road through the woods. “What was Eric involved in? Drugs? Guns? What?”

  “Nothing. He was a property manager.”

  “And what else?”

  Meg covered her face with her hand.

  “Let’s get real,” Neal said. “Snipers don’t just attack anybody in the Idaho backwoods. Come on.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  Neil slammed on the brakes as the road curved, and the back end slid in the gravel. He rammed the gear shift forward and eased back onto the gas

  “On my way to town I turned on the radio. You’re a wanted woman. You’re considered armed and dangerous. The police are everywhere looking for you. I saw three cruisers on my way back here.”

  Meg stared at him. “But there hasn’t even been time for them to—who would have called them? They couldn’t even know what happened yet.”

  “Meg, they are calling it a domestic crime.”

  “A what? I love my husband. There was a man with a gun.”

  “I think you’re being set up. You have to think. Was your husband into something that you didn’t know about?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think.”

  “I said I don’t know. After he was shot, he said he wasn’t who I thought he was. He asked for forgiveness.”

  “Oh Shit. Meg, what was your husband involved in? Who was he involved with? Do you know what this means?”

  “Let’s just go to the police. The truth will prevail. I didn’t do anything. They will believe me.”

  “You better give that some hard thought because if you do, you will be taken into custody. It appears that somebody up the food chain knew about this before it even happened. You could just simply disappear.”

  “The cops wouldn’t do that.”

  “The hell they wouldn’t. They’ll do anything their superiors tell them to do. They won’t question it.”

  “My husband is dead. I have to go to the police.”

  “Do that and I can’t guarantee you’ll ever get out of there.”

  “Why do you care? Why not just turn me in?”

  “Because a friend of my brother is a friend of mine. I can see what’s happening here. I can’t stand back and allow that to happen. There is evil in the world, Meg. I’ve learned that in my years in the security business. The only thing more dangerous than evil is a person who turns their back and does nothing to stop it.”

  They continued in silence on the only road to Boise.

  CHAPTER 6

  They arrived in Boise just after 2 a.m. Neil slowed the Jeep as he entered town, and it seemed to Meg as if she was in a place she’d never been before. Not that anything was different. It was more th
at her whole reality had changed. Neil continued driving deeper into Boise.

  She couldn’t go to the university tomorrow. She could just imagine Kelly Brenner asking her if she’d enjoyed her weekend getaway.

  How could Meg answer that simple question? “Not really. An intruder killed Eric and nearly got me, too.”

  Of course they would assume she was joking. And when they finally believed her story, then what?

  “Did the police catch the killer?”

  “I didn’t call them,” Meg would say. “Eric led some kind of double life and I’m being set up by someone who sent an assassin after me.” No doubt she would be in jail within hours if not a psycho ward.

  Meg wanted to fall asleep and escape from it all. She closed her eyes, leaning her head against the passenger window. When the Jeep hit a pot-hole, her head bounced and slammed against the window, jerking her awake.

  The neighborhood where she and Eric lived came into view. Neil parked a block away from Meg’s home, and they walked together along the sidewalk. They’d gone only ten feet when Meg stopped. “I don’t want to go there.”

  “We have to go now before anyone else gets here. We have to take the chance to clear your name and find justice for your husband.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “It won’t take long, Meg. Just grab anything that might give us an idea who’s behind this. Address books, cell phones, anything that you think might help us.”

  “Are you sure it’s okay?”

  “I’m confident because we’re acting fast, but a few hours from now no place will be safe for us. This is our only chance.”

  She started walking.

  When she saw the house, she saw herself and Eric working in the garden. She saw them coming home together after dinner out. She unlocked the door. Inside, the house was warm. She didn’t realize she’d left the heat on.

  “Get your address book. Where do you keep important documents?”

  “The filing cabinet in the den.”

  After Neil went into the den, Meg got her address book. It was in the kitchen drawer where it always was.

  She was suddenly back in the mountains, in the dark, with Eric lying on the ground.

  “Go to Lomax,” he had said.

  She grabbed the address book and shut the drawer.

  The wood stove sat in the corner of the living room on brick surround. Meg kneeled down by the wicker basket, where she usually tossed old newspapers. She dug down a few inches and found what she was looking for. Pulling last month’s issue of Backpacker magazine out, she flipped to the back cover. There was no name by the phone number that was scribbled there, but no name was needed. Meg had taken a message when John Lomax called. Meg knew little about him except that a couple of times Eric had mentioned volunteering on Lomax’s tramp ship, a vessel that he used to deliver food to people in need.

  Meg was on her way down the hall to the den when she noticed that the bathroom door was closed.

  That’s not right. I didn’t close it … did I? She moved quickly past it.

  In the den, she found Neil going through the filing cabinet. Meg looked at the photo on the desk of her and Eric on the Oregon coast. In the photo, Eric was smiling. Meg had looked at that photo a hundred times, but now she saw the deception that she’d never noticed before.

  “I want to get out of here,” Meg whispered. “Now.”

  A creak came from down the hall.

  Meg remembered the killer at the cabin. She relived the terror-filled moments when she saw his face. She wanted to run outside and to her neighbors. They would help her, wouldn’t they? They would make it all okay.

  They’re in the house. They’re—

  Meg stood rigid with fear, drawing quick shallow breaths. Her eyes shifted around, desperately looking for something to defend herself with. There was nothing in reach but an empty cereal bowl that Eric had left on the desk. Meg picked up the spoon. Maybe she could stab the intruder in the eye with it.

  She looked around for an escape route, like a lamb surrounded by wolves, as if she didn’t know that the only way out was down the hall. She looked back at Neil. He glanced at her for a moment then pulled a gun from the small of his back. He moved slowly down the hall. She followed.

  He stopped at the closed bathroom door. Meg pulled up behind him and waited for him to continue down the hall. Instead he rammed his shoulder against the door and smashed it inward. Meg heard the door slam against the wall, then saw Neil leap into the bathroom with gun drawn ready for the kill.

  Meg waited for the sound of a gun exploding. Instead, the only thing she heard was blood pounding in her ears. Then she heard Neil sigh.

  “Come here,” Neil said.

  “What is it?”

  “Just come here.”

  Meg waited outside the door.

  “What is this?” Neil said.

  She peered into the bathroom and saw a photo on the counter. It was of her and Eric, taken downtown a few months ago. Eric had asked a stranger to take the photo. Meg was standing on a curb in front of a Mexican restaurant, the street address “2623” painted on the curb beneath her feet. Eric was adamant that the stranger include the festively-painted address in the picture. Eric stood beside her with his arm around her. What was it doing in here?

  “I’m leaving.” Meg turned and went for the front door. She heard Neil right behind her.

  “We can’t leave yet. We need a line on who’s behind this.”

  “I’ve got my address book. There’s nothing else here.”

  “Once we leave, we can’t come back.”

  “Good.” While walking through the living room, she saw movement. A figure walked along the sidewalk, away from her house, glancing back at it.

  “They’re here,” Neil said. “Hurry, give me your car keys. Which car is yours?”

  “What?” Meg rummaged through her purse and threw the keys to Neil. “It’s the Subaru in the driveway.”

  He eased the front door open with one hand and held his handgun in the other. “We’re going straight for your car. Get in fast.”

  They followed the path alongside the garage and into the driveway. The man was out of sight now, and Meg sighed with relief. She aimed herself for her car’s passenger door.

  But a man stepped out from behind a wall of arborvitae trees on the far side of the neighbor’s house where the road and sidewalk curved.

  Meg ducked as the man raised his gun and fired twice. Her car’s window shattered and glass rained down on the driveway beside her. Meg flattened herself on the asphalt and wondered if she’d ever get away from this terrible place she’d once called home. A flurry of shots went back and forth, and from her place on the ground under the Subaru, Meg saw the killer’s body collapse to the pavement. Meg got up and reached for the car’s door, then heard running footsteps. The man she’d seen earlier was running down the street towards them.

  Meg glanced at Neil as he wheeled around, leveling his handgun.

  The shooter fired at almost the same moment as Neil. The shooter’s head snapped back as a bullet crashed into his right eye. He staggered and fell, and after he hit the pavement, he moved no more.

  Meg didn’t either. Standing by the car, she knew she was in another world. She kept looking back and forth at the dead bodies. Meg was terrified that they would suddenly jump up and start shooting again. She told herself that they were dead, and suddenly she was concerned about what the neighbors would think.

  Meg’s eyes jumped from window to window, hoping that nobody had been watching as her companion gunned down two shooters. Maybe they were out of town. She could just imagine them being interviewed on television saying how they were so shocked, how Meg was a popular drama professor and such a nice person. They couldn’t believe that she was involved with a bunch of killers—and Eric dead! They were stunned.

  Meg was drawn out of her trance when Neil slapped her. He grabbed her by the shoulders and began to shake her.

  “I told you to ge
t in the damn car,” Neil said. He jerked the door open and shoved her in, causing her to bump her head in the process. As Neil burned rubber, the car slid out into the street just as a truck came barreling around the corner. The truck swerved to avoid collision. Neil peeled out, and the car ripped down the street. Meg gazed in horror out the back window at the two dead men on the sidewalk.

  “The box,” Meg said, pointing at the Jeep. “You’ve got to stop.”

  Neil slammed on the brakes, and the car slid to a halt.

  Moments later they fled the subdivision.

  CHAPTER 7

  As they drove through Boise, Meg realized that three people were now dead. In less than 24 hours, her life had become unrecognizable. She went from being a simple drama teacher to a wanted woman.

  She looked over at Neil. “You didn’t tell me you were carrying a gun.”

  “Meg, I’m in the security business. Of course I carry a gun. Now, we’re going to check into a motel and ditch your car. We need to look like somebody else, and fast.”

  Meg tied her hair up with a scarf and put on sunglasses.

  “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

  Neil left the car behind a vacant gas station. Meg carried the wooden box, and they caught a bus to a hotel near the airport. Neil rented two rooms.

  Meg’s hotel room had the standard double-beds, television, and thick curtains that ensured privacy. On the coffee table was a local restaurant menu, which she turned over.

  She was a hunted animal—totally defenseless and on the run. Nothing was the same any more. She would have to learn how to protect herself.

  Who the hell was Eric?

  She wanted to flick a switch that would turn off her new life and turn her old life back on. The trembling returned as waves of emotion shook her body.

  “Eric. What am I going to do? I need you, Eric. How could you leave me like this? Why didn’t you tell me what you were involved in? What am I supposed to do?”