Death Takes a Partner: A Mary Jo Assassin Novel Read online

  She didn’t feel like partying alone tonight. She hadn’t done the job alone, she needed to party with Jean.

  Five minutes later she was in her suite and had changed out of her new dress and shoes and put on comfortable traveling clothes of jeans, a sports bra, a silk blouse, and new tennis shoes.

  Twenty minutes later she had her new clothes packed into a carry-on bag and headed to the airport. That morning she had sold her car at a local used car lot after cleaning it completely.

  As she often did, she had booked and paid for five first-class tickets to New York, one for each evening she had planned to be in Las Vegas. She hated feeling trapped in a city because of booked flights, so about twenty years ago she had started doing that.

  She had thought she might stay at least two or three days in Vegas, but she had gone ahead and booked the tickets for all five possible days because she figured she didn’t know when she would want to leave.

  She sort of laughed at herself that she hadn’t lasted a day relaxing without Jean.

  Not one single day.

  Wow, she really was in love.

  And she didn’t mind that at all.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  JEAN GOT A good night’s sleep in a wonderful suite hotel just outside of Missoula, Montana. Then the next day she had spent buying some new comfortable clothes and donating the last of the clothing she had worn in California to different charities around the town.

  Then she donated her car to a charity after making sure it was rubbed clean completely of any fingerprints or trace she had been in it. She signed over the title under one of her fake names.

  From there, she headed to the airport.

  Five hours later she was in a cab headed into Denver.

  She had no idea why she had decided to go to Denver. It just seemed logical and as the cab pulled into the hotel she had booked, she just flat changed her mind.

  She didn’t want to be here. She wanted to be in New York, in her and Mary Jo’s condo.

  So she had the cab driver wait and she went in and cancelled her reservation, then had the cab take her back to the airport. The poor driver was smiling the entire way, thinking he had managed to get the best client ever.

  By paying a little extra and flirting with a woman at the counter, Jean managed to get on a late flight to New York through Chicago.

  By three in the morning New York time, the cab dropped her off in front of the condo.

  The air was muggy and the sounds of the city wrapped around her like a welcome hug. Damn she loved this city. She felt like she was home.

  She stared up at the condo, but could see no lights in the windows, so she put her bag over her shoulder and turned and headed up the sidewalk to a deli. She was hungry and she knew they had left nothing to eat in the condo.

  On top of that, she needed to buy some fresh orange juice. She planned on having a drink tonight and soaking in the hot tub. And then getting a long, long night’s sleep in her and Mary Jo’s bed.

  Twenty minutes later, her travel bag over one shoulder and a sack of groceries in both hands, she was one block from the condo when she saw a cab pull up.

  Jean kept walking, smiling, as the most beautiful woman in the entire world climbed out of the cab with a light travel bag and stood on the sidewalk staring upward.

  Jean was within twenty steps of Mary Jo when she turned and looked at her and broke into a huge smile.

  “Didn’t want to go up there alone,” Mary Jo said, coming to Jean and stepping into her arms as Jean put the groceries on the sidewalk.

  For Jean, it was the best hug she had felt in a very, very long time.

  Then after a very long kiss, Jean smiled at the woman she loved and indicated the groceries. “I had to get some orange juice and something to eat.”

  “A woman after my own heart,” Mary Jo said, smiling.

  “I was hoping I already had it,” Jean said.

  “Oh, you do,” Mary Jo said. “You really do.”

  If you enjoyed Death Takes a Partner, you might want to check out An Easy Shot, available now from your favorite bookseller. Turn the page for a sample.

  PROLOGUE

  Monday, April 3rd

  11:12 p.m.

  CHARLES ROBINS IGNORED the crisp desert air and the star-filled Arizona night as he stepped onto the stone patio of his Scottsdale mansion. His entire focus was on the dark-suited man who leaned against a rock wall, smoking.

  Beyond the wall, the lights of Phoenix stretched out across the valley floor. Often, on spring nights like this, Charles would have his after-dinner brandy served on this patio. He loved the view, the lights, the feeling of being above all the masses below.

  But not tonight.

  At the moment there was much more important business to attend to. There would always be other warm nights and brandy on the patio.

  The man dropped the red-tipped cigarette and ground it under his foot as Charles closed the patio door and turned.

  The man would fit into most crowds. His dark suit wasn’t expensive, but it wasn’t cheap either. His face was clean shaven and had nothing really distinctive about it. His hair was short and he was going slightly bald. Charles doubted he would even recognize the man if they passed on the street. Yet the man was one of Charles’s most trusted and valued employees.

  The man waited, making Charles come to him. No one else could do that. Charles controlled businesses worth a billion dollars, had twenty servants and six body guards in this house alone, and was considered one of the most eligible bachelors in the country. Yet this man just didn’t seem to care.

  Charles asked him to do special tasks, paid him well, and that was all the man did. He scared Charles by his very coldness. No one else in this world did that to Charles.

  In the three years the man had worked for Charles, this was only their fourth meeting. All four meetings had been on this patio, and always alone. Charles didn’t even know the man’s real name and had no desire to learn it. Charles just called him Bill when he had to call him anything at all, and the man didn’t seem to care. Yet Charles knew to the penny how many hundreds of thousands of dollars this man, under a false company name, had been paid for “consulting.”

  And every penny had been worth it.

  The man spoke little, and Charles liked that about him. Tonight there were no greetings. The man, his dark eyes hidden in the faint light, simply stood and waited, his hands behind his back, as if he were in control.

  That attitude made Charles feel even less sure about what he was about to do, but at this point he could see no other choice.

  “Senator Knight from California will be playing in a pro-am golf tournament here in Scottsdale this weekend,” Charles said, keeping his voice low so that it wouldn’t carry in the desert air. “Then he will be flying to Washington for a vote Monday morning.”

  The man said nothing.

  Charles went on. “I want you to make sure he doesn’t make that trip.”

  “Never make the trip?” the man asked, his voice very low and deep. “Or delayed?”

  “I don’t honestly care,” Charles said. And he didn’t. Senator Kelly had been after him for years. Having the man permanently out of the picture would not be a bad thing. But it was critical Kelly didn’t make that vote.

  “Understood,” the man said, nodding once. “Is that all?”

  “Make it look like an accident if you can,” Charles said. “But if you can’t just make sure it’s done. He cannot be allowed to be in Washington on Monday. Understood?”

  Again the man nodded once. “This is a United States Senator you are talking about. It will cost you more.”

  “Of course,” Charles said. “Just get it done.”

  Without even a nod the man turned and started down the rock path beside the garage wall. The night seemed to swallow him. One moment there, the next gone. How the man got past Grant and his men, and in and out of the estate’s security system was another question Charles just didn’t want to know
the answer to.

  Charles stared after the man for a moment, feeling uncertain, and very worried, just as he had felt every other time he had talked to him. Yet the man always got the task done.

  Charles turned to look out over the lights of the valley below. This mansion, all his property, everything he owned and controlled, was being threatened and he couldn’t let that happen. Senator Kelly was the push behind legislation that would cripple two of Charles’s main companies, and lead to investigations that Charles knew he couldn’t withstand. If Senator Kelly’s legislation passed, Charles would be broke and fighting to stay out of jail in less than a year.

  Most of his waking hours—and many of his nightmares—over the last few months had been to fight this bill. He had wrapped up enough votes in Kelly’s committee to tie and kill the bill if Kelly didn’t vote. But Chairman Kelly’s vote would put the bill on the floor of the Senate and from there it couldn’t be stopped.

  The key to it all was making sure Senator Kelly didn’t make that vote.

  Charles glanced down the dark path where the man he called Bill had disappeared. He could see nothing.

  With a deep breath of the fresh, crisp night air, Charles turned and headed back inside. He had a lot of work to do and work was always the best thing to take his mind off of what he had just ordered done.

  If that was even possible.

  Friday, April 7th

  8:02 a.m.

  THE THREE GUNMEN walked into the small apartment of Steph and Danny Baines without knocking. Two wore masks, the third, who was in charge, didn’t seem to care who saw him. But he knew that the residents of the nearby apartments had all left for work. Only twenty-four-year-old Steph Barnes was at home.

  The small apartment hugged against the back of a large red rock just above the small valley that held Sedona, Arizona. It had one bedroom, a small living room and kitchen, and a fantastic view of the red-rock country around Sedona from a balcony.

  Danny worked as the assistant golf pro for the local country club and Steph taught sixth grade. They were both from Phoenix, had met in college, and were hoping that Danny would get a job this next fall on one of the bigger Scottsdale clubs so they could move back. They both loved Sedona, but it was just too cold in the winter for both of them.

  Danny stood just under six feet tall, had sun-bleached brown hair and a smooth-as-silk golf swing. Steph was almost as tall, with light auburn hair and a smile that could melt a sixth-grader. Everyone said they looked more like brother and sister than husband and wife.

  Steph had taken the morning off from school to help Danny get ready for the charity tournament in Phoenix. They both had figured that it would be a wonderful opportunity to meet some people who might help them get back into the Phoenix area. And when he learned he was playing with Senator Knight, Danny got even more excited. Steph was going to come down by bus on Saturday and join the group on Sunday. Not only was it going to be a good chance for Danny to make contacts, it was going to be fun as well.

  Steph had just dropped a fifth golf shirt into Danny’s suitcase when the front door opened. For a moment she thought it was Danny coming back from the course early. Then she heard a strange voice from the doorway.

  “Don’t scream or nothin’” the voice said. “Just finish packin’ for your husband and everything will be just fine.”

  She spun around to face three men. All were holding machine-gun-like weapons on her.

  Somehow she managed to not scream.

  Somehow.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith published far more than a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres.

  At the moment he produces novels in several major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the Old West, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, a superhero series starring Poker Boy, and a mystery series featuring the retired detectives of the Cold Poker Gang.

  His monthly magazine, Smith’s Monthly, which consists of only his own fiction, premiered in October 2013 and offers readers more than 70,000 words per issue, including a new and original novel every month.

  During his career, Dean also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds. Writing with his wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch under the name Kathryn Wesley, he wrote the novel for the NBC miniseries The Tenth Kingdom and other books for Hallmark Hall of Fame movies.

  He wrote novels under dozens of pen names in the worlds of comic books and movies, including novelizations of almost a dozen films, from The Final Fantasy to Steel to Rundown.

  Dean also worked as a fiction editor off and on, starting at Pulphouse Publishing, then at VB Tech Journal, then Pocket Books, and now at WMG Publishing, where he and Kristine Kathryn Rusch serve as series editors for the acclaimed Fiction River anthology series.

  For more information about Dean’s books and ongoing projects, please visit his website at www.deanwesleysmith.com.

  Look for These Other Titles from Dean Wesley Smith

  Cold Poker Gang Mystery Series:

  Kill Game

  Cold Call

  Calling Dead

  Bad Beat

  Dead Hand

  Freezeout

  Thrillers:

  Dead Money: A Doc Hill Thriller

  An Easy Shot: A Golf Thriller

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  Copyright Information

  Death Takes a Partner

  Copyright © 2016 by Dean Wesley Smith

  First published in Smith’s Monthly #31, WMG Publishing, April 2016

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover and layout copyright © 2016 by WMG Publishing

  Cover design by Allyson Longueira/ WMG Publishing

  Cover art copyright © Subbotina/Dreamstime

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Table of Contents

  About This Book

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  PART FIVE

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  PART SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TH
REE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  PART SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  PART EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  PART NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  An Easy Shot

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  About the Author

  Look for These Other Titles from Dean Wesley Smith

  Copyright Information