Kill List (Special Ops #8) (3 page)

She heard the closing of what she would call a flip phone cover. The man had just called Amber an “it?” That dirty bastard! She wanted to hurt him but common sense prevailed. No way was she going out there. No way was she going to get herself killed. She was going to make sure Amber’s parents knew the truth. She was going to make sure they got justice. But how was she going to do that if the cops were dirty too? He had told whoever he was talking with to get a couple officers over to clean up the body, and those words alone told her the cops were not friend, they were foe.

She waited, listening as the door closed and then waited for a hundred breaths longer. She had counted them. This was the only way she could think of to try to buy some time and not leave out the back closet exit and then ditch the room too early. She didn’t know if he was just waiting outside the door or not. A hundred breaths is all she gave herself before she made the voyage out of the closet from the back exit and then slowly, quietly, and very cautiously, got out of the suite. She was just getting around to the way for the back service elevators when she heard his unmistakable British accent again.

“Yeah, I forgot something crucial. I’m going back in. No worries about the fifteen minutes out. I’m sure nobody else will be coming in before you get here.”

The voice was getting closer and there was no way he wouldn’t see her. She looked around frantically and then quickly decided she would take a chance on dying going down the clothes shoot than knowing she would die if he saw her standing there. He would know she knew what he had done and she knew he wouldn’t let her live to tell about it.

She opened the cover and went feet first. Head first would be bad for sure. The clanging of the cover behind her told her she had given away that something wasn’t right because he would have heard it, but she couldn’t exactly close the cover from the inside because of the way the shoot was setup. The cover either snapped back loudly, or the person on the outside used the lift handle to close it gently.

She slid down while keeping her eyes squeezed tightly shut and her mouth closed tightly as her speed increased more and more. She prayed there would be a cart at the bottom that was full and not one that had just been emptied, or worse, she prayed the cart hadn’t just been moved.

Down, down, constantly descending from the fourteenth floor to the sublevel basement and thankfully her prayers were answered with a full cart of dirty, stinky, sheets and comforters. The impact still hurt, but at least she was alive.

She saw the house phone on the wall. She couldn’t let that man get away with moving Amber’s body. She picked up the phone, dialed 9-1-1 and waited for the prompt answer.

“There’s been a murder at the Westin Lights—room 1422. Hurry. He’s killed her and they’re going to try to move her body.” She slammed the phone down and she ran. She knew a good way out the back area and then she would take the back roads. She stripped off the apron but she was still very much dressed like a maid. There was no way she could blend in like the rest of the highfalutin society crowd. She wouldn’t be able to hide amongst them because she would stand out like an elephant in a ballroom.

Where could she go? She thought now that her mind was relatively clearer that she hadn’t disguised her voice when she called 9-1-1 so they would know the caller was a woman. They would also know that it was more than likely her given the fact that once they arrived and started questions that they would know Amber wasn’t alone and that she was the maid assigned to the room with her. What was she going to do now?

She heard the sirens blaring and the screeching halt of the cars. At least the other cops had gotten here first. At least those guys were going to make sure Amber’s death didn’t get covered up as something it wasn’t—as if maybe she had just walked down the wrong street on her way home and some miscreant gang banger or robber had used his weapon on her. No, she wouldn’t let that lie go out. But at the same time she knew she couldn’t go home and not knowing which cops to trust she couldn’t exactly walk into a station either.

“Chogan,” Olivia thought. He wasn’t in town, but she knew where his place was outside the city. She knew this because Amber had taken her by there one day. Amber didn’t have a car, Olivia did because of where she lived before moving back, but she barely drove. Amber was ten years her junior but they had struck up a positive friendship so they did the go out and see the sites thing together. Sometimes they drove out of the main parts of the city. Sometimes they took a cab. Sometimes they just got around on foot.

“He says I can move in there if I want,” Amber had said. “But, you know I prefer to stay with my parents. They’re awesome and my mom cooks the best.” Amber had laughed. She had given up a chance to stay at a nice house in a safer area so she could stay with her parents who refused to leave the home they had not even two blocks away from her father’s clothing store. He basically just sold the urban clothing that drew in the younger crowd, and the men who wished they were still younger—that crowd that clearly had forgotten why the belt had actually been invented and preferred to walk around with their pants near falling off. Amber said her father didn’t fear them, but that he liked the money they dropped on clothes that hadn’t cost him much at all since they had been made in India, China, and other places that didn’t cost much and he had the wholesale buying price and could sell everything for much more. They were making a stable life for themselves and they were happy, but they wanted more for her. They wanted her to quit the maid thing and get into something better. Now, she wished Amber had listened to them. Had she left for another job this wouldn’t have happened.

Olivia hid out for as long as she could, waiting for the sun to sink into the sky before heading to the higher priced housing area. She didn’t want to go during the day, although she realized maybe she should have. Those people were probably all working just to be able to afford those houses which meant they were probably home now and would see her. But as she got to the area she also realized they were probably all still trying to get out of the city and with traffic that was probably beyond difficult.

She found Chogan’s house and found her way to the back door without being noticed. Amber had been more than talkative the last time they came and had talked about how she remembered the code. Her brother was high on security, but she had been able to remember the code. The miscarriage date of the first baby her mother had lost, combined with the date of the first World War, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Cold War months. Now Olivia just needed to hope she remembered something about her history classes because to her it all sounded so complicated. She could remember this. She remembered numbers fairly well because she had to remember medical figures.

She took a deep breath hoping she remembered this right. She punched in the fourteen digit code and was pleased when the three beeps clearing her way sounded and the lock to the door disengaged. Amber said with the code keyed and a specific button pushed afterward she didn’t need a key to get in but her brother had always told her to use the key instead of just pushing buttons all the time. He was big on security while Amber was more lackadaisical in some areas.

Olivia quickly opened the door, went inside and fumbled with the security box mounted on the wall until she picked out the arm in stay-mode button. She couldn’t very well put it on away-mode or it would go off with her being there since the motion detectors Amber had pointed out were always active in the away-mode status.

The sleek stainless steel with black trim refrigerator called to her. She was so hungry now that she would eat whatever she could find so long as the expiration date wasn’t conquered by the passing of time. She looked in the refrigerator. There wasn’t a stitch of food. Why would there be? He hadn’t been there in over seven months. Amber had gone and cleaned it once or twice a month while checking in on it at least once a week otherwise, but cleaning and needing food there was not the same thing. Amber just swept away dust and cleaned a little and never did she restock the refrigerator until she knew he was coming home. She would go out and buy some of his favorites and then she would leave his house nicely locked up and secured. She had told her all this while they walked around his house and she gave her the tour. A tour that had Olivia imagining what it would be like to have Chogan take her body in that elegant iron rod framed bed that spanned his bedroom so vastly she wondered how he fit the bed through the French doors of the bedroom. She also wondered where he found such a beautifully large bed. He could probably fit six people in there or more.

Her nose wrinkled as she imagined him with six people in that bed and she certainly hoped it wasn’t six women he was sexually exploring. From what Amber had told her he was not a virgin, but he wasn’t a man whore either.

As she searched the cabinets hoping there might be a can of something up there she could open and eat her thoughts went back to the last time she had been here with Amber, to the conversations they had shared, to the fun they had and to the words that had deepened their commitment to each other. “You’re the sister I never had,” Amber had said. “And you’re the sister I wish I had,” Olivia had responded. They had joined pinkie fingers and said, “sisters always,” with a definitive shake and a head nod. They were like family and now she had lost her. This wasn’t a missing sister who might show up one day, this was a sister, a friend, a beautifully unique woman who was dead and she would never come back.

What had been so important about those pictures and who were the people in the photos? She hadn’t really recognized them. A couple that she glanced at on her way to the bathroom to collect her cleaning brush had looked vaguely familiar, but she still couldn’t place them. The ones she saw as she started toward Amber before seeing the man with the gun had all looked somewhat foreign, somewhat familiar, but she couldn’t place them. She couldn’t place them but she could place him, define his features to the police, and give them a near perfect description to send out to the news stations in order to help them find the guy.

The man had dark close cut hair, green eyes, pale white skin, a strong jaw with a clef chin and severely in need of grooming eyebrows. She had seen all that and he hadn’t seen her. She would sketch what she saw if she could draw but she couldn’t draw well enough for that. She could, however, write down what she remembered. She would write it down, even though she doubted she would ever forget she still didn’t want to chance forgetting even the most minuscule detail. She had been so afraid that there were probably things she saw and they never registered because she was living with fear, sorrow, anger and the pain of watching the woman she loved like she was her own blood get murdered right before her and she couldn’t do anything to stop him, to save Amber. She couldn’t do anything and that made her angry with herself. She was there. She should have been able to stop him, to save Amber, anything. She should have taken that room to clean and sent Amber to the bathroom to clean. Things could have gone differently had Amber not had to move the case to reach the vacuum hose under the bed. Getting down on their knees and using the long extended hose to clean under the bed before doing the rest of the floor was a requirement in their cleaning regimen.

Olivia would have just put the case on the bed, but since Amber had done the floor first and the bed was still a mess she had put the case off to the side and moved it around as need be. Then she had changed the sheets. She had already taken the dirty sheets and dropped them down the shoot and then came back and made the bed. She was just finishing things. She was just putting the case back. Why did it have to fall open? Why did he have to come back when he did?

Feeling unsafe everywhere Olivia went down to the basement of the house, closing the door behind her. There was a bathroom down there so at least she would be able to go if she had to without going back upstairs. She could just hide out in his tribal decorated and history laced basement for however long it took. He would be back. He would come back for the funeral. Maybe he would know what to do. Maybe he could help her figure out what she needed to do. Until then, she would stay in hiding. Hiding was better than dying.

Chapter Two

T
he hum of the plane and the noise of the babies crying and people talking to people sitting right next to them as if they were talking to somebody five hundred miles away was filtered, but only because Chogan had his top of the line headphones on while he listened to whatever updates he could find.

Chogan sat watching the news on the screen as he flew back home, realizing his going home was not for good times this time around. His going home was because of heartbreak and sorrow. When he got the request from his CO to come see him he hadn’t expected bad news. He had expected another assignment. He and his team had just gotten back not even two days earlier and most times they had at least a week or two between special ops missions unless something major came up. He didn’t mind working another mission that soon, but he was looking forward to getting some downtime and maybe spending a couple days in New York with his family before heading back out to get his next set of orders. He had expected more work, not the news of the murder of his little sister.

“Police are concerned now for Olivia Marsei,” the dark as night reporter with the short cropped natural hair and red painted lips said. She sat there speaking in standard news person tones—the kind of tone that told him this woman didn’t care anything more about the murder than how much it could boost their ratings. Hell, he wasn’t so dumb to assume they covered the story for any other reason. Amber wasn’t white, and neither was Olivia. Had the hotel not been so high profile upscale, had the murder not been discovered, he doubted any of the stations locally, nationally, and even internationally would even cover the news of his sister’s death. No, it would have landed in a small box on page fifteen of a local paper, maybe, but he doubted that too. It was only because of the money and class of that hotel that his sister’s murder had gotten that much attention. The fact that he was military, highly decorated, just added more chips to their tailgate dish. His family, their life and the heartache of losing somebody they loved had become just a ratings topper to these people.

The deep voice broke his train of thought. Clearly she had finished spending time on how grand the hotel was, how shocking it was that such a horrible event had happened there. Chogan felt anger building. “Happened there?”—as if it would have been fine if it happened somewhere else.

“Olivia was the other maid working the room and she is missing. Police say her home has been untouched, her car is still parked in the location in the area where she lives, nobody saw her leave the hotel, and they now fear that the man who killed Miss Harjo may have either taken her, or killed her. There is also the question of who made the 9-1-1 call. For now the detectives investigating have more questions than answers. They are asking that if anybody sees this woman,” a picture of Olivia flashed on the screen. It was her employee picture. Even though she still looked beautiful with her clean face and up-styled hair, there were far better pictures they could have used to let people see who this woman was, what she looked like from different angles with better lighting. The better the picture, the better the chance somebody might recognize her. The woman continued speaking on what the police were asking. “…That you call Detective Grover, or the number at the bottom of the screen to report the sighting. They fear she may be either dead or being held prisoner. If you see this woman please alert the authorities.” The picture faded and the reporter ended her story in time for another one to pick up the far less important side of the story. Now they were talking about what celebrities stayed at the hotel, what political figures, what athletes, and all those other non important facts.

Chogan shut off the feed as anger skipped through his body. He had lost his sister to this bastard and now, from what he had seen, he may have lost the woman sitting center of his heart too. He had stayed away from her, not because he didn’t want her, but because he was afraid to ask her to share the life he lived. No, she wouldn’t go on the missions, but he was called out often to locations he was near guaranteed to either have the possibility of serious injury or death while operating. None of their missions were the easy ones. They were a Special Forces team comprised of two Navy Seals, four Marines and two Army men. The only time they used the Air Force operative was when they needed to enter from the air, or exit from it more swiftly than the usual pull out called for.

A lot of people outside the circle chain would question the combination but all the men had been specially picked for a reason. They all had special skills, and while this was a Marine undertaking, having men from different branches in their special team didn’t hurt; it helped—a lot. Bravo Zulu and Simper Fi were standard speech from all of them now. Before they became a team they didn’t borrow each other’s terminology, but the longer they worked together, the more they became one unit not divided by uniforms.

His anger kicked up a notch as he thought of what this man might have done to Olivia. From what his father told him during the brief conversation they had before he headed home the police had said Amber was shot in the back of the head. The police had told his father it appeared to be a shot fired at a downward angle. That downward angle would mean Amber was on her knees at the time. If he had done that to Amber then what had he done to Olivia?  He knew the projection was accurate because his sister was just standing at six feet, an inch under him. There was no way she was on her feet from what his father said the detective had told them.

The bastard had executed her. He had seen a lot of executions in his days doing his job, but this, right there in America, a man executing a woman like some criminal in a war, just had his blood boiling. The fact that that woman was his sister had him near volcanic. He felt the heat of his anger rising more with each second, but he tried to push it down because the last thing he needed was to go primitive tribal on this flight and have the pilot declare an emergency and turn the thing back to Germany out of fear they might have another crazy man ready to attack.

No, he had to stay as calm as possible, but when he got off this plane the unlucky bastard who tried to get in his way of finding this murderous cretin better pray for any god to help him because Chogan wouldn’t show any mercy at all.

The flight had been long and the cab ride to his father’s home had seemed even longer. His family’s picture had been plastered all over the papers and in the news. Such an upscale hotel having a murder was a sure page turner for the leeches. The fact that he was a Marine, highly decorated, and highly favored, had been just another nail in the coffin of privacy.

Somebody had obviously gotten wind that his flight had landed because a few reporters were already encamped across the street from his parents’ place. He got out the cab, taking his duffle bag with him. He ignored the flashing lights of the cameras firing the shutter like a machine gun in heavy combat. He took the stairs to his parents’ front door and went in as his father opened the door for him. He noticed how his father tried to stay behind the door and he saw his mother hiding in the shadows too. Why couldn’t they just leave them alone? His parents were grieving the loss of their child and these ratings seeking whores couldn’t give them a second of peace. It was like they were just waiting for the perfect shot to lead the next story with, and that had pushed his parents to grieving in silence. He hoped to the gods that these people didn’t show up at the funeral too.

“The bloody bastards,” he growled as he saw the heartbreak, the fear, and the anger written on his mother and father’s face.

“I figured when they started gathering outside in higher numbers again that your flight must have landed. I’m glad to see they didn’t meet you at LaGuardia.” He shook his head. “I closed the store since…well, you know. I have people who work there, but these people started stalking them too, asking them about me, the family. They were okay, but I gave them the week with pay because it hurt me too much to…it just hurt.” His father shook his head. Chogan understood the hurt. He was hurting for their loss, for the pain the media kept exploiting, and he couldn’t handle knowing they were inflicting that kind of intrusion of privacy on the young people working his store.

“Denise apologized to me,” he shook his head again.

“For what?” Chogan couldn’t understand how the sweet sixteen year old his father had hired part time would feel responsible. He remembered the bright eyed younger black girl because her mother had gotten work first and he had been there when he was back in town for a night. He met her daughter then, but she was fifteen and not employable. He remembered how happy she seemed that her mother had gotten work seeing as though her father, a white man, had fired her the moment he decided he wanted to sleep with his secretary. He remembered his dad saying how angry Gladys, the mother in the situation, felt because she said she should have never gotten involved with her boss all those years ago. She was the accountant who handled the books and she should have stayed that way, but she fell in love while all he did was fall in lust. Once the lust was over he was ready to move on to the next employee—a bleached blond Latino who barely knew how to answer the phones.

“She um…had some choice language to share with them and it was far from ladylike. She said her mother told her she shouldn’t have said what she said.” He shrugged. “But then she said her mother gave her a cute smile and wink then told her she needed to apologize to me since it was my place of business, but that she wanted to say some of the same words herself. I told her not to worry about it; I probably would have said worse, maybe even done a lot worse. These people,” he shook his head. “Look what they’re doing,” he pointed to Chogan’s mother and he looked at her—not only was there sorrow and anger but there also seemed to be fear deep in those eyes. His mother who used to love to go outside and enjoy the sun on her face or the brisk chill of freshly fallen snow, seemed locked in the shadows of her own home.

He hugged his father before taking his mother in his arms and holding her trembling body.

“I still can’t believe it,” she said. “I know she’s gone. I know we’re going to put her in the ground in a couple days, but I just…I just can’t.”

“I know, Mom. I know.” He couldn’t believe it was real either when he got the message, but he knew his CO wouldn’t joke about something like that so he knew it was real. His sister was gone now and the thing that made it worse was that whoever had done this was still out there, unpunished and still breathing. He aimed to change that real soon.

“Will you stay here a while?” His mother hugged him even tighter.

“Yeah. I’ll stay here until after the funeral. Maybe a few days after and then I’m going to have to go home.”

“Why?” She clutched him tighter.

“Because I’m a Marine who is going on the hunt for a killer and I can’t do that from here.”

She hadn’t asked him not to do it. She hadn’t protested at all which told him she was okay with his choice. She wanted justice too, and she obviously didn’t believe the cops were going to get that for her.

“Any word on Olivia?” He looked at his father and saw him shake his head no.

“They say she’s probably…well, you know…they don’t know for sure.”

He growled low. What did they know?—nothing it would seem.

“I think she’s alive. Why kill one and leave her there and not leave the other one too?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t know the answer but it was a good question to ask. Why take Olivia? Why not kill her right there too? Not that he wanted her dead. He didn’t want either of them dead, but he needed answers and right now answers didn’t seem to be coming their way.

“But if she’s not dead,” his father sighed and shook his head. “If she’s not dead then what is he doing to her?”

Chogan felt the highest level of ferocity within him coming to a full peak like Everest embraced by the winter clouds in the sky. Anger, a feeling of rage with the ferocity of two category five hurricanes joined for destructive war is what he would call what he felt.

His mother released him. “I fear for her. She…if she’s alive…” she shook her head unable to continue as she walked to the soft beige leather couch in the far corner of the room. He had bought her that couch as a present. She had wanted new furniture and he had wanted to give it to her so he bought the living room set she had been eyeing in the paper. Getting that beast up the stairs of the front porch and through the narrow doorway had taken more than a few good men. Thanks to his friends he had been able to do it.

He had to put his mind back on something other than imagining the hell Olivia was going through if she was still alive. “Who called the police?”

His father shrugged. “They say the call came in from within the hotel. They say it was a female, but not much more than that.”

“Could it have been her?”

His father shrugged again. “Doubtful because they say there was a hint of southern twang in the voice. We all know she doesn’t have that at all.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. She was a Midwest girl born and mostly raised until her family moved to Manhattan. Then she had gone off to college in Arizona from what he had been told. Amber had said she was trying to get scheduled to do her residency requirements in Montana since she thought she had a better chance of working with the kind of animals she wanted to work with. He had talked to Olivia and he hadn’t heard a hint of southern in her voice ever. If it wasn’t her then who had put in the call? And why hadn’t they come forward to identify the guy who did this?