Authors: Ashley Rhodes
They were back on the road early the next morning. Nick woke at five AM without the need for an alarm. To say that he’d slept wouldn’t have been precisely accurate, but he had rested.
For a little while, he watched Cassandra and Ramon sleeping. It didn’t seem right that something as basically good and innocent as a kid could come from him. Or that a woman like Cassandra would have made the choice to keep any child that might have risked inheriting his bloodstained legacy. Was it genetic, the instinct that Nick had? He was good at killing people. Sure, Lester had trained him for it; but he did that because he saw in Nick a talent for taking lives with a calm, collected efficiency—both mechanical, and emotional.
Did Ramon have some part of Nick inside him, not yet stirred? Was this mad dash for freedom and life going to trigger a latent instinct like it had in Nick?
Normally, he could put all these questions down and be focused. “Nothing but the mission matters,” Lester had often told him. “You have to look at what’s in front of you, and pull the trigger.”
It had been a useful philosophy not just for mission execution, but for life in general. How did it apply here?
While they slept, he lined up a new rental under the new name. Over the years, he occasionally purchased plane tickets and rental cars, hotel rooms, and whatever else might make a convincing picture for the identity. He never used those things, but vendors and merchants were happy to take his money anyway.
The easiest way to have a fake identity set off red flags was to never use it for anything except when you needed it. More than once he’d tracked someone down who was using one for the first time. “Always have a plan,” was something else Lester had always taught him. “Have three plans. Have five. One for starting out, one for when things go south, and one that breaks all the rules. Then make two more, just in case you’re up against someone that’s better than you.”
By the time Cassandra and Ramon stirred, he had their route to Newcastle mapped three different ways, with contingencies and alternatives just in case someone caught on that the trail he’d left was a fake.
Cassandra stretched as she got out of bed, still wearing her clothes from the day before. She was feline and supple when she did, and for a moment Nick wanted to tell her good morning with a kiss, and maybe more. From the way she looked at him, maybe she did, too.
“We’ll make it to Newcastle by tonight,” he told her. “I have it all set up. We should get going soon, though. Don’t want to sit still for too long.”
“I know,” she sighed. “Did you sleep at all?”
“Yeah,” Nick lied. “For a while.”
She looked over her shoulder at Ramon. “He’ll sleep for a few more hours if I let him. I’m going to take a shower.” She hesitated though, and her eyes lingered on him.
It was an invitation.
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Nick said.
Focus on the mission.
She bit her lip and gave him a nod. “Good.”
After she showered, Nick took his turn, and when he emerged from the bathroom Ramon was awake.
“How did you sleep, kiddo?” Nick asked him.
“I miss my bed,” Ramon sighed.
“I know you do,” Cassandra said, and hugged her son—their son—close.
Higher end hotels tended to have more cameras, and cameras opened them up to being spotted if the people coming for them were tech savvy enough to take advantage. Lester’s organization had had facial recognition software that would have been an upgrade for the NSA. There were no comfortable beds in the immediate future.
Nick sat on Ramon’s other side on the bed. “You know,” he said, “the way I was trained, it wasn’t very different from training to be a ninja.”
Ramon looked up at him. “Like a real ninja?”
“Sure,” Nick said. “It was tough. The hardest thing I ever did, just about. For months I slept on the ground out in the wilderness. I had to be on constant guard because… enemy ninjas, you could say, might pop up from anywhere, at any time.”
“Were you learning jutsu?” Ramon wondered.
Nick laughed. Jutsu—the kind of magic from the show Ramon liked. “Not exactly. Not like you mean. I was being… tempered. See, when something is uncomfortable, or difficult, your body and your mind have to adapt. When they do, they’re stronger than they were before. It might be a little while before we can settle down, and go back to normal. But in the meantime, think of it as ninja training.”
Ramon was sceptical.
“After this,” Nick promised him, “you’ll be stronger than you thought you could be. Who was it who taught Naruto?”
“Jiraiya,” Ramon said.
“And did he take it easy on him?” Nick asked.
After a moment of thought, Ramon shook his head.
“If Naruto can do it,” Nick said, “I’m guessing you can, too.”
Ramon, like Nick, couldn’t turn his back on a challenge. He mulled it over for only a moment before he finally gave a resolute nod, and then looked up at Cassandra. “When I see Angus again, I’m gonna be strong.”
“I don’t doubt it for a second, mi mijito,” Cassandra said, smiling as she kissed the top of his head. Her eyes flashed up at Nick when she did, sparkling.
“Alright,” Cassandra said. “Go take a shower. Be quick. Wash behind your ears—wash everything. Use the green bottle. Go.”
Ramon hopped off the bed and practically dashed to the shower, making whooshing and whizzing noises on his way.
“You’re a natural,” Cassandra said.
Nick waved the episode off. “We talked about his show last night for a long time. I just fed it back to him with a new context.”
Cassandra was giggling, and shaking her head. “And then you over think it. You told him a story. That’s how kids learn. It’s their language. Was that part of your training?”
“In a way,” Nick sighed. “Listen, when we get to Newcastle, I don’t know what’s waiting for us there. My boss—my new boss—Alex; he’s the only place I can go to get the resources and answers I need right now. But his was the organization that I took the job from. Alex will take exception to someone putting an asset to the gun, but…”
“But maybe not enough to drop the contract on us,” Cassandra finished.
“Right. I can’t leave the two of you alone right now, but taking you to Alex with me could be dangerous.”
“Are you asking me what I want to do?”
Nick nodded. “Pretty much.”
“If I have choice,” Cassandra said, “I choose to stay close to you. At least that way, whatever happens we have a chance.”
“Okay,” Nick said. He stood, and went to the duffel bag. From inside, he pulled a smallish side arm, one that didn’t have too much of a kick. He turned, and held it out. “You need to take this. Did you ever learn to shoot?”
Cassandra took the gun from him, turned it over in her hands and frowned at it. “I learned. I didn’t want to. But I can point and shoot.”
“Good,” Nick said. “Keep it on you, keep it hidden. We’ll pick you up a pair of boots.”
She laid the gun down on the bed, and then rubbed her hands as though they were dirty. “Will it ever be over?”
“I wish I could say I knew,” Nick said. “But I don’t.”
He saw Cassandra harden, just then, in the course of a few moments. She picked the sidearm up, chambered a round resolutely and checked the safety. Then she stood, and tucked it into the back of her pants like he had. “Okay.”
The need to avoid cameras necessitated fast food for lunch and dinner, and just as Nick had planned they made it to Newcastle late that night.
Ramon did well on the trip. He had questions, and Nick answered them. Mostly they were about places Nick had been. It became a game to his son. He’d name a place—some he named twice—and ask if Nick had been there; then he moved on from that to guessing whether or not Nick had been there.
Frequently there were follow up questions about why he had traveled to one place or another. Nick didn’t want to lie to his son, so he talked about the things he’d done in those countries other than assassinate people. The sights he’d seen and, sometimes, the partners he’d been with there and what they’d done together. None of them were people Nick would name friends, but they were as close as it normally got.
Ramon did sleep eventually, on and off, lulled by the long hours of monotony that any day long car ride entailed.
It was almost midnight by the time they reached Newcastle, and by then even Cassandra was started to flag, and Nick felt the tiredness in his bones. Until he was fresh, he didn’t want to risk walking into Alex’s establishment and facing some kind of an ambush.
The next hotel was identical to the first in the way that most cheap hotels look like one another. Nick had to carry Ramon in; the boy was so exhausted he didn’t wake at all from the car, to the room, to the bed. The moment Ramon was tucked in, Cassandra announced her intention to take a long hot bath and Nick didn’t begrudge her.
Plus, he needed to make contact with Alex and feel this out.
Once Cassandra was shut away in the bathroom, he slipped the sim card back into his burner phone, and sent a text to Alex with his ID code. A few minutes later, Nick’s boss messaged him back.
“Line not secure. Dump phone. Radio dark. See Pete. One hour. Usual spot.”
Cussing, Nick pulled the sim card out, cracked it, and then chucked the phone out the window.
See Pete.
He supposed Pete was the go to guy for everything else. A pair of agoraphobic masterminds, those two. Even here in Newcastle it could take days to actually meet with Alex.
That the line wasn’t secure caused some problems. He couldn’t very well leave Ramon and Cassandra here, not even for a little while, if there was a possibility someone knew they had come this way. He’d barely used the phone, but it had a cheap camera on it.
Once Cassandra was out of the bath, Nick apologized, and ordered them all back to the car.
“I don’t want to go,” Ramon complained, only half-conscious, as Nick picked him back up and cradled him close for the walk to the car. Cassandra didn’t look particularly pleased about it either, but at least she’d gotten a bath out of the deal.
The only location for Pete Porter that Nick knew was an old warehouse where his proxy executed their last deal, the one to get Cassandra her new identity as Elena Murray. He hadn’t been here since then. Dealings with Pete and Alex were all done via secured phones and hidden Tor servers over the dark web. Where Lester had been a master of classical cloak and dagger spy craft, delivering coded messages and taking out personal ads with specific keywords, Alex and Pete were techies that preferred high level encryption and fragmented data packets.
And, to be fair, they were good at it. Nick had never seen either one of them. He didn’t think Pete and Alex, or Porter, were their real names and had never been able to find a scrap of intel on them.
It made him very nervous.
He strapped two knives, a silenced handgun, and two smaller sidearms to his body, and then hung a small arsenal of explosives and deterrents from his belt.
Ramon was asleep in the back seat, but Cassandra watched Nick prepare with growing concern. “What do we do if you don’t come back?”
Nick handed her an envelope, and tugged his jacket on. “They’re numbered. Follow the instructions, one after the other. I’ve got a few safe houses set up, that no one knows about. There’s one in upstate New York and the key to it is in step ten.”
“Recipe for a getaway?” she wondered.
He shook his head. “Unless I can put an end to this, there won’t be a getaway.”
“I know,” Cassandra sighed. “So don’t get yourself…” She trailed off, then met his eyes.
“Just come back.”
“I will.”
Before he could open the door, she reached over to him, pulled his head toward hers and kissed him.
“If you hear gunfire, leave,” he said.
Cassandra nodded once, and let him go.
He’d parked some distance away—far enough not to be seen, but close enough to get back to them in a hurry if he needed to and could. But he took a roundabout way getting there, to approach from the other direction. Just in case. About two hundred yards out he started noting the locations of cameras, some of which tracked him as he closed the distance.
At one end of the old warehouse was a simple metal door with a covered slot at eye level. Nick tapped out his ID code in Morse on the rusted steel.
A few second after he did, there was a sound on the other side. One large bolt sliding out of place. Then another. Nick’s body tensed as he waited, and finally, the door opened. The first crack poured white light into the darkness, and he took a step back, hand going to the small of his back and the gun he’d stowed there.
Framed in the light from inside—spot lights, meant intentionally to blind him he realized—was a slight form, solid but short, and made of darkness with the light behind it. He heard the distinct sound of an automatic shotgun chambering.
“Hands up,” a voice said. A woman’s voice.
Nick did as the proxy ordered—this had to be her, he’d heard her voice before but never seen her in person—and saved her the trouble of frisking him. He listed his arsenal, one by one, but left the knife strapped between his shoulder blades off the list.