Relentless (Option Zero 2)

“You were hired to take both of them out. You failed.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault Starr survived the wreck. The other one died. It was a good, clean kill.”

“How is it a good kill if your target is still alive?”

A dangerous light entered the man’s eyes, and Rudolph swallowed hard. Perhaps he was being a little unfair. The other man was right. One of them had been killed.

“I still don’t understand why you couldn’t take out Syd Green. My solution worked perfectly.”

“You know that’s not my type of kill. It had no creativity, no panache.” He shrugged and added, “Poison is so blasé.”

Hard to believe this man could say those words with a straight face, but he knew the guy actually believed them. He had known from the beginning that retaining the acclaimed killer Promethean might cause problems. He was proficient in his kills, and that was what was needed. Unfortunately, he liked to be creative. When Ferante had told him the snakes in Lawrence Medford’s house had been Promethean’s idea, Rudolph had been intrigued. It had definitely worked out well. No one had suspected murder.

He’d contacted Promethean with a cou

ple of job offers. The undetectable bomb on Ferante’s yacht had been successful. Authorities had already closed the case, blaming faulty wiring that had likely started a fire that had reached the fuel tank.

If he had learned anything in his life, it was to clean up any mess he made. As he had made Ferante, Rudolph had taken care of him. Problem solved.

Hiring the team to take out the men Ferante had hired to kidnap the child in Iowa had been handled with one easy phone call. Ferante and his twisted perversions were now merely a bad memory.

But there had still been the residuals. When he’d told Promethean he wanted Syd Green dead, too, and offered the way, one would’ve thought he’d been asked to walk barefoot through glass. The man had looked horrified and had refused point blank.

If ever there was a diva in the assassin world, it was this man.

Syd Green had had to go for many reasons. He had defied orders on numerous occasions, and everyone was tired of his defiance. Taking out his daughter Becca had been Green’s final punishment before his death.

Not that it had been difficult to find another killer to do away with Green. Rudolph had plenty of people from which to choose. But still, it had been one more thing about the whole ordeal that he’d wanted over quick and fast. And it had worked perfectly. He’d even had the same man deliver the fake request for Green’s immediate cremation. He would definitely put the other killer on top of the list for next time. There had been no dramatics, no excuses. He’d done the job, received payment, and that was that.

There was one last piece of business to handle. Aubrey Starr had to go—there was no choice in the matter. The infuriating filmmaker was one last loose end and then the whole debacle could at last be put to rest. The hit-and-run had been the perfect solution, taking out both Green and Starr. Yet, Starr still lived.

“I still need you to take care of the filmmaker.”

“She’s in hiding.”

“I’ll lure her out. You just need to make sure you succeed this time.”

The killer glared at him and while Rudolph tried to maintain a hard expression, he was sure fear showed in his eyes. Getting his hands dirty this way turned his stomach. He was in the highest tier, much higher than Green or even Ferante. He should not have to be involved in this kind of low-level planning.

They were punishing him because of Ferante. That much was obvious. And the level of their punishment would only increase if he didn’t get this right. For the first time in his long career, he realized how expendable he really was. He’d come too far, done too much, to allow this bump in the road to be his end.

“I’ll make the arrangements to bring her back to LA, and I’ll let you know where and when. How you get it done is your problem.”

Promethean smiled. “It’s not a problem…it’s my pleasure.”

Chapter Forty-Four

Montana

Days passed in sublime delight. Aubrey managed to bury the grief and sadness and instead concentrate on the joy in front of her eyes. The miracle she’d been given. The man she’d loved for so long was here with her. With each day that passed, she fell a little deeper in love, and had come to the conclusion that their chance meeting had not been chance at all. They had been brought together for a reason, and though separated for a long while, their reunion was made all the sweeter and stronger for the pain they’d endured.

She delighted in learning the little, everyday things about Liam, and each day she learned something new. He had a penchant for mountain climbing on his days off, liked westerns, both movies and books, hated what he called artsy-fartsy films, preferred his coffee black, his wine red, and his beer ice-cold. He sang in the shower, badly, and he had an addiction to Peanut M&M’s. Something she had discovered on their first grocery trip together.

He also had a need to protect the weak and vulnerable. That had been revealed to her when they’d been walking in the snow, and he’d found a half-frozen pygmy owl floundering on the ground. He’d scooped it up in his gloved hands, wrapped it in a warm towel, and called a wildlife expert, who came within the hour and took the bird away with the promise of a full report on its health as soon as possible.

She’d told him about the one and only TV show she’d been in and its short-lived success. Explaining how her shift in focus from acting to creating documentaries had occurred had been easy. If there was anyone who understood why, it was Liam.

When she’d told him about going to the NYC library that day and how heartbroken she’d been until she had somehow inhaled the scent of roses, he’d held her close in comfort. They had lost twelve years of being together, which made their days here and now even more poignant and precious.