The Guardian (3 page)

‘Don’t worry about it, Flower. Why don’t you just come over here, where you’re comfortable.’ He patted his crotch.

The girl took another look down her nose at Cianna and walked over and wriggled her leather skirt into his lap. ‘My name is Flower,’ she said defiantly. Vin draped his arms over her
shoulders, and they both sat there staring at Cianna. Her eyes were filled with hatred; his less so.

Cianna looked behind her at Milo, and he moved what was left of his chin up and down in an affirming nod. She turned back to Jenny. ‘You’re coming with us, Jenny,’ she
said.

‘No, she’s not,’ Vin answered for her. His face grew hard.

Cianna ignored him and spoke to Jenny. ‘Let me explain this to you once, Jenny. Me and Milo, here, are your only chance. You’re on parole, right?’

For the first time, doubt crept into Jenny’s eyes.

‘Right,’ Cianna answered her own question. ‘That’s why we’re here. You blew off your meeting with your PO today. That’s violation number one.’ She
looked around the room. ‘I see at least another eight violations here, any one of which would get you sent back inside. You come with us now, and you get a pass. Just this once. That’s
the way this works, you understand?’

The doubt on Jenny’s face had spread like a rash. ‘You’re with the Parole Office?’ she asked nervously.

Cianna shook her head. ‘Not officially, but we work with them. We can get you one pass if you come now.’ Jenny hesitated. ‘Where’s your daughter Maggie?’ Cianna
asked. It was her trump card, she hoped. Jenny’s eyes went to the floor. ‘That’s what I thought. Playtime’s over; you need to come with us.’

Vin spoke before Jenny could move, and all trace of flirtation was gone from his voice. ‘I said she’s staying put.’ He removed one of his arms from Jenny’s shoulder and
dug around in the chair’s cushions. A second later the hand reappeared, now holding a semiautomatic pistol.

. . . And that’s why it’d be nice to have a gun on this job.

He brought the gun up and traced it along Jenny’s arm, caressing her with it, running it up along her neck and under her chin. Her eyes were wide with fear as he used the barrel to twist
her head back around toward him until he could kiss her aggressively, forcing his tongue into her mouth, his eyes closed in a pantomime of ecstasy. Her eyes remained open, and tears began forming
in the corners.

When he was done, he released her and let the gun drop so that it was resting under her left breast. ‘See?’ he said to Cianna. ‘She wants to stay here with me.’

Cianna hadn’t looked at or spoken to him since Jenny had entered the room. Now she realized that she was going to have to engage him. She frowned as she looked him in the eyes.
‘It’s Vin, right?’ she said. She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Vin, you have to understand something: Jenny is going to come with us. I don’t give a shit how you
spend the rest of your life, but you’re not going to fuck up hers. At least not tonight. Do you understand? Or should I speak a little slower?’

The two twins at the table pushed their chairs back, leaving them with a clear run at her. From all appearances, it was on. ‘Do you understand, Vin?’ she repeated.

He looked at her, and the sick smile returned. ‘What I understand is that we’re guys.’ He gestured to his underlings. ‘And guys need to get laid.’ He shrugged.
‘That’s just the way things are; we need to clean the pipes every once in a while, or we go all fucked up in the head.’ He twirled the barrel of the gun around his ear as if to
illustrate. ‘Now, that’s not a problem for me, as you can probably guess. I can get pussy any time I want. But these guys . . .’ He pointed his gun at each of the other four.
‘These guys ain’t all that great with the ladies. That’s why I told them that we could have a little party tonight, and once we’re all good and fucked up and Jenny and I
have had some fun, they can all have a turn with her.’

The blood drained from Jenny’s face and her tears gathered speed. He looked at the side of her face. ‘It’s only fair, Jen. I mean they do good work for me, and besides, by then
you’ll be so fucked up that you won’t give a shit.’ He looked back at Cianna. ‘Hell, she probably won’t even know it’s happening.’ His eyes were so dark
now, they seemed dead.

He pushed Jenny off his lap and stood up. It took two slow steps for him to be in front of Cianna. ‘I am a businessman, though,’ he said, gesturing over toward the drugs on the card
table. He took the gun and ran the barrel lightly between Cianna’s breasts, then up her neck and across her cheek. ‘So if you have a counter-offer, I’m more than happy to reach an
agreement.’ He put his face close to hers. ‘I’m Irish; I’ve always loved redheads.’

‘I was hoping you’d go in that direction,’ Cianna said. She breathed deeply, almost in a pant, as slowly she ran her fingers up his arm, over his shoulder, and around to the
back of his neck. She was close enough to feel him harden against her stomach as he pressed against her.

‘I had a feeling you were,’ he said.

‘Oh, yeah,’ she breathed to him. He began to move his hips against her and she matched his rhythm as her other hand slid lightly up the forearm that held the gun against her cheek.
He was groaning, and his eyes were half-closed. ‘You see, now that she’s seen who you really are, it will be that much easier for Jenny to walk away.’

He was so engrossed that he wasn’t listening. Even if he had been, she acted too quickly for him to defend himself. She twisted the hand that held the gun hard, out away from his body, and
heard the clean snap of his wrist. He screamed out in pain, and released the gun. His knees buckled as he used his other hand to grab his wrist. She grabbed hold of the hair on the back of his head
and pulled down with all her weight. His head snapped back, and his spine bent to try to keep the hair from being pulled out of the scalp. His mouth was open, and he was screaming louder now, and
she raised up his gun and drove the butt into his nose, drawing a fountain of blood.

Vin collapsed on the floor at her feet. It had happened so quickly that no one else in the room reacted. She turned and looked at the other four. The twins and the crack addict and the fat kid
by the refrigerator all just stared at her, mouths dangling. She pointed the gun at them. ‘You tell him when he wakes up that if I find out anyone has gone near Jenny or any of her friends or
family, I’m coming back, and I’m going to shoot all of your balls off, understand?’

The four stood there, paralyzed.

‘You understand?’ She asked it louder this time, raising the gun at their heads for punctuation.

‘Yeah,’ they muttered.

Cianna looked at Jenny, who was standing next to the chair, where Vin had moved her. ‘Are you coming?’

Outside, Cianna climbed back into the passenger seat of the rusted Sentra. Jenny got into the back seat and Milo got behind the wheel. They all sat there for a moment in the silence, staring
straight ahead. She reached over and put the gun into Milo’s lap. ‘You need to take this,’ she said.

He looked down at the gun. ‘Are you afraid you might go back and finish the job?’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t have a gun.’ He gave her a quizzical look and she scowled at him. ‘I’m on parole, too, remember?’

Milo dropped Cianna off at her place on Mercer Street in South Boston, less than a half a mile from the Old Colony Projects. He would take Jenny home; dealing with emotional
and psychological wrecks was his special talent. Handling the physical challenges of their job was hers. It was what she had been trained for, after all.

Her apartment was in a big, square, three-story clapboard house with two residences on each floor. Hers was on the south side of the third floor: 600 square feet of scarred wood floor with a
bathroom that had a freestanding tub from the 1940s. The furniture was old and stained: a queen-sized bed, a pea-green couch with a crate in front of it for a coffee table, a dining-room table with
one chair, and a makeshift desk. Still, it was home, and it was the one place where no one could tell her what to do.

She climbed the staircase wearily, and made her way down the landing to her apartment. The last of the adrenaline from the evening’s encounter had almost fled her system, leaving her with
the crack-jittery, strung-out feeling of a crashing addict. She noticed that the light on her landing had burned out and would need to be replaced. It made it a little more difficult to find the
right key in the dark, and the keys jangled as she located the right one. She’d just unlocked the door when she felt the hand on her shoulder.

For a moment she was frozen. Her job was dangerous. It was one of the reasons she’d taken it – that, and the fact that Milo was one of the few employers who would hire an ex-con.
Milo believed in redemption. Cianna wasn’t as convinced, but she was grateful to be given the benefit of the doubt, and was willing to help people if there was a paycheck in it. It was a
small neighborhood, though, and you couldn’t ruffle greasy feathers without expecting some attempts at retribution. The hand on her shoulder let her know that one such attempt had
arrived.

Without thinking, her hand came up and took hold of the attacker’s wrist just below where the hand rested on her shoulder, pulling and twisting at the same time. The assailant gave a
pained scream as he toppled forward, off balance, and she used his momentum to her advantage, driving his head into the wall just to the side of the door. He screamed again, but now it came out as
a confused yelp. ‘Wait!’ he cried.

She barely heard him. She kicked the man in the side as he tumbled to the floor.

‘Get off of me!’ he screamed.

She was getting ready to fully incapacitate him before calling the cops, but as she raised her fist his last plea for mercy penetrated her consciousness. There was something about it that was
eerily familiar. Like a scent that touches deep within the memory, the rhythm of his wail brought her back to another time, another place. Suddenly, she was back in the Projects, fourteen years
old, kneeling on the arms of skinny kid two years younger than she. She saw herself torturing him by letting a long thin line of spit dangle from her lips, dropping slowly until it almost touched
his face as he squirmed away, before she sucked it back into her mouth, laughing. He wriggled and squirmed to try to get away, but she had always been stronger. And every time he tried to get away,
he would cry out pitifully, ‘
Get
off of me!
’

Cianna leaned forward, trying to see the man’s face through his upraised arms. ‘Charlie?’ she said tentatively.

‘Christ, Cianna,’ the man said, lowering his arms just enough to look back at her, though still keeping them high enough to provide some protection. ‘What kind of a welcome is
that for your little brother?’

Jack Saunders was sitting at the head of a large semicircular table on the sixth floor of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. An array of television screens paneled the wall
in front of him. The room was dimly lit and hushed except for the periodic rasping of closed-circuit radio communications in the background.

Four others sat at the table with him. Lawrence Ainsworth, the Assistant Director of the CIA in charge of operations – Saunders’s friend and boss – sat directly to
Saunders’s right. Colonel Bill Toney, the Director of the NSA, sat next to Ainsworth, his expression telegraphing his disgust. Saunders thought Toney was a first-class asshole, and figured
Ainsworth had strategically separated Toney and him to prevent trouble. To Saunders’s left was Gerald Hoag, the Assistant Director for counterterrorism at the CIA, and Sonny Kopecki, a close
advisor to the newly elected President. Hoag was ineffectual but harmless – a master paper-shuffler who’d advanced by keeping a low profile on the bureaucratic escalator. Saunders
didn’t know anything about Kopecki other than what he’d read in the papers. The reports didn’t bode well.

Saunders could feel the stares from the other men around the table. He’d never been a clean fit with the management crowd in the intelligence community; they were all spawn of old-line
families with powerful connections and political ambitions. Saunders was a mutt. If it hadn’t been for Ainsworth’s support, he would have been banished from the Agency years ago. And
now his ass was really on the line.

It didn’t bother him. He figured that’s what asses were for. He’d made his reputation across enemy lines, running more successful missions than anyone could remember. At
thirty-nine, he had more practical experience than all of the others around the table put together. That was the only reason the rest of them allowed him to be there, choking down stale,
re-circulated air. Because, whether they liked it or not, Saunders knew what he was doing, and people who could claim that truthfully were in short supply.

‘My men are in place,’ Toney said.
His
men.
What a prick
, Saunders thought. The men were actually with the FBI – the CIA had no technical jurisdiction to operate
within the boundaries of the United States – and were on loan to a joint operation over which Toney had little operational oversight. Legalities, titles and official chain of command aside,
it was an Agency op through and through.

Ainsworth took a deep breath. ‘Okay, Jack,’ he said. ‘You’re calling the shots.’

Saunders picked up the headset sitting on the table in front of him, looked at the twelve monitors on the wall. Each showed a slightly different view of a small house in Alexandria, Virginia.
Ten of them were beamed from the helmet-cams worn by the operatives in the field. One was an overhead satellite shot. One was from a stationary camera that had been mounted on a nearby telephone
pole. ‘Team Leader, this is Base,’ he said. ‘Status?’

One of the radio reports crackled loudly. ‘Base, Team Leader. No movement. We have five inside. Two male. Two female. One child.’

‘Weapons?’ Saunders asked.

‘Unknown.’

The man on the other end of the line was Nick Johnson. Good man. Twenty-nine years old. Former marine, now with the feds. Well-trained and battle-hardened. Married, two daughters, the oldest in
third grade. Saunders knew the names of all ten of the people on the ground. He was pretty sure Toney couldn’t say that about any of ‘
his
’ men.