Ghost Sniper

68

Mariana arrived at her motel having drunk more than she’d planned.Paying the cab driver and keying into her room, she did not notice the blue sedan that followed her from the nightclub. She dropped her purse on the bed and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth. Just as she was stepping into the shower, there was a knock at the door.

Thinking it must be one of the twins checking up on her, Mariana wrapped herself in a towel and went to have a look through the peephole. It was Fields.

“Shit!” she whispered, realizing he must have tailed her.

She got dressed and answered the door. “What are you doing here? I told you I’d call when I had something.”

He stepped pugnaciously into the room, invading her space and forcing her to take a step back.

“What have you learned?” he asked, moving toward a chair.

“I’m making good progress… and I didn’t say you could sit down.”

“I didn’t ask your goddamn permission!” His eyes were flinty and cruel. “Now close the door and tell me what was said! In case you haven’t noticed, I’m done putting up with your shit — and so is Pope!”

There was a cold, predatory nature about him tonight, and his right hand was hidden inside the deep pocket of his overcoat. From the bulk of the weapon, she thought it must be a silenced pistol. She closed the door and took a chair near the wall, now more paranoid than ever.

“Start talking,” he said, not kindly.

She told him about her evening with Jessup in detail, omitting his obsession with the twins, who were due back any time.

“You’ve got him on the ropes, for Christ sake. Why didn’t you invite him back here? One smooth fuck, and you’d have had the whole enchilada tonight!”

“I already told you that’s not going to happen!”

He glared at her. “If you can’t get Jessup to give up Hancock, you’re useless. Do you understand what useless means in our business?”

“Hancock? You already know his name?”

In his entire career, Fields had never let an asset’s name slip. There was no better proof that this upstart little bitch was getting under his skin.

“I also know where to find Crosswhite’s family.” He let that hang in the air a moment. “I know exactly how to hurt him. So if you don’t give me the sniper’s location by this time tomorrow night, I make a phone call — just one — and your friend will be sorry he was ever born. Have you forgotten he has a baby on the way? I haven’t. You’re a slick little cunt, but you are not as slick as you might think.” He got up from the chair and dumped her purse onto the table.

She jumped up from the chair. “Get your fucking hands off my things!”

He snatched her satellite and cellular phones, along with her passport, and jammed them into his pocket.

“You son of a bitch! Give those back!”

He gestured with the bulky weapon hidden in his pocket. “Step away.”

She did as he said, and Fields went to the door. “If I were you”—he pointed at her crotch—“I’d put that thing to good use and get this operation wrapped up.”

He stepped out and drew the door shut behind him.

Mariana stood staring at the door. What was she going to do now? There was no way Jessup would give up the gringo sniper over lunch the next day — not unless she seduced him — and she was sure that Fields would follow through on his threat to have Paolina and the baby murdered. Hell, now that he’d stolen her passport, she couldn’t even return to the US without going to the American consulate and suffering through days of bureaucratic red tape.

Fields was about to pull out of the parking lot when he saw the twins arrive in a cab, instantly recalling having seen them at the curb in front of Villalobos’s motel two days before.

“You clever bitch,” he muttered, now wanting to strangle Mariana with his bare hands. Fields backed into the shadows and sat watching the girls pay the driver. By the way they walked to their motel room, just three doors over from Mariana’s, it was easy to see they’d been drinking.

He got out of the car and walked across the parking lot to the twins’ room, listening at the door. They talked for a couple of minutes, and the television came on. He went around back and listened at the bathroom window for the shower, then he walked back around to the front, drawing a ball-peen hammer from his coat pocket and standing off to the side as he knocked on the door.

“Quién es?” Tanya asked. Who is it?

“La pizza.”

Tanya opened the door a crack, keeping the security chain in place. “We didn’t order—”

Fields rammed the door open with his shoulder and bashed Tanya in the head with the ball of the hammer. She dropped to the floor without a sound, and he kicked the door closed with his heel, stalking directly into the bathroom and ripping back the shower curtain. Lorena spun around, eyes wide, and he bashed in her skull. She fell to the bottom of the stall, and he beat her over the head a second time for good measure, wiping the hammer clean with a towel and dropping it into the toilet. Blood poured from Lorena’s head, mixing with the shower water and running down the drain.

Before leaving, Fields ripped Tanya’s clothes from her body to give the appearance of sexual assault and dumped both purses onto the bed, stuffing their money into his pocket. He found Villalobos’s suppressed pistol and jammed it into his coat. Tanya was still breathing when he left.

As he walked to his car, it occurred to Fields that he hadn’t killed anyone in more than twenty years. He’d almost forgotten how invigorating it could be.