The Innocent

It was raised. Angry. It was asking her father what he knew. How much he had been told.

She heard her father whimpering, as though he were hurt.

Then Julie heard her mother’s frantic voice. Asking the person to leave them alone.

Julie crept down the stairs, her body shaking.

She had no cell phone or else she would have called the police. There was no landline phone in the house. Her parents couldn’t afford it.

When she heard the gunshot she froze and then started running down the stairs. When she reached the lower level she saw her father slumped back against the wall in the darkness. A man held a gun pointed at him. There was a dark patch on her father’s chest growing bigger. His face was ashen. He fell to the floor, his arms whipsawing around and knocking over a lamp.

The man with the gun turned and saw her. He pointed the pistol at her.

“No!” her mother shrieked. “She doesn’t know anything.”

Though barely a hundred pounds, she hit the man in the back of the legs and he collapsed to the floor in pain, his gun spinning out of reach.

“Run, honey, run!” screamed her mother.

“Mom!” She called back. “Mom, what is-”

Her mother screamed again, “Run! Now!”

She turned and ran back up the stairs even as the man spun around and landed a crushing blow to the top of her mother’s head.

She reached her room, grabbed her backpack, sprinted to the window, and grabbed hold of a trellis of metal over which someone long ago had planted ivy. She climbed down so quickly that she lost her grip and fell the last six feet. She got up, slung her backpack across her shoulders, and ran off.

A few seconds later a second shot came from the house.

When the gunman ran outside, the teenager was already out of sight.

But he stopped, listened. The sounds of footfalls reached him. He set out west, moving deliberately.

CHAPTER 10

The woman walked to her car. She was probably thinking a million different things as she slipped her briefcase in the backseat of her Toyota sedan, right next to the kiddie seats. Busy professional, mother, housekeeper-the list went on and on, as it did for many women.

Her black suit was a discount off-the-rack model, like most of her clothes. It was a bit grimy after a long day and her heels were nicked in several places. She was not wealthy, but the work she did was important for her country. That made up for a paycheck that was smaller than she could have earned in the private sector.

She was in her middle thirties, five feet nine, more than thirty pounds overweight from her last pregnancy and no time to do anything about it. She had a pair of kids, ages three and less than a year. She was in the process of getting a divorce. She and her soon to be ex-husband currently had joint custody of the kids. One week on and one week off. She wanted full custody, but that was difficult to manage with the work she did.

There had been a change of schedule tonight. She had one stop to make before heading home. She drove off, her mind swirling with thoughts of work issues mixed with the demands of two active children. There was no room in there for her. But that just came with motherhood, she supposed.

Robie stared up at the five-story apartment building. It looked like his place. Old, decrepit. But he lived in a nice part of the nation’s capital. This was a part of D.C. that suffered from a lot of violent crime. However, this particular neighborhood was becoming safer. You could raise a family here without worrying too much about your kid dying while walking home from school because he was caught in the crossfire of drug crews battling for street supremacy.

There was no doorman here. The outer entrance was locked and one needed a pass card to get in. He had that. There were no surveillance cameras. They cost money. The folks who lived here couldn’t afford that. Or a doorman.

Robie had gone from cartel bosses to Saudi princes to this. The dossier on tonight’s target was particularly light. Black woman, age thirty-five. He had her picture and her address. He had not been told the specific reason why she must die tonight other than she had ties to a terrorist organization. If Robie had to label her, he would probably put her in the “problem” box his employer sometimes used to justify death. He couldn’t visualize anyone living here as being a global menace. They tended to matriculate to fancier addresses or else hid out from the law in some country that did not extradite to the United States. But terrorist cell members were trained to blend in. She apparently was one of them. In any event, the reason why she had to die was above his pay grade.