Pandora's Box Read online

  “The Blonde Assassin.” Roxie said her nickname out loud, savoring the feeling of it on her tongue before taking another sip of white wine. She smiled behind the glass as she wondered who had originally tagged her with the name. “I like it.”

  “You like what?” Her employer, the man with the plan entered the room behind her. He went straight to his desk and took a seat behind it.

  Was he trying to intimidate her at this late date?

  “Nothing,” she said. Her lips compressed and she pushed a load of air through her nostrils, wanting him to know how irritated she was at being kept waiting for so long. “I’m ready to speed things up.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I want to kill Madison Grey.”

  “We aren’t wavering from the plan.”

  “She’ll get in the way. The sooner we dispose of her, the better things will go.”

  He shook his head, jaw tight. “She has an important role yet to play. Trust me. Madison won’t be a problem.”

  But instinct told her that Madison Grey was already a problem, and she wondered if the man behind the desk had feelings for the woman. Did he want to spare the young agent’s life? That would be unfortunate—for him. The Blond Assassin usually obeyed his every command, but she couldn’t allow Madison to walk away unscathed this time.

  Roxie had wanted to kill Madison for what seemed like forever. She’d been put off long enough. To her boss she said, “You want the president dead, and I want her laid out beside him. I’ve killed for money and I’ve killed for you. This one is personal.”

  “Why do you hate her so much?” he asked.

  “That’s my business.” She placed her glass on the edge of his desk and walked out. She pretended not to hear him call her name. He thought he was in charge, because he usually was, but not this time. This time he was just a puppet in her death game.

  ******

  Madison shook a pink packet of artificial sweetener before ripping it open and dumping the contents into her steaming coffee cup. She’d purposely chosen a small table at the rear of the all-night diner, far from the door and huge square windows, an old habit she’d learned from her father. This way she could keep an eye on the people coming and going. No one could sneak up on her—if she was paying attention.

  Darkness had covered Washington over an hour ago, and she’d gone straight to the diner after leaving the White House. She needed time to put the clues together, time to outline an agenda, time to decompress. Her usually calm emotional state had become frazzled. She wasn’t sure how much more she could take without cracking.

  The sound of a wooden chair being dragged from her table brought her chin up sharply. She looked just in time to see Tyler placing his bulky form in the small wooden chair. He scooted it closer to the table and forced a smile that didn’t seem real. Although she had to admit, even a fake smile looked good on Tyler.

  “I can’t believe you went running to my father,” he said. “That was so junior high. Next time you have a problem with me, tell me.”

  He caught the attention of a passing waitress, ordered a black coffee with a cheeky grin, and then dropped it the second she walked away. “I wouldn’t have to follow you if you would work with me. I have a feeling we each have an important piece of the puzzle. Maybe if we shared them, we wouldn’t be stumbling around in the dark like a couple of idiots.”

  He could have a point.

  Madison waved a hand for him to continue.

  “Let me tell you a little story,” he said.

  He placed a small black and white headshot of her father in front of her. She stared at it, afraid to reach out and touch it no matter how much she wanted to. Instinct told her she couldn’t afford to show weakness at this moment. Not in front of Tyler. He hadn’t proved whose side he was on yet.

  Tyler put a similar photo beside the first, this one of his father. He carefully arranged them, laying them in a straight line with a mere half inch between them. He quickly added two more. She recognized the men in these photos as well. They had been friends with her father and mother, almost like family, joining them for dinners and parties at their house when she was very young. Dr. Elias Grainger and Rico Boracci.

  Before she could ask Tyler a single question, he began the story.

  “Once upon a time these four boys went off to a prestigious university, each of them filled with ambition and that ambition was their one common denominator. A gangster’s son, a genius, the next generation in a long line of politicians, and the offspring of hippies who just wanted to save the world. They joined a fraternity together and somehow they managed to intimidate everyone they came across from fellow students to the top heavyweights of the school.”

  The son of hippies had been her father. She’d seen the picture worn from time of her grandparents, but her father had refused to talk about them. She had gotten the feeling that her father had been embarrassed by them.

  Tyler added, “After the boys graduated, they kept in close touch. In fact, once a month they got together at your father’s house here in town. Quite a feat, considering they all lived outside of Washington at the time. Then one day poof! They stopped meeting. At least not all four at once.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Our fathers still got together once in a while, your father flew in to see Boracci once a year, and Grainger only met with Boracci. Boracci in turn never got together with my father again. I guess they had a falling out. My question to you is how much do you remember about these men?”

  The waitress returned with his coffee. She smiled at Tyler, lingering at their table for longer than necessary. Madison shot the woman a foul glare. What nerve! The waitress had no way of knowing what their relationship entailed. Perhaps they were married or engaged. Little blonde twit was flirting with her eyes as if Madison wasn’t sitting at the same table.

  Check, please!

  Madison cleared her throat. “Do you mind? We were trying to have a private conversation.”

  The waitress finally took her bony butt to another table.

  “Now, where were we?” She eyed him for a moment, enjoying his discomfort. He didn’t hide it very well. The man wanted to strangle her for the information. If she didn’t stop stalling, he just might. “Oh yes, my father’s friends. Actually I don’t remember them that well. Uncle Rico was a handsome man, dark hair and dimples, and he bandaged my knee once when I fell off my bike. Uncle Eli was always jotting things down. He would write on anything, even the wall if he couldn’t find a piece of paper. I guess he didn’t want to forget any of his brilliant ideas. He had a nice smile and I adored his wife. She was almost like a second mother to me.”

  Her parents hadn’t allowed her to call adults by their first names unless she put an ‘aunt’ or ‘uncle’ in front of it. She wouldn’t admit it to Tyler, but the men he wanted to know about had been like family to her. At one time she’d loved them. Then they’d disappeared from her life like so many others.

  Tyler gestured for her to continue, but she clamped her lips together. She wasn’t telling him another solitary thing until he reciprocated. The man was on a fishing expedition, but he didn’t want to share his bait. Hardly fair.

  He sighed heavily. “Okay. I didn’t return to Washington to track my father’s enemies. I’m here to find out the truth about my father, your father, and their buddies. We want to know why those four men met once a month for years and then suddenly stopped. We have a feeling they were up to something interesting.”

  “Like what?” Her eyebrows went up.

  “Well for one thing, Boracci’s father was gunned down and circumstantial evidence points to his son even though someone went to a lot of trouble to make it look like a professional hit.”

  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She had thought he wanted to clear her father of attempted murder not convict him of another one.

  “And you think our fathers were involved?”

  He clamped his lips shut and shook his head.
He wasn’t going to tell her anything more until she parted with some information and by the stubborn look on his face, she knew he would want something stronger than superficial crap. He wanted something that would rock the foundation that his father had built his presidency on.

  Madison wondered what sort of man would turn on his own father.

  ******

  Fifteen minutes later Tyler left the diner feeling a great deal less satisfied than when he’d entered it. He had hoped the pictures now settled deep in his jacket pocket would shake some truth out of Madison. Their appearance had definitely thrown her. But she’d recovered her composure in a heartbeat, fueling his admiration. Too bad she still stubbornly refused to trust him. He had a feeling she knew something important, something that could possibly save him a great deal of time and energy.

  He walked down the sidewalk, passing a group of loud tourists and continued on foot, unsure of his destination. Home and bed sounded good to him, but he hadn’t checked in with Skinner in a while. His frazzled guest would want to know how the mission was progressing.

  A huge knot pressed between his tight shoulders. With a tired sigh, he turned and crossed the street. He could sleep later. Raising his hand, he hailed a passing taxi cab.

  Tyler slid into the back, gave the driver the address, and settled in for a long ride. He rested his head against the seat and closed his eyes. A dull pain throbbed between them. Once again his thoughts returned to Madison. He agonized over how much he should tell her. He’d bet money that she had nothing to do with the assassination attempts.

  The taxi stopped and Tyler opened his eyes to see why. The traffic light before them had gone to red. His eyelids drifted back down again, content to rest until they arrived at their destination.

  The door to Tyler’s right opened and Madison slid in next to him. She turned, glaring at him, and tried to catch her breath. Her chest heaved with the effort. She must have chased the taxi for several blocks before catching it.

  He blinked at her in disbelief before leaning forward to talk to the surprised driver. “I’ve changed my mind. I want to go home.” He rattled off the address of his apartment.

  The driver nodded. He flicked on the turn signal and cut over the center line, turned them around, honking his horn as he did it.

  Madison shook her head fiercely. “I don’t think so. You were about to go somewhere you don’t want me to know about, and that’s exactly where we’re going. Tell him to take us to the original address.” When Tyler didn’t immediately cooperate, she moved her face close to his. Their eyes locked. He could feel her breath on his mouth, too intimate. She said, “I mean it. You take me to wherever it was you were going and reveal your secret, or I’ll blow you out of the water.”

  She was bluffing.

  “And just how will you do that?”

  “I could make a lot of threats. I could tell you I’ll go to your father or the press or the CIA, whoever will scare you the most. Instead, I’m going to promise you something. If you keep holding out on me, I’m going to become your best friend. You won’t be able to take a piss without me standing right there. I’ll sing while you’re trying to sleep, step into your every conversation, stick to you like glue. I don’t have a job right now so I can spare the time. In a couple of weeks you’ll be begging me to listen to the truth.”

  He stared deep into her fabulous brown eyes.

  She wasn’t bluffing.

  Tyler tapped the driver on the shoulder and said, “I hate to do this to you again, but I need to go to the first address I gave you. Thanks.”

  The driver rolled his eyes at them in the rearview before spinning the car around and heading in the opposite direction. Car horns honked around them. Tyler and Madison were thrown together, bumping shoulders. She was practically sitting in his lap now.

  She asked, “Well, are you going to give me a hint or do you want me to guess where we’re going? What are you hiding from me?”

  Under his breath he said, “Skinner is not going to like this.”

  “Skinner? Where do I know that name from?”

  Her eyebrows knit together as she tried to put a face with the name. He didn’t imagine it would be too hard at this point, so he saved her the trouble.

  “I’ve been working for the CIA.” He pulled the four pictures from his jacket pocket again and separated them so Madison could see each individual face. “We’re trying to figure out which of these four men has been trying to take over the world one person at a time using a little project called Pandora’s Box.”

  Madison’s breath caught in her throat. “Pandora’s Box? What is that?”

  “We think it’s something that Grainger invented, something powerful.”

  “Is it deadly?”

  “I hope not.” Tyler’s mouth took on a grim twist.

  ******

  Chapter Six

  As they walked down a shabby hallway to the last apartment door, Madison tried to digest what Tyler had told her in the cab. She couldn’t get over the fact he’d known about Pandora’s Box this whole time. In fact, he knew more than she did about it. Tyler had been right about one thing. They should have shared information a long time ago. She wondered if he’d be interested to know that Pandora’s Box had been her father’s last words.

  Tyler rapped on the apartment door with his bare knuckles.

  The door jerked open almost immediately and a short, nervous looking man glared at them both. His bloodshot eyes went from her to Tyler to her again. He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe she was standing in his doorway. Poking his balding head out, he glanced down the hallway. Then he grabbed Madison by her coat sleeve and yanked her through to his side.

  Tyler followed close behind.

  The man shut the door carefully; although, by the tight expression on his reddening face Madison imagined he wanted to slam it. Once it was closed he turned on them. Physically shaken and looking a little green around the edges, he whispered louder than some people shouted. “You promised to protect me! Why did you bring her here?”

  Tyler shrugged his wide shoulders. He leaned casually against the wall near the door and watched Madison as she sized the little man up.

  She recognized him. Skinner. She couldn’t remember his first name. He’d worked as a janitor at the CIA building in Virginia. She had passed him in the hall many times, noticed him as he cleaned the lobby, nodded at him in the elevator. Her mind whirled in confusion, wondering how Skinner had traveled from invisible janitor to hunted man.

  Madison took a moment to visually check out the apartment. Furnished with a drab couch that folded out into a bed, beaten up wood coffee table, rickety bookshelves, and an outdated console TV, there weren’t many personal touches in the room. A suitcase lay open in the corner, clothes spilling out. There was a personalized coffee cup on the table, #1 Dad, an unframed photograph of a young girl, and a pack of cigarettes.

  She took notice of the way Tyler’s gaze continuously returned to those cigarettes as if they were engraved with gold. Was he a smoker?

  No, she decided; he was in the process of giving the nasty things up. There was unmistakable hunger in his eyes when he looked at them. She knew that look. Although she’d never smoked, she felt that way about her career. The thrill of her job, the danger gave her such a rush that she didn’t think she could ever walk away. Her work was an obsession, a vice she couldn’t kick.

  She couldn’t think while the couch was unmade. She hurried to it, fixed the sheets and blanket into place before transforming the bed back into a couch.

  Tyler gaped at her.

  “Well?” She met Tyler’s eyes head on before placing the last cushion back into place. “What’s his story? Why are you hiding him out here?”

  Skinner wailed like a wounded animal. He grabbed the sides of his head with both hands, pulled on what was left of his hair, and went down hard on the couch. “Why did this have to happen to me? I never did nothing to nobody! I was a good guy. I minded my own business, wo
rked hard, never left early or stole supplies. Now they’re trying to kill me.”

  Skinner was a man on the edge. It wouldn’t take much to push him over, so Madison approached him with caution. She’d been trained to deal with these situations, but Skinner was a janitor. How had he ended up in this mess?

  Madison sat next to him on the couch and gently patted his back. “It’s okay. I’m here to help you. Tell me who’s after you and why?”

  “I don’t know.” He looked at her, his facial features twisted in agony. “I was minding my own business, mopping the hallway one night when an agent named Warner came running toward me. He slid on the wet floor, went down hard. I helped him up, and he shoved a file into my hands, told me ‘they’ would kill me if they found out I had it, so I needed to run away and hide.

  “He was babbling like a maniac, talking about microchips and brainwashing. He told me these microchips can change anyone, make them do things they wouldn’t normally do. He said they could make even your closest friend become your enemy, and he couldn’t trust nobody cause anyone could have one.

  “I thought he was joking at first. You know, I thought I was being put on. It wouldn’t have been the first time some of the agents had made me the butt of their jokes.” He shook his head and tears welled up in his eyes. “I could barely understand what Warner was saying to me. I remember he was sweating a lot. There were huge pit stains under his arms and the front and back of his shirt was soaked. He was babbling about microchips and brainwashing and killing people. I tried to give him back the folder. I tried to go back to my work. I needed to mop the floor where he fell, but he wouldn’t let me.

  “He hit me across the face, screamed at me to run before they killed me too. So I dropped the mop because I wasn’t going to get any work done with him yelling at me like that. I figured he was crazy. I was going to call security. But I never got the chance. I heard them coming, yelling at the tops of their lungs for him to put his hands in the air.”