Diary of an Assassin Read Free Page B

of us except Heather. She packed, but couldn’t walk. The other men looked to each other and to me.
    “Leave her,” they said, and they began to jog away. I started to run and then glanced back at her, covered in mud, slogging through the forest with a broken ankle. No woman had ever looked so beautiful to me before.
    I went back and put her arm around my neck. “I don’t need your help,” she said. “Maybe not,” I said. “But you’re going to get it anyway.”
    She looked at me and then didn’t say anything for a while. When she did speak all she said was, “I’m Heather.”
    “Isaac.”
    “I know,” she said .

 
    CHAPTER 5
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    At least the morning was warm, Rhett thought as he woke at the Four Seasons. In his bathrobe, he looked out the windows at the city. He’d been here twice before, one time for work…and one time with his wife.
    He remembered it was snowing and she looked so beautiful as snowflakes sparkled on her eyelashes. They walked down the street, in awe of the city and the life they had ahead of them. She had just finished her medical degree and was going into pediatric medicine. Rhett was moving with her to Chicago where she would complete her residency. It was just the beginning of their life, filled with hope and possibility…then she was ripped away from him.
    He turned away from the window and showered , dressing in jeans and a sports coat. He headed downstairs and opted to take a taxi instead of driving the Cadillac, which he had rented with one of his fake identifications and credit cards.
    “Where to?” the cabbie said.
    “Hamilton Hotel. The construction site.”
    “You got it.”
    Rhett noticed the cabbie took the longest route but didn’t say anything. It gave him a moment to think and watch the city. Cities, he believed, had energy and personality. Some cities he’d been to, like Bangkok, had dark energy. Something taken from the acts that the citizens allowed to occur there every day. Some cities had good energy that made one feel uplifted just by being there. Though often disgusted by the city, today, he couldn’t tell where Manhattan fell.
    He arrived at the site. Crowds were already gathered. They would be breaking ground today for the hotel , and the mayor and two members of Congress would be there.
    Rhett p aid the cabbie and got out. He mingled with the crowd as the mayor delivered a speech on the future of New York and how they were the most progressive state in the nation. He read through some stats of the city and the improvements that had been made. It was essentially a reelection speech.
    Then he introduced Stephanie Johnson, congresswoman of the fourteenth district. She met applause and shook a few hands before taking the podium. Rhett watched her as she told a story about her first time in Manhattan. The crowd laughed. The woman was a natural up there. Her story wasn’t forced in any way, and he could tell she enjoyed what she did.
    Rhett pulled up her dossier on his phone.
    She’d been born in New Haven, Connecticut, to a single mother. Her father had abandoned them before she was born and she had never established contact with him. She had one sibling, and her mother worked two jobs and attended law school at night. She eventually became a successful contract litigation attorney and was able to send Stephanie and her brother to a private school. When Stephanie graduated high school, she attended the University of Connecticut and then NYU for law.
    Stephanie wa s married at twenty-five to Paul Johnson, another successful attorney, who, Rhett saw, had a short criminal history of two drug possession cases and a DUI. He worked at a large law firm and was able to avoid any sanctions by the state bar, receiving only a short suspension and some drug and alcohol counseling.
    A photo of Stephanie was included. This had been snapped by the tagger—the man or woman who did the research and put the dossier together—and Stephanie