Page 17 of Memphis

Selah.

10

Then…

Iaccepted the proposition and was now in training to become an elite assassin, or at least that was how my recruiter termed it. Said recruiter, the man who I “met” in that parking lot, finally shared his name, or rather, his code namewith me—11C22. The name assigned to me was B329. It was official; I was becoming a damn killer, and as I learned the fundamentals of surveillance, target research, and stealth, I already knew I was going to use these newly acquired skills to complete a side quest in the form of one Dr. Sherman Stone.

“You only have two major concerns other than hitting your target: not getting caught in the act and covering your tracks afterward,” my recruiter was saying. We were in a room in an extremely seedy hotel. He’d swept it for bugs of the technical kind, but I was more concerned about actual insects because this place sucked!

I nodded my understanding.

“You’re excellent at hand-to-hand combat, but you’re going to have to become proficient with firearms of all kinds. Unless the client requests otherwise, most of your eliminations will be accomplished with a gun. It’s quicker and cleaner. You ever handled a gun before?”

I shrugged. “I’ve shot one before, if that’s what you mean. It was my daddy’s pistol.”

“Okay, get a gun. I’ll teach you what you need to know to be proficient at shooting. The boss wants you working in the next month, so your learning will be accelerated.”

“The boss? Do I get to meet him…or her?” I asked.

He grinned, and I finally noticed how handsome he was.Toohandsome.

“No one gets to meet the boss,” he informed me.

“Not even you?”

“Oh, I have, but I’mme,” he quipped, his grin deepening by the millisecond.

I rolled my eyes and tried to ignore the flutter in my stomach.

I failed.

Damn, was I crushing on the tall, lean, butterscotch-skinned recruiter?

Between my classesand assassin training, I didn’t have time for much else. So, I stopped attending the self-defense classes. There were only so many hours in a day and I was tired. Tired as hell, but I was learning a lot from my recruiter and spending so much time with him that it felt like we were growing closer, becoming…friends? More than friends? I could tell he liked me. I couldfeelit, but he was a killer.

Bitch, ain’t you training to be one, too?

That thought made me shake my head at myself.

He eyed me, biting his bottom lip before saying, “You okay?”

I nodded a little too hard. “Uh, yeah.”

“Okay, so I gotta tell you…you are crazy good at shooting. Shit, I don’t think there’s anything else for me to teach you.”

I was seated beside him on the hotel bed, and although the room—our regular meeting place—was disgusting, being that close to him made it hard for me to focus.

Still, I managed to smile and say, “Oh, so I’ve hit expert level?”

“Pretty much!” He smiled at me, his eyes dropping to my mouth before he looked away. “Uh, okay. So, I think you’re more than ready for your first assignment.”

My eyes ballooned. “Really? Already?” I’d only been training for two months.

“Yeah. Remember, the boss set a deadline. You met it.”

“Right…”

“I’ll help you do any required research on the target. Expect a message on the cellular phone I gave you in the next couple of days with instructions for retrieving the job info. You said you know how to use it, correct?”

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