Page 90 of Vaquero
She blinked her bright blues at Senator Sullivan.
“And?” he growled, unimpressed with her battered, but still uniquely feminine, charms.
She took the rebuke like a pro. “My father gave me my first real mission a month before my seventeenth birthday. I was supposed to kill FBI Agent Bullock. On personal leave in London, he’d been seeing the sights and was supposed to be at Trafalgar Square with his wife and three-year-old daughter that day. I remember the sky was overcast. A thick fog had rolled into the city. Covered everything. You could lick the smell of the Thames off your lips. There were pigeons and tourists everywhere. Traffic. Always traffic. Buses. The smell of diesel smoke…” Her voice trailed away.
Eva faltered. But just for a split second. Rolling her shoulder, she faced Julio head on. “I couldn’t do it, Agent Juarez. I. Just. Couldn’t.”
“You wear glasses,” he told her.
Her head canted as if he’d surprised her. “Yes. I hate contacts. Why do you ask?”
For the first time since he’d met her, this woman wasn’t lying.
“I believe you,” he replied evenly.
“Ah,” she murmured. “I gave myself away, didn’t I? Damn. I’ll have to be more careful. What am I doing wrong?”
He wasn’t about to share what he knew about her tells. “Why couldn’t you kill Agent Bullock?”
An unintended pout pinched her lips, not suggestive, but thoughtful. As if she were remembering. “I was supposed to slip a miniature explosive into one pocket of his trench coat, then walk away. The bomb was powerful enough to kill him and anyone within a hundred feet of him. I’d practiced sneaking up on my parents and planting it, then strangers in the streets, doing this exact same drill. Not with real explosives, just with typed cards with BOOM written on them. It was easy enough to get close to him. I was proud of my sleight of hand skills. I could’ve done it.”
Julio stared at her. Eva seemed to be trying to convince herself.
Lifting that plastic bottle, she took another sip of water. “But I was nervous when I approached my very first target. Of course. You know how it is when you’re expected to kill someone. I didn’t know Agent Bullock. Didn’t know he had a family, either. But none of that mattered until… until I saw him.”
Somehow this conversation had narrowed down to just Julio and Eva.
“He was a handsome, tall man with short, red hair, blue eyes, and freckles. He wore an Irish tweed cap, a gray woolen trench coat, white shirt, and pressed black slacks. Every sound and sight became ultra-important. Every person. Every selfie being taken and every accent in the crowd. I didn’t want to miss a thing. All five senses were on overload, zeroed on my mission. I swear, I could smell the tacos fromTortilla Charing Crossa block away. I was three, maybe two feet from Bullock, so close, I could smell his aftershave and his wife’s hairspray. The starch in his crisp white shirt. I almost had him, but… but then” —she took another deep breath— “he lifted his little girl up high and put her on his shoulders. Perfect opportunity, right? His coat wasn’t buttoned. God, the stupid gray thing flapped in the damp, foggy breeze. Nearly slapped me in the face, I was that close. He never would’ve felt my hand in his pocket. I could’ve gotten away with it. But… but…”
Julio waited while she ran both hands over her face, then dragged her fingers through her hair, combing it straight back before she dropped her hands into her lap. “What stopped me was the pure, childish adoration on the face of his three-year-old daughter. Do you believe that? Something so inconsequential as a child. A tiny little girl. A kid. But God, she was perfect. Tiny like Tinkerbell. I think he called her Lizzie. Curly blonde hair. Bright blue eyes—just like mine. The voice of an angel, soft and pure. Joyful. He’d lifted Lizzie onto his shoulders, so she could climb onto one of the famous Landseer Lions. And you know what? He told her to stay still and not fall. Which she did. Lizzie was grinning so hard, but she said to him, as cute as a bug, ‘Come on up, Daddy. I won’t let you fall.’ Can you believe that? She thought she could keep him safe on that stone lion?”
Brushing a hand over his eyes to clear the tears sparkling at the corners, Julio nodded. All he could see was Tomas’ baby face, smiling up at him from his crib. Kids were generous and gracious like that. They wanted nothing more than to help their moms and dads. They wanted to be good. Like Tomas. Like Eva Bell when she’d been a child. She’d just wanted to please her parents. Which was why she was here today.
She continued, her voice hoarser and her accent now flat. “Well, before I knew it, he’d jumped up there with her, then tugged his wife up too, and I’d lost my chance. Once he and his wife joined her, Lizzie squealed and clapped her hands. His wife ooooh’d and ahhhh’d at the view. Agent Bullock lifted that little girl of his back onto his shoulders, where she had an even better view. By then she so excited, she was smacking the top of his head. She was so beautiful, and her dad was so proud. Even with her hitting his head, he grinned like a fool. A happy, blinking fool. For a moment there, I couldn’t remember why I was there. I wanted to run.”
Coughing into her hand, Eva broke eye contact. “The thing is,” she ground out, talking to the floor now.
Julio didn’t blame her. Confessions were difficult. Repentance was harder.
“That little girl was seeing Trafalgar Square from the height of a princess, instead of a mere commoner. And… and the man I’d been sent to kill… to murder… The man my parents said was evil and wicked just because he worked for the United States of America… That handsome red-haired man who was so obviously in love with his blond, blue-eyed wife and his pretty little daughter…”
Eva swallowed hard. Her head snapped up and her eyes locked onto Julio. Her hand flattened over her heart. “Don’t you get it? I was looking at the life I could’ve had, Julio. It was like I was seeing me for the first time. That little girl should have been me!”
“What did you do?” he asked quietly.
Again her fingertips raked through her hair. “I… I saw it all then, Agent Juarez. The lies. The life I should’ve had. What the love of a real father looks like. I saw an American family who adored each other. Honestly…” She blew out a deep sigh. “That little girl looked just like me, only she had stars in her eyes. But me? I had a fuckin’ mission in mine. My need to please my parents and the mother country I’d never set foot inside, ended that day. It dissolved in the fog and mist on Trafalgar Square. I. Could. Not. Do. It.”
“Your parents couldn’t have been pleased when you failed,” he murmured, sure this retelling was just as hard on Eva as it was on him.
“You’ve got that right,” she scoffed. “Oh, sure, they forgave me since that was my first foray into the clandestine world of sleeper agents. After they beat me. Both my mother and father took turns for a week. With belts and whips. Rubber hoses. I was no princess. I was just a tool. A seventeen-year-old tool they’d honed to do a job for them. A disgusting, cold-blooded job.” Her lips pursed. “After that, they kept me under lock and key until I was re-indoctrinated, reformed, and submissive. Longest damned weeks of my life. But that was when I knew I had to leave if I was going to live. Hell, after being punished so severely for being too weak to kill a man… make that hundreds of innocent tourists, including that sweet little girl…”
She closed her eyes at what she’d nearly done. “What would they have done to me if I’d blown up the wrong guy? I was seventeen, for God’s sake. It could’ve happened.”
“The same thing they will do to you if they ever catch you,” he replied.
Eva leaned toward him, her blue eyes gone hard. “Which is why I need to go back down there and murder Anastasia before she wakes up. That’s my only way back into the Dolls without raising suspicion. I have to follow their code, not mine, or I’ll never bring one of those bitches to justice.”
Strong shook his head. “Not happening. Killing her will only make you look complicit with the Bureau. As if we’d known what you were supposed to do, that we allowed you to commit murder just to keep your cover. Every criminal in the world knows the FBI doesn’t allow inmates to murder each other. You had your chance and you took it. We intervened like we should have. Anastasia’s nose is broken and you might’ve cracked her larynx. She’s being seen by our doctor. What more do you want? We stopped you. Blame it on us.”
