What Have We Done (44)

The chair she’s strapped to is on top of a large sheet of plastic, never a good sign. An aluminum table

—it looks like something you’d see in an operating room—stands nearby with what appear to be instruments of torture neatly aligned upon it.

It’s then that she sees the man’s cocksure smile. The same smile as when they first met nearly a decade ago. They’d been assigned to play an American couple on vacation in Berlin—to bring about the demise of a banker with a long history of working with individuals on terrorist blacklists. All their kissing and canoodling went from acting to authentic somewhere along the way. They spent five years pretending it could work between them. She’d wanted to take it to the next level—wanted a normal life, to get out of The Corporation. Get married, have kids. That wasn’t who he is, he’d told her. Yet here he is with a wife and two kids.

He walks up to her, crouches to eye level, his lips near hers. “You coming to kill me?”

She stares at him a long moment. “Are you dead?”

He smiles. Steps back. “I miss that confidence. And I know you’re not here for me.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I’ve been expecting you.”

“Sabine called you?”

He releases a small laugh. Shakes his head. “No. How is the old bird?”

Jenna doesn’t answer.

He lets out a sigh. “It’s pretty obvious why you’re here. You’ll remember, I’m one of the few people who’s read your file. I know where you’re from. Know about your foster family…”

She shakes her head like she hasn’t the foggiest. She doesn’t.

Michael scrutinizes her for a minute. “You really don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

Michael looks at the two men standing at attention near the doors.

“Give us the room.”

The men disappear.

Jenna jostles her arms, gives an annoyed look at the zip ties securing her wrists. Michael’s men restrained her either as a matter of protocol or because they didn’t know who she is. Michael picks up a scalpel from the aluminum table and approaches. He slips the razor-sharp blade under the zip tie, popping it off. He turns the scalpel, holding the blade now, offering her the haft. She takes it, cuts off the tie on her other wrist, then the ones on her ankles.

He knows what she can do with a blade. If he wanted her dead, he would’ve never given it to her, confirming again that it’s not The Corporation out to kill her.

“I take it you haven’t caught the news lately?” he says.

“I’ve been a little preoccupied—running for my life. Protecting my family.”

He nods. “Yes, and what a lovely little family you’ve adopted.”

“Can you quit with the games. What’s going on?”

Michael smiles again, as if admiring her cutting through the shit. Like she used to. “Cable news has been on a tear about a certain federal judge who was murdered; a rock star who fell off a cruise ship; a TV producer in a blown-up mine; and the pièce de résistance, an assassination attempt on Artemis Templeton.”

She processes this. Ben became a federal judge, Donnie a rock star. She’d even seen Nico on an advertisement for some cable TV show. It can all mean only one thing: Someone is targeting the kids from Savior House. The same someone who extorted her into taking a shot at Artemis.

“Who?”

Michael shrugs.

Jenna stands, rubs her wrists, which are still indented from the zip ties. “Come on, Michael. You know all the contractors. All the jobs.”

“As Sabine would say,” Michael says in a mocking French accent, “I’m sorry, mon chéri, no clue.”

Her mind is spinning. Running through the whos and whys.

“The contractor is a woman,” Jenna says. “In her twenties, pretty. Cheekbones. She uses a strange weapon.” Jenna describes what happened. Being coerced to target Artemis, not taking the kill shot. The woman coming after her at Willow’s school. Killing the hipsters. Tracking her and Willow on the way to the cabin.

“I can ask around. I don’t know any professionals who’d be foolhardy enough to target Artemis Templeton, one of the richest men in the world. Much less be dumb enough to go after you.”

She walks up to him now. Looks him in the eyes. She’s going to say something about his family but decides against it. She realizes she doesn’t care. She has her own family.

“The Corporation isn’t after me.” It’s a statement, not a question.

“Nope.”

She believes him. He could be lying. But he wouldn’t have freed her. Sabine wouldn’t have let her leave that party alive. Most important, The Corporation doesn’t screw up. And this hitter not only let Jenna and Artemis escape but also botched two other jobs.

“You can stay in the guesthouse tonight if you’d like.” He looks at her like he thinks she needs a good night’s sleep. “You’ll be safe here.”

She nods. “I need new papers in case mine are compromised.”

“And a better gun,” he says, dismissing her compact Remington on the aluminum table.

“That too.”

He nods.

“Thank you, Michael.”