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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

  Macon GA 31201

  Killing Joe

  Copyright © 2008 by Marie Treanor

  ISBN: 1-59998-927-1

  Edited by Linda Ingmanson

  Cover by Dawn Seewer

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: April 2008

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  Killing Joe

  Marie Treanor

  Dedication

  To Linda, who didn’t give up on me.

  And to my first husband, who had better not.

  Chapter One

  No one ever accused the assassin of humor. But he did possess a fine sense of irony that he liked to employ in his work.

  For example, he knew exactly how to kill the girl.

  Through his spotlessly clean windscreen, he saw her emerge alone from the hangar-like building she worked in. A swift glance at the open wallet in his hand showed him the photograph of a studious-looking, dark-haired young woman in black-rimmed spectacles and a white lab coat, her severity lightened by a quirky half-smile. Across one creamy if clinical shoulder was scrawled, “All my love, Maria”. He’d written it himself last night, along with a fake New York phone number on the back, just to make his possession of it look innocent.

  The girl now walking across the car park right in front of his vehicle was not called Maria, and she was not American, but she was definitely the same woman. Even her thick, black hair was in exactly the same style, if you could call it that—tied carelessly behind her head, with lots of it escaping. Dr. Anna Baird, a project leader working for the British Institute of Crash Research.

  His client wanted her death to look accidental. And obviously, given her profession, a car crash was the most pleasing accident for her to have. But Joe—the assassin always thought of himself as Joe—found it a particularly ironic touch to use her own research to do the job properly. Like any kill, a car crash had to be studied scientifically in order to ensure the target’s death and his own survival, and she did appear to be the number one expert in the field. He had a bit of reading to do back at the hotel.

  Just beyond his car, the girl paused, and Joe dropped his gaze to the wallet, casually rummaging. Some targets sensed his observation. It wasn’t unusual for eye contact to be made, but Joe preferred to avoid it until he was ready. However, the girl just looked around her, frowning, as if she couldn’t remember where she’d parked her car. Joe could have pointed it out to her. After only a moment, she went straight toward it.

  Joe liked the way she walked, economical with her movements, largely unaware of her own body, yet with quiet, natural grace. And he reckoned, by that faintest roll of her hips beneath her well-worn leather jacket, that there was suppressed passion in there. A clichéd fantasy about a female scientist, no doubt, but he was sticking with it.

  Dr. Baird still appeared slightly distracted as she went through the motions of inserting her key into the lock of her Saab, opening the door, throwing her briefcase onto the passenger seat and climbing in. There looked to be a permanent frown on her brow. Perhaps Joe’s client preferred happier women.

  Once she had belted herself in, she placed her hands on the steering wheel with driving-school precision. Then unexpectedly, her head dropped forward onto the wheel in an unexpected gesture of exhaustion or defeat. Like most people, she imagined herself invisible once inside her own car, and Joe found that hint of vulnerability oddly touching. He’d make sure his job was done quickly and efficiently.

  After the briefest moment, she sat up straight and started the car. Joe let her drive right out of the gates before he started his own engine. It was industrial park land out here, lots of big offices and no housing. Security was poor, too. The different organizations shared a night watchman and had their individual buildings alarmed, but there were no cameras in the Institute car park.

  Joe already knew which road she would take to go home to her flat in central Edinburgh. At this stage, he wanted only to observe her driving speed and technique.

  Careful, dull, efficient. She took no chances, never jumped the light at amber, never tried to edge out another driver. Joe marked a few possible spots to stage an accident: a wide road full of fast-moving traffic with several junctions, a busy roundabout…

  Dr. Baird lived alone—no husband or family, no lover. Her flat was in a tenement block opposite a pleasant green park. Joe stopped at the corner just short of her building and got out to stroll down the pavement toward it. The building was decent enough, but hardly luxurious. The girl was living on a not particularly generous salary, as if she was—honest.

  She had stopped outside the front door to speak to someone—a white-haired old lady. Joe wondered if she would glance at him as he passed, if her gaze would be quickly dropped, self-deprecating or indifferent. There might even be a glint of shy attraction. After all, Joe was attractive to many women, and this girl had loneliness written all over her.

  In the end, he never got near enough to find out. She turned away to the front door of the building, pausing with her key in the lock, to throw the old lady a quick smile over her shoulder.

  For some reason, the smile startled Joe. It seemed to alter her whole face, smoothing the frown, lightening her eyes. She seemed to shine. And then it vanished. The door opened and quickly closed and Joe walked past unnoticed.

  Being a fair-minded man, it struck him that it would be equally ironic if his client was involved in a road accident from which Dr. Baird’s research could have saved him.

  ***

  Having completed his research over the Internet in his hotel, Joe knew exactly how and where to hit her car to kill her—and what bit of his vehicle to use to avoid his own injury. Thanks to a misspent youth of joyriding and playing chicken, he was pretty confident of his ability to do it. Especially in the Zeitek, which devilment had made him hire at the airport. Her investigations into that particular model had been thorough and he now knew its every strength and weakness.

  Following her to work the next morning, he concentrated on her driving idiosyncrasies: when she braked for a light or reacted to unexpected events. No way would she be allowed to avoid him…

  Unfortunately, the required force and precision couldn’t be guaranteed in the rush-hour traffic. So Joe drove straight past the gates of the Institute to the next roundabout, went completely ’round it and headed back into town. He had a phone call to make, an assignation to arrange.

  It was a pity, he reflected, as he sped along the busy carriageway. It might have been intriguing actually to meet the appointment he was about to make. He liked clever women, and when she smiled, Anna Baird was rather beautiful. Nice body, too. He would have enjoyed wakening that slumbering passion he sensed in her, making the cool scientist hot and wild if he could… But he’d got long past the stage of finding it exciting to fuck his hits. In this age of DNA evidence, it would be bloody stupid besides.

  He decided not to run with the fantasy stuff. It seemed somehow—disrespectful. An odd word to pop into his head. Joe didn’t have respect for many people and he’d never had any reason
to regard women with any special chivalry. In his experience, women were downright dangerous. Fascinating, some of them, and sexually delightful, but nonetheless lethal. In his line of work and with his necessarily limited social circle, he didn’t encounter many like Anna Baird…

  This time tomorrow, the girl would be dead, the money would be safely in his bank and he would be flying back to America to wait for the next poor sod to kill.

  He’d be glad when it was done. He didn’t care for this job. Having studied her work now, he knew exactly why his client wanted Anna Baird out of the way. It didn’t make what he was about to do any less legal than his other hits, but for some reason it left a nasty taste in his mouth. It was the last job he’d do for…

  The car hit him with tremendous force. Shooting out of a junction on his left, it gave him no chance to avoid it. Instinct made him swerve and brake together. It made no difference. The car slammed into the side of his vehicle, hurling him into the oncoming traffic. Two more crashes tried to throw his broken body in opposite directions

  If only he’d had any breath, he might have laughed. As it was, before he lost consciousness, he had time to think, “Fuck. Now this is irony.”

  ***

  “Great, you’re all set,” Anna approved when she entered the crash room with her coffee. The crash was set up, the dummy being carefully positioned in the driver’s seat.

  “What do you think?” asked Bill Mackie, her eager new assistant, straightening up beside the mock car.

  Anna touched the cold metal. “Zeitek specifications?”

  “It’s the new Zinnia to a tee” Bill assured her, with a grin at the rough appearance of the shell.

  Anna reached in to check that the dummy was firmly assembled. It was a new one, built to her own design, resembling a human far more closely than anything they’d had to work with before. Not in appearance, maybe, but in weight and joints, the placement of organs and even simulated flesh, it was the best guide they’d ever had to the true effect of a crashing car on its human occupants.

  “OK,” Anna said. “Let’s fire him off.”

  With Bill and Lesley, her other assistant, she walked over to the protective control cubicle, waiting impatiently for the technicians who’d carried in the dummy to get clear of the crash room. When they left, closing the door behind them, she pressed the locking mechanism immediately.

  “Thirty-four miles an hour,” she said, typing the speed into the computer. “Go.”

  She hit the button.

  The “car” moved into action on its rails, quickly building speed. At the same time, the car on the cross-rails sprang into action, too. At precisely thirty-four miles an hour, Anna held her breath. Through the clear Perspex of the windows, she stared directly at the dummy, to see every tiny effect with her own eyes.

  As usual the dummy’s smooth, featureless face showed incongruous disinterest in its grizzly fate. And it would be grizzly. Anna had already calculated the damage that would be caused at thirty-five miles an hour, no matter how safe at thirty. The dummy’s internal organs were toast.

  It didn’t mind.

  Or did it?

  Anna blinked. She was no longer staring at a dummy’s inhuman, impassive face. She was looking at a man’s face, a real man’s. Strong, tanned, wide-eyed with shock.

  “Jesus!” Anna slammed her hand hard down on the abort key. Too late. The cars collided with the usual almighty crash.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?” Lesley demanded, jumping after her as she wrenched open the control room door and bolted toward the carnage. “Anna, it’s all right! Wait!”

  But Anna couldn’t wait. In a cold sweat of horror, she threw herself to her knees among the debris.

  Of course it was impossible. She already knew that she wouldn’t see a man’s broken body. Just a dummy. Its vacant head was still attached, its battered body tied into the wreckage by a seat belt.

  “Anna.” Lesley’s hand touched her shoulder. “Anna, are you okay?”

  With trembling fingers, Anna pushed her hair off her face. She tried to laugh and managed a weak smile. “Yes, I think so. Les, if I ever go completely bats, promise you’ll kick me off this project before I wreck it? Pun intended.”

  Lesley’s fingers tightened. “Honey, without you, there wouldn’t be a project. But if you keep calling me Les, I’ll have your arse in a sling.”

  Anna gave a wavery laugh, and pushed her glasses more firmly onto her nose. “Bill? Got your pencil? Right, let’s get measuring.”

  Springing to her feet, she strode off, pretending to look for her instruments—in reality fighting to control the shaking of her limbs.

  Bill slowly took his gaze from her and turned it on Lesley. “What the hell was that all about?”

  Lesley sighed. “About the past, my dear.” She glanced at him. “It’s hard for her to watch crashes, okay?”

  “Don’t you think she’s in the wrong job then?”

  “Not from the results she gets, no,” Lesley retorted.

  “Point,” Bill allowed. “So what’s her problem?”

  Lesley hesitated. Then, “When she was sixteen, she saw her parents and her wee brothers die in a car crash. Sometimes…it’s like she relives it. Here.”

  “Christ.” Bill looked quickly across to the control room where Anna was rummaging. “That isn’t healthy. Seriously, Lesley.”

  “I know. But it hasn’t happened for years. Not since the very early days of this place. I thought she’d got used to it…”

  “Christ,” Bill said again. “Why does she put herself through this? It must be torture wondering if her work could have saved her family…”

  Lesley’s smile was a little twisted. “Bill, she’s saving someone else’s family.”

  ***

  The scanned dummy bore out all Anna’s calculations, and all her calls for Zeitek to hold up production of the Zinnia. Its shape, which made it so different and appealing, was also its weakness. The car was a killer at anything over thirty miles an hour. In effect, the dummy’s body was completely crushed.

  When they were finished with it, she helped the techies haul it down to the storeroom and put its limbs back together. Outside the crash situation, it seemed there was no temptation for her to imagine it a real person. It was just that his face had seemed so real, and she was sure she had never seen the man before. It was the sort of face she would have remembered—not particularly handsome, but strong, attractive, different.

  That’s what’s wrong with me. I’m not working too hard, I’m not exhausted or barking mad. I just need a man.

  And in the circumstances, the humiliation of that was almost a relief. Laughing at herself, she went to write up her report.

  She was still writing when Lesley appeared in her office door, coat on and ready to go home.

  “How’s it going?” she asked.

  Anna smiled. “Good. This time we’ve got the buggers. They wriggled out of it on the last model, but this time there’s just no excuse.”

  “We’ll need to do more back-up tests,” Lesley warned.

  “I know. We’ll set them up throughout the week. Test for passengers, too. With and without airbags. The whole shebang.”

  “Fair enough. Oh and talking of the previous model—I got a call about another accident. Not far from here actually, on the A8.”

  Anna cocked an interested eyebrow. “Oh? A Zeitek? Anyone hurt?”

  “It was a bit of a pile up. Several injuries, mostly recoverable—but the Zeitek’s a write-off, and they reckon so’s the driver.”

  “Dead?” Anna asked sadly.

  “Not yet. They don’t sound very hopeful though.”

  “Poor bastard. Where was the impact? In the side?”

  “Both sides. It was hit on the left and pushed right into traffic. A second major impact on the driver’s side.”

  “It’s criminal,” Anna said in a small, tight voice. “We warned them about that weakness, and not only did they fail to rectify it, they
produce the bloody Zinnia which gives all the protection of paper!”

  “Honey, you’re preaching to the converted.”

  Anna gave a quick, apologetic smile. “I know. Sorry. I just don’t know how they sleep at nights.”

  “We’ll stop them this time. After this week’s tests, you can get your report in on Monday. By the end of next week, they’ll have to halt production and alter their design. So slow down.” She straightened, detaching her leaning shoulder from the door post. “Don’t stay in here all night, Anna. Go home.”

  Anna saved her file and pressed the off button. “I’m off now. Oh, did we get a look at that Zeitek wreckage?”

  “Yeah. Dan MacQuarrie went down there. He’ll have the report in to you tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Lesley. ’Night.”

  As she left her office only moments later, she could still hear Lesley’s heels clicking down the corridor. The sound brought a surge of affection for her loyal assistant. Lesley was amazing. Good at her job, easy to be around, thought for herself and wasn’t afraid to voice any doubts she felt. And yet she carried out instructions, even wishes, to the letter. And though she never mentioned it, Anna knew she looked out for her. If it was embarrassing, it was also a comfort.

  Following the clicking heels, Anna paused at the top of the stairs which led down to the basement storeroom. She couldn’t remember anyone turning the light off in there, or locking the door. And on the tight budget they worked on, these things were important.

  With a sigh, Anna turned and ran lightly down the stairs. It was highly unlikely anyone would break in here and steal the crash test dummies, but insurance would not pay up if anyone did so when the door was unlocked. And the new dummy had cost a fortune.

  The door wasn’t properly shut. Even before she switched on the lower corridor light, Anna could see it stood ajar. Though at least someone had switched off the light. Rummaging in her bag as she walked toward the open door, she dragged out the big bunch of keys, sorting through them to find the right one. As she reached for the door, something breathed behind it.