Page 72 of Run for Her Life
“It’s always better to know.”
Silence stretched between them, thin and taut. Zoe curled her hands into fists in her pockets. Bolts of energy climbed up her legs. But she willed herself to be patient.
“Have you heard of a shadow criminal organization called Red Trigger?”
“Yes. But I don’t know much about it.”
He nodded. “Your mother worked for them. She was a contract killer.”
Hollowness grew behind Zoe’s navel and crept its way into the rest of her body. All air left her lungs as she exhaled. “No.”
“I know it’s difficult for you to hear, considering the honorable path you’ve taken in your life.” He picked up his glass again and turned it in his hand. “Your mother was very young, just a teenager, when she was sold to Red Trigger by a trafficker who had abducted her. She was groomed from a young age to kill. It was all she knew. It wasn’t her fault.” Dazed, Zoe let his words wash over her like water. “Whenever the organization needed to assassinate someone, they sent your mother. Over the years, she experienced a crisis of conscience many times. But it was the only life she knew, so she was never able to walk away. Even after having you. It wasn’t until she indirectly caused the death of a teenage boy at Pineview Falls that she finally had the courage.”
“Michael,” Zoe whispered.
“Yes. Her task was to lead the boy to a haunted house and then distract the operator. What she thought would be an abduction turned into a massacre. That’s when she approached me.”
Zoe recalled David mentioning a pretty woman had begun talking to him and he’d stepped away from his station. Thewhole time it was her mother who had been at the center of the massacre at Pineview Falls.
“We worked together for several months. I even met you twice but you were too young to remember.” A smile formed on his lips. “I heard Rachel committed suicide. After that I kept tabs on you and your sister.” He hesitated. “How is she?”
“Who?”
“Gina.”
The way he said her name. It carried so much love. Zoe stared at him blankly and then she saw it—a slightly upturned nose and almond-shaped eyes that were too familiar. Her nerves sizzled. “Oh my God… you’re her father.”
Jeff whipped his head to look the other way. “I had a wife and kids, Emily. I couldn’t… well, you understand.”
Zoe didn’t understand anything. “So you know who I am. Jackie, Michael’s sister, sent that riddle to you. Do you remember?”
“Oh, yes.” He blinked, frowning. “It was so long ago but… I remember there was a little girl with the family. It must have been her. I had visited the family on multiple occasions, trying to gather more information on Michael and why he had been targeted.”
“She must have remembered you. That’s why she sent it to you. The only person she knew who had worked on the original case.”
“And I forwarded it to you. I’m an old man and Pineview Falls stirred up memories of your mother. I know how great you are at what you do. She would have been proud of you. You have her killer instincts.”
Rachel akiller? Zoe still couldn’t get her head around it no matter how long she held that thought. It percolated inside her like a foreign body. A thought her brain kept rejecting like a failed transplant.
“Who did she testify against?” she asked.
Jeff opened his mouth. “He’s?—”
The front window shattered, the sharp whine of a bullet slicing through glass before burying itself into the far wall.
Jeff barely had time to move before another shot rang out, this one slamming into the wooden bookshelf behind him, sending a shower of splinters raining down.
Zoe reacted on instinct. Her crowded mind emptied and she became a machine.
She reached for her gun, flipping the small table in front of her as makeshift cover. Jeff cursed, ducking behind the armchair.
A voice, sharp and laced with amusement, drifted in from outside.
“All you had to do was stop asking questions, Agent Storm.”
Zoe knew that voice. Viktor Axenov. Rage seared her skin, turning her blood hot. She tightened her grip on the gun.
She peered through the shattered window, her heart pounding.
