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Confessions of Eden: Michelle Reagan, #1
Confessions of Eden: Michelle Reagan, #1
Confessions of Eden: Michelle Reagan, #1
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Confessions of Eden: Michelle Reagan, #1

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Is "Confessions of Eden" drawn from today's headlines, or are the headlines drawn from what little is visible of Eden's highly classified footprints?

WINNER: Pinnacle Book Achievement Award - Best Spy Thriller
WINNER: Literary Titan Book Awards - Gold Medal

"For fans of crime and espionage, 'Confessions of Eden' comes across as a tour de force in entertainment." ~ Romuald Dzemo, Readers' Favorite Book Reviews (5 STARS)

"'Confessions of Eden' is told in a powerful voice, featuring streams of consciousness that plunge readers into the protagonist's turmoil. Fast-paced and filled with action, it is one of those books you feel compelled to read nonstop." ~ Christian Sia, Readers' Favorite Book Reviews (5 STARS)

Michelle Reagan—code name Eden—is the CIA Special Activities Division's newest covert action operator, an assassin, who struggles between wanting to succeed in her new profession for herself and her charismatic boss, and the moral quandaries of what she must do to innocent people who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although she faces seemingly intractable decisions as she executes her missions across the globe, the adversary most difficult to overcome may very well be her own conscience.

Through it all, only one man has ever called her an 'assassin' to her face. Someday, if she has her way, she'll marry him—if she lives that long.

EVOLVED PUBLISHING PRESENTS a fast moving, intensely emotional, edge-of-your-seat thrill-ride. Where does the reality of today's veiled world of international espionage end, and the fictional story begin? That may be impossible to discern in 'Confessions of Eden,' an action-packed new addition to the great military espionage traditions of Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, Stephen Coonts, and Len Deighton. [DRM-Free]

 

LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 6, 2019
ISBN9781622536641
Confessions of Eden: Michelle Reagan, #1
Author

Scott Shinberg

Scott Shinberg has served in leadership positions across the US Government and industry for over twenty-five years. He has worked in and with the US Air Force, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and most “Three-Letter Agencies.” While in government service, he served as an Air Force Intelligence Operations Officer and a Special Agent with the FBI. He lives in Virginia with his wife and sons.

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    Confessions of Eden - Scott Shinberg

    PART 1 – TOTEM POLE

    Chapter 1

    I held my pistol three inches from the back of her head and pulled the trigger for the second time that night. This time, my pull was quick and smooth.

    She looked almost peaceful as she lay motionless, face down on the floor. A grotesque mixture of blood-matted brown hair strewn wildly about the floor and a dark burgundy stain spreading from the fatal head wound I had just caused jarringly interrupted the illusion of tranquility.

    I fixated far too much that evening on my concern about ruining the resort villa’s rather bland beige carpet. Come on, Michelle, I reminded myself, focus on the plan, not on the body... or the blood.

    With the obstacle—her—now out of the way, the silence of the empty bedroom drew my thoughts back to my primary target. I hadn’t heard Gutierrez for a while, so I peeked around the corner to see if he was already there. He was not.

    The lifeless body lying at my feet held me spellbound. Standing over her, what I saw was a beautiful woman with thin, tanned legs in a short silver dress riding up on her more than she probably would have liked. I could see no hint of the belly wound caused by my first shot.

    The tightening starting up again in my gut was interrupted by the sound of shoes tapping up the hardwood stairs outside the master bedroom. The noise yanked my attention away from my fascination with the dead woman. The bedroom door was pushed open with a tell-tale clunk.

    I inhaled deeply and reminded myself that this was my reason for flying down to Aruba from Washington, DC, the previous morning. I kept my mental pep talk quick and to the point: Okay, Michelle, now!

    Chapter 2

    I remember quite clearly having decided early that sunny morning before boarding the United Airlines flight to Aruba that if she were there, I would kill her.

    Those who know me now—at least the handful of people alive who know what I do for a living—might be surprised to hear me say that the thought of it sounded awful, even to me. In the moment—at that moment—standing on the departures level in front of Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, DC, I shuddered as uncertainty descended over me.

    The specter of self-doubt pitted my brain against itself. One half desperately wanted to believe the internal debate had ended in my favor. The other half repeatedly chided me: Don’t kid yourself, Michelle, this goes far deeper than mere flesh and bones.

    My new boss, Michael, had made his expectations of me perfectly clear back when he extended his invitation to join his team. He didn’t beat around the bush about the way outsiders might view us if they knew the details of our team’s missions. He warned me from the get-go that I would have to get used to killing people who were simply in the way, even if they were not my primary target. It didn’t have to be something I would like; it just had to be something I would do.

    The concrete sidewalk led me to both the airport terminal and the first test of my less-than-concrete self-confidence. The strength required to carry out my mission lay buried somewhere deep within me. Part of my mind wanted to prove I was more than capable of succeeding and resolutely believed it would carry me through my mission to Aruba. But there was still that irritating other part asking the same recurring question: Really, Michelle?

    I didn’t delude myself into thinking the question could be answered while sitting safely in Michael’s sterile office or at home in my apartment, seven miles east of the airport. This question—the one that had been ricocheting around my skull for days prior to my flight—could not be answered until the fateful moment arrived in which I found myself face to face with a human being standing in front of my pistol.

    I breathed deeply to try and calm the quivering that wreaked havoc upon my stomach. I silently affirmed my decision to take the next step in the plan: board the plane. That gave me enough courage to walk towards the automatic door with renewed conviction and at least the illusion of having enough self-confidence to complete my mission.

    Through the corner of my eye, I spied my reflection keeping pace with me in the lowest pane of the gleaming fifty-foot-high sectional plate glass window of Dulles’ towering terminal. That’s precisely where I now think of myself being at that point of my life, at the bottom of the totem pole—the beginning of my story.

    We walked abreast each other, my reflection inside the terminal and the real me outside. The two mes could only regard each other from afar, forever occupying disconnected worlds. What an apt description that turned out to be.

    Sweet, naïve, innocent Michelle only one year out of high school peered in from the outside, wondering what the future held in store for her career. Loving, experienced, hardened Michelle on the far side stared out, wondering whether the gains have been worth the costs.

    I was only nineteen years old back then—so young. Innocent. Willing. Eager.

    What would have happened if the two of us crossed the barrier, converged in that instant, and touched? What might have happened if our fingers had made contact through the impenetrable membrane of time or if our minds had connected on an emotional level? Maybe nothing at all. Maybe the world would have stopped spinning on its axis, or maybe only my world would have changed and no one else would have even noticed.

    I checked my appearance in the window one last time while still on American soil. Hardly any nineteen-year-old girl can pass her reflection and not double-check her hair or clothes. In that glance, some sense of reassurance calmed me ever so slightly. I confirmed that my disguise looked just as it should: blonde wig, neutral makeup, non-descript black pants, and a dark blue blouse. Boring. Unremarkable. Perfect!

    I took a personal, intimate mental snapshot of my reflection to remember how I looked at that particular moment—the moment at which I made the decision. That image would be my last mental before self-portrait. Before my first mission. Before boarding the plane. Before my life changed forever. Before I became a killer.

    My apparition grinned a thin-lipped half-smile back at me.

    I reflected on my new boss’s advice about making decisions before starting a mission. Once you make the decision and commit to it, Michael said with the smooth elegance of his fading West Texas drawl, following through becomes automatic. Your training will take over. Trust your training.

    As always, time has proven him right. I’ve learned to trust his wisdom and decades of experience implicitly. Michael is walking proof that you don’t have as long a career running covert action operations as he has had without being right almost all the time. In the field, small mistakes can be fatal, and big mistakes can be even worse.

    With the decision behind me, I inhaled deeply again and walked both literally through the now-open sliding glass door and figuratively into my new life as the youngest covert action operator in CIA’s Special Activities Division—SAD.

    Covert action can be a very messy business. Much of what we do in the Directorate of Operations, the DO, is messy. Many, maybe most, civilians would call me an assassin, but on our team, we prefer to use the military’s term: operator. Assassin? No, that word just doesn’t fit with my personal view of who I am as a woman or my feelings about why the profession in which I’ve specialized for over a decade is so important to my country.

    Officially, the US government doesn’t engage in assassinations. Officially. Even if the CIA doesn’t acknowledge it, every Director has had a team like ours at his disposal. We’re his option of last resort.

    Only one person has ever used the word assassin to my face. I smiled at him warmly when he did and, yes, he’s still very much alive. Someday I’ll marry him. If I live that long.

    My longevity was not something I thought about much in those early days, being caught up in the excitement and freshness of my new life.

    I dove head-first into it all—the training, travel, learning to live undercover, working entirely in the shadows—and woke up one day having realized with a start that I had real, tangible control over people. Those feelings were powerfully intoxicating, stimulating, and liberating.

    No one had handed me the power to control others. Rather, I incubated it somewhere deep inside me, somewhere so far down that I didn’t even know such a place existed. This potent but fragile creation of mine both excited and, at the same time, terrified me. Could I keep it under control or would it destroy me?

    Thoughts of my own mortality have been on my mind more and more recently. That’s one reason Michael suggested I write this memoir. Whether anyone ever reads it or not doesn’t matter to me at all. For all I care, it can sit unread in his office safe until it rots. Right now, I just need to sort out my twisted, conflicting emotions. My goals are to recognize and understand what these feelings are and then to figure out how to untangle their complicated web. For me, this is my attempt at preserving my sanity. It may be my last chance to control the power and not succumb to it.

    As I write this, I’m working infuriatingly hard just to keep myself from becoming my own final victim. Some would no doubt say that it would be a fitting end. They might even be justified in that opinion, but I refuse to let that happen. Not on my watch. I will not lose!

    I will not become a casualty of the inner hostilities and contradictory feelings that fight within the recesses of my mind for doing the things the CIA asked of me. My country asked and I answered the call, knowing what my missions required were necessary for the good of my country and my team. They were my choices to make, and I made them willingly. So, now, the question before my internal inquisitor is this: how do I feel about myself, considering the many lives I’ve taken?

    I need to know what part of me will come out on top in my quest for self-approval—a quest begun on that beautifully clear and warm night in Palm Beach, Aruba.

    Chapter 3

    I struggled to walk at a casual pace and not run along the white sandy beach towards Rodrigo Beltran Gutierrez’s rented oceanfront villa. The churning and tumbling in my stomach made me question whether I would even get to the villa’s back gate before losing my dinner.

    I approached the rear of the three-bedroom villa with the same self-doubts and consternation experienced by all first-timers—an abject fear of screwing up my all-important inaugural mission. Over the previous two weeks I had made dozens of dry-runs at the Farm, the Agency’s clandestine service and covert operations training facility in Central Virginia. Even after extensive preparation, my hands still shook on my first foray into the real world. The corners of my mouth drooped upon the disappointing realization that I was only human after all and did not have mythical nerves of steel.

    I felt scared. There, I said it.

    The light from the half-moon hanging low over the Caribbean Sea lit my way along the paved path. I had to consciously refuse the appealing distraction of the water lapping upon the glistening sand a dozen or so feet to my left. The soft whoosh-slap of the small waves breaking on the sand was the only sound I could hear along the still beachfront.

    The rear of the villa sat quietly, half concealed in shadows. I was happy to see that the moon only partially illuminated the wrought-iron gate set into the wall surrounding Gutierrez’s vacation house. The minimal moonlight would make me harder to spot as I broke in.

    The gorgeous rental probably cost ten grand for the week. The owners maintained it well and kept the backyard free of the fallen palm fronds littering so much of the rest of that tropical island paradise. No doubt, as the transportation coordinator for a Peruvian drug cartel, Gutierrez made good money. I’m sure he could have afforded an even more luxurious spread, but for a week-long getaway with his choice of chiquitas, it was perfect.

    The rental cost him more than I could afford as a newly hired GS-7 civil service employee, even with the hazard pay that just about doubled my salary for being in this line of work. By my standards, Gutierrez was living large.

    I traced my eyes across the tall privacy walls of his villa and those surrounding the neighboring houses for any of the usual threats: people, dogs, or security cameras. I scanned horizontally first, then vertically along the eaves, empty balconies, and curtained windows of each house, but saw nothing obvious. Dogs and cameras are rare around vacation properties, but people are what vacations are all about, and I did not want neighbors out for a late evening stroll to spot me.

    Physical security at vacation properties is laughable, I reflected appreciatively, striding purposefully away from the water and towards the rear of the villa. The cheap locks were relatively easy to pick, even for a novice like me, only four weeks out of my second attempt at locksmith training.

    With little likelihood of encountering surveillance cameras on this mission there was no need for any of my more complex disguises. Agency artists excel at crafting complex disguises such as silicone facial pieces. Regardless, I didn’t want to end up featured on the next episode of Aruba’s Most Wanted, so that night’s disguise consisted of a basic blonde wig and a pair of large-framed glasses, just in case. Even routine actions like driving past an ATM machine can get you photographed nowadays, so my rule about disguises is to never leave home without one. Or three!

    Every girl enjoys dressing up for the important events in her life. I’m no exception, although What to Wear When Making Your First Kill has not yet made it to any of Cosmo’s Top 10 lists. That night in Aruba, my medium-length dishwater blonde wig covered my short brunette bob. In addition, I wore only a touch of makeup. Who would want mascara smeared all over if she ended up sweating a lot and rubbing her face? I anticipated being awfully nervous that night.

    Safe-ish missions like this one are the usual first jobs for new operators on our team. Frankly, it was a mission that didn’t even need to happen. Normally, Gutierrez would not rate anywhere near the top of the list of people the CIA would deem worth the effort or risk to kill. Unfortunately for him, he chose to go on vacation at the same time I was finishing my advanced training. Timing is everything.

    I would never meet the Case Officer in Lima who learned of Gutierrez’s travel plans through a source working at LAN Perú Airlines. Analysts in the Agency’s Crime and Narcotics Center reviewed the cable describing Gutierrez’s travel plans and decided they would not learn anything useful by spying on him during his vacation.

    Michael, on the other hand, read the message in a completely different way. Knowing that no one else would be watching, he decided this would be the right opportunity for me to earn my bones, as it were, by ridding the world of yet another up-and-coming prince of the drug trade.

    That sat well with me for my first mission. Safe-ish. Easy-ish. Worthwhile-ish.

    At the rear wall of the villa, a quick push on the gate’s handle confirmed it was locked from the inside. With the assistance of one of the half-dozen palm trees decorating the rear of the property, I took the next-most obvious way in by shimmying up the tree closest to the red-painted wall. I hopped over where the wall met a tan concrete pillar, dropped to the pea gravel that passed for a back yard, and reassessed the situation.

    Inside the protective wall and seemingly alone, I looked carefully across the rear of the stucco house. I searched again for any sign of security cameras that might expose my participation in the coming events of the evening. There were none.

    The clean, white stucco and bright-red trim spoke of the care with which the house was maintained. Yellow, red, and green flood lights gave the backyard a festive atmosphere and lit the Jacuzzi with a playful and tropical character that would have been a favorite of any vacationing couple.

    I unlatched the gate to ensure an unimpeded escape later, then headed for the back door. Gravel crunched quietly under my shoes as I took my first, tentative steps towards the house. My realization that I was walking hunched over, essentially skulking, gave way to a wave of embarrassment at my own foolishness. My attempt to hide from occupants I already knew had left for the evening was probably not my first mistake of the night and would not be my last.

    My surveillance of Gutierrez and his mystery lady earlier in the evening as they drove off to dinner made me confident that I was alone at the villa. Besides, if anyone was in the house and watching me, it would be the gun under my windbreaker that would solve that particular problem and not scooting to the back door in a half-crouch.

    I stood upright and ran my hands down the front of my jacket in embarrassment. At least there was some relief in knowing I could suffer this one indignity in private and not have to watch it replayed on video in front of my entire class, as was the case with so many of the training scenarios I endured over the previous year.

    A Kwikset lock secured the rear door. I smiled briefly at my good fortune that it wasn’t a high-security brand, which would have been harder to defeat. For this job, a standard shallow-hook lock pick and a sturdy tension wrench would do nicely. I pulled the pair of thin-metal tools from the pocket inside my jacket and spent thirty seconds lifting and jiggling the five pins inside the lock’s tumbler one by one until they all aligned at their sheer lines. The L-shaped tension wrench lurched clockwise in my hand as the lock jumped open.

    I breathed a small sigh of relief and allowed myself a brief self-congratulatory grin, pleased that I wasn’t having problems with the parts of the mission that were supposed to be easy.

    As the villa’s back door swung open, what Michael said to me two days earlier flooded back through my mind. I cherish the advice he has given to me over the years, and the last thing he told me before my flight to Aruba is something I will remember to my last breath. As we stood at the door to his office, he squeezed my shoulder gently and said, When the time comes for it, Michelle, remember this: I’m giving you permission to pull the trigger. His words didn’t mean that much to me at the time back in Virginia, but they echoed loudly through my mind as I stepped into Gutierrez’s villa.

    Starting at the rear door, I searched the living room, dining area, and kitchen to find hidden weapons or anything else of importance. I ran my gloved hands and novice’s eyes across the cushions, cabinets, and closets, but found nothing.

    The sterile rental villa was also devoid of anything to personalize it or give it character. No photographs sat on the countertops. No kids’ awards, diplomas, or artwork graced the walls or refrigerator. A Cabernet Sauvignon from Bordeaux and an Argentinian Riesling on the countertop gave me the only hints the house was even occupied.

    I looked up and eyeballed the stairway that climbed to the villa’s second level. A single potted plant decorated the small loft at the top. French doors leading to the master bedroom commanded the view above me.

    As I climbed the wooden staircase, the magnitude of my reason for making the trip began to weigh more heavily on my mind, on my heart, and on my legs. I labored to lift one foot over the other to reach the loft outside the master bedroom. With my gloved hands responding less and less reliably to my brain’s commands to move, I pushed myself forcefully along the railing one hardwood step at a time.

    Somewhere around the sixth step, a sobering realization burst through my mind. I would not come back down these stairs the same woman I had been upon entering the villa only minutes earlier. The emotional belt tightening around my chest cinched down another notch.

    I doubted that a patriotic soliloquy about the substance of the career upon which I was embarking and its importance to national security would have motivated me to conquer the remaining stairs any quicker. Instead, I urged myself forward with the more plain-Jane method of simply agreeing with myself that getting my sorry ass upstairs would earn me the reward of plopping down in the chair closest to the door. If I had had any inkling that Gutierrez might have had a chocolate bar upstairs, that kind of bribe might have worked, too. Collapsing into the overstuffed leather chair in the corner of the master bedroom worked for me that evening.

    I sunk into the well-padded white leather chair breathing heavily and franticly trying to find my inner resolve. The most active flock of butterflies that had ever inhabited my stomach whirled faster as I struggled to calm them with deep breaths. With little success, I tried to imagine how difficult a future mission—one with real danger—might be. My nearly debilitating case of stage fright had put even this easy first job at risk.

    Oh man, what am I getting myself into? I focused on coaxing the acrobatic butterflies doing barrel rolls across my abdomen to take the rest of the night off. With my hands more than full simply trying to steady myself, I could not conceive of how to handle greater challenges on future missions. If walking up a flight of stairs posed such a problem for me, I wondered in dismay how would it ever be possible to succeed on a more complex mission? How do people handle their nerves on jobs that actually matter, such as one against an important target who has bodyguards, armored cars, or an alarm system to defeat first? Will I ever be able to do that, or should I just go back to Michael and admit defeat?

    I refuse to be a failure, I answered myself with certainty. Never have been and never will be. That’s not me. I will not quit. I will not lose!

    From the reassuring embrace of a soft and welcoming chair, I surveyed the large master bedroom. Against the far wall, a king-sized bed sat draped with a colorful print bedspread replete with tropical yellow and orange flowers. A peach loveseat, wood-and-glass coffee table, and the mate to my plush white chair completed the vibrant theme of the room.

    To my right, French doors led to the balcony where two wicker chairs and a matching table overlooked the evening surf. From that angle above the beach, I could appreciate the silvery moonlight reflecting across the small waves lapping up on the fine sand of the Aruban coast.

    After regaining enough of my strength and nerve, I rifled through the dresser, nightstands, suitcases, and closet for weapons. As expected, I found none.

    I sat back down on my chair and reflected on the woman who left the house earlier that evening with Gutierrez. Whoever she was, she’d regret having come to Aruba with him. I started to feel sorry for her, but only a little.

    When you take up with drug smugglers, you’re choosing your own fate, right? The empty room didn’t answer.

    I wondered whether she was his wife or if he had brought along a girlfriend instead. Either way, the outcome would be the same. One singular question bugged me incessantly for the two weeks since I first briefed for this trip: who would step through the doorway first and end up as my first kill? Him or her? Either way, that evening was not going to end with the loving embrace she anticipated as she got all dolled up to go out to dinner.

    I drew the 9mm pistol and a cylindrical suppressor from the holster under my dark blue windbreaker. The threads inside the suppressor mated smoothly with those on the tip of the pistol’s barrel. I bided my time twisting the two together while sitting silently in the dim light filtering through the balcony’s sliding-glass doors.

    The long wait for my targets to return from their last-ever night on the town gave me plenty of time to study the face of my watch as the hours passed. I honestly hoped they were having a wonderful evening.

    With little else to do, I ran my gloved fingers over the length of the pistol, repeatedly caressing the rounded top of its frame and the smooth tube-shaped suppressor, studying a shape I already knew by heart.

    On future business trips, I would switch from that 9mm automatic to a harder-hitting .45 caliber with either a three- or five-inch suppressor. Sometimes, though, the firearm or suppressor I chose to use depended on what I wanted to or had to wear that evening.

    Both are popular weapons for which good accessories are easy to find. I’ve accumulated a drawer full of holsters that work especially well with my assortment of skirts, pants, and jackets under which I conceal all sorts of weapons and equipment when in the field. After all, a girl has got to accessorize well!

    Stealth, surprise, and an accurate first shot are my only real advantages. At five-foot-five-inches tall and one hundred thirty pounds soaking wet, I’m not a powerhouse and wouldn’t likely survive a fair fight. So that’s my goal: plan so that the fight is never a fair one. I either obtain and maintain the advantage or make an entirely new plan.

    In this line of work, there are no silver medals for second place. If you’re not the winner every time, all you get is an anonymous star engraved on the Memorial Wall of CIA’s McLean headquarters. I’ve worked with a few of the people who have posthumous stars on that wall and, while I respect them greatly, I have no interest in joining them on that edifice of honor.

    Chapter 4

    My heart leapt into my throat as I heard the loud revving of a car engine that pulled around the villa’s small circular driveway. They were home.

    To this day, I still get nervous entering a target’s house, hotel room, office, or whatever. On those missions, I’m inserting myself into their environment and stepping into the unknown. The unknown is unreliable. Nerve-racking. Deadly. That night in Aruba, I felt every emotion under the sun... or moon, as it were.

    A rush of adrenaline set my thighs and arms quivering. My throat dried and tightened to the point that I needed to open my mouth wide to get enough air through my narrowed windpipe. I half-feared that the sounds of my wheezing breath and pounding heart would be enough to warn away Gutierrez and his lady-friend before they even made it upstairs.

    I hefted the black Sig Sauer P228 semi-automatic pistol in my hands and needlessly double-checked the suppressor, feeling through my gloves that it was screwed onto the barrel securely. Weighing over two pounds, the Sig-and-suppressor combo is not terribly heavy, but nonetheless takes a good deal of concentration to control. The dense metal of the German-made pistol felt solid and reassuring. The hammer gave two metallic clicks as I drew it back with my thumb to its fully cocked position.

    My chair was getting less and less comfortable. I crossed my legs and immediately re-crossed them, shifting awkwardly in the padded leather. With a frown, I settled on placing both feet flat on the floor and gently tapped my toe on the carpet.

    The deadbolt in the front door made an unmistakable scraping sound as the key turned. The well-oiled wooden door’s hinges were not noisy, but rubber weather stripping on its bottom screeched across the foyer’s pink tile floor.

    I heard the woman’s voice first, speaking Spanish. Her vicious complaints about the ugly waitress who spilled a tray of drinks at the club that evening were not going to matter to her for much longer. She told Gutierrez to bring a bottle of wine and two glasses upstairs, referring to him as querido, dear. That struck me as more wife-y than girlfriend-y, but still didn’t settle the issue in my mind.

    The clicking of her high-heels on the foyer’s inlaid tile echoed upstairs as I moved with purpose across the master bedroom. The tenor of her heels changed to more of a clunk as she left the tile floor and started up the wooden stairs.

    That she had told Gutierrez to bring wine with him meant she would come upstairs first, alone. I scooted around the corner to my left, made a U-turn down the short hallway leading to the bathroom, and stood out of sight, silently waiting for her.

    If this were her own home, I would have expected her to head to her closet first to take off her shoes and dress. Since it wasn’t, I gambled that she’d make a beeline for the bathroom to either change into something more comfortable or slip into a robe.

    The carpet muffled her footsteps so well that when she rounded the corner of the short hallway between the bedroom and bathroom and we first saw each other, it surprised us both. I flinched, and my eyes quickly took in the entire scene.

    The woman branded indelibly into my brain was standing four feet in front of me. She wore a short, silver, sleeveless dress with a sheer panel that wrapped from the top of one of her thin hips, around her back, to the other. Her gorgeous brown hair hung over well-tanned shoulders, down to the middle of her back. She had the kind of long, shiny hair that looks so easy and natural, yet women know from experience that hair like hers looks so beautiful specifically because in reality it’s so damned hard to take care of.

    Fashion magazines say beauty comes from the personalized and creative ways in which a woman mixes, matches, conceals, and reveals the elements of her individuality—hair, clothes, boobs, shoes, butt, makeup. There’s an intangible element to beauty. Some women have it in spades while others never will, no matter how hard they try. This woman had it all, and she made it seem so natural and easy. Whatever it is, she most definitely had it, with plenty to spare.

    I had flown to Aruba to kill Gutierrez, but now a brunette beauty stood between me and my target. Intellectually, I knew that completing my mission meant going through with the plan. I didn’t create the plan, I just had to carry it out. To execute it. To execute her, a woman who made the fatal mistake of going on the wrong vacation with the wrong drug dealer at the wrong time.

    She’s so beautiful, I thought, how could it be right for me to kill her? All my life, people have repeatedly told me how pretty I am, but standing in that hallway, pistol cocked and aimed at her gut, I felt ugly inside.

    Had I really signed up for this? In that spectacular moment back at the Farm when Michael asked me to work for him, a wave of joy had flooded my mind—elation, euphoria, or maybe it was relief knowing that my career would be in the confident hands of a man like him. A senior CIA executive wanted me and not any of the more educated or experienced new hires! Had I genuinely appreciated the magnitude of what he was asking me to do? Had I actually agreed in that glorious moment to do anything asked of me, regardless of the consequences? I realized, looking at the woman standing in front of my pistol, that yes, that’s exactly what happened.

    My inaugural mission—the final exam after a grueling year of intelligence operations training—left no time for hesitation. I came to understand in that specific moment that this is exactly what I wanted. No, what I needed: to pass the test, to be in and fully accepted on Michael’s team. If that meant going through this chick to get to Gutierrez, then so be it.

    When the time comes for it, remember.... Michael had counseled.

    I remembered.

    My distracting thoughts seemed to take all night but likely only lasted a second. The calm of surety enfolded me, and I knew what path the rest of my career was going to take.

    Decide. Act. Move. Live. Repeat.

    After thousands of routine trigger pulls in training, that particular trigger on that particular night pushed back against my index finger as I drew it tightly against the arc of the smooth black metal. I doubt my squeeze was as smooth as my father had taught me to make them from that wonderful day—my tenth birthday—he first brought me to the firing range. From that exhilarating afternoon until he suddenly and without explanation or even a goodbye left my mother and me when I was sixteen, he made me an expert marksman.

    I was a natural with a pistol, but pulling that particular trigger at that particular time felt anything but natural. I squeezed for what seemed like forever and flinched when the Sig jerked back in my hands. The empty brass case ricocheted with a surprisingly loud ping off the mirrored closet door to my right.

    My memory of pausing to see what happened after that first shot is crystal-clear. It seemed perfectly natural to want to see the results of my first shot—never mind that Gutierrez was somewhere downstairs gathering glasses and a bottle of wine to bring up. I became overly fixated on the slowly spreading red spot in the middle of the knockout brunette’s silver dress and wasn’t focusing on the critical tasks still ahead.

    In front of me stood, well, staggered really, a supremely surprised woman in terrible pain. She lurched backwards into the wall and the thud snapped me out of my self-induced haze.

    If she collapsed against the wall, Gutierrez would be certain to see her and I wasn’t strong enough to drag a hundred pounds of dead weight out of sight quickly.

    I rudely grabbed ahold of her perfectly coiffed hair and pulled her a few feet down the hall toward the bathroom. There, bent forward, brown hair spread between the fingers of my gloved hand, she fought to say something. The anguished contortion of her face communicated more than the incomprehensible, guttural noise that emerged from her throat.

    I don’t recall having a strong reaction to shooting a woman I’d never met, but oddly, grabbing her by the hair felt too intimate and made it personal; it left me queasy.

    I could only

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