Furious Jones and the Assassin’s Secret (7 page)

D
ouglas was right—what was
I thinking? This was the CIA. The most secretive and powerful government entity on the planet. And Douglas had my phone number. He could easily have my phone tracked. He knew exactly where I was, and I'm sure he was only a block or two away.

I stood up to go. I could throw my phone in the trash and Douglas wouldn't be able to track me, but where would I go?

I picked up my book and food and walked over to the trash. I was about to toss my phone in with my Coke and half-eaten scone when I realized what I had to do.

I had to go to Galena. I had nothing left in my life and nothing left to lose. I had to figure out what was going on there. Maybe I could get some proof that my mom was murdered
by the Salvatore crime syndicate. Maybe I could get proof that my dad's new book was a factual recounting of . . . of whatever.

I searched buses and trains from New York to Galena on my phone. It looked like the Greyhound bus was my best bet. The ticket cost $169. I hadn't counted my grandpa's cash, but I knew there were at least several hundred dollars in my pocket. I guessed that would be enough to get there and, and then . . . I don't know.

I looked at the clock on my phone. It was just after four o'clock. The bus to Galena left in fifty-six minutes. The Greyhound station was across town. I needed to hurry. I threw my phone in the trash, left the bookstore, and started running.

I
got to the bus
station with four minutes to spare. The bus was nice. Not first-class Singapore Airlines nice, but still nice. It had comfortable seats, Wi-Fi, and outlets built into each row. Not that it mattered. I was phone-less. But it wasn't a total loss. The bus had over a dozen high school girls on it, and the pretty blonde across the aisle kept looking over at me. She clearly had no idea just how young I was. Aside from the Greyhound ticket agent assuming I was older than I was, talking to high school girls might have been the only other advantage of being six four in middle school.

“Where are you headed?” I asked.

“Northwestern in Chicago. We're going on a school trip.” She smiled. “Northwestern has the top journalism school in
the country, and we all work for our school newspaper on the East Coast.”

“What school do you go to?”

“Watercrest Academy,” she said.

“Watercrest? That's the all-girl boarding school in Westport, Connecticut, right?”

“Yes, how do you know about Watercrest?” she asked.

“I make it a point to know the locations of all the all-girl schools on the East Coast,” I said.

“Oh, really?” She smiled.

“No.” I smiled back. “Not really.”

“How about you? Where are you headed?”

“I'm going to upstate Illinois. A little town called Galena,” I replied.

She lit up a little. “I love Galena. I was just there last summer for the hot air balloon races. It's beautiful. Have you been there before?”

“Nope. First time. But I've heard it's nice,” I lied. I had never heard a thing about Galena. “My name is Furious.” I extended my hand across the aisle and winced a little. Should I have given her my real name? What if she posted it online?
I met the cutest guy named Furious on the bus just now. And he's headed to Galena.
The CIA would be sure to pick that up with all of their electronic spy equipment.

But now she was wearing the same look that everyone wore when I gave my name.

“
Furious?
What kind of name is
Furious
?” she asked.

“Yes, that is the question.” I paused. “I think my parents were either attempting to create a professional athlete, build character, or just really thought it would be funny to inflict me with this name. I imagine it'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy someday.”

“A prophecy?” she asked.

“Yeah. I'm bound to be unbelievably furious after a lifetime with this name.”

She smiled. “Why don't you ask them why they chose it?”

“Well, my mom always told me a story about me hitting the doctor in the nose when I was born, but I suspect she just made it up,” I said.

“Why don't you ask her?”

“I can't; my mom and dad are both dead.” Wow, that was the first time I'd ever said that.

She gave me a kind, long, sympathetic smile. “I'm sorry to hear that,” she said. “And actually, I like your name. Mine's Emma.”

“Emma? Whoa, now, that is an unusual name, isn't it? That must have been quite the cross to bear growing up. How did you ever cope with such an unusual name? I can't even imagine the trouble a name like Emma would've created for you.”

She continued to smile. She had a great smile.

“Well, Emma, any recommendations on what I should
do in Galena? Since you've been there and all.”

“There's actually a lot to do. They have great canoeing, hiking, and shopping. I went with my boyfriend's family last summer. His parents live in Chicago and have a place at this huge resort just outside of Galena. And we spent a lot of time at Ulysses S. Grant's house. My boyfriend knows a ton about history and stuff. He goes to Yale.”

So not only was she too old for me, she had a college boyfriend, too. This girl was way out of my league.

“Lucky him.” I paused and smiled. “Yale is a great school. So are your parents okay with you dating a college guy? Maybe you should seriously consider dating someone younger?”

“No, they're cool with it. They like Andrew, and they know that high school guys can be so immature.” Then she quickly added, “No offense, though.”

None taken
, I thought.
I'm two years away from high school.

“So, Northwestern. You want to be a journalist? Are you thinking of going to Northwestern after high school?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Or I might look at Columbia. You know, to stay closer to Andrew.”

“You look like a journalist,” I replied.

“How do you look like a journalist? Curious? Inquisitive?”

“Patient,” I replied.

She smiled.

“Patient enough to hang in there and watch newspapers be replaced by the Internet,” I added.

“Ah, you're one of those?” she responded, the smile now gone.

“Realistic about the future of newspapers?” I asked. “I mean, the day of the newspaper is gone. It's dead. No one reads the newspaper anymore.”

“No,” she replied, “I meant that you must be one of those naïve people who refuses to realize that no matter the medium, it is the content that matters. It is the research skills and the craft. That will never change. It will dress differently and take different forms. But the craft will always be just that—a craft.”

Now I smiled. “You're right.”

“Of course I am,” she replied as her phone rang.

I looked out the window as she answered her phone. It was probably the Yale man.

I
figured there was no
way Douglas and the CIA could track me now. I had no phone, no electronic devices, no credit cards. I had nothing to track, and I paid for my ticket in cash. After all the taxes and fees, I was left with just over $300. It wasn't going to get me very far—but I was alive and safe, for the moment.

The bus went dark as we entered the Lincoln Tunnel. Cars were shooting by just inches from the bus. You've got to love New Yorkers. I wondered when I'd see New York again.

“So why Galena?” Emma was off the phone.

“Sightseeing, I guess. My family has connections there and I thought I'd check it out.”

“You'll love it. Oh—” She suddenly bounced a little in
her seat and spun toward me. “Make sure to check out The Atomic Toy Company on Main Street. They've got these awesome old toys. And the candy shop. It's a serious old-school candy store. The owner's family invented this candy called Chuckles or something. Anyways, they're awesome.”

“Okay. Toys and candy—check.”

“Where are you staying?” Emma asked.

Good question
, I thought. I had no idea. With three hundred bucks, I was probably staying in a cornfield.

“Somewhere cheap,” I replied.

“We stayed at this quaint little inn on top of the bluff overlooking the town.”

“I'm not sure I can afford ‘quaint.' ”

“No, it really wasn't much. You don't get breakfast there, like at a B&B, but this cute old lady owns it. I think she just likes having people around.”

“Well, then quaint might be in my future.”

“But don't hold me to it. It could be more now. Galena gets busy this time of year with all the Chicago tourists checking out the fall leaves.”

“Cool. The inn on the bluff, I'll check it out.”

“I think it was called Betty's Inn or Betty's Manor or something,” Emma said as she pulled a laptop out of her bag. “Here, I'll look it up for you.”

She clicked around for a few minutes and found Betty's Bluff Inn. She said they were running a fall
colors special. If I didn't eat a thing, I'd have enough for four or five nights. Great.

“Are you from the Midwest?” I asked.

“No. I grew up in Oregon. But my mom and dad live in California now. How about you?”

“I kind of grew up everywhere, sort of like an army brat.”

“Where do you live now?” she asked.

Right here on this bus
, I thought. “I was living in New Canaan, Connecticut, until recently,” I replied.

“Nice.”

“It's okay.”

She closed her laptop and slipped it back in her bag.

“Can I ask a huge favor?” I said.

“Sure.”

“Can I borrow your laptop real quick? They're offering a sneak peek at this new book, and I'm dying to read it,” I said, holding up my dad's book.

“Oh, I love Robert Jones. Is it a chapter from his book that comes out next week?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then yes, you can use my computer, but only if I can read the chapter when you're done.” Then she added, “It's sad what happened to him.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It is.”

I pulled up my dad's website, entered the code, and found one excerpt available for download. There was a counter that
indicated additional excerpts would be available in twenty hours. I read the first excerpt.

The Central Intelligence Agency, better known as the CIA, was headquartered in Langley, Virginia. Not too far from the CIA's assassin training grounds, called The Farm. Carson Kidd had fond memories of being trained at The Farm.

The CIA had recruited Kidd right out of college. Kidd had studied economics and foreign languages in school–two skill sets the CIA treasured dearly.

Kidd entered the CIA a naïve intellectual type but, after nine long months at The Farm, the CIA had turned him into one of the most elite and deadly killing machines on the planet. Kidd was equally equipped to kill someone at one thousand yards with a high-powered sniper rifle as he was to kill someone three feet away with his bare hands. And that was actually what he wanted to do today. He wanted to kill someone for summoning him back to Langley. He hated coming to CIA headquarters. It was full of executive pencil-pushing types. Men and women who had either never been in the field as active spies or, as in Kidd's case, an assassin. Or if they had been spies and killers, it had been many years ago. And now they all sat behind desks, getting fat and telling
other people what to do. Kidd hated desks and, more than anything, Kidd hated being told what to do.

He squeezed his fists tight as he walked up to his boss's office, deep inside the Langley building. He pushed the door open and walked in without knocking.

“Well, it's good to see you too,” Kidd's boss, Director Douglas, said as he stood up from behind his desk. “Come on in. Don't bother knocking or anything.”

David Douglas had been the Director of International Organized Crime for over six years and he had personally recruited and trained Carson Kidd.

Shortly after being named Director of International Organized Crime, Douglas realized that the Salvatore crime syndicate had penetrated most of the world's government organizations, including the CIA. The Salvatore crime syndicate was based in Sicily but had a large and vast network that covered most of the globe. It was far and away the most brutal Mafia organization in the world, and Douglas knew that if he was to have any chance at taking on such a powerful organization, he would need to build an elite force of killers from the ground up. A group that was free from corruption. A group that could kill the world's top killers and then disappear into the shadows.

Douglas personally put his recruits through the CIA's brutal assassin training program.
Douglas's team had been given black operation status. The black ops designation gave them freedom to operate without having to report to anyone inside the CIA. Technically speaking, black operations didn't exist. They didn't appear on any budget or spreadsheet. Nor did the people that work them. They were ghosts. They were set loose to accomplish their missions by whatever means necessary. The only real rule that applied to the CIA black ops programs was they were only allowed to operate outside the United States. All internal operations inside US borders belonged to the FBI. At least on paper.

“What am I doing here, Douglas?” Kidd demanded. “You know I hate coming here.”

“Carson, I'd like you to meet John Gibson.” Douglas motioned to a man sitting in a leather chair in the corner of the room.

Gibson didn't get up, and Kidd didn't acknowledge the man's existence. He just continued to look at Douglas.

“What am I doing here?” he demanded again.

“Have a seat, Carson.” Douglas motioned to a chair directly in front of Douglas's desk.