Prologue
Jo Taylor, surprised to hear a knock on the door, rose to answer it. Who could it be? She wondered. No one had visited her at her warehouse before. No one even knew about the warehouse except for her senior officer, who was her boss, and Naval Intelligence. And one other person.
Perhaps, it was him, she thought as she unlocked the chain lock on the door.
“Oh, it’s you,” Taylor said. “You scared me.”
“Sorry,” the man uttered, entering the warehouse.
With a quick look to see if Jo was looking, the man relocked the door preventing anyone from interrupting what he was about to do. He gloated inwardly as he watched her resume her seat at her desk. She didn’t know he was aware of what she discovered.
He really did feel bad about what he was about to do. After all, she was a beautiful, intelligent woman and deep down-though he would never openly admit it-he had very strong feelings for her.
But he mustn’t think of that now. Not when everything was going smoothly. Besides, what was about to transpire had to be done. If it didn’t, then the people he was secretly working for would have his head. And those people weren’t ones you want to mess with.
With a quick glance at her, he took out his 9mm semiautomatic pistol out of his jacket and slipped on the silencer.
She must have heard the click as I pulled back the cock because she turned around to face him. Her smile vanished when her eyes found the gun now aiming at her head.
“I see you have discovered I know about your little operation,” Taylor whispered, her eyes now staring into his.
There was so much sorrow in her eyes. He couldn’t tell if it was for her or for him.
Before he could second guess his task, he fired two shots into the middle of her forehead. Her body hit the cold concrete seconds after the bullets hit. He knelt down beside her and felt for a pulse.
None.
“I really did like you, Jo. It’s a shame you discovered my operation. We could have used your intelligence,” he said rising and looking into her lifeless face. A face which only minutes before showed happiness now showed utter surprise.
After setting the timer on the bomb for fifteen minutes, he took today’s security tape out of the VCR, swiped Taylor’s laptop, removed its hard drive, and left the building.
15 minutes later
Boom!
Nice beginning. I like the somewhat noir flavor.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I'm glad you enjoyed the prologue. I have the hardest time with hooking readers in. Sorry about the typo with Taylor's name. I meant to have it be Jo and not Joe.
ReplyDeleteI confess the spelling did catch my daughter Elsie and I off guard, as we were reading together. But when I explained to Elsie that *usually* a female Jo is spelled without the "e", I added that an author can do whatever he or she wants. :-)
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