The Housewife Assassin's Handbook Read Online Free PDF Page B

don’t tell anyone: not the kids or your Aunt Phyllis, no one.”
    “What? But my kids should be able to mourn their father! I can’t keep this from them!”
    “I know it’s a lot to ask, believe me. But it might help us to apprehend them.”
    “How do you figure?”
    “For whatever reason, if they think he got away–if they think that he’s still alive and that he may reach out to you–”
    “You want to use the kids and me as decoys?” I slapped his hand off me. “Boy, Ryan, you’ve got some nerve!”
    “I know how it sounds. But still–” He looked me straight in the eye. “–wouldn’t you like to see us get the guys who did this to Carl?”
    “Of course I would.” If anything could bring a smile to my lips, it was that thought. “In fact, I’d kill them myself if I could.”
    “Carl once told me that you handle a gun almost as good as he does. Did.” That slip of his tongue had him examining his toes in embarrassment.
    “Better. But I never let Carl know that. I thought it might have crushed his ego. It was the only secret I ever kept from him. Seems that he one-upped me pretty good, doesn’t it?” I brushed away a tear.
    No more tears. At least, not in public. Because Carl wasn’t dead officially. He was just … gone. “Okay, Ryan. I’ll go along with your little charade.”
    “Good.” He averted his eyes as I led my meowing newborn to my breast. His news had stripped me bare of any feelings whatsoever, let alone any modesty. “For the time being, Carl will still be on Acme’s payroll. That way, if there is a mole inside Acme, it will validate the theory that he’s still alive somewhere.”
    As if his paycheck, or even Carl’s full death benefits, for that matter, could compensate for the loss of the love of my life.
    “And I assume you’re talking about round-the-clock surveillance on us, even when we’re out of the house?”
    He nodded. “The Quorum is a top priority with us.” Then, as an afterthought, “As are you and your family, of course.”
    Yeah, right, sure. He had all the conviction of a car salesman trying to unload a Hummer during an oil shortage. 
    Did it really matter why Ryan Clancy and his men stuck around?
    I stayed dry-eyed until he walked out the door. Then I noticed that he had taken Trisha’s little bear with him, and I couldn’t hold in my emotions in any longer. I started crying.
    Howling, really. The nurses had to give me a sedative to calm me down.

    Acme moved quickly to cover up Carl’s murder. They had it easy. There was no need for a cremation, since there were just a few body parts recovered.
    The death certificate carried a stranger’s name.
    The next morning, Ryan drove me home with baby Trisha. The urn containing Carl’s ashes was on the backseat.
    So was Trisha’s bear. Apparently whatever Ryan had hoped to find wasn’t in it. Well, at least by scanning it first instead of just tearing into it, they’d had the decency to leave it intact.
    Although Ryan entered the house first and pretended to look around before giving me the all-clear signal, I just assumed his operatives had already searched our house, too, although I really couldn’t tell. Almost everything was as I’d remembered it when we left for the hospital–
    Except for the box that held our framed photos and our wedding and family albums. Someone had torn that open and rummaged through it, ripping away any image of Carl, and taking his photos from their frames.
    “Damn it Ryan, how could you?” I cried.
    “I swear we didn’t touch a thing. It was Carl. Donna, your husband was a genius.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “It’s simple: whenever Carl went undercover, he was meticulous about altering his features in some way. Taking the photos with him was his way of ensuring that the Quorum would never be able to ID him when—well, when he resurfaced later.” 
    And came home to us.
    But now that would never happen. And with his photos gone, too, it was as if he had