Free The Blonde by Duane Swierczynski Page A

majors.
    His handler’d had a rare bit of good news for him: “No need to travel. We’re sending someone to recover the bag from you.”
    She’d given him the address of a diner two blocks from Ritten-house Square.
    And here he was, Ed’s head stashed between his feet on the floor, plate of bacon, bowl of cottage cheese, bowl of mixed fruit, and a cup of chocolate skim milk on the table before him. Usually, he waited until after an assignment, but the running and killing and planning had left him ravenous. An infusion of protein would help.
    He’d wanted to talk to his handler.
    Maybe say, We should talk.
    Or: I need to explain a few things to you.
    Or even the classic: This is not what it looks like.
    But how could it not?
    Let’s say you’re her.
    A handler in an ultrasecretive government agency. Your boyfriend—also your number-one field agent—disappears on along-term op, only to emerge with a pregnant fiancée. How’s it supposed to look?
    Never mind that the fiancée is dead. That doesn’t help things at all. Not in your eyes.
    Her eyes
.
    Kowalski couldn’t even bring himself to think of his handler by name. Her lovely name.
    They’d worked together for years, anonymous to each other, the passion growing. By the time they’d broken down together in Warsaw, in that violent thunderstorm, and she revealed her true first name, it was like bearing her naked body to him for the first time. It was the most intimate thing about her.
    And now that he thought about it,
that
was supremely fucked up.
    He used his butter knife to slice a strip of bacon in half. Surprisingly good bacon—not many globules of fat, not too burned.
    Want some, Ed?
    He could put the bag on the table, unzip it, unhinge Ed’s jaw and give him a little taste. Least he could do, after all he’d been through. Kowalski decided he’d been a little harsh previously. What was Ed’s crime? Flirting with a pretty blonde on a plane ride to Philadelphia?
    Meanwhile, Kowalski had a stack of mafiosi bodies piling up this summer—an Italian holocaust. And
he
was the guy enjoying the bacon.
    The worst thing was, he’d lost count of how many goombahs he’d snipered since ID’ing Katie’s body at the morgue. The local paper had it somewhere around thirteen, according to the last news brief he’d read. Speculation was that it was intermob warfare, a bunch of bargain-basement capos capping one another over worthless bits of turf left behind by the Russian mob. And he’d only read
that
brief because they had printed the anonymous tip he’d phoned in: “Yeah, somebody’s out there. He’s pissed. And he’s a good shot, too. They call him Mr. K.”
    The reporter ran with that, verbatim. They didn’t check a damn thing. It was amazing. The media would print anything.
    But Ed, I did it for a reason. I wanted them to know why they were dying. That I was coming after them. All of them.
    You understand, right, Ed?

1:55  a.m.
    Sheraton, Room 702
     
    S he pressed a corner of a blanket to his nose. “Keep your head back and the bleeding will stop.”
    “I’m bleeding? Oh, fuck, you made me bleed!”
    “Shhhh, you big baby. It’ll be fine. I didn’t break anything. If I had, you’d know.”
    “Fuck.”
    There were three sharp knocks at the door.
    “Oh, fuck,” Kelly said.
    A muffled voice through the door: “Hey, sorry to bother. I’m one of your neighbors from across the hall, and I thought I heard something. Everything okay in there?”
    “We’re great!”
    “Somebody
help me
”
    Kelly squeezed tighter, and the fresh agony in Jack’s ribs took his breath away. She clamped her free hand—the one that wasn’t handcuffed—over his lips and pressed down hard. Her eyes were daggers.
    “My husband’s kidding. We’re doing a little
rough play
. You understand, right?”
    “Are you okay, miss? Look, how about you open the door and let me know.”
    “I appreciate your concern, but I can assure you, we’re completely fine. Go back to