The Perfect Teacher Page 9

  "Wh - what are you doing?"

  In the next moment, Neil opened the black medical bag and pulled out a pistol. "Take this."

  "No."

  The elevator stopped at floor 25. Abbie looked over Neil's shoulder. No one there. He leaned in close as the doors closed.

  "In less then 15 seconds, those doors are going to open again. Follow my lead and be prepared to fire. No excessive shots. Aim for center mass. Take the gun. Now."

  Abbie accepted the weapon in a daze.

  Neil was still in close. He whispered again into her ear. "Keep the mask on. People are watching."

  When the lift reached 26, the doors opened.

  There to greet them was a well-dressed very muscled-up man in a suit two sizes too small for his frame. As the two of them emerged from the elevator, he stepped past them onto the elevator. He and Neil bumped ever so slightly. Neil and Abbie turned right and headed down the hall.

  Up ahead, a man stepped forward to intercept them with his hands raised. He met them after they took 22 steps.

  "Sorry. This floor is private." This guy looked Middle Eastern but spoke with a distinct Australian accent. "You'll need to go back down."

  "I think you are mistaken," Neil spoke with a thick German accent. "We were invited to the penthouse floor for a private gathering. Suite number seven."

  "Sir, there is no one in suite seven or any other rooms. This floor is private. Please, step back onto the elevator and go back down and check with the front desk."

  Abbie looked from the private guard to Neil and grabbed his arm. She held the Sig Sauer 9mm behind her back. Neil looked from the man in front of him down the hall at two other men standing in front of one of the suites near the end of the hall. And he did something a little strange.

  Neil stepped forward to within inches of the man attempting to block their way. With his face inches from the Middle Eastern Australian, he continued. "You are mistaken. Penthouse floor, suite seven, 1 a.m. We are at the correct location. I can see that you are private, not hotel security and you obviously are not well informed. Our host is waiting for us in number seven. Now step back and let us pass or I will be forced to contact actual hotel security to sort this matter out."

  Neil pushed the man aside and walked forward, pulling Abbie along with him.

  The gent now behind them started after them. "Hold up, right there." He reached and placed a strong hand on Neil's shoulder. But Neil was undeterred and continued forward.

  "We will knock on number seven and you will see that you are mistaken."

  "That's enough." The pseudo Aussie clamped down hard on Neil's shoulder to stop him in place, pull him back and spin him around. He was a very strong man. Looked like six foot, 220 pounds and less than eight percent body fat. Very impressive.

  Problem was, he wasn't as fast as a striking cobra. And the movement he was attempting left him exposed, especially his neck.

  The torque and momentum of pulling a resisting Neil back and to the right meant the Aussie's full frontal was open and unprotected. He had no time, zero, zilch, to react when Neil suddenly spun with him and brought a cocked elbow up into his throat. The blow made direct contact with the man's Adam's apple. It was a shocking, debilitating shot; the kind that causes momentary paralysis and drops a man to his knees.

  But that wasn't the end of it. Neil continued his spin while dropping to his right knee. As he did so, he flipped open the flap on the medical bag and reached in. By the time he spun back around to a forward position, he held in his gloved right hand a silenced Sig Sauer 9 mm handgun. He brought said gun up, placing his right hand into his left palm.

  The action of the preceding 14 seconds achieved more than causing a small scene. The movement down the hall caused the other two hallway guards to come to attention and then begin moving toward the action. Just 18 seconds earlier, more than 160 feet separated these two guards from the elevator doors. Starting down the hall and drawing their attention collapsed the distance between these two additional rapidly advancing guards and the end of the cold black metal cylinder encompassing the silencer on the end of Neil's gun.

  The first guard was 23-feet away when the flash of recognition lit his face. The guy in front tried to stop. The guard a pace behind him crashed into his shoulder, but that was it. Because in the next half second, four bullets fired from the silenced Sig Sauer 9mm slammed into the front and exploded out through the backs of the two men's skulls. Two rounds each hit their targets and felled them.

  Neil rose and spun back to his rear with gun still raised. The still-stunned Aussie's face went all shock with eyes bulging. He started to bring his hands from his neck up to a raised position but didn't complete the action. Two more silenced rounds blasted through the man's forehead and out through the rear of his head. Quite a bit of blood and bone and brain matter exited right behind the supersonic bullets.

  The poor fella was still falling backward when Neil spun again. This time he picked up the old fashioned black medical bag and started forward. A whole 13 seconds elapsed since he elbowed the dude from down under in the throat. Abbie was frozen. Just frozen. Neil turned the gun downward and pressed into Abbie's back. As they moved with haste down the remainder of the hall, he handed the bag to Abbie. She instinctively took it. Face blank, nothing there.

  When they reached a small foyer the two guards were standing in moments earlier, Neil stepped in front of Abbie, inches from her face and whispered, "You work for the CIA. You are smart, brilliant. You are a fast learner. You are talented. You have skills you don't yet know you have. You are here for a reason."

  He reached down and brought up her hand with the gun. "Safety is off. If you need to shoot, remember, aim center mass and put at least three shots into your target. One in the head to finish them off. You have 16 rounds in your clip."

  Nothing. Blank stare.

  "Abigail Melissa Ross. Twenty-nine. Parents Phil and Sharon. Deceased. Penicillin allergy. Broken femur 12-years old. CIA auditor, special assignments. You with me?" Neil waited a beat. "Head's up, eyes open. Stay on my back. Take the right side of the room. This is real. Live rounds. Live fire."

  He stepped back, spun around and inserted a card into the slot and opened the right door of the double doors. He bolted into the suite. Abbie moved as quickly as she could.

  Inside, two additional guards waited. One stood, the other sat in an armchair. Behind them was a closed double door. Most likely the bedroom.

  Less than three steps in, Neil pulled the trigger and let loose four more bullets. Two each for the remaining guards. The one standing collapsed in a messy bloody heap. The seated guard flew back into the chair. Blood started spreading from the two new holes in his midsection.

  Neil moved forward to the double doors. He halted to glance back over his shoulder at Abbie, "Watch the guy in the chair. If he pulls his gun, it will be to kill you. Put three more in his chest, one in the forehead."

  He then turned and opened the bedroom doors silently. Inside, the bedroom was over-the-top plush. No doubts, this was the presidential suite for the hotel. All that was nice, but Neil wasn't here to take in the extravagance of the room. His attention was the bed and the three humans in it.

  Moving forward, he stepped over a spread of clothes and shoes on the way. There were the remnants of three costumes. Looked like a pimp and his two working girls was the theme of their ensemble. Neil approached the bottom of the bed. After a few seconds, one of the two females hard at work pleasuring the lone male in the trio looked up and noticed a masked Dr. Freud standing at the bottom of the bed holding a silenced handgun aimed at them.

  She inhaled and was about to scream when Dr. Freud raised a finger to his lips and shook his head ever so slightly. Instead of screaming, the naked woman pulled a sheet over herself and reached over and tapped her friend on the other side of the lucky fella in the middle. The other woman looked at her friend who held a finger up over her closed mouth and shook her head. She turned to see Neil.

 
; "Oh my god," she blurted out.

  This brought the gentleman in the bed out of his pleasure stupor. He opened his eyes and sat up. That was all he did.

  Before the synapse in his brain could fire off a message to move the muscles in his face to form a word, a silenced round exploded through his forehead and exited out the back of his head to lodge into the ornate and exquisite red fabric covering the plush padded headboard. Two more bullets were sent into his chest before he landed back on the blood-splattered pillows.

  "Ladies, you are not part of the plan this evening. Protocol calls for your foreheads to receive the same treatment as the gentleman. But I believe that you were both sleeping and neither of you heard or saw a thing until one of you wakes up 20 minutes from now to call down to the front desk. To repeat, you saw nothing and no one because you were sleeping, correct?"

  He got only nods from the both of them.

  "Twenty minutes. Not a moment before."

  Neil turned to leave the bedroom. As he did, he heard Abbie utter "no, don't" from outside in the main room. In the half-second after those whispered words, he heard the hammer of a Sig Sauer 9mm pistol slam against the chambered 9mm round. The explosion sent the round down the barrel of the gun in Abbie's hand, through a few feet of air and right through the forehead, skull, brain and more skull before heading out the back of the seated dude's head.

  Neil stepped through the doorway with his silenced Sig Sauer down at his side. Abbie still had her gun aimed at the now deceased fella in the chair. A wisp of smoke rose. He glanced and saw the bullet hole in the back of the high back side chair.

  "He pulled his gun?"

  Abbie, still wearing the Jackie Kennedy get up and mask, was now shaking something fierce. Her eyes, visible through the holes in the sequined mask, were wide and white and more than a little crazed from shock.

  "You chose the 'one in the forehead' method? Very clean." Neil walked around the chair to her.

  She was stuck in a stare looking at the mess. He grabbed the gun from the clutch of her two hands and twisted it free. He turned away and bent down to the black medical bag. From the old leather thing he pulled two white sheets. He stuck the two handguns inside. He popped his mask off and dropped it in then stood and turned to the still frozen Abbie. He reached around behind her head and pulled the elastic string up and pulled the mask off her face.

  He was pleased to see she was already recovering from her shock. She turned away and looked at the dead guy in the chair and the other dead guy on the floor with blood spreading across the white tiles under his head.

  "You're him." She whispered.

  "Who?" He asked facing away from her as he put her mask in the medical bag.

  Abbie dropped her head. "I knew there was something about you. I just knew it."

  "We can talk about this later. We stepped off the elevator 78 seconds ago. Time to move."

  "The rules are you're not supposed to say your name, right?" Abbie smiled nervously. "No one is supposed to say it. No one is supposed to even know it."

  Neil handed her a sheet. "Put this on." He threw a sheet up over him. He adjusted it until the two eyeholes came over his face.

  Abbie wasn't moving so he reached out and took the sheet from her hand. He spread it out and threw it over her. It settled down over her like a heavy London mist. He adjusted it, moving it around until the cutout holes were over her eyes. "Go ahead. Say it. You're safely under cover. No one can see your face." Pretty sure he was smiling when he cracked the bad joke.

  "Preacher." Abbie whispered from behind the sheet. Her eyes through the cutout eyeholes were all fear and wonder.

  "Let's move." Preacher bent down and grabbed the medical bag to bring it up under his sheet. They walked out of the presidential suite, down the hall to the elevator, careful not to drag their sheets through the spreading pools of blood from the dead guards. And made it to the elevator right at 130 seconds since stepping out of the elevator. Two minutes, ten seconds. Mission accomplished.

  The elevator doors opened 23 seconds later. They stepped on and descended to the lobby. No one else got on this time so they had another 28 seconds of silence as the lift descended. Once down at the lobby level, the two ghosts stepped out of the elevator and casually walked across the open lobby space to the revolving front door. Outside, they went left, walked past the taxi stand and off into the night. Just two spirits out for an after midnight stroll on All Hallows Eve.

  Chapter 20

  In the course of life, boys become men. Girls grow to be women. Not always, but often, children grow to become their parents. They take on learned personal traits. They echo or mirror or mimic or parrot the actions, the mannerisms of their parents.

  Lance couldn't say exactly where or when it happened. But what he just witnessed was undoubtedly the transformation he saw coming for years. Looking down now on the bloody corpse laying in the blood-drenched king size bed, he saw it. It was done.

  The student was now the master.

  Floating above it all from Washington to New York, from Penn Station to hotel to hotel and up to the penthouse floor, he bore witness to the dancing puppet becoming skilled puppet master. The decade of apprenticeship gave way to mastery. Lance watched from above as Preacher moved about like a magician, a ballet dancer, a shadow. He was in complete and utter control of the world around him.

  And like his master before, he discovered a pupil with amazing talents who will undoubtedly evolve from legged to larvae to wing.

  Lance turned from the carnage below and the ladies of this evening moving about and watching the clock, urging it to move ahead twenty minutes. He floated over to and out the window to gaze down at the wondrous chaotic city below. He'd need to catch up with Preacher soon. But for now he was content just floating, just being. He tried so hard to be different, to become someone different than who he'd always been for 30 years. But a leopard has spots. A great white ceaselessly moves forward. The universe expands. Lance Priest lies. And kills. And destroys.

  A master of this universe showed him the way. Now he chose the path, the way and those who would follow in his wake or fall behind.

  The floating spirit closed his eyes and shook his head.

  At some point the psychosis would rise up and either drag him to hell or set him free. This going crazy, scratch that, this being crazy thing was losing its allure.

  Chapter 21

  "This is it, really?" The New York City Police detective shook her head. Her partner standing behind her did the same.

  "Sigmund frigging Freud and Jackie O." The detective's partner was less than thrilled. "Jesus."

  "I don't see him anywhere." His partner quipped.

  "Funny." He turned to the head of hotel security. "This is it, nothing else? You're certain?"

  "We've been running through all the tapes from every camera. These two walking across the front lobby and on the elevator going up to 26 is all we have. Besides these two, it was the deceased, his security team and the two female survivors. You have them downtown, correct?" Hotel security wasn't thrilled with the lack of evidence.

  "Those two are downtown now. But both say they were sleeping, or at least passed out when their bed partner was shot. What is the name again?" The female detective asked her partner.

  "Jamal bin-Sultan. Saudi businessman."

  The hotel head of security nodded at the name to provide confirmation.

  She got up and turned from the video monitor in the small security room. "Five private security guards killed. Saudi businessman whacked in bed with two hookers, but the ladies aren't killed. And we have a masked Sigmund Freud and Jackie Kennedy as the only suspects."

  The hotel head of security threw a little fuel on the fire. "And here's the capper, take a look at two and a half minutes after the couple got off the elevator on 26."

  The two police detectives watch the monitor as two individuals covered in white bed sheets with eyeholes cut out get on the elevator and ride down. The video operator switches v
iews and we see the two ghostly characters casually saunter across the hotel lobby and out the front revolving door as other costumed characters mill about. One more switch and the monitor showed the front drop-off and pick-up lanes. The two suspected killers covered in white sheets casually walk down the sidewalk and turn the corner where they can get lost in the city that never sleeps.

  "That's some cold as ice stuff there." The male detective snickered as he snapped his notebook shut.

  His partner shook her head and rubbed her neck. A glance at the clock on the wall confirmed the night was far from over at 2:48 am. "We'll need copies of all your security tapes and we'll need to begin a canvas of the property including interviews with a number of hotel personnel. I'll be honest and say that we likely won't learn a damn thing. These two look like real pros. But maybe, just maybe they slipped up along the way."

  Her partner was even more brutally honest in his assessment. "We won't learn nothing. Not a thing. I can tell a professional hit when I see one. Twenty to one these two are foreign. And with two hours head start, they are well on their way out of the country. Just like the videos show. These two are ghosts."

  Chapter 22

  "You didn't need to involve me in any of this." Abbie was no longer shaking. A long, hot shower, accompanied by a couple of bouts of full-body bawling, helped. She was huddled up in the middle of the bed with wet hair hanging and her chin resting on her knees as she hugged her shins. "It was sick, is sick. You're sick."

  "Undoubtedly." Preacher sat in the small desk chair. His legs rested on the tiny desk. "You're sure you want to talk about it. You could sleep and we can talk in the morning."

  "Right. I'll just drift off to sleep with visions of exploding heads filling my sweet dreams." She tucked her head and rested her forehead on her knees. "Why? Why me?"

  "We'll get to that part. That's not really the 'why' you want to know, correct?"