Assassin Zero

The kid’s eyebrows knit quizzically, but his mouth curled in a smirk. “Why? You another Fed looking for her?”

Fed? A chill ran up Zero’s spine. If anyone who claimed to be FBI had come around, it could mean she’s been abducted.

“I’m her father.” He stepped forward, shoving the kid back with his shoulder as he pushed into the house.

“Yo, you can’t just barge in here!” the kid tried to protest. “Man, I will call the cops—”

Zero spun on him. “It’s Tommy, right?”

The blond kid’s eyes widened apprehensively, though he didn’t answer.

“I’ve heard about you,” Zero told him, keeping his voice low. Strickland had given him a full briefing while he was en route. “I know all about you. You’re not going to call the cops. You’re not going to call your lawyer dad. You’re going to sit there, on the couch, and shut your damn mouth. You hear me?”

The kid opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something—

“I said shut it,” Zero snapped.

The lanky boy retreated to the couch like a kicked dog, taking a seat beside a young girl who couldn’t have been eighteen if she was a day.

“Are you Camilla?”

The girl shook her head frantically. “I’m Jo.”

“I’m Camilla.” A young Latina girl came down the stairs, dark-haired and wearing entirely too much makeup. “I’m Sara’s roomie.” She looked Zero up and down. “You’re really her dad?” she asked dubiously.

“Yeah.”

“Then… what do you do?”

“What?”

“For work. Sara told us what you do.”

“I don’t have time for this,” he muttered at the ceiling. “I’m an accountant,” he told the girl.

Camilla shook her head. “Wrong answer.”

Zero scoffed. Leave it to Sara to tell her friends the truth about me. “What do you want me to say? That I’m a spy with the CIA?”

Camilla blinked at him. “Well… yeah.”

“For real?” said the blond kid on the sofa.

Zero held up both hands in frustration. “Please. Just tell me where you last saw Sara.”

Camilla looked at her roommates, and then the floor. “All right,” she said quietly. “A few days ago, she was looking to score, and I gave her…”

“Score?” Zero asked.

“Drugs, man. Keep up,” said the blond kid.

“She needed something to even her out,” Camilla continued. “I gave her the address of my guy. She went there. She came back. Next morning she left again. I thought she was going to work, but she never came home. Her phone’s off. I swear that’s all I know.”

Zero almost saw red at these irresponsible kids, barely adults, sending a teenager alone to a drug dealer’s house. But he swallowed his anger for her. He needed to find her.

She needs you.

“That’s not all you know,” he said to Camilla. “I want the name and address of your guy.”

*

Twenty minutes later Zero stood outside a Jacksonville rowhouse with grimy siding and a broken washing machine on the front porch. According to Camilla, this was the dealer’s house, some guy named Ike.

Zero didn’t have a gun on him. He’d been in such a rush to get to the airport that he’d run out the door with nothing but his car keys and his phone. But now he wished he’d brought one.

How do I play this? Burst in, kick ass, demand answers? Or knock and have a chat?

He decided the latter would be a better way to start—and he’d see where things took him from there.

On the third brisk knock, a male voice called out from inside the house. “Hang the fuck on, I’m coming!” The guy that appeared at the door was taller than Zero, more muscular than Zero, and far more tattooed than Zero (who had none). He wore a white tank top with what looked like a coffee stain on it, and jeans that were too big for him, hanging low on his hips.

“Are you Ike?”

The dealer looked him up and down. “You a cop?”

“No. I’m looking for my daughter. Sara. She’s sixteen, blonde, about this tall…”

“Never seen your kid, man.” Ike shook his head. He had a frown on his face.

But Zero noticed the tiny, almost imperceptible twitch of his eye. A flicker on his lips as he willed them not to scowl. Anger. He showed a brief flash of anger at Sara’s name.

“Okay. Sorry to bother you,” Zero said.

“Yeah,” the guy said flatly. He started to close the door.

As soon as Ike was partially turned away, Zero raised a foot and delivered a solid kick just below the doorknob. It flew open, crashing into the dealer and sending him sprawling on his belly to the brown carpet.

Zero was on him in a second, a forearm against his windpipe. “You know her,” he growled. “I saw it in your eyes. Tell me where she went, or I’ll—”

He heard a snarl, and then a blur of black and brown as a thick-necked Rottweiler leapt at him. He barely had time to react other than to take the force of the dog and roll with it. Teeth gnashed and bit at the air, finding purchase on his arm and sinking fangs into flesh.

Zero clenched his teeth hard and rolled once more, so that the dog was under him, and pushed down, forcing his bit forearm into the dog’s mouth even as it tried to clamp down further.

The dealer scrambled to his feet and fled the room while Zero grasped behind him for whatever he could find. The dog wriggled and thrashed beneath him, trying to get free, but Zero pinched his legs together so it couldn’t get upright. His hand found a ratty blanket draped on the leather couch, and he pulled it loose.

With his free hand he delivered a single, snapping blow to the dog’s snout—not enough to hurt it badly, but to stun it enough that its teeth released his arm. In the half-second before the jaws clamped down again, he wrapped the blanket around the dog’s head and relaxed his legs so it could flip over and stand.

Then he whipped the end of the blanket under its body and tied the ends behind its head, wrapped the front half of the Rottweiler tightly in the blanket. The dog thrashed and bucked, trying to get free—and it would, eventually. So Zero scrambled to his feet and dashed after the dealer.