I Promise
Crow Skyler
2005
Jackson Rippner paused at the computer screen and the thin, gaunt man who was typing on the keyboard in front of it. He made an impatient sound in the back of his throat, as though words were above the man.
The man jolted in the chair and stared. He was part of the iPod generation, going broke and going deaf.
"…yes," he breathed, when his eyes had focused behind his glasses, "I've got them. Her flight plans."
"Good," Jackson replied, tone clipped. "That's what you were paid to do."
What he had come to the warehouse for, it turned out, was in the gaunt man's file cabinet. Jackson had long ago learned the man's name, had done business with him three times, but he couldn't be bothered to remember it. He had other things on his mind.
Lisa Reisert.
William Keefe.
Miami.
Getting there.
Jackson paid the man his money and moved effortlessly out to the street, reading as he went. He could book the plans in his hotel room at night, when Lisa had gone to bed, or on the phone, while tailing her.
He was flexible.
"Kal, don't poke it, it's dead…"
Oregon, the coast, a vacation. Kal Rippner, Jackson Rippner. The air so cold you could hack away at it with an icepick and knock it down.
And one very dumb, dead jellyfish.
"It stung me," Kal muttered. "It wasn't supposed to do that, so I killed it. You know why, Jack?"
Nine-year-old Jackson shook his head.
"Because we're all born to die. Remember that. It's bad and unfortunate, but it happens to everyone."
Jackson stared at him, then nodded, numb. "Even us."
"Yeah…" Twelve-year-old Kal smirked. "But we—Jack, we—are going to cheat death. You know how?"
A shake of the head, a glance at the clear jellyfish for clarity.
"We'll know," his older brother murmured, confident. "We'll know."
He knew why they'd chosen Lisa. She was manager; she was the only one on staff who could change Keefe's room without having to get an approval.
But she was dead boring to tail. Lisa Reisert apparently didn't have any friends out of work, because though she ate out often, she was always alone. Once a man had sat down at her table, but had soon straightened up again, as though it were a case of mistaken identity.
Jackson thought she needed to lighten up a little, death in the family or no. She wasn't the dead one.
And what was with those sea breezes?
But, a target was a target, and he kept on her.
"Kal…"
Seattle, Washington, a funeral. Kal and Jackson, older, one wise and one less informed, although another couldn't tell the difference.
"They were born to die," Kal Rippner told his brother.
The two boys looking into the open casket, looking into the faces of their parents, trying to imagine the look on the drunken man's face when his car had struck theirs.
"We can't even boast that they were killed by a serial killer," he continued.
Jackson made a face. Serial killer. Jack the Ripper.
Kal noticed.
"Sorry, Jackson."
He was the only one who'd only ever called his brother that, from the day he'd been born. Jackson appreciated it.
"What will we do now?"
"We're going to cheat death."
A tremble from the youngest.
"Do you know, now?" he asked.
Kal smirked. "I know. We're going to work for Death."
Jackson had learned a long time ago that Death had many faces, many names, and many different price ranges. He selected his own Death, this time, with the intent of someone who could do a sleek job if required—but was as obedient as a well-trained Doberman.
He was fairly certain that Lisa would go along, if daddy were threatened. He'd noted the phone calls, the letters, the room at daddy's house that she'd spent most of her childhood in.
Joseph Reisert was her weakest chain link.
Jackson worked for Death even as Death worked for him. It was a mutually beneficial relationship, and it was what Jackson was best at.
That and a few other tricks of the trade.
Kal and Jackson watched the woman, dressed in lilac, as she sat at her restaurant booth, waiting for one of them.
"You're better-looking than I am. And you've got the better table manners," Kal added. He was taller than Jackson, with the same basic facial structure, but he looked less friendly. A lion next to a domesticated, but feral, cat.
"Go," Kal told him.
Jackson straightened his new suit and approached her, newly twenty-five, hair newly trimmed. He felt like a model, and in a bad way.
"Mrs. Cordanis?" he inquired, then smiled and shook her hand when she extended it.
He looked sideways the next time he could, while they talked of the arms deal.
Kal was smiling.
He slipped into Lisa's hotel room while she was having dinner with an old childhood friend. Jackson had made sure that she was being tailed by someone almost as skilled as he was, so that he wouldn't get any nasty surprises.
It was… spare. He'd been expecting more.
True, there were the usual cosmetics supplies that seemed to hover around women in every moment, but other than those, just clothes. Her music player of choice, mp3, was full of soft pop that made Jackson's ears bleed. But one detail did not elude him—the pop wasn't about its favorite subject, romantic love. It was about rainy afternoons, quiet noises, family, and—decidedly—what was known as 'angst.' Jackson tended to call it 'nonsense.'
"Someone marked you," he murmured quietly. "Marked you… and then left you? Died? Dumped you?"
Jackson thought of Lisa Reisert again—the soft face, the dark hair, the kind eyes. An interchangeable personality, from quiet bookworm to party girl. No, she hadn't been dumped; she was far too keen for that.
He opened his cell phone and called his tailer.
"She's just sitting there, talking to him," was his answer. "Old college professor. I think they're discussing Hamlet or some shit, but, I'm not that great of a lip-reader."
Somehow, that seemed perfect. Quaint. Grandmother dies, you come back, go to her funeral, and then discuss Shakespeare with your old college professor.
She'd originally been an english major.
He knew that.
Pretty soon, Kal was at the head of the pack. He was always wanted for jobs. And by extension, so was Jackson, not that he was ever paid any attention to.
It didn't bother him.
"You're my secret weapon," Kal said, one evening. "If I go down, you're my avenger, you know? My guardian angel."
Jackson wondered about the angel part. "If you go down?"
His older brother held a grim smile.
"We work for Death, Jackson, but Death is a back-stabbing bitch. Never forget that."
They worked for the highest bidders, the high-rollers of the underworld that could put up a convincingly innocent public face. It required acting and downright cynicism to pull their jobs off, and they did it with style.
"Backstabbing puts you down with the worst dregs of our world," Jackson noted.
Kal continued to smile.
"Then you know where you can find Death, don't you?"
Asking how well Jackson Rippner knew Lisa Reisert was like asking for the collective scientific knowledge of how exactly the world worked. It was gigantic. He didn't use a notebook like some stalkers, instead logging every mannerism, every flutter a new conversation topic stirred, and every indication of personality directly into his memory.
It would have overflowed a simple notebook.
And yet, like everyone else he'd ever targeted, for the first week she'd kept surprising him, kept making turns that he hadn't anticipated.
By the second week, in Texas, he had made a map, a grid, and it was pathetically easy to calculate whatever movements she would make. What she would order on a menu, mapped out by her moods and tastes. The direction she would walk, mapped out by the way she turned her head or moved her hands.
Jackson had long ago learned about becoming a shadow, a nonentity in a crowd, a ghost. He moved effortlessly, with a grace that came from premeasured steps. Lisa never noticed him.
"There's a current in every crowd, a general mood. Once you find that mood, you slip into it, you hide in it."
New York City, the city with the best crowds for practice, but they weren't there for it. Kal had business with a kingpin, a giant, and he was making sure that they were alone in their duties. He led Jackson around a buildings twice to see if anyone stopped or followed, then bought a hotdog near one and finally moved on.
Jackson saw the man behind them, but he didn't process the man's movements like he was supposed to. He was in his brother's shadow; he was relaxed.
July 19th.
Once they found the address they've been given, they killed time for an hour, and then it was meeting time. The man was big, white-clad and wore a bangly silver watch that gleamed of too much polishing.
Kal, with his eyes, pointed out to Jackson that this man was trying to make himself seem bigger than he actually was. A movie villain.
A clown, Jackson thought darkly, named Dean Torrian.
"So, you're the boy who preaches about Death, aren't you?" Torrian asked, with a shadow of a smile. "Kal Rippner." He glanced at Jackson. "The one with the… younger brother."
Someone behind Torrian snickered, which was most likely meant to unnerve them; Kal and Jackson wore pleasant, but stoic, expressions.
"That's right." Kal tilted his head at the low-level gang boss and silently dared his henchman to make another sound; they didn't. "What can we do for you, Mr. Torrian?"
Overconfidence.
"Death comes to mind."
It was a Rippner family flaw.
Joseph Reisert's wallet arrived in the mail the day of the flight. He removed everything that didn't matter, but kept the family photos and the various odds and ends that were so obviously unique and personal.
He'd chosen his guard dog well. Phone conversation, the man said, indicated that Reisert Senior thought he had merely misplaced the wallet. He'd mentioned it to two friends. Other research indicated a man who didn't know what to do with himself, recently retired, with quite a few Dr. Phil books in his personal library.
Jackson made sure everything was ready—the watchman, the wallet, the flight—and then drove to Lisa's hotel. He pretended to make calls on his cell phone, across the street, and watched her get packed and ready through the window.
A somewhat less-than-punctual woman, Lisa waited until the last minute to pack the bulk of it, and when she hailed a cab from the hotel curb, she was either going to be late or right on time. Jackson tailed her cab and frowned at the rain that suddenly descended from the sky.
The weather was starting to worry him.
By the time he parked his car, he knew the flight was going to be delayed, and a quick glance to his watch made him twitch nervously. Time was running against him. He had to put his foot down on Lisa, or else his end of the deal would be in dirty water.
Not that he hadn't worked fast before, and without aid.
They didn't have much time in which to react.
New York City, July 19th.
But their sidearms, nevertheless, were blazing as they quickly made tracks to go the direction they'd come in from. The warehouse-type building was dimly lit and provided cover for both predators and prey, and Jackson shot more than one person in a single day, for the first time in his life.
It wouldn't be the last time.
"Get moving!" Kal ordered, hissing it through his teeth, and Jackson hastened to obey, leading the way back out into the street.
And then back into the crowds, or so was the aim.
Because a bullet went through Kal Rippner's back, and a nearby woman shrieked like a banshee, but when Jackson turned to fire, no one was there.
There were only distant police sirens, and Jackson Rippner carrying and yanking his dying older brother from the scene.
Jackson found his way into the airport and was glad for his lack of luggage. He only had his cell phone, a very important part of the deal. The day before, he'd scouted the airport—where the waiting lines would be, and what was next to them. Tex Mex, he'd noticed, carefully logging it into his memory.
It was there now, and he noted that Lisa wasn't in line, which meant she had been delayed somewhere. But he didn't let it worry him, so much, for the moment. Delays happened. She'd be there.
He glanced out the nearest window.
The flight was almost certainly going to be delayed.
Gritting his teeth a little, he called the other half of the deal, the man who was handling Keefe's assassination; Jackson's employer.
"Pray there aren't two delays, or wheel the deal some other way," was his reply.
Jackson started thinking about brute tactics.
His last words, agonizing as it was to recall them, had been as clear as day.
"Never let them get away from you, Jack."
Jack.
Not Jackson.
It took only a few minutes to call someone connected to them in an unofficial way, someone he could trust. It took his mind off of the fact that he was the last remaining member of the Rippner family.
He couldn't even recall his grandparents, either set.
There was a meeting arranged, by his anonymous contact, in a 'neutral' location. Neutral was a dangerous word. Jackson knew it to be the word one used when you were describing a location untampered by either side.
Not this neutral. This was a location that had been waiting for use for several months, now, and everyone had forgotten about any activity that had been there.
It was ready and waiting for Dean Torrian when he arrived, silver watch flashing. He was bathed in the icy moonlight, like a spotlight, and Jackson noted privately that he seemed bored.
Six words into the conversation, Jackson's contact, a mean, short woman with brown hair, yanked out a pistol and shot his bodyguards.
Knocked Torrian to the ground.
That was Jackson's cue, and he was a good actor, having been waiting in the wings. Torrian was laughing when he walked onstage, almost hysterically so when his feet stopped by the lowlife's side.
"Big brother bit the dust, huh? What'd he say? Beg for mercy from that Death fellow he was so terrified of?"
Kal's biggest fear had been fought.
He'd lost, but Jackson wasn't thinking about that.
"Never let them get away."
Jackson tried not to enjoy killing Torrian, but he failed; he lost a battle, too, that day.
Brute tactics were off of the menu as soon as he caught sight of her, delicate, hurried, talking on her cell phone in a smiling, exasperated way that communicated oh, dad from a mile away.
Jackson smiled easily. He didn't put on any psychological makeup, didn't try to be someone he wasn't. He didn't like lying, and he didn't have to, when it came down to it. So, he just relaxed, and somewhere in the next minute, he got up and started walking behind her.
They were in line within the moment, and he continued to smile.
Lisa Reisert wasn't going to get away.
There wasn't much of a funeral.
Oregon, rainy, a grassy area next to the coast with big white umbrellas. Closed casket.
A few close friends of the family, who all patted Jackson's back when it was over. Jackson's lawyer had said it was a misunderstanding, a 'terrible misunderstanding,' and no one knew or suspected a thing.
Just shook their heads at the last-remaining Rippner, in sympathy.
When they were mostly dispersed, Jackson went forward, subdued. He'd said his speech, like a good little actor, but this was personal.
"You were obsessed with Death," he noted quietly.
He didn't think this was particularly wrong, for someone in Kal's—his—position.
"He got you. He was a backstabbing bitch, and you said it yourself. But, I promise you, no one's going to get me. No one's going to get away. I promise, Kal.
"For you."