Operation by Tony Ruggiero Page B

mind.
    She left the man sitting at the base of the tree and walked the short distance back to her car. She felt a smile form on her lips and a sense of…she didn’t know how to describe it, perhaps a sense of neutrality about what she had just done. For the first time that she could remember, she did not have to fulfill any expectations beyond her sustenance or feeding. With Jake, there was a pleasing that had to be accomplished to keep him satisfied. With others, it had been about killing for the sake of killing. But this time, she had acquired what she needed with no commitments, no expectations, and without killing.
    She arrived at her car and got into the driver’s seat. Starting it and putting the car into drive, she turned back onto the main road and headed back toward the city of Suffolk. As she drove, she felt lighthearted and it felt nice.
    She remembered that she had promised John dinner tonight and checking the time she saw that she had just enough time to find a restaurant before they closed. She could get some food and then drive over to his house in Norfolk. She, of course, would not eat any of the food but she would just tell him that she had already eaten. It would work as an alibi for now.
    Thoughts of John as well as everything else tonight seemed to jumble about in her thoughts as she drove. For the most part, she felt good about everything that had happened and was embracing the new outlook she found herself living in. However that did leave her with two potential areas of contention: Jake and her connection to the agency for which she had dutifully worked for the past sixty-plus years.
    She would have to decide what to do about Jake. What would she tell him and would he understand? As for the agency, that would require something more resourceful. She knew that she would not be allowed to leave on her own accord. There would be no fond farewell dinner given to her because she had decided she had had enough of this line of work. The break would have to be decisive and believable.
    She laughed at her own thoughts. Normally she had to be concerned about how to murder someone, and now she was concerned about what to have for dinner. Such domestic bliss. She only hoped that all of her decisions would be so simple. But experience told her there would be hard times ahead and she didn’t think those decisions and choices would be so simple.
    Welcome to the world of the living…
     

C HAPTER T WENTY -T HREE
    The closer that Reese got to his home in Norfolk, the greater the fatigue of the past two days pressed on him. It was another of those rules of nature that he never understood, just like the one about having to go to the bathroom; the closer you got to home the more you had to go. In either case, it was as if there was some link between body and home.
    The thought made him wonder about the girls and if they possessed some kind of link to their home and if they missed it. It had been different with Dimitri and his fellow vampires. They were able to rationalize what was happening to them. That thought also brought on a twinge of guilt because he had been the one who orchestrated their capture and removed them from their home. But there was nothing that could be done about that now.
    But the girls had been snatched up and taken. One minute they are in the Balkans and the next they are in America with virtually no explanation about where they are and what is happening to them.
    So much hurt and pain. It was devastating to think about these two little girls and what had been stolen from them. Not stolen. Ripped away described it better. He only hoped that he would be able to help them in some way. Maybe Christina could offer…but he couldn’t tell her. Telling her would only endanger her and he would not let that happen. She was special.
    “Blow it out your butt,” he said to his own thoughts. “You will not win this time my friend. This time it’s going to work out, I can feel it.”
    Reese pulled into