Perfect Assassin by Wendy Rosnau

shirt.
    When she opened the door from the bathroom minutes later she ran into him coming down the hall.
    “You should have said something,” was all he said before he scooped her up into his arms. “Koko says you’re feeling up to pie. I think you need a bowl of soup first. You turned down lunch, remember?”
    “I can walk,” she protested when he started back with her in the direction of the living room. “I’m going to have to start sometime. And I’m not dressed…again.”
    To satisfy her last protest, he grabbed the blanket off the back of the couch and tossed it into her lap.
    “Are you angry with me?” she asked.
    “No, why would I be angry?”
    “You seem angry.”
    “Not with you.”
    But he was angry. She wondered about that. Wondered if he’d learned something more about her that she should know.
    “Is your grandmother still here?”
    “Yes.”
    “It was very nice of her to bring me…the basket.”
    “That’s Koko. On top of every problem. But next time, I’ll get whatever it is you need. All you have to do is ask. I’m no mind reader.”

Chapter 7
    T he report came in while he was out having lunch. Merrick slipped behind his desk and opened the file. He read over the cover page, and immediately felt a chill wash over him. The lab reports had finally come in on the body at the morgue. The one they had recovered in Greece months ago. The one they had believed was the Chameleon.
    The report claimed that the body in the morgue was Pavvo Creon. A man they had believed had died fifteen years ago had resurfaced.
    Which meant what?
    Was Pavvo the Chameleon, or was he still alive?
    Merrick stood and went to the window. He didn’t want to believe the report, but he’d personally handpicked every lab tech, and he had the utmost respect for each one of them. They were the best in the country.
    Lev Polax’s words came back to him. He’s alive, Merrick. The bastard is alive.
    But how could that be? How had the Chameleon escaped the explosion that had splintered his yacht into a million pieces? And if Pavvo Creon was laid out in the morgue, where had be been for fifteen years?
    It was never going to end, Merrick decided. He’d waited years for this to be over. He’d tried to go on without Johanna, but every day he saw her face—even after he’d put away the pictures.
    She was in the kitchen making breakfast, in the bathroom washing her hair. Seated by the fireplace laughing and teasing him out of his pants to make crazy reckless love on the rug.
    Her laugh was throaty and deep for such a slight woman. Her beautiful hair was soft as silk, her eyes so full of love each time she looked at him. No one would ever look at him like that again.
    She’d been his life, and he knew he had been hers. Until the Chameleon had turned their life into a nightmare.
    He had lived each day to see the bastard dead, but now it looked as though he’d been robbed of even that. The Chameleon had slipped through his fingers again. But how? His yacht had blown sky high. He himself, and Sly McKwen, had almost been killed in the process.
    That last thought gave Merrick pause. If they had survived, then it was possible that the Chameleon had escaped the explosion as well.
    Another chill ran the length of his spine, and it told Merrick that his lab experts were right. Pavvo Creon was in the morgue and the Chameleon was still out there somewhere breathing and laughing.
    And if he was alive then hell was about to revisit him and the agency before too long.
    There were two ways to look at this, Merrick thought. He could consider the mission in Greece a failure, or decide that he’d been given a second chance to confront his enemy—to come face to face with the man who had stolen his life.
    A second chance to kill the Chameleon for Johanna.
    So maybe this unanswered prayer was a gift.

    Jacy sat at his computer frustrated and in a sour mood. His daily routine was getting tiresome. He’d been searching for answers but hadn’t