Smoke & Mirrors by John Ramsey Miller Page B

staying?”
    “Call me Deputy Massey…again. I’m staying with my new boss, the sheriff. Where are you guys?”
    “Have you leveled with him about Styer?”
    “I haven’t decided how much to tell him. I think I’ll wait for the DNA comparison.”
    “Tell him, Winter. Don’t let him be vulnerable because he doesn’t know what he’s dealing with.”
    “Maybe it’s time.”
    “Yeah. Just in case, he should know. Faith Ann wants to visit Graceland, so I thought we’d stay a couple of days.”
    “I’d rather y’all would go on home. I’d feel…”
    “I thought we’d eat at that rib place you told me about.”
    “Rendezvous. Yeah. It’s close to the Peabody.”
    “Any objections to our staying over? He won’t bother us. Besides, he’s there, right?”
    “You’re right, Sean. But I’ll be worried and if I’m worried…”
    “Okay. We’ll leave tomorrow morning at eight,” Sean said. She was the strongest woman Winter had ever known, but she also knew when to give in. It was one of the things he loved most about her.
    “Styer won’t go after you guys at home.”
    Winter spoke briefly and wistfully to Rush, Faith Ann, and Olivia before he hung up and returned to the den.
    “I think it’s time you knew who I think we’re probably dealing with,” Winter said quietly. “How much do you know about me, what I’ve been involved with in the past?”
    Brad fed Ruger what was left of his burger as he spoke. “I’ve heard some things. The Tampa courtroom shootings. I know there was some kind of big incident outside New Orleans a few years back with Sam Manelli’s gang, and another one there a little over two years ago. And I know there was an incident in South Carolina involving the trial of Colonel Bryce, some rogue military intelligence officers, and the kidnapping of a judge’s daughter and her child.”
    Winter nodded and said, “Brad, what I am going to tell you has to remain between the two of us. If you tell anybody I told you what I’m going to tell you, I’ll deny it.”
    “I’m listening.”
    “Styer is a professional assassin from the Eastern Bloc who used to trade in seemingly impossible-to-kill targets, first for the KGB’s elite Special Situations Unit, and after the wall came down, for a private murder-for-hire organization. When I sent your toothpick to the lab, I also sent them Styer’s DNA. I got it from a scented toothpick he left in a rental car in New Orleans. I’m having that sample compared to your toothpick, and if it matches, we’re going from bad to worse real fast. I’ve gotten what little I know about this guy from people who know things I don’t. They talked to me because they hoped I might somehow lead them to him.”
    Brad crossed his legs at the ankles.
    “Paulus Styer was born in East Germany and sent to the Soviet Union where he was groomed to be a weapon of selective destruction. He became a world-class professional assassin—a human chameleon who vanished two years ago after failing to kill me.”
    “You were his target?”
    “He was told I was his target. The CIA used a hit on me to get Styer in the field so they could take him out when he made his move on me. They underestimated Styer and sent a single professional to kill him, but Styer found out the hit was a ploy and escaped. Faith Ann’s uncle, my friend Hank Trammel, is a cripple, and his wife, Millie, was killed. Faith Ann saw Styer run them over with an SUV merely to manipulate me into a death game. He has a compulsion to show his victims, just before he kills them, how amazingly talented he is. I guess since he can’t show the world his genius, he plays to an audience of two—himself and his target.”
    “He tried to kill you and failed?”
    “He easily could have, but he decided not to. Look, nothing he does is without purpose. Maybe he killed Sherry Adams for another reason, but he definitely used that murder as bait to get me here. It’s all a game with him. He isn’t part of the