Under Cover

Chapter 11

        Hannah stood frozen for a few seconds, her gun in her hand pointed at the ground.

"I said drop the gun and raise your hands," Michael commanded.

She slowly leaned down and placed her gun on the pavement.

"Kick it over to me."

Hannah obliged.

"Now hands over your head." Michael pulled out his portable police radio. "This is Detective Richards requesting back up at...."

That was as far as he got. As he was holding the radio up to his face he momentarily let his gun hand drop, and Hannah launched herself at him hitting him hard in the stomach. He fell to the ground, dropping his gun with Hannah landing on top of him. He frantically reached around for the gun with his right hand while he tried to lock his assailant in a grip with his left arm. As Hannah tried to break his grip he reached up quickly ripping the ski mask off her head. 

They both froze for a moment as Michael stared into the face of his wife.

"H-Hannah?" he stammered, involuntarily easing his grip on her.

"Surprise, Michael," she said with a smile. She grabbed his gun from the ground by the barrel and clubbed him with it on the side the head. He groaned and his body went limp.

She looked at him for a moment, then leaned down to kiss him on the lips. "I'm sorry, sweetheart," she whispered, "It was good while it lasted, but I think our marriage is over."

She jumped up and retrieved her pistol and ski mask from the ground. She turned and looked back at her unconscious husband. "Goodbye, Michael," she whispered sadly, "You know I really did love you." 

As the sound of distant sirens reached her ears Hannah ran down the street, jumped a fence into a neighbour's yard, then through another two yards before coming out into a side street. She put her gun and ski mask into her jacket pockets, then jogged at a leisurely pace down the street. To anyone passing her she looked like a woman out for an evening exercise run.

Ten minutes later she reached her car, then she was driving back to the storage unit. Hannah was a professional. She left nothing to chance and was completely prepared for tonight's turn of events. In a matter of minutes she had changed into a smart outfit of jacket, skirt and boots, and a brunette wig. Some quickly applied make up and she looked nothing like Hannah Richards. She grabbed a pre-packed suitcase with everything she needed for a trip including fake passport and driver's licence, then used a burner phone she had purchased two days earlier to call an Uber to pick her up from a gas station two blocks away.

A mere forty five minutes later she was boarding a plane at Vancouver International Airport bound for Miami.

As she sipped on a martini in first class she wondered what would happen to Michael. He almost certainly would be demoted, or lose his job. After all he had been giving information to the killer the police were hunting even though he had no idea he was doing it, and the FBI would probably be called in once they worked out who they were really chasing. How many kills did she have under her belt now? Five in Vancouver plus the unexpected hit man, and six from her previous life in the states. As a result she had over two million dollars in her Swiss bank account.
She felt a pang of remorse for her husband. He had been good to her and she had loved him, well at least a little bit. But he had been a means to an end, and now she had to move on. She could have killed him, should have killed him to prevent him from talking, but it didn't really matter. She knew her time was up in this city anyway, especially after tonight's hit. It was time to move on.