Hush Little Baby

The Sig in her hand became more visible, even in the darkness, as it centered between my eyes.

Thinking again that no good deed goes unpunished, I continued. "He told me you would think I killed him, just as he knew you would come after me. Your father gave me a message to give you when you turned up."

The Sig paused.

I wet my lips, this could after all be my final moments on this planet. 'Hush little baby', he repeated it twice to me and those were even the last words to leave his lips."

The business end of the Sig wavered for a moment, I heard a gasp from the darkness before Dana moved away from me and rested against the back of the cave, her silhouette slumped to its knees as heart breaking sobs left the darkened form that was Dana Hoffmann. As a man, the temptation was there to comfort her. That thought lasted all of a second, my Sig still grasped firmly in her hand was a deciding factor.

The one face missing on the board back at the National Guard office was Dana's, and that was only because the F.B.I knew her father had an enforcer, but no one was alive to prove it. The criminal intelligence people had drawn a blank every time they went looking for this person.

She looked so much like her mother that I knew who she was the second I turned around and spotted her standing by the door to the tent. Judging by the only picture I had seen of her mother, Dana had all of her mother's looks. Her Father's gift was his eyes. I had held onto Marcus Hamilton and stared into those same eyes, while I waited for either help to arrive, or him to die. Yes, I had looked into those eyes of his that evening as he drew his last breath and I had once again seen those same eyes.

Marcus Hamilton was Dana's father and I didn't need a blood test to prove it. Although Dana Hoffmann was as good a killer as her father was reputed to be, I just wondered if his daughter had any other traits that would have been passed down from his own genes, something only he would have recognized. At the moment all I could see was a cold- blooded killer taking a moment to mourn her father, before allowing me to join him.

She whispered her next words, then took a breath before saying them louder so I could fully acknowledge I had heard them. "You don't understand, do you?"

I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, I still believed the only reason I was still alive was because I hadn't reached for my own weapon yet.

"Did my farther explain those words to you?" she got the words out, but only through gritted teeth.

Shaking my head stopped when I realized that in the diminishing light, she couldn't see me do it. "He said you would blame me for him dying." For some reason I even mentioned that he apologized that Dana would. "He then told me those words and with what little strength he had left he pulled me down to him so he could repeat them."

"You clearly know who and what I am?"

I felt on firmer ground. "Yes, you're the Hamilton family's enforcer. The fact that the Police agencies were looking for a man meant you went right under their radar."

The pause was longer this time.

"Why wasn't your conversation with him in the Police report?"

That didn't surprise me, her family would have people in the Sheriff's office, if they hadn't, they would have been higher up. The only thing I was curious about was how long it took them to get their hands on a copy of my interviews.

"Because it wasn't any of their business, I felt that message was only meant for three people, your father, me and you."

That pause between us seemed to lengthen again before she said. "And he never explained that message to you?"

I didn't care that she hadn't seen me shrug my shoulders.

"Your father knew his life was ebbing away, his priority was to get his message across and to make sure I knew it word for word."

Feeling that she was intentionally hiding something, I had to ask. "Does it mean anything to you, Dana?"

All I was doing was staring into the darkness when I asked her that question, not even able to gauge the space between us, or even how she was taking this new information.

"It means you live another day; we need to stay here tonight, so plan accordingly. I need to think, don't talk to me, or even come near me. Touch me and you die, it's that simple. You have bought yourself another day, don't push it."

I heard rather than saw her move down to the floor of the cave. I stood, tied everything off and grabbed my personal weapon, that's when I heard a familiar click of a Sig being made ready.

My patience may have been wearing thin, but she still had a gun in her hands and I had just given her a lot to think about, so with a deep breath taken and expelled I said. "You want to stay here another night, that's fine, but I need to do a little snooping of my own down on the valley floor so we don't get any nasty surprises tomorrow."

"Remember, I'm resourceful."

I flipped down my night goggles and my world went green. She was in the fetal position with her head resting on one arm, her other arm extended and my own Sig pointed right at me.

"And you remember. I don't leave people behind." As I headed for the caves entrance I added. "I'll cough once before I come in."

Silence was her only reply.

*******

Three Hours later ... The long walk home.

I remembered to cough before getting to the cave entrance; she was on one knee and her Sig pointed at center mass when I came in.

"Grab your kit, we have to leave and I mean now."

Dana wasn't stupid, she heard the urgency in my voice and if she could have seen me standing in the middle of the cave she would have seen me drenched in sweat, my clothes were soaked and clinging to me as I placed my hands on my hips and pulled air deep into my lungs in the hope of replacing the depleted oxygen level in my blood. She grabbed her backpack, dropped it at her feet while she did up her jacket; throughout Dana's activity I was also pulling a strap free and connecting it to the back of my own backpack. As she stood in front of me, I gave her a quick rundown of events.

"They think we are asleep, so some of them are sneaking up here. I get the feeling that it's take no prisoners time from here on out, so we need to leave and make sure we stay in front of the baying mob until we get back to our lines."

Her free hand came into view and I grabbed it before placing the lose end of the strap into it, then headed out while telling her that she was to hold on to that at all costs.

Although we were both wheezing as we made good time from the cave and along the goat track, an RPG tore into the cave's entrance, followed by a few rounds from AK47's just to make sure. That alone added to our own impetus. Dana said nothing and I sure decided to follow her lead in that department.

Sun-up wasn't far off, and although we had made some good distance from the cave, I wanted to make just a bit more before we went looking for somewhere to hide. Getting caught out in the open wasn't too good an idea when you have folks hunting you down. As the first rays of morning spilled over the mountain top, Dana was curled into me in the only space we managed to find.

The rock covered the small crawl space that was to be our bolt hole for the day. The space would have been comfortable for a single person to wait it out, but now it was occupied by two, and it made things a little tight. To make things a little easier our webbing and packs were wedged into some of the cracks around us, both to blot out the daylight and to give us just a little more room. We would be in each other's faces for the day, that was for sure.

Her voice came at a whisper to my ear. "You just had to poke the fucking hornets' nest, didn't you?"

She must have felt me shrug my shoulders. "They heard you were in town and decided to say hi."

I felt her breath catch, with her head resting into my chest I felt her giggle and then laugh. I shushed her and reminded her that her friends were just outside somewhere looking for us, the playful punch into my ribs didn't go unnoticed either. We both needed sleep but the adrenalin levels were still high between us, so all we did was fidget, and in our confined space that lead to a lot of touchy-feely between us that couldn't be helped.

Dana moved again and placed her leg across both of mine, her arm traveled the length of my stomach and stopped at my hip. I was sure hemmed in now.

"We need to talk," came the whisper from my companion.

"You need rest, Dana, you're so wound up at the moment you need to sleep and unwind."

This time I felt her fingers on my hip, bunch into a fist. "No. We need to talk, or better yet you stay quiet and I talk."

My arm came around her and held onto her, sharing what body heat we both had through the last moments of what is often called pre-dawn; soon the hole we hid in would turn into an oven, but I would rather be warm than dead. Dana must have taken my silence as me agreeing to her request and she started to talk.

"When Mom left Daddy, she swore he would never see me ever again. When I was old enough, Mom sent me to boarding school in Switzerland."

Dana's mother was from old European money, she thought that taking Dana out of America and schooling her in Europe would keep her out of the hands of her ex. Despite his business, Marcus Hamilton was a fierce family man at heart. When Dana went to boarding school, her father turned up and introduced himself. It took a while, but a relationship formed between them.

"At first, all daddy wanted was to have some sort of connection with me, with mother's agreement, or if need be, without. While mother lived it was without. Mike, she couldn't know; it would have killed her if she had ever found out."

Her face took on a pained look and I really worried about what she was going to say next.

"When mother had her stroke, it was so severe that she only lasted a day before the second one killed her. Her body was still warm when Mother's family turned on me like a pack of wolves, I was thrown out of school without notice and forced to leave the place I called home with what I was wearing and my passport."

She used what little currency she had on her to phone her father; he immediately wired her money for a hotel room while he organized a jet to pick her up and bring her back to the States.

Her whole frame seemed to fill with pride that in her darkest hour, her father came to her rescue while her own mother's family set about destroying any evidence of her existence. Marcus Hamilton wasn't stupid; he still kept Dana on the very periphery of his family and away from government and agency eyes.

To the total shock of her mother's family she even went back to school three weeks later. Her college fees all paid up to the end of exams, along with an apartment that almost overlooked the school. Marcus Hamilton also turned his own attention to his ex-wife's family and slowly peeled away the smoke and mirrors to finally reveal the family secret. They lived in name only, the wealth long ago spent away. It seemed that they had mostly lived on the millions Marcus gave to her mother when she had returned to Europe.

Marcus Hamilton was at Dana's graduation armed with a file that would systematically destroy those that stripped Dana of what was hers. Dana sat and read it, pondered it for a moment before handing it back to her father. She wanted to stay in Europe, something Marcus was pleased about. She also told her father that it would be the best place to be when her mother's family finally imploded.

He had already set her on the path he planned for her, and to do that, he needed to keep her out of America. With her journalist qualifications in one hand she set about getting a job in France, and it was under the guise of a freelance journalist that she could travel the world, enforcing her fathers will and she slowly watched and added a twist here or a nudge there, and over time, her mother's family crumbled into the dust.

Suddenly Dana moved, her hands came to my face and held on tight, so her eyes could bore into mine. "Know this Michael; I'm good at my job. Enjoy it? No, I don't. But it's the one given to me by my father."

She licked her lips and her eyes seemed to wander; it truly felt like she was about to share a secret and was reluctant to do so.

I used her hesitation to say something, regretting it as the words left my lips. "You're an enforcer, Dana, a killer."

The sneer was real. "You're no better than me, your government points you in a direction and tells you to kill. You seek the moral high-ground because you wear a uniform when you do."

Through the years the ghost that was Dana Hoffman roamed the world killing people at her father's command. The father in Marcus Hamilton continued to watch his daughter and realized that the enforcer was slowly stripping his daughter of a life, something she never truly had; there were no long term loves in her life.

She stopped talking about her life and giggled. "On one of father's visits he asked me about my relationships, I called them penises and pussies. Daddy just stared at me for a moment before shaking his head and made me sit down; he moved a chair across so he could look directly at me."

A slow intake of breath from Dana made me wonder if she wanted to say what was already on her lips. "My father sat me down and told me that I was too good at what I did, and made me promise that when he found me the right man I would be... human again."

She seemed to wince when she said that last part.

"Daddy promised he would let me know. Do you know the words he would use to let me know who that man would be Michael?"

Dana stared down at me, daring me to get it wrong.

*******

My God, I saved Marcus Hamilton's life, however briefly and he'd just given me his daughter for doing so. This was insane, the whole family was insane and Marcus Hamilton sat on top of the whole pile.

"This is nuts, Dana." I felt my voice tremble when I said just that much.

Dana just continued to stare down at me, Marcus Hamilton was right, judging from what I read on the board at the National Guard building that day. She was really good at her job, the best of the best went looking for her and never even got close enough to figure out her gender, let alone have a picture of her. All this was done while living in a vacuum of her own making.

In my case, I had people who watched my back and I stayed sane because I kept them sane. Dana Hoffmann had over fifteen known kills on her record and I truly had to wonder how many more hadn't been connected to her. She had no other anchor to her life than that of her father at the end of a burner phone. No wonder Marcus Hamilton had seen her loose parts of her humanity day by day.

Eventually she shrugged her shoulders and said, "No, it's daddy's wish and I made a promise right alongside him that day." Her hands held me just a little tighter. "You need to say it, Mike."

I couldn't; it wasn't refusal. Even looking up at the dust covered woman looking down at me she was still a walking wet dream, but Dana Hoffmann was also an enforcer for a criminal family in the United States.

It was as if she could read my mind. "Daddy said he was even willing to give me a wedding gift, the day I marry, I leave the family business, with his blessing."

Within such a confined space as we were in, she felt the relief wash over me, she giggled.

"You still need to say it, Michael Davis. Even though we both know that's not your real name."

I gulped and my mind screamed no, yet something so deep within me, that looked out for me and made the hard choices in my life emphatically said yes right back.

"Hush little bab..."

Her lips were on mine and her tongue was doing its best to nestle in my throat before I finished. Dana Hoffman really was a force of nature. Marcus Hamilton would accept no disobedience from his daughter, when he checked in with her, she still told him that she took gratification from the penises and pussies in her social circle, but she was also laying the groundwork for the relationship and retirement from her father's business.

Less than a year later, I was pulling the dying body of Marcus Hamilton from the wreckage of his own vehicle.

20:00 Hours ... I'll show you mine, if?

Although we heard the odd vehicle passing us by, and judging by the snorts, I would say a few camels wandered by, as well. We stayed in our bolt hole and got sore lips. The temptation was there to have a bad case of wandering hands as well, but we were still in the middle of a really bad day at the office, and would be for a couple of days yet.

It had been dark for a while when I got out and checked the area. Two hours later I coughed next to our rock and Dana dropped out, Sig in hand, her gaze covered the darkness around us before she relaxed, slightly. I placed my strap in her hand once again and we headed off into the night. When I would take a knee, so would she, even though she couldn't see the reasons why I did. Dana Hoffman had now placed her trust in me.

Her father had given me the key to her heart in return for realizing that there were people out there willing to risk their own lives to pull him out of the wreckage, so he could have just a few more minutes of life. Now this woman had come to realize that her father's death was simply an accident. It was perhaps now that she was at her most vulnerable, and as that very thought crossed my mind, I smiled to myself. The family's enforcer, a killer of many people was given a chance at life, and with her father's blessing, she was going to take it.

If it wasn't for the occasional tug on the strap, I wouldn't have even known she was behind me, such was this professional killer's skill. Trying hard to keep my concentration on the task in hand didn't stop my thoughts from wandering back to the conversations we've already had.

When her father outlined what he wanted from her as a member of his family, even in nothing more than shadow form, the amount of research Marcus Hamilton would have done to find the right people to teach his own daughter the art of death. He had clearly seen something in Dana that would allow him to do that, just as he had realized all too late what it had stolen from her in return.

She asked for his love and he in return had turned her into one of the best and most invisible killers on the planet. She lived under the nose of some of the most powerful law- enforcement agencies in Europe and was never discovered. Now, with Marcus Hamilton's blessing, she was going to put the tools of her trade down and learn to love, to live away from the shadows.

It was as we stopped for a rest and a shared snack that I pulled my map out so we could look at it; that wasn't possible in such a confined space of our last bolt-hole.

With a pin of light shining onto the map we both whispered about our best route, it only took a few seconds to realize we both were on the same page, and other than bounce the odd idea around we took off into the night once again. We still ducked for cover when we heard a vehicle, and even had to drop like a stone onto the ground some hours later, when we came across the tail end of a camel train. Fortunately, the two we almost bumped into as they walked between two huge boulders were carrying the group's tents.

Both of us knew then that we needed to stop and hide out for the rest of the night and day. Between the tension, having Dana in my company and the talking between us, we were getting fatigued as well as careless, and that was dangerous. Our next bolt hole overlooked the very path the camel group took. It was bigger than our last hole, and as soon as we made sure it was secure, I set Dana to sleep. Although reluctant at first, even she knew we were on the brink of making mistakes that could get us killed or captured.