Gemini Divided, page 1
Praise for Gemini Divided
“The premise of the plot is rather unique, the banter and conversation between the characters is both witty and realistic, and the story is quite entertaining. The author is also very skilled, and her writing style is very compelling.”
—Reedsy Discovery
“Shy, introverted, fangirl badass assassin meets the nerdy, handsome new target. What could go wrong? Everything. Just one bit of advice for all you book lovers: read it; it’s fun.”
—Joanne Alain Cook, Author of Oh, Henry
“Great mysteries surprise me with their twists and turns, and this one ended up doing just that. I loved the banter between Jen and Will, and the plot kept me flipping pages, wanting to know what the next chapter would bring. Also, the cover of Gemini Divided is absolutely stunning and is what first caught my attention when deciding what book I wanted to read next. I would recommend Gemini Divided by Lauren Kristen Roberts to all mystery lovers out there; it was a fun one!”
—Readers’ Favorite
“Gemini Divided is an exciting blend of romance and thriller. I love books that blend multiple genres, and this book definitely fits the bill. One highlight of this book is the action and excitement that comes with Jen’s assassin job. It made a nice change from the standard romances between celebrities and ordinary people.”
—Reader Review
“She’s an assassin. He’s the target. If you're looking for a full-on action-packed novel, then this is the book for you. With a badass heroine who knows her way around firearms and fights bad guys as easy as counting one to three. And then, as if that’s not enough, there’s also a charming hero on a mission to sweep you off your feet. Don’t miss your chance to read this fantastic novel . . .”
—Reader Review
“This book is as full of twists and turns as it is excitement. Be forewarned: once you are halfway through this book, you won’t want to set it down.”
—Reader Review
“Not quite but still fake-dating, female bodyguard, trained assassin who writes fan fiction about a TV show . . . this was amazing!”
—Reader Review
Gemini Divided
by Lauren Kristen Roberts
© Copyright 2022 Lauren Kristen Roberts
ISBN 978-1-64663-575-7
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The names, incidents, dialogue, and opinions expressed are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Published by
3705 Shore Drive
Virginia Beach, VA 23455
800-435-4811
www.koehlerbooks.com
This book is dedicated to my husband, Chris, who knew I wanted to write it before I did, and who didn’t stop asking me, “Did you work on your book today?” until I was hooked on it—even though his preferred recommendation for sections he didn’t like was to “nuke it from space.”
CHAPTER 1
JEN ADJUSTED THE SCOPE AND peered through the long-range lens, once more searching the sea of faces. Her attention landed on a couple at the center of the action: a brunette in a skin-tight emerald dress stood facing a handsome man in a dark suit. As he leaned toward her, speaking into her ear, a woman with disheveled red hair and smudged eye makeup jabbed him in the shoulder from behind. He straightened and turned, startled, as she flung the contents of her drink in his face and disappeared back into the crowd. While the brunette tore into the dripping-wet man, Jen tilted her head a few degrees, frowning in curiosity before letting her attention wander.
Across the room, her eyes were drawn to another couple. A tall man stood close to a woman in a black cocktail dress, his fingers tangled in her shoulder-length chestnut hair and his face inches from hers. Her back was pressed against the window, accentuating the plunging back of the dress; it dipped lower than any Jen had ever seen. She rolled her eyes. Definitely designed by a man. When the man’s hand came into view, blatantly groping at the woman’s bottom, Jen scanned onward.
It’s way too crowded in there. And there’s so much touching. A shiver threatened to throw the rifle off balance, but she regained control. While the party was full of interesting characters, the entire thing made her uncomfortable.
Her mark was easy to locate. Fish Lips, as she thought of him, looked exactly like the pictures in his dossier, only slightly less gangster in real life. Maybe a tad chubbier, too.
She checked her watch. Midnight. It was time.
Rolling her shoulders, Jen settled into the stock of the rifle. She took a deep breath and cleared her mind. For a second everything was perfectly still.
Click.
Shattered glass rained down on the partygoers, reflecting flashes of the strobe light all the way to the top of the cathedral ceiling. Murmurs of awe rolled through the crowd, some guests assuming they’d witnessed the release of sparkling confetti or fairy dust, not the splintering of a floor-to-ceiling window. Almost immediately, amazement turned to shrieks of terror.
Panic spread like wildfire through the room, and people surged away from the void where the window had been. The only one in the room not moving was a well-dressed man in an armchair with his back to what was now the open air, the ends of his long, slicked-back hair dancing in the wind. He slumped forward as blood gushed from a bullet hole in the back of his head and his newly disfigured face.
The rhythmic strobe lights flashed and the bass pounded as the crush of terrified guests scrambled toward the only exit, colliding, frantic to escape. With blood running down their glass-peppered faces and arms, some guests looked like they’d been attacked by a wild creature.
Jen gazed across the street at the chaos, imagining the underground tunnels of an ant colony after their anthill had been stepped on: from calm to frantic in seconds flat. So many jobs ended like this.
By the time distraught socialites began streaming out of the tall glass building’s street-level doors a minute later, her equipment was already packed. She climbed down the fire escape at the opposite end of the abandoned structure. Releasing her grip on the ladder, she landed safely on the ground several feet below and strode away from the confusion she’d caused.
This had been an average night’s work; everything went exactly as planned. Glancing at her digital watch, she noted the date for the first time—two years to the day she’d met up with Brett by the Reflecting Pool in the center of Washington, DC. She’d been numb and desperate that day, and their conversation had altered the course of her life.
“You look like something ran you over. You okay?”
Brett had always been blunt. For over a year he’d been her commanding officer, watching her back but giving her hell. After her mom, he was the person she trusted most. That bond was the only reason she’d agreed to meet him that day, even though she was still reeling from her mother’s news.
“Thanks. That’s exactly the look I was going for.” The words came out more harshly than she’d intended.
He stared at her hard and then used that voice that told her there was no use giving him anything but the truth. “You going to tell me what’s wrong?”
She nodded, staring at the ground and numbly reciting the words she still couldn’t believe. “My mom has cancer. Stage four. She’s been doing chemo and radiation for a year and she never told me. Said she didn’t want to worry me while I was out of the country. I found out the day I got back. Last week.” Her voice broke at the end, and she bit her lip so hard she wondered if she’d drawn blood.
“Shit. I’m sorry.” Normally, his expression gave nothing away, but this time the concern on his face made her look away before she fell apart again.
“Yeah. Now her insurance company says she’s almost reached her lifetime maximum coverage. They’re not going to pay any more bills.” She tried not to glance at him, not wanting him to see that her eyes were glassy with tears. “I can’t let her die. I need to find a way to pay for her treatments.”
“I don’t know much about chemo, but I’m assuming you’re talking about a hell of a lot of money.”
“Yeah. So far I’ve struck out.”
He nodded sympathetically. “I might know of a job you’d be interested in. You have the right skills. It’s why I called you, actually. I wondered if you were looking for work.”
“Seriously? What is it? Because I’m interested. My resume isn’t getting me anywhere.”
There weren’t many tourists around at that early hour, but he moved closer to her and lowered his voice to avoid being overheard anyway. “I started a business when I got back. In our first six months, we made three million dollars.”
“What kind of business?”
Brett had always been unapologetically loud, and her forehead creased at his sudden show of discretion.
“You and I know all too well . . . too many monsters just roam free out there. Terrorists. Traffickers. Scum of the earth. So I thought, what if we could do something about them?”
“Wasn’t that what we were doing in Germany?
“It was. I guess you could say this is a different way of serving your country.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Different how?”
Her father figure and mentor had always been skilled in the art of persuasion, but she saw through the positive spin he gave his business. Yes, the odds were against her, but Jen knew one thing for certain: her mother hadn’t raised a vigilante. She knew right from wrong, and what Brett was doing was wrong.
The more thought she’d given his offer that night, the sicker to her stomach she became. He’d been one of the good guys, but now . . .
I was so naïve back then, before I let him pull me down that same path.
In the days following her talk with Brett, she’d found out more about her mother’s aggressive and rare form of cancer. The more Jen learned, the more desperate she became. Her limited options dwindled to nothing. She needed the money for her mom’s ongoing treatments, and needed it fast. She had no other option.
Lying in bed two nights after Brett made his pitch, she’d stared at the ceiling, wide awake. A particularly vivid memory of herself at age five sprang to life, as real as if it were happening in front of her.
The thought of monsters hiding in the dark corners of their apartment had terrified her ever since her dad had walked out two months before. Every night before she could go to sleep, she made her mother check every inch of every room, ending with her closet. Her mother went along with it, putting on her purple “monster-hunting hat” and spritzing the darkness randomly from a spray bottle of “monster repellent.” Afterwards, she would sit with Jen on her bed and hug her tight, exclaiming, “The only monster here is this cute little one!” Jen would collapse in giggles, satisfied that she was safe.
Smiling in the darkness that night, still reeling from both her mother’s admission and Brett’s offer, the next memory hit her hard. She’d been six years old when she announced to her mother that from then on, she would take over the monster patrols. “I promise to keep us safe, Mommy!” she’d proclaimed. Twenty-eight years later, she still hadn’t forgotten that promise. In a way, it was part of the reason she ended up in the Army.
Mom would’ve slayed monsters for me, and she made sure I always knew it. How can I not do the same for her? She tossed and turned for hours before getting out of bed. Sitting with a pad of paper at her kitchen table, she made a pros and cons list, as she so often did when she was struggling with a decision. Not long before the sun came up, with one short line of text circled in heavy black marker, she crawled back into bed with an aching heart. Save Mom. When it came down to it, nothing was more important. That new experimental treatment they’d given her cost a fortune, but for the moment it was working.
The next morning, she called Brett.
“So, did you change your mind?” he asked, skipping past “hello.”
“Yeah.” She had never hated herself more than she did in that moment, but it had to be done.
Jen pushed the memory of two years ago away. Working for Brett was a necessary evil for which she would never fully forgive herself, even though she’d kept her mother alive. She forced herself to focus on the only thing that mattered—the fact that the job had let her catch up on her mom’s medical bills and even put a little aside for the bills yet to come. That was what was important. And her targets were legitimately bad people. Her research had proven it time and time again.
She pulled the elastic out of her hair, releasing the tension in her scalp. Settling the strap of her bag casually over her left shoulder, she melted into the masses who were out and about and enjoying this unseasonably mild early June evening. Her fingers flew across the screen of her burner phone as she walked.
Project completed. Ready for another. She hit Send and stuffed the phone in her pocket.
Her stomach rumbled as she approached a street vendor’s cart. Smiling sweetly at the tired-looking man inside the tiny window, she paid cash for a bag of potato chips and a diet soda.
It wasn’t the life she’d wanted for herself, but it was the one she’d ended up with. She didn’t envy the groups of friends or the couples around her as she darted between them, down a side street and then around the next corner, ostensibly stopping to adjust her bag so she could check that she hadn’t been followed. At least, she told herself she didn’t envy them. Her life was complicated enough as it was.
Despite what seemed like a clean getaway, Jen took the long way back to her hotel, as always. She couldn’t be too careful.
CHAPTER 2
JEN SAT FORWARD IN HER chair, her eyes glued to the computer screen even though she knew exactly what would happen next. This episode was her favorite so far, and the comforting background noise of the coffee shop around her melted away.
The small, green numbers of the digital display ticked down without mercy. In only eighty-seven seconds, Agents Cleary and Greene would be out of time.
Sweeping the building had turned up nothing at first, and for a while it appeared that the tip from their reliable source was wrong. But then they’d reached the spacious conference room at the south end of the third floor, where they found enough explosives to bring down a much larger structure and a display informing them that seventeen minutes remained until detonation. While the rest of the team continued clearing the building, the two agents stayed behind to deal with this new problem.
That was now almost sixteen minutes ago.
“How’s it going, Mel?”
Agent Melissa Cleary kept her hazel eyes on the task at hand and didn’t let the tension in her partner’s voice break her concentration. He always got fidgety as the time ran low. She didn’t have to see his expression to know what face he was making—that vein on his forehead would be throbbing in annoyance, his scowl partially hidden behind the dark stubble that matched his brown hair. Adorably annoying.
“You’re cutting it too close.” His brown eyes bored into her back as if doing so could speed her up. “Come on. Stu and I have basketball tickets for tomorrow night. I’d like to live that long.”
When she didn’t budge, he tried again. “Don’t make me drag you out of here, kicking and screaming. You know I’ll do it. I don’t care how stubborn you are; we’re not going to die here.”
“I get the point.” She gritted her teeth, making one last, futile attempt to stop the countdown. “And we don’t want to disappoint Stu.” With an exasperated sigh, she turned away from the complex grid of electronics, rushing for the door as if she’d been the one waiting for him and not the other way around. “Let’s go!” He was only one pace behind her as they dashed for the stairwell.
A handful of seconds later, they flew through the emergency exit on the ground level, temporarily blinded by the sunshine. But they weren’t safe yet, and they tore across the wide concrete plaza, diving behind a car parked at the curb.
For half a second as they fell toward the ground, the world was silent. Everything moved in slow motion, trapping them in an endless freefall.
The moment Matt and Mel hit the pavement, debris erupted from a fireball that climbed high into the sky. Shards of glass and metal showered the two agents. All they could do was lie motionless and wait for it to stop, pressing closer together. Agent Greene had thrown his arm over his partner’s back to shield her from the fallout of the blast, and he left it there even after the air was still once again.
Thick smoke billowed around them, stinging their lungs, and visibility was limited to a few inches. Matt lifted his arm from Mel’s back, carefully releasing her. He coughed, cursing under his breath. “How much do you want to bet this is going to end up on the news?” Her only reply was a loud groan, which made him pause his own self-evaluation and twist around to face her.
“You okay, Mel? You never stay still this long. Or quiet, for that matter.”
Groaning again, she shifted before answering. “Shut up. I’m okay.” She was already halfway to a sitting position. “I mean, I— OW!” She winced, cradling her right arm.
“What’s wrong? Your arm?” He leaned closer.
