This story contains a significant amount of violence, although it is not gratuitous. If violence isn't your thing -- well, you've been warned.
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The odds of two people with the unusual talents, backgrounds, and proclivities of Lizbeth Portis and Rob Barnard (neither their birth name) moving to Tompkins, Missouri -- population 16,169 according to the most recent census, and roughly two and ⅓ hours' drive from St. Louis -- within two months of each other were probably about 200 million to 1. However, the odds of winning the Mega Millions lottery are about the same, and that happens. In any event, it did occur, some say for the betterment of Tompkins, Missouri, and even mankind; others may quibble with that.
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Rob Barnard was born in Eugene, Oregon as Jeremy Fulton. Jeremy was many different things at many different times; athlete, delinquent, soldier, lover, badass, assassin, man of mystery, and entrepreneur. He started out as one of two children in a decent middle class family, but when his father suffered some hard times and started drinking, his life devolved into disorder. He took up sports to try and overcome the chaos at home, and in High School started working with a track and field club.
Due to his natural ability and intensity Rob may well have become an Olympian in the decathlon. That never came about; however, when just before his 18th birthday, after he had just graduated High School, he killed his father with a javelin when the father was beating his mother and younger sister with the butt of a pistol.
Due to the extenuating circumstances, a good lawyer hired by the sympathetic affluent volunteer director of the track and field club, and the fact that he was not yet the age of majority he would have skated on the charge with only a few overnights in jail were it not for a crusty asshole prosecutor and an equally cantankerous judge. Still he did escape prison by volunteering for the Army when given the choice of three years in prison or his enlistment was posited by His Honor.
The Army recognized the many aptitudes the six feet 1/2 inch, 188 rock-hard pounds, young Jeremy possessed, and he served in the special forces for more than two years. At that time a recruiter from an acronymic government Agency whose budget does not appear in any line item anywhere within the government financial reports, snapped him up for the Agency.
Over the next decade Jeremy travelled many places in the world performing high-risk, and often illegal, tasks for the Agency. While he didn't particularly savor his work he felt that he was "doing good" and serving his country; that is until the fateful night that he was tasked with killing not only a foreign male politician who was considered a threat to the United States but also his wife and two daughters in order to make it look like a rival organization has orchestrated the hit. Jeremy balked, he was threatened, and when he sent two operatives, who had been directed to kill him and finish the job, home in body bags Jeremy determined that it was time for a different line of work.
Jeremy had some minor reconstructive work done on his face -- changing his disarming rugged facial good looks into more refined and even more handsome looks -- and went into hiding. That was easy to do considering the skills he had developed over the last decade; he became Rob Barnard, entrepreneur. In Tompkins he ran an Internet consulting and product-delivery business that also had a store front. The business had two branches, one that specialized in weaponry, the other in sports equipment. His endeavors were financed by years of saving his payments and "performance bonuses" from his employer, and unreported "confiscations" of cash and convertible securities from some of his criminal victims. His entrepreneurial endeavor was more avocation than profession since his funds were more than sufficient to last the rest of his natural life, but it was necessary for Rob to have the appearance of an average working man so as not to draw attention to himself.
While Rob had had a number of extended sexual -- maybe even romantic -- relationships in the past, given his line of work none lasted very long. In order to keep a low profile in Tompkins Rob didn't really date locally. His sexual activities were confined to trips to St. Louis or Springfield to consort with loose women picked up in bars, or "professionals."
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Lizbeth Portis was born Amelia Worthington in Princeton, New Jersey to two Princeton University professors, one with a PhD in Physics, the other in Chemistry. In actuality, she always got the impression that she was "bred" into existence more than "born," since her parents' relationship always seemed formal and academic, rather than romantic. Since both of her parents had IQs in the neighborhood of 140 it was not a surprise that Amelia was intelligent; what was a surprise was how intelligent. At the time that she was first tested the highest IQ ever certified was 228. When hers first registered almost that high at 210, it was assumed that there was some error in the test or some aberration. By the time that she was tested the last time at age 15 it was finally certified as 218 placing her in the top one ten-millionth of one percent in the world. That corresponded to her scores on the battery of other tests that her parents seemed to revel in, and Amelia seemed to detest (although she tried hard on the tests in order to please her parents), including a perfect 50 on the Wonderlic test.
Amelia was an athletically built comely girl -- having gotten all of the best physical attributes of her ordinary-looking parents -- but was socially awkward for many reasons. One was because her parents themselves were hardly smooth socially; two was that her parents were too involved in her life and unnecessarily cloistered her; three was because although her parents established an exercise routine for Amelia since they considered the mind-body relationship important they never allowed her to participate in team sports; and four was that it was hard to be a freshman in High School at age 12, and a freshman at Princeton at age 14 1/2, and have anything close to a normal social life.
At the ripe old age of 18, while Amelia was already in the PhD program in computer science at Princeton, to celebrate her birthday she defied her parents' wishes and went out on the town in New York City, ill-equipped socially and emotionally for the journey. It ended in disaster. She witnessed a murder by two Gorsky Russian Mob hitmen, fled for her life, and luckily escaped. She was turned over by NYC police to Federal authorities who put her, and her unwilling parents, into protective custody in what was supposedly a safe house.
The Gorsky mob was very motivated to have Amelia eliminated since her testimony could put the son of the "Pakhan" (big boss), Mikael Gorsky, in prison, so they paid off or blackmailed two Federal agents to find out the location of her safe house. Then a dozen Gorsky thugs killed Amelia's parents and the two loyal agents guarding them. Amelia escaped only because one of the agents held off the hitmen long enough for her to bolt through a tunnel to a nearby property.
Given her intellect, and the fact that she was able to drain her bank account with her ATM card before tossing away all of her identification, she was able to successfully make it out of the New Jersey -- New York area and establish a series of new identities. After nine years on the run, having moved six times and having set up her own computer programming business over the Internet with no contact with clients, she arrived in Tompkins hoping that Lizbeth Portis was her last identity necessary, and that this was her last move.
While Lizbeth had had a number of casual sexual encounters over the years simply to quell her animal needs, she never had had a real relationship with a man.
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Rob's store front was near the main market area of Tompkins, and when not working out at the only gym in town, reading, or actually doing some work, he enjoyed people watching either through the large plate glass window of his store, or on an outside bench. He did notice when Lizbeth moved to Tompkins about six weeks after he did, and found her intriguing. Given his training by the mysterious government Agency he had worked for, he was very observant; he noticed Lizbeth coming to the market every Tuesday and Friday, always about 11 a. m. She seemed to be very polite, but solitary, avoiding extended contact with anyone.
While Tompkins was a normally quiet, safe place -- one of the reasons that both Rob and Lizbeth had located there -- like everyplace else it had some toughs who considered themselves badasses, and who caused trouble. After Rob had been observing Lizbeth -- with increasing interest -- for about two months the four biggest miscreants in Tompkins harassed Lizbeth during her normal Tuesday shopping excursion. The four seemed to be about 20 to 25 years old, tattooed, and surly. Lizbeth unsuccessfully tried to ignore them, so she simply left the area without completing her shopping.
While one of Rob's main goals was to keep a low profile, other factors came into play when he saw the troublemakers slyly follow Lizbeth to her SUV, and get into their own car. Rob had found out enough about Lizbeth to know where she lived -- about ten minutes outside of town in a beautiful remote wooded area -- so he got on his motorcycle and took off in that direction.
About five minutes out of town Rob caught up with Lizbeth's unwilling caravan and saw the reprobates' vehicle cut in front of hers, causing her to stop. As Lizbeth sat in her vehicle the four thugs got out of their car and approached her. By this time Rob was already off his bike and immediately confronted the nearest guy.
