Messenger Will

by

Will Bontrager

All she wanted was to find out who killed her best friend back when they were 6 years old.

All Wilhelmina wanted was to find out who killed her best friend back when they were 6 years old.

Her primary purpose in life is find out who killed her best friend, Evy.

(And she will find out. But Wilhelmina has to marry a rich guy to do it. Lo and behold, her husband takes action to put an assassination contract on his wife after she bears an heir for him.)

At 8 years old, Wilhelmina is reading science books. they were bound and determined to find out who killed her best friend.

During lower school and high school, she took every science- and electronic-related course that she could possibly stuff into her school days. Her knowledge became astounding, indeed. She trained herself to create and launch software on the sly, whatever she needed to further her investigation into her girlhood friend's death. She may have become the most efficient of all at perusing the WorldNet, with nobody being the wiser.

Wilhelmina got caught once. In lower school. The principle, well, I'll let Wilhelmina tell you what happened. “Even in lower school, I found ways to peek into databases. Well, the principal caught me. He offered a deal. I accepted. Somehow, he trusted a ten-year-old girl. Or, more likely, assumed it was his only choice. The deal was I would never reveal anything about him that I had uncovered, anything that others didn’t already know. In return, he would make certain my behavior was not recorded anywhere.”

Toward the end of high school, Wilhelmina became acutely aware that she needed funds. She ended up marrying the richest guy on the planet, Major Sassafras.

Yes, she got funds. Also a whole shitload of other stuff.

Turns out Major's father had hired assassins to kill his parents, grandparents, and siblings. Why? So he could marry the person who became Major's mother without family objections. But Wilhelmina didn't know that until near the end of the story. I guess it runs in the Sassafras family. Major had his father assassinated so he could pursue and marry Wilhelmina. Wilhelmina didn't know that, either. Nor did she know that it was Major who had his own mother assassinated during the reception immediately after the wedding ceremony.

What Major Sassafras wanted very much was an heir. He figured he deserved an heir from the smartest woman on the planet. He wanted real smarts, not just IQ smarts. Wilhelmina was the most science-imbued woman his age that he could find, which was his metric for determining smartness. Major didn't care that they were from common stock. She would be assassinated after she delivered a male heir.

Wilhelmina, now Mrs. Sassafras, used her skills to uproot spies in the Sassafras organization. At least once, a plane load of spies exploded. Other spies just somehow disappeared, sometimes with Major's assistance.

When the only means of secure communication among the wealthy was broken, Mrs. Sassafras invented a way to communicate securely. She kept her invention secret from all but trusted friends associated with her, Major, or the Sassafras organization. To gather intelligence, she launched her Messenger Will project. The project was presented to the wealthy as a guaranteed secure method of exchanging messages.

Wilhelmina became almost as proficient at stock trading as her husband was. Their stock manipulations to drain fortunes were so effective that a person just wanted to laugh or cry, depending on which side you rooted for.

Assassinations were hirable. Once an assassination contract was accepted, there was no way to cancel it, not even with the death of the person who offered the contract. Willhelmina was keenly aware of that fact. When Major determined it was time to hire an assassin to eliminate his wife, Wilhelmina was ready for it.

She finds out her husband is the killer who had his father assassinated. And his mother. And is now trying to get an assassination contract on Wilhelmina herself, his wife.

Kick back. Open the book. Enjoy the ride.