Author: James R. Hannibal
Category: Thriller
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“What is it? You look terrified.”
“It’s nothing. I’m . . . okay. Sore, but okay.”
Chlorinated water showered them both as Finn dropped to the pool in a cannonball dive. “Couldn’t let you two have all the fun,” he said, pushing himself up onto the deck. He strolled over to Tyler, reaching behind his back and producing two handguns. “Both guards are out cold. I borrowed these. You’re welcome.”
“Thanks.” Tyler took the weapons and threw them into the pool. He winced at the motion, stumbling sideways.
Talia caught his arm, letting go of her trust issues for the moment. “What’s wrong?”
“He took two bullets in the back on your account,” Finn said, wringing out his shirt. “That’s what.”
Tyler pulled off his black sweater. He wore a bulletproof vest beneath. When he unstrapped it and lifted his T-shirt, Talia saw two big welts between his shoulder blades. She touched them. He drew in a sharp breath. “You’ll have some serious bruises,” she said, “but you’ll live.” She moved her hand a little higher. There was a third bruise, far more developed, on his right shoulder. “What’s this?”
“A bruise. I get them all the time. Must have happened in Venice.” Tyler pulled the shirt back into place. He found Talia’s Glock lying on the pavement and pressed it into her hands. “We need to go. Those guards won’t stay down forever.”
A little coordination with Eddie and a quick climb down to another glass walkway brought them to the same window washer basket. When Talia dropped down onto the walkway roof, she teetered.
Finn caught her. “Easy there. I’ve got ya.” He had his hands around her waist.
Talia had grabbed his biceps for support. They might as well have been steel cables. She let go and pushed his hands away. “I’m fine. I can handle myself.”
Finn frowned. “All right. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
As soon as he turned away, Talia dropped the defiance from her expression and threw out her arms for balance. She felt like collapsing onto the glass—crawling the rest of the way. But she held it together. She even refused his help a second time when she climbed down into the window washer basket.
The descent took an agonizingly slow ninety seconds. “Where’s Bert the Window Washer King?” Talia asked as they reached the bottom.
“Gone.” Tyler hopped out of the basket. “We’re blown.”
Eddie confirmed it. “Your friends from the penthouse reported in. I’m getting tons of chatter on the security net. They have men at the front entrance. More are headed your way.”
“Understood.” Tyler pushed through the service exit, out into the rain, and led them east, quickstepping along a raised pedestrian plaza.
There were voices from behind. Talia glanced over her shoulder as a pack of guards appeared at the top of the escalators, most of Arab descent. “Here they come.”
All three broke into a run. “Eddie, what’s the status of our contingency?”
“It’s Red Leader.”
“Eddie!”
“The contingency option is ready, and I’m locked on to your GPS. I’ll guide you from here.”
Without an earpiece of his own, Finn was only getting half the conversation. “What contingency? What’ve you two drongos gotten me into?”
Talia felt like asking the same question, although she had no idea what a drongo was. It didn’t matter, she couldn’t get a word in between Eddie’s directions.
“Take a right—no, a left . . . Yes. Left . . . Now right . . . Okay, straight. Doing fine.”
They entered a low tunnel. It looked like a good escape route until Eddie turned them left once more and they found their path blocked by an iron gate. Talia skidded to a stop between Tyler and Finn. “This is not fine, Eddie. This is a dead end.”
The Shard security men turned the corner and slowed, raising their weapons as they advanced. “You there! Don’t move!”
“Look around,” Eddie said. “Help is nigh.”
“What help?”
Tyler answered for the geek. “Darcy Emile.”
At his cue, a young black woman stepped out of the shadows to Talia’s right, pulling back the hood of a red sweatshirt. She accepted an earpiece from Tyler and gestured at the floor. “Bonjour, mes amies. Please step to the center of the circle.”
Talia had not noticed before, but the four of them all stood within a circle of some dark metal, laid out on the concrete floor. Darcy spread her hands and scrunched the three of them together at the center.
“I said don’t move!” The lead guard stopped a few feet from the strip with his men behind. “Hands.” He poked the air between them with his gun. “Show us your hands.”
“Do not move. Show you the hands.” The French chemist made a tsk sound with her tongue. “Which is it? Make up your mind, yes?”
Her challenge confused the man. “I . . . You . . .”
“You . . . I . . .” Darcy mimicked his stammering. “Forget it.” She pressed the earpiece into her ear. “Red Leader, it is time, no?”
“Red Leader,” Eddie sighed into the comms. “I love the way you say that. Welcome to the team. Stand by for detonation in three, two . . .”
A red warning flag went up in Talia’s mind. “Detona—”
“ . . . one.”
A rapid series of explosions drowned out the remainder of her question.
Chapter
forty-
three
PEDESTRIAN COMPLEX EAST OF THE SHARD
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
THE NOISE AND A CLOUD OF DUST forced the security team back as the floor dropped beneath Talia’s feet. The circle of concrete slammed into another circle of concrete, and then another, still falling, with Talia and the others fighting for balance. The three stacked pieces finally smashed down on rusty tracks. Finn caught Talia’s arm to keep her from tumbling off.
The dust cleared, revealing an underground train tunnel lit by work lights. A black SUV sat idling beside the tracks. Talia hobbled down from the slabs on shaky legs. Finn gave her a hand. “Bet you didn’t know the Shard sat on top of the London Bridge Train Station.”
Darcy stepped down as if stepping off an elevator and started toward the SUV. “Mr. Lukon—”
“Lukon!” The other three cut her off in unison.
“Just . . . Lukon,” Tyler finished.
She looked back at them like they were all insane. “Yes. Okay. Whatever. Do we argue about the saying of the names, or do we get in the car?”
“Car.” Tyler brushed the dust off his arms. “I’m driving.”
MAC HAD THE GULFSTREAM warmed up and ready at the airfield. Tyler spent the first few minutes of the flight changing out of his gear and then handed the bedroom off to Talia to do the same. As he walked forward through the main cabin, Finn and Darcy were arguing over why she got an earpiece and the Aussie didn’t.
“It is a matter of position.” The chemist held the device close to her eye, appraising it like a diamond. “A matter of one’s importance. I am a specialist. My work depends on split-second timing.”
Finn’s jaw dropped. “And mine doesn’t?”
“Evidemment, yes? Else Lukon would have given you one.” She held the earpiece out, only to snatch it away as he reached for it. “You do not need an earpiece because you are—how do you say?—a grunt. A minion.”
“You’re insane.”
“Everyone says that. But I do not see it.”
Tyler let the conversation fade as he entered the flight deck. He tapped Mac on the shoulder. “I’ll take over for a while.”
The big pilot half turned in his seat, expression dour. “You didn’t bring me on the job. You won’t let me fly. What did you hire me for, any—”
A sharp look ended his complaint.
“Right.” Mac punched the autopilot like a giant pouting teen and squeezed himself out from behind the controls. “All yours, then.”
The deep contusions from the guard’s bullets stabbed at Tyler�
�s spine as he lowered himself into the seat. He prayed the damage was not too extensive. Bulletproof vests were not well-named. Bullet-resistant would be more accurate. Focused shockwaves still penetrated the body, chipping bones and bruising organs. He didn’t let the pain show on his face. “Try not to clean out the galley stores. The rest of us get hungry too. And, Mr. Plucket”—he glanced over his shoulder—“send Finn up. I need to speak with him.”
Tyler needed to maintain a tight hold on that one. Outside of Talia, Plucket was his biggest wild card. Val, he understood, for the most part. Eddie was loyal to a fault. Darcy’s insanity made her strangely predictable. But Plucket? Tyler shook his head. The Scotsman would always have one foot out the door and one hand in the till. Without the right balance of carrot and stick, he could betray the team at any moment.
Finn rapped the bulkhead with a knuckle. “You wanted something?”
“Close the door.” Tyler waited for the kid to take the copilot seat, then rested an elbow on his armrest and leaned close, lowering his voice to a growl. “What I want is exactly what I asked you for. Did you get it?”
“As requested. Found it in Boyd’s desk drawer after you and the girl took your tumble.” Finn pulled a thumb drive from a pocket and held it between them. “Good show slipping the job offer into my pocket on the glacier. I didn’t find it for an hour—thought I’d gotten the best of ya.”
“We’ll have to do a rematch sometime.” Tyler took the thumb drive and tucked it away. “You played your part well in the penthouse. There’ll be a bonus for you in the end.”
The Aussie sat back, putting one foot up on the padding at the base of the instrument panel. “We could have called it even if you’d let me have the Fabergé.”
“I couldn’t do that.” Tyler slapped his leg down. “Feet off the leather. Were you raised in a barn?”
“Melbourne. Close enough.” Finn laid his head back against the headrest and rolled it over to look at Tyler. “What’s the deal with the girl? Why bring a mark on a heist?”
“Talia is no mark.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“She’s our in. That’s all you need to know.” Tyler intended to make that the end of the conversation, but the thief kept watching him. He sighed. “You have something else to say?”
“She’s a bright girl, that one. She’ll figure out the game soon enough. And when that happens, you’ll have a hard choice to make.” His eyes turned grave. “You saved her from the guard’s bullets. Good on ya, mate. But when she looks behind the curtain and sees you for who you really are, who’s gonna save her from yours?”
Chapter
forty-
four
SOMEWHERE OVER FRANCE
TALIA KEPT HER DISTANCE from the others during the return to Switzerland. How had she gotten there, trapped in an aluminum tube with a French bomber, a Scottish enforcer, and an egomaniacal Australian cat burglar with a clear death wish? Not to mention the man at the helm, a questionably former assassin who had made cameos in her nightmares.
Jordan had once warned Talia that a CIA operations officer might often find herself in a den of thieves. Talia had pictured an unsavory pub, not a Gulfstream flying over the Ardennes. The private jet was plush and clean, but a smoky, back-alley dive seemed safer. In her imagination, there had always been a door marked EXIT—one she could use at any time.
The group reached the chateau in the wee hours of the morning. Eddie met them at the door, and Talia tried to signal him with a something’s not right look, but he only had eyes for Darcy. He followed the chemist into the great room, chattering away.
Darcy dropped her bag beside the fireplace, looking utterly confused. “Wait. You are the Red Leader?”
“Yes—” Eddie coughed, dropping his voice to an ill-fitting baritone. “Yes I am.”
“But you are so small and . . .” Darcy repeatedly snapped her fingers. “What is the word?”
“Weak,” Mac offered.
“Yes. Weak.” She poked Eddie’s arms as if inspecting a life-size doll. “Weak is precisely the word.”
If Eddie hadn’t ignored her when the group walked in, Talia would have felt sorry for him. He stood there as the chemist removed his glasses, looked backward through the lenses, and then returned them to his face, somewhat askew. She made a pbbt sound with her lips and threw a hand in the air. “I am exhausted. I must sleep.”
“Of course, madam.” Conrad shot Talia and Tyler a cross-eyed glance as he bent to pick up Darcy’s bag. “Please follow me to your room. May I take your coat and . . . any explosive or incendiary devices you may be carrying?”
Talia did not see where she pulled it from, but Darcy slapped a gray cylinder with wires protruding from both ends into his waiting hand.
“I suggest we all sleep,” Tyler said, stepping to the center of the room. “We’ll reconvene for a late brunch.”
Eddie wouldn’t sleep. Talia knew that. He had likely slept a good bit already while the rest of them were riding home on the jet. She gave the others half an hour to settle in before she crept down the hallway to his room and lightly pounded on the door. “Eddie?”
He opened it an inch. Talia pushed inside and closed the door behind her. She wrapped him in a hug. Despite his buffoonery with Darcy, Eddie was the only person within a thousand miles she could trust. She laid her head on his shoulder and let out a breath as if she’d been holding it since London.
“Um . . . ,” Eddie said. “This is new.” He pried himself away. “If this is about Darcy, I swear I won’t let my relationship with her affect our friendship.” He cocked his head, narrowing one eye as if something else had just occurred to him. “And if this is about competition with Darcy”—Eddie stretched his lips back in a this is awkward grimace—“we’ve known each other a long time and I’ve only recently come to grips with the fact we’re—”
“Eddie!” Talia punched him in the chest before he said anything that would haunt her eidetic memory forever. “This is not about Darcy.”
Glancing around, she found a pen and pad on the nightstand and wrote a quick note, holding it low between them.
Sweep for bugs and cameras
He lifted a puzzled gaze to Talia. She twisted her features into a Just do it already frown.
If there were any cameras in the room, they got quite a show. Eddie launched into a terrible mix of pantomime and forced conversation as he opened an app on his smartphone and began wandering around the room. “Thanks for dropping by, Talia,” he said with mechanical rhythm, waving the phone across the wall. “How about that Gulfstream?” He bent backward, limbo-style, to scan a bedside lamp. “Pretty cool, right?”
Shakespeare, he was not. But—Eddie’s performance aside—the scanning app hadn’t picked up any bugs. He showed her the green check marks on the screen. “No transmitters. No cameras. We’re in the clear. What’s this about? Why am I scanning a room in Tyler’s house?”
“Because Tyler is not who we think he is.” The dam burst. All the thoughts and fears she had been suppressing since London came flooding out—her nightmares, the vision she had when she crashed into the pool. “Tyler was there, Eddie, at my dad’s accident.”
The validation she wanted—needed—never appeared in his expression. Eddie retreated to his bed. “Talia, the mind is a funny thing. New images blend with the old. Remember what we learned about interrogation pitfalls at the Farm. Memories get mixed up all the time.”
“Not mine. I saw him, Eddie. Tyler was involved in my father’s death. And I think he may have orchestrated the attack on Avantec too.”
She expected Eddie to write that theory off as well, but he looked up at her, nodding. “You found an extra bruise when you were checking his back.” He shrugged off Talia’s look of surprise. “I heard your conversation over the comms. I can read between the lines.”
“Yes. On his right shoulder.” The old pain in Talia’s side began to ache, and she suddenly felt as if her legs would not support her. She pulled t
he chair out from under the room’s small desk and sat down. “I shot the man who killed Ella Visser. I heard the grunt when I hit him.”
“And the placement of the wound, the development of the bruise—it all works out with your shot and the timing, assuming the killer had been wearing a bulletproof vest, correct?”
She nodded.
“It’s thin.”
“I know.” Talia didn’t say anything else for a while. There was something safe about leaving the implications of it all in the realm of mere theory. But theory wasn’t what she had trained for. She rubbed at that annoying ache in her side and took the first step down the road before her. “We need more intel—hard evidence. Start with my dad’s accident.”
“Talia . . .”
“I’m serious. If Tyler was involved, then the Agency was too. Dig into the records. See what you can find.”
Eddie looked down at his fingers, fidgeting. “That’s against policy.”
“Not if we can tie it to the active mission. Solving one mystery may lead us to answers for the other.” It was a long shot. But Talia pushed her friend. “Eddie, I need this.”
“Okay. I’ll see what I can find. In the meantime, get some rest.”
Get some rest. An easy thing for a concerned friend to advise. A harder thing to execute when bedtime arrived in that surreal stretch between way too late and dawn.
Talia’s mind wouldn’t stop grinding on the vision of Tyler. She rolled over in bed, flipped on the lamp, and reached for her worn copy of The Cat in the Hat, but then she noticed the Bible resting beside it on the bedside table. What had Tyler told her? Look into a man named Saul of Tarsus. He was the one looking after the coats.
Talia knew enough to look for Paul, instead of Saul. The translation was readable, not one of those old-English King James versions, and it had an index at the back. The list of entries led her to the seventh chapter of Acts. A man named Stephen gave an impassioned sermon amid his own trial, and at the end he accused the men before him of murdering “the Righteous One.” They stoned him for it. Such a brutal execution must have been sweaty work, because—as Tyler had said—they laid their coats at the feet of a man named Saul.