The gunman on the roof screamed in frustration. It was a woman’s voice.
“Toni!” Quinn breathed. Even though she could not see her, Quinn knew her guess was right. Toni made sense.
Noah had just shot her, though. He had shot Aslan, too. Yet they were his people…
The impact of Toni’s weight landing on the roof made the metallic groaning and vibrating speed up. The carriage didn’t just shiver. It convulsed.
Aslan stirred and tried to get to his feet. He pushed himself onto his hands and knees. The carriage lurched.
Quinn clutched the railing as it dropped at the other end. Abruptly, the entire Ferris wheel came to a creaking halt. The inertia was too much. It still hung on the rod which passed through the middle, although the rod was not attached at that end, anymore.
Quinn heard Toni scrambling at the roof, panting. She slid along the roof and dropped over the end. For the first time Quinn saw her. To save herself, Toni flung out her hand, looking for anything to clutch. She found the door handle and grabbed it. The door slid open.
Toni’s weight swinging on the door was too much for the old carriage. The door hinges gave a groan, then the door splintered and pulled away.
Quinn cried out as she watched Toni’s body fall and disappear from view.
The carriage gave another shudder and sagged even more. How long would the fastening on the other end hold?
The shaking and the sharp tilt of the floor was too much for Aslan in his weakened state. He slid down toward the door, scratching at the floor with his fingers to halt his slide. He gave a despairing cry.
Quinn threw herself forward, slithering along the sloping floor. She grasped Aslan’s reaching hand just as his legs shot through the open doorway. His weight turned Quinn. When she reached the end of the carriage, her knees and her shoulders slammed into the door frame. There was nothing beneath her but thin air and the door frame she was wedged across.
Aslan’s full weight yanked at her arm and her shoulder became white fire. She held her grip, panting. Her pants had little cries inside them, for the pain was more than she could bear.
Aslan looked up at her. A calm expression was in his eyes. “If you are who I think you are, you will let go of my hand. I’m already weak. I won’t be able to hold on for long. So who are you?”
“Start it again, Scott!” Dima cried in his ear. “The carriage will fall! Start it up! We have to get the carriage down!”
Scott felt sick. He stared at the computer screen, seeing the truth for himself. “I crashed the system to make it stop. It has to reboot before I can start it again.”
“How long?” Dima screamed.
The $50 million question.
“I don’t know,” Scott said truthfully.
The pain was so intense. Quinn felt it detach itself from her and lift away. It didn’t disappear. She knew it was there, only the pain had enclosed her in a shielded bubble, where she could think clearly. Or perhaps it was the adrenaline. She was afraid but even the fear was distant.
The carriage shook and groaned. It wouldn’t last long. She was running out of time.
She met Aslan’s gaze. “The Kobra. Who is he?”
Aslan’s eyes widened. Then he frowned. “That is what you want? All this time, all the things I’ve done…and you want the man who made me?”
“Tell me who he is,” Quinn said. “I think Mitchell was his man. I think the Kobra gave the order to have Denis killed because he thought the CIA had reached out to you, and that you would give them the Kobra. He was cleaning house, Aslan.”
Aslan’s face worked. She could see soul-destroying pain there. “No. He wouldn’t…”
“Tell me who he is, Elijah. Tell me and I’ll make sure the Kobra is dealt with. For Denis.”
Aslan’s eyes glistened. Tears. “I chose Vienna,” he said softly, “because Denis was here.”
Then he let go of her hand.
Quinn screamed.
The Ferris wheel jolted and moved again. Quinn scrambled to stand on the edge of the door frame, which was now the floor. The movement of the Ferris wheel made the carriage shimmer. She could see it was sliding down the central pole.
Quinn tore off Aslan’s cumbersome coat and threw herself up the sharp-sloping floor of the carriage. She gripped the rail on the windows and hauled herself up. She used the toes of her boots to lever against the window frames and made her way to the other end of the carriage. She hung from the rail and struggled to open the other door.
With a hard shove, the door swung open. Quinn gripped either side of the frame with her hands and dangled for a moment. Her shoulder flared in pure agony. Her vision grayed out.
Another shudder of the carriage warned her to keep moving. She took a deep breath, then hauled herself up through the door. She sat on the edge of the door frame, on the outside of the carriage. The wheel was moving more slowly than before and she knew the carriage would not last. She could not stay here and wait for the carriage to reach the ground.
Quinn worked herself up on to her feet and balanced there. She had once been able to balance on her toes for endless minutes. She had danced in The Nutcracker as Princess Aurora, which required her to greet every courtier while balanced on one toe.
She could do this.
Quinn looked up. Overhead was a huge beam which looked to be the width of her hips. There were holes drilled into it, which made her think of Meccano pieces. The beam ended with a bracket which held that end of the rod from which the carriage hung. The carriage had slid down the rod…and was still sliding. The beam was a foot above her head. She would have to jump to reach it.
The carriage gave another shimmy and slid a few more inches down the pole. It was going. She could feel the gathering speed under her feet. She had run out of time.
Quinn took a great breath and bent into a plié. Letting the breath burst from her, she threw herself up, her arms reaching. She aimed for a hole in the beam and curled her fingers over the edge of the hole.
She had forgotten the beam would be icy. The cold bit into her fingers and they slipped. With a cry, Quinn threw her injured arm up over her head to grip the other side of the beam. Her shoulder gave another angry protest, making her vision swim.
She felt the beam under her fingers and inched them forward until she found her other hand. She clamped her fingers together, one hand holding the other.
With a shriek of wood against metal, the carriage slid off the end of the pole. Then it splintered and cracked as the support struts of the Ferris wheel smashed it to pieces. Timber and glass rained down, while the wheel shook with the impact of the carriage against the supports.
Quinn could only listen. She hung desperately, afraid to even turn her head to look.
It seemed to take a month before the Ferris wheel descended far enough toward the ground for her to drop to the oily soil beneath. There were people standing right beside the Ferris wheel, waiting for her to reach them.
As soon as she dropped into a crouch on the soil, her fingers of her good arm pressing against the dirt for balance, two people hoisted her to her feet. They carried her out from beneath the Ferris wheel, down the concrete steps and onto the pavement.
She was put on her feet and hugged. Quinn cried out, as the hug squeezed her shoulder.
“Oh my God! I’m sorry!” Leela cried, letting her go.
“Leela?” Quinn said, bewildered. She took in Leela’s clothes, which were skimpy at best. A white lab coat buttoned to the chin and a pair of Wellington boots. Her legs were bare. She wore a borrowed overcoat over the top which was far too big for her.
“I thought Noah killed you. I saw you in a tub of acid…” Quinn said.
Leela shook her head violently. “It was supposed to look like me. It wasn’t me. There’s no time. Come with me. We have to get you somewhere safe.” She picked up her hand and tugged.
For the first time, Quinn took notice of the other people milling on the pavement. Most were in uniform. Viennese police
and special forces unit in their black uniform.
Quinn spun to study the roller coaster. From here, it was a lacy network of white struts.
There he was.
Noah was halfway down the structure, climbing agilely. The rifle was over his shoulder.
“Leela, get her out of here!” Dima yelled.
Leela yanked on Quinn’s arm. “Hurry, Quinn!”
Quinn tried to shake off Leela’s hold. “I have to talk to him!” Noah was jumping from level to level, making the descent look easy. He was clearly in a hurry, though.
“No time!” Scott yelled.
“Take the shot,” Dima said, her voice firm.
Scott brought a rifle up to his shoulder and bent his head to peer through the sights. He was aiming at Noah.
Quinn sucked in a terrified breath. “No!” She lurched forward. Leela held her back.
The rifle fired with a flat crack, jerking Scott’s shoulder.
Noah slammed up against the white beams, thrown against them by the bullet. He hung by one arm.
Quinn pressed her hand over her mouth to hold everything inside.
Noah dropped. He made no attempt to break his fall. He fell into the bushes at the foot of the roller coaster structure, behind another pretty white picket fence.
Quinn moaned, her head hanging. Now she understood why Aslan had let go. For this one moment, if she had been in Aslan’s place, she would have let go, too.
The Viennese police took off at a run, to recover the body.
When Leela coaxed Quinn toward an ambulance which stood waiting at the edge of the park, Quinn let her. She had nothing better to do, now.
[28]
Saturday, February 22nd
Because Jenny was contracted by the CIA and had top level clearance, Quinn didn’t have to watch her tongue. She could say exactly what she wanted to say. Only, she didn’t feel like saying anything at all. She attended the weekly sessions because it was part of the agreement which kept her out of jail.
Jenny had been enthusiastic about Quinn returning to work. When Jenny pressed Quinn on her first week back with the orchestra, Quinn shrugged. “I went through the motions. Just as you told me to. It was a week.”
Jenny nodded. “And did you listen to the orchestra playing, at all?”
If she had any capacity for caring, Quinn knew this aspect of her return to Boston would have upset her the most. “It was meaningless.” She paused, considering. “I think music is lost to me.”
Jenny was the upset one. Her face fell. “Well, it’s still early days. Give yourself time. After something like this, you can’t expect to return to your old life in exactly the same way.”
“It isn’t my old life. My old life had Denis in it.”
Jenny raised a brow.
Quinn added the truth which had been forming in her mind for the last few weeks. “None of this is my life, any more.” Maybe that was why music had lost its charm.
Jenny put her chin on her hand, balanced on her elbow. For a psychologist, she was very casual. She had bright, big brown eyes, which could ooze sympathy or dance with amusement, in turn. Unlike any other psychologist Quinn had ever met, Jenny didn’t seem to mind showing her emotions.
“If your old life is not your new life, then what is your new life?” Jenny asked.
Quinn sighed. “I haven’t got a clue.” The absence of alternatives yawned before her, keeping her awake at night, as she puzzled through why she had no ambition to figure it out. She didn’t have the enthusiasm or energy to do anything at all.
It wasn’t entirely true. There was one thing—only, it wasn’t an ambition. It got her out of bed in the morning, though.
It had started off as a simple inquiry, because answers—too many answers—were missing. She had been bundled up into an ambulance and transported to an anonymous hospital somewhere in the outskirts of Vienna and kept there for three days. Nothing was wrong with her shoulder beyond bruises and she had no other injuries, yet she didn’t move beyond the room with the bed.
Instead, people came to her.
Most of the people wore suits, spoke with American accents and asked detailed questions. They took no notes. It told Quinn any sound in the room was being recorded.
Quinn didn’t bother lying about anything. There was no point. Whatever anyone asked her, she answered in full. The questions seemed to be endless. They included requests for a list of things she bought on Aslan’s credit card, to describing the men she saw upon the estate in Innsbruck. The layout of the house, there. The color of the sofas in Aslan’s apartment in Vienna. Her impressions of Aslan. Her impressions of Toni.
One person to question her was a fat, old man with a silver beard and young eyes. He stayed for four hours, his legs crossed, his hands on his knee. He asked the most bizarre questions.
He gave her a small smile as he settled on the chair beside the bed. “Tell me how Noah smelled when he fought with Toni in the kitchen.”
No name. No introduction. No one had offered their name.
Quinn crossed her legs and raised her brow. “How he smelled?”
The man with the silver beard just nodded.
Quinn thought back to the moments in the kitchen when Toni attacked her. When Noah appeared so unexpectedly.
How had he smelled?
What scents had she detected at the time? A casserole bubbling on the range. The remains of breakfast still lingered in the air. The sharp soap scent from a commercial dishwasher chugging away under the counter. Pine…
Abruptly, not only the smells came back, but she could hear once more the sound of Toni’s sharp grunts as she lashed out. The soft growl Noah made as he launched himself at Toni.
The moments in the kitchen came back to her almost as fresh as if they’d just happened. “Body odor,” Quinn said softly. “Only, it was sour.”
The man with the silver beard nodded as if she had answered correctly. “Adrenaline. Most likely mixed with a healthy dose of fear.”
“Noah was afraid?” She shook her head. “He showed no emotion at all.” She could see his face clearly now. Recalling smells, then hearing sounds, had painted in details she had nearly forgotten.
“When Toni had you by the neck, what did her hand feel like?” the man asked.
With a jolt, Quinn remembered. She remembered everything. She handed it all over to the man with the silver beard, as he asked his unexpected questions. They prompted her back into the memories with a freshness which made her feel the fear, sickness and aching tension all over again.
Quinn slept after the man was gone, even though it was still the middle of the day. She slept until a new visitor arrived to ask her more questions.
Then the questions stopped. People stopped visiting. One of the last visitors was Leander. He nodded at her.
“Is Dima coming to see me? I have questions,” Quinn said.
“I’m here just to bring you up to speed,” Leander said. He stood at the end of the bed and spread his fingers on the untouched cover. “Normally Scott would do this, but I suspect you don’t want to see Scott.”
Quinn’s gut tightened. The memory inserted itself. Scott raising the rifle. She shook her head. “No, I don’t want to see him.”
Leander nodded, as if he had watched the memory play in her mind. “A lawyer will visit you tomorrow morning. He will ask you to sign a lot of papers. My advice is that you sign them all.”
“What are the papers?”
“Among them will be a document which binds you to secrecy. You can’t talk about what happened in Austria, or the real reasons behind Denis’s death. You can’t talk about anything which has happened since Denis died. In exchange, the government will not pursue any lines of inquiry which emerge from your actions.” Leander gave her a small smile. “In other words, you will be protected from prosecution.”
“As long as I don’t say anything to anyone,” she finished.
“You know how to do this,” he assured her. “You did when you were a ch
ild. This is the same thing. You are closing a door. The door must stay closed if you want to have a normal life.”
“And is anyone ever going to answer my questions? Why did Noah protect me? Why did Toni try to kill me? Why did Noah shoot Aslan? What happened at the warehouse? Was the shipment halted? Did anyone catch up with the Russians?”
Leander held up his hand, making her stop. “For reasons of national security, most of your questions will not be answered.”
Quinn gripped her fingers together. “National security? As I was actually there, right in the middle of it, explaining to me what happened will certainly destabilize the entire country.”
Leander’s smile was small. Sour. “Trust me, Quinn. Even if we answered every single one of your questions, it would not satisfy you. Every answer would generate a dozen more questions and if we answered those, they would spawn another thousand questions.”
She scowled.
Leander gave a tiny shrug. “Besides, when you’ve had a chance to think it through, I suspect you will come closer to the real answers than any of us. You got to know these people. You can figure it out.”
It was the politest “no” anyone gave her in those three days.
The next day, as Leander promised, a lawyer arrived with a small mountain of documents. Quinn signed them all, as Leander had suggested.
That afternoon, she was flown back to the United States. She arrived in Boston in time for New Year’s Eve, so jet-lagged she was forced to go to bed at seven p.m.
On New Year’s Day, she sat at her kitchen table and tried to encompass that she was back home once more. Her apartment seemed more unrealistic and dreamlike than her bedroom in the luxurious house in Vienna.
It was easy to tell her she couldn’t have answers, only it didn’t stop the questions endlessly circling in her mind. As there was no need to rush back to work, she had no structure to her days, and nothing pressing to do, which let the questions plague her.
When she went to buy groceries for her fridge and pantry, Quinn discovered her bank balance had increased by over a hundred thousand dollars. When she looked into it, the bank manager himself confirmed that Denis’s life insurance policy had indeed been paid out.
Hunting The Kobra Page 26