Liars' Legacy

by Taylor Stevens

  A man seated at a table on the patio stood, shook both of their hands.

  Down by the streetcar platform, the van moved forward.

  Light in the fourth-story window across the cobblestone wedge shifted.

  Holden’s index finger curled inward.

  On the periphery of awareness, he heard the tires squeal.

  The rifle stock recoiled into his shoulder.

  Light in the fourth-story window changed color, and the world went silent, as if time had paused to catch its breath.

  Pigeons scattered.

  Pedestrians entering the escalators continued down.

  And then came the chaos, van plowing toward the restaurant patio; armed men rushing the table, dropping hoods over heads, dragging off bodies; and a staccato of rapid fire, glass shattering, and metal zinging against metal.

  He’d known the grab would happen, but it shocked the senses all the same.

  Patrons screamed and pedestrians dashed for cover. The square center erupted in a chorus of battlefield crossfire, and Jill was up, running, following the van from the rooftop edge, firing, drawing attention.

  Across the cobblestones, a shadow in body armor tracked a rifle in her direction.

  Holden took aim. The shadow fell before he fired.

  He had no time to see who’d made the hit, had no time for more.

  He slung the rifle over his shoulder, cinched it tight, was up and moving, head down, skirting cover to cover until he crested the roof peak and picked up speed, chasing after Jill, who seemed to care not at all that she drew fire from two directions now.

  The van careened around the corner.

  She changed course.

  Holden stopped short, cut left to outflank her, reached the rooftop edge, leapt.

  She changed trajectory again.

  He cornered in the opposite direction, chasing tiles foot to foot, collided into her, and took her down in a rolling heap.

  She hooked around him, arms and legs tangling fast.

  He’d been here before, not here in Prague, but here fist to fist in a fight for life. He knew what she was capable of, how quickly she could gain the upper hand, and what would happen if she did. He couldn’t take that risk.

  She broke free, rose up, recognized him, and in recognition hesitated.

  He swung the rifle stock, caught her fast upside the head.

  She went down hard.

  He stood over her, lungs aching, heart pounding, fully alive and intoxicated by the fear of having accomplished the most stupidly anti-self-preserving thing he’d ever done.

  This, perhaps, was what it meant to fall in love.

  On the cobblestones below, the van was gone.

  Pedestrians had fled.

  The firefight continued in sporadic bursts, Americans and Russians fighting each other in another man’s battle, as Jack had planned.

  In the distance sirens wailed.

  Holden knelt, got an arm beneath Jill, lifted her over his shoulder and, laden by deadweight, moved cautiously for the nearest ladder. She’d wake eventually, and when she did, she’d break his fucking heart.

  CHAPTER 20

  Námstí Republiky

  Prague, Czech Republic

  KARA

  ONE SECOND TO THE NEXT, A BLINK, A HEARTBEAT, AND THE MORNING had gone from mission accomplished to complete and utter shit. From her perch at the square’s highest point, camouflaged in drab gray-green and sheltered beneath stone wings, she’d watched, trepidation turning to horror as each new second took bad to massacre.

  She’d wanted a scoped rifle instead of a spotting scope.

  Had requested a position that gave her a shot at target instead of a distant eye on him, but Nick had wanted her where she’d have a bird’s-eye view of the entire arena, had wanted her where she could watch and analyze, and hell if that wasn’t exactly what he’d gotten.

  She had watched commuters, oblivious in the daily routine, exit the underground and hurry on for the sidewalks, and had watched pigeons flock and settle, and she’d called in each movement.

  Banter had run thick with gallows humor.

  She’d especially watched the delivery van, blatantly out of place and the first obvious sign there was more to this morning than met the eye. And she’d watched target step out onto the patio, accomplice beside him, blond hair straying from beneath a hat and most definitely a woman. It’d been vindication seeing the two of them there like that, knowing she’d been right, that they were hunting a pair: male and female, brother and sister.

  Target and accomplice had continued toward a man who sat at a table alone, and she’d watched that, too, holding her breath, willing them just another few feet forward.

  They’d been that close.

  But the delivery van had started forward, picking up speed in a straight line for the patio, shutting the window of opportunity at fifty miles an hour.

  Aaron hadn’t yet had the angle for a clean kill.

  Juan had confirmed he had target.

  Nick gave him the go.

  The crack of a high-powered rifle had shattered the early workday morning, but it hadn’t been Juan’s rifle. Or Aaron’s. Or Nick’s.

  One second to the next, just like that, everything had gone to shit.

  Her focus had darted from rooftop to rooftop to window to balcony, heart pounding, adrenaline coursing, searching for what she’d missed, for what they’d all missed in the long hours leading up to the rendezvous.

  A blink, a heartbeat, and bad had turned to massacre.

  The van reached the patio.

  Masked men leapt out, grabbed target and accomplice, pulled both in.

  The rapid staccato of an automatic weapon replied.

  People scattered. Glass shattered.

  In her earpiece, chaos followed.

  Nick and Aaron spoke over each other.

  Another barrage of firepower followed and her brain pulled in each new piece of information, processing the details like an algebraic equation, canceling out on one side to cancel on the other.

  She found a muzzle peering between curtains behind a flower box.

  She called out coordinates.

  A rifle report answered in place of words.

  Shadow distracted her.

  Movement below a rooftop ridge caught her eye.

  Her brain circled for x. In her ear Nick grunted, and with that grunt, her stomach clenched and the whole of her screamed in protest.

  Across the square a shadow moved within a window.

  Another report rang out.

  The van peeled away.

  A barrage of bullets rained down on it, first toward the tires, then the driver’s door, then the windshield, round after round ricocheting off.

  She tracked the weapon fire.

  Nick said, “Kilo, take coms.”

  Pain and struggle filled his voice. He’d been hit, was hurt bad.

  Her throat closed, and she fought to breathe.

  Nick had wanted her where she’d have a bird’s-eye view and she’d watched it all, impotent, powerless, disbelieving. She was useless here, she had to move.

  She crawled away from the ledge and angled for the hatch.

  He said, “Don’t you fucking dare.”

  He couldn’t see her. Hadn’t heard her. He just knew her that goddamn well.

  She continued the backward crawl.

  He said, “Get me eyes now.”

  His words were raspy, like he was repositioning himself and fighting for air.

  She hated him, hated his stupid stubborn loyalty, and crawled back for the ledge, because that was what he wanted.

  Tires squealed. The van turned a hard corner.

  Target was gone.

  The man on the patio lay dead beside the table, blood from a head wound pooling between chairs. The square went silent.

  Beginning to end, it’d been forty-five seconds, sixty at most.

  She called for status.

  Nick was silent. Juan silent.


  Aaron answered. Of course it’d be Aaron who fucking answered.

  All that mattered now was getting what was left of her team out and to safety, but her brain wouldn’t let go of the movement she’d seen.

  She knew who’d taken that shot at Nick.

  If she had a rifle of her own, she’d zero in on that window and put a bullet through it, and then another and another, bleeding her soul dry through gunpowder with the same gripping urgency she’d felt on so many wee-hour mornings when going home empty handed wasn’t an option.

  No matter what else, that shooter would die.

  She ran the scope toward the far end of the square.

  Monotone, emotionless, she called in the coordinates.

  Aaron said, “I don’t have a clean line of sight.”

  She said, “Take the shot.”

  His rifle answered.

  She scooted back from the ledge, said, “Clear out. I’ll meet you for extraction.”

  He said, “Where are you going?”

  “You know where I’m going.”

  “That’s against orders.”

  She knew it. Nick knew it. They all knew before going into a job.

  Injury, capture, death, if the team couldn’t get to you without compromising the objective, you were on your own. Headquarters might send in a local cleanup crew after the fact. If you were lucky, they’d get to what was left of you before the enemy did.

  Every extra second she spent in this square was compromising the objective, but fuck if she was leaving Nick behind if there was a chance he was still alive.

  She said, “If I’m not there in an hour, break for the border without me.”

  Aaron said, “You—”

  She unplugged, cut him off mid-syllable, scrambled for the access hatch, dropped down into the stairwell, and flung herself over the handrail. She dropped half a floor at a time in a race to ground level, burst out onto a side street, paused long enough to get a look at the obvious, and bolted between cars for the square’s narrowest point.

  Detouring around the kill zone would eat away minutes.

  The fastest way to him was through.

  She charted a trajectory broken by the tram stop and an advertising board, put her head down, ran. Bullets hit the cobblestones, ricocheted, sent projectiles flying.

  She ducked and scurried.

  A mosquito whine passed inches from her ear.

  Her feet kept moving.

  Her heart hurt, her lungs burned. She skidded into the doorway that led to Nick’s position, barreled through, slammed it shut, and started up, listening for him, listening for life, but heard only her boots pounding, echoing thud against thud in an empty stairwell. She tumbled onto the third-floor landing and found him leaned against a doorframe two rooms off from where he would have been.

  His vest was soaked. His hands were red. His eyes open.

  She checked the hall.

  All but two doors were closed. Offices.

  Anyone already at work likely hiding beneath desks.

  She knelt beside him, afraid to touch him, as if wishes and wanting could keep him alive and reaching for him might be the curse that expelled his final breath.

  But he was already gone.

  She slid beside him, pulled his shoulders into her lap.

  Guilt and self-loathing chased each other around her head, taking her back to the night before, to the warning she’d given him about a trap, to his decision that regardless, the operation was go. Protest had gurgled up her throat then, nausea mixed with desperation compelling her to argue, to convince him he had to convince headquarters to look at the bigger picture and postpone the hit, but she’d clenched her jaw to keep the words from forming. She couldn’t press him in front of the team and had known it’d do no good to argue with him in private, either.

  If Nick had a fault, it was loyalty, so she had consigned herself to confronting whatever fate had to offer, and hadn’t spoken.

  Hadn’t spoken, hadn’t spoken, hadn’t spoken.

  She rocked forward and back, forward and back.

  Didn’t matter if he would have listened or not. She hadn’t tried.

  A part of her split and calved, ice shelf shearing off into the sea.

  On the barren cliff behind, there were no tears, only cold.

  She smoothed his hair, closed his eyes, wiped the blood off his face, pulled herself free, and lowered his head to the floor.

  She checked his ears, his neck, his chest.

  The earpiece was missing, as was the receiver unit, and it took a few minutes to find them, and a few minutes more to find his weapon and kit. He’d stashed it all and dragged his body as far away as he could before he’d gone under, his final moments spent trying to protect his team from whoever came looking for ways to trace them.

  He’d been a foot soldier in a machine that didn’t deserve him.

  She picked up the rifle, shouldered his gear.

  Her feet moved her toward the window with a will of their own.

  She zeroed in on the last coordinates she’d given Aaron.

  He hadn’t had a clean line of sight, hadn’t confirmed the kill.

  Patience rewarded her with movement.

  Shadows danced, her brain reacted, and her finger kissed the trigger. Thunder rolled out from beneath her cheek. Red spattered against the curtain.

  Another report rang out, and self-defense kicked in.

  She retreated behind the wall, shoved the rifle into its custom-built case, strapped it to her back, stepped over Nick on her way into the hall, and started down the way she’d come. There’d be a time for grief, a lifetime for self-recrimination, but no matter how much blame she laid at her own feet, she wasn’t so gluttonous for punishment that she forgot where true responsibility belonged.

  —Information withheld.

  —Missing pieces.

  Nick was just as dead as if headquarters had planned this.

  With each step, anger and rage and hate grew stronger. She no longer cared about the objective. She wished Jacques Lefevre and Christopher Holden, or whoever the hell they were, long and happy lives. At least someone would escape this tragedy.

  She’d find a way to do right by Nick, would be patient and smart and would ensure nothing led back to her, because the only way to avenge him in death was to honor him with her best-lived life. She paused on the ground floor.

  Sirens reached the square. Shouting followed.

  Law enforcement fanned out.

  Juan was one building over, four flights up. There was nothing she could do for him. She gripped the straps at her shoulders. Leaving the rifle behind would make it a whole lot easier to slip away, but this was all she had of Nick.

  She wasn’t letting go.

  CHAPTER 21

  Prague 9, near Kolbenova Metro Station

  Prague, Czech Republic

  JACK

  THE WORLD WAS DARK, AND TIME UNCERTAIN, SAME AS THEY’D BEEN since the pillowcase went over his head. He sat motionless in that uncertain dark, chin to chest, wrists shackled to armrests and ankles to chair legs, listening to acoustic patterns that spoke of empty walls and empty floors with just enough furniture that the three men who guarded him weren’t playing musical chairs for a place to sit. He was in a ground-floor room in an empty office or industrial building somewhere near Prague.

  They hadn’t driven fast enough or long enough to get farther than that.

  And the air was too sterile, absent the cooking grease, body oil, and cleaning chemicals that lingered in curtains and furniture, for it to be a home or hotel, and too still and quiet to be an embassy or other building under diplomatic cover, and it had none of the baseline stench of body fluids and fear that would have pointed to a black site. Whatever here was, it was temporary, outside the apparatus purview, and away from spying eyes. Just he and the men who’d grabbed him, waiting in silence.

  No television, or radio, nothing but an occasional whisper.

  They’d hit him hard, these men. />
  They’d shoved him to the floor of the van, and tossed Anna in through the back, and her high-pitched terror had bounced within the enclosed space as they careened across cobblestones, and bullets ricocheted off the panels.

  He’d tried to crawl toward her, to comfort her.

  Their boots had responded with vicious kicks.

  He’d seen them, their hands and feet. He’d seen through sound and movement, just as he did now, and he’d tracked them like Doppler tracking a storm. His senses, running on overdrive and fueled with post-Clare trauma, had driven him to his knees in a retaliatory strike he hadn’t planned.

  He’d punched his elbow back into the nearest face.

  Had felt the crunch, and smelled the blood.

  The van lurched, knocking him off balance, and a sap struck his ribs, landing blow after pummeling blow.

  He swiveled, hooked a leg over a shoulder, locked thighs around a ropy neck.

  The van peeled around a corner.

  He took the neck with him into the side panel.

  More bullets hit. Anna’s screams drowned out everything else.

  They beat him until he let go, and then they grabbed her by the hair and stuffed a rag in her mouth. He inched in her direction, and they boot stomped him every time. The van braked to a hard stop soon after, and they hauled him away, and her muffled screams went silent.

  He never did have a chance to talk to her or apologize or explain.

  He wasn’t sure what they’d done with her—assumed she was in a room similar to this—knew she was hurt and scared, and for that, the fault was all his.

  He’d counted on professionals, not goddamn sadists.

  That miscalculation raised the possibility of others and dredged the murky subconscious depths, churning up self-loathing and fear. He’d factored for exponential possibilities, but he could never know what he didn’t know. There’d always been a chance that the Russians, with their enormous network of spies, were three steps ahead of him. There was still the chance these weren’t Russians at all.

  That final thought pushed self-loathing into anger.

  He shoved Clare out of his head, same as he’d been shoving her for the past ten years, and his focus homed in on the patter of soles against tile, and tracked footsteps from the wall at his left across the floor.