Liars' Legacy

by Taylor Stevens

  Kara shook her head, as if reiterating what she’d said at their first meeting just wasn’t worth the effort, and she looked away.

  Jill sat, tucked her feet up, placed the tablet on the table.

  Kara, like Jack, valued information more than just about anything, and information was what she’d held back.

  Information was where this was headed now.

  Jill said, “Explain to me why your people want to kill my brother.”

  Kara hesitated, as if she wasn’t sure if she’d been asked a trick question or if she needed to state the obvious. She said, “He’s an assassin they can’t control, and they want to eliminate future risk.”

  “Yes, but in the immediate sense.”

  “To prevent an immediate assassination.”

  Jill said, “Do they know who the target is?”

  Kara didn’t answer.

  Jill said, “Yeah, I didn’t think so. Makes sense, really, because my brother isn’t the assassin they should be worried about. The same guys who, quote-unquote, ‘hired’ him—and trust me, there’s no money involved, only blackmail—they’re the ones who pointed you to him in the first place.”

  Kara’s gaze slowly tracked her way.

  Jill could see her mind running, reorganizing, and categorizing existing intelligence to accommodate new data, so much like her brother’s. She said, “You don’t think it’s odd that you’ve known what cities he flies into and where he’s meeting but not who he’s killing? Moscow has been playing you—your branch, division, whatever it is you guys are—keeping you focused on him so you don’t look at me.”

  She paused for effect, waited until silence became painful, and said, “At some point within the next three days, I will put a bullet between the eyes of a sitting member of Congress, and all your guys out there running themselves ragged trying to find my brother will never see me coming. Even if I turned you loose right now and you went straight back and told your bosses everything, you couldn’t stop me. I am that good. Not bragging. It’s just the way it is. It’ll be a public spectacle, something impossible for TV cameras to miss. Those are my orders. I’ll give you a minute to connect the dots and figure out why.”

  Kara said, “I don’t need a minute.”

  “To be clear, we don’t want to do this, but your people are making it really hard not to. Whether we do or don’t, your guys still want us dead. You’ve seen my brother work. You know what he’s capable of. So you get how big a deal this is when I tell you he has a way to shut this whole thing down. It’ll require a channel to where the backroom deals are made. We need you to make that call.”

  Kara studied the table and then her hands, as if plotting the many directions this could lead. She said, “Even if I manage to get the right person on the phone, there’s nothing I can say that will make them take me seriously.”

  “No,” Jill said, “but they’ll take him seriously.”

  She opened the tablet, punched in the code, pulled the image up on the screen, and flipped it forward. “Liv Wilson, right?”

  Kara didn’t speak, but she didn’t have to.

  “We already know how to find her,” Jill said, “but we’d prefer a call. A switchboard number will do. Just a few words . . . proof-of-life type stuff.”

  Kara said, “Are you planning to grab her, like you did me?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Are you planning to kill her?”

  “Would it bother you if we were?”

  “I don’t like her. You already know that,” Kara said. “I probably wouldn’t care a whole lot if I didn’t know and didn’t play a part in it. But I do know. I don’t want her blood on my hands.”

  Jill closed the image.

  Conscience mattered to Kara, and that’s why she played to it.

  “We don’t know what kind of resistance we’ll face,” she said. “Our goal is to do this with as little violence as possible.”

  Kara said, “I guess in the end it’s all the same. The goal is to stop the chaos. If you want the guy who runs the shop, I have his cell phone, too.”

  “I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”

  Kara recited. Jill typed.

  She’d needed the numbers, needed them the way they’d needed access to coms in Bolivia, and she’d needed confirmation that Jack had tracked down the correct Liv Wilson, but what she’d really come for was the same thing that had made it crucial that they ensured no blame fell on the wrong shoulders.

  Whatever Jack’s personal reasons for looking out for the woman, and no matter how much Jill personally liked her, and no matter that she didn’t deserve to take the fall for other people’s sins, Kara was going back—back to the kill team or to an analyst position or to her old station in the navy. Where didn’t matter, because where was irrelevant. She was a woman who had access to people who knew things, and having given this to them now, she’d primed herself for giving more.

  Not next week or next month or maybe even ever.

  But if and when that time came, she was a string to pull.

  Clare had taught that lesson well.

  Acknowledge a person’s deepest desires, guard their secrets, soothe their hidden shame, and reaffirm their worldview and self-image, and you got yourself a back door.

  CHAPTER 34

  Bethesda

  Maryland, USA

  JACK

  THE HOUSE WAS A MODERN TAKE ON A PENNSYLVANIA COLONIAL WITH a heap of McMansion thrown in, five bedrooms, seven baths, fully finished basement, three-car garage, large backyard, and a secluded pool, set back from the road and surrounded by mature trees on a half-acre lot in a stately, low-traffic neighborhood that made home security systems redundant, because even if random crime did stumble in, it’d get lost trying to find its way back out. Getting in unnoticed meant yet another night on the rough.

  He’d laced into the trappings of a fitness junkie, parked a mile away, and headed out for a predawn run that took him to the homes on the rear parallel street. He loped through the shadows between them, working his way from backyard to backyard to reach his target, a far different environment than those Clare had thrown him into, but the basic rules never changed.

  Don’t be seen. Don’t get caught.

  He paused at the perimeter, searching for signs of dogs or young children.

  No toys, no water bowls, no poop.

  Were the weather warmer, more inviting, he’d crawl the exterior, hunting for an open window.

  In this damp December cold there was no point.

  He headed around the corner for the bay doors that faced a privacy fence.

  He needed a silent entry.

  That ruled out picking locks.

  Even an unarmed security system still chimed when the doors opened.

  The garage was the second easiest point of entry.

  It took effort, and a fight against the chain lock, but he got the smaller of the two roller doors raised high enough to wedge beneath. With his back to the ground and the full weight of the door resting on his chest, he ran a penlight along the ceiling, walls, floor in a search for cameras and motion sensors and let himself in.

  Silver and black, his and hers Range Rovers filled two of the parking spots.

  In the third was a workshop with an eighty-inch, double-stacked Snap-on tool chest, a ten-foot workbench, and a PegBoard, on which high-end power tools were mounted the way he would have mounted weapons, and not a hint that any of it had ever been used. On the back wall a rack held two trail bikes, both of which looked like they’d never made it farther than the box, and in the corner was an array of gardening tools, mostly untouched. The large, empty chest freezer beside the interior door was the closest he’d get to a place to hide. He sat on the cold concrete, looking out over thousands of dollars in wishes and wants, all of which spoke to an idea of life with no time to live it, the type of detail his sister would have used to worm her way into a person’s good graces, assuming they had something she wanted.

  He’d never had patience
for the head games, but he’d never really had to.

  It’d always been easier to wind Jill up and set her loose.

  They’d wreaked a lot of havoc, the two of them, and in spite of the insanity, they’d had some good times. Those had always been worth holding on to.

  Footsteps from inside the house broke the reverie.

  The door opened, the alarm chimed, and a man strode into the garage.

  He was six feet flat, trim, midfifties, sharply dressed, on the phone, barking at someone about Taiwanese markets. The black Range Rover backed out. The garage door went down. Jack crept toward the door that Mr. Taiwan Markets had been in too much of a hurry to lock. The handle turned for him.

  That would save him time gaining entry when seconds mattered most.

  Today, the silver Rover would stay in the garage.

  Instead, a town car would arrive at the front, and security would arrive with it, and men with guns would escort Liv Wilson from door to backseat. The message Jill had left with the tranquilized foot soldiers in the motel room should have seen to that, and on the chance that hadn’t been enough, the phone call from Kara would have pushed things over the edge.

  He needed these precautions.

  Needed the false sense of safety they provided.

  Needed the change in routine.

  He sat with his back to the door, waiting, listening, and in the wait, impatience grew and time became the enemy. He was tired. Tired of not sleeping. Tired of running. Tired of spending nights in chairs and bus seats and on cold garage floors.

  Thirty minutes passed, forty. He debated letting himself in and handling the whole thing here and now, but prudence and planning warned him against it.

  The security men didn’t concern him much.

  Ten seconds or less was all it’d take to remove that threat. He could haul Liv Wilson off, use her own car to spirit her away. But as soon as she failed to turn up for work, the whole world would start chasing. They needed more time than that.

  Timing was everything. Timing was why he’d routed Jill and Holden by train and why their journey required a ten-hour drive after reaching Chicago.

  Traveling by rail had allowed him to erase Kara’s trail and gave his sister the time and space for mental games while on the move, but that had been a bonus. What he’d really purchased was the time to get ahead of them, to hunt from a parallel path, and to conjure the bridge beneath their feet.

  He was a magician raising bricks before each step touched ground.

  Inside the house, a doorbell rang.

  The security system chimed, signaling an open door.

  Voices carried low and distant, and then the system chimed again, intoning the countdown of a house alarm arming, and the same thirty- to ninety-second grace period that allowed owners to come back in for a forgotten item if needed allowed someone like him to slip in through an unlocked door unannounced.

  He let himself into a mudroom that had never seen mud, and scanned the ceiling and floor in a search for motion detectors. In keeping with the neighborhood’s sense of quiet safety, the security system seemed limited to door and window sensors.

  He stole into the kitchen, checking corners and niches.

  The cameras were here, somewhere, wireless devices to capture the goings-on while the homeowners were away. They had to be. Every other home had them these days, and even in a household without kids or pets, they’d exist to keep track of whatever domestic help kept the vast inside dust free and sparkling. He kept his head down, moved quickly up the stairs, found the master bedroom and, from there, the master closet. Unless someone watched in real time, that’s all they’d have of him, a record.

  He perused clothing and shoes and personal items, and eyeballed distance between furniture, bathroom, and balcony, and closed himself inside and settled into the thick plush carpet. For two days he’d been on the go, pushing pieces into place, and all he had now was time to sleep and time to wait, and he drifted down, down, deep down into the oblivion of timelessness, and woke to the vibration of an alarm going off in one pocket and a minute later a pager going off in the other.

  He pried his eyes open, glanced at the pager readout.

  The technology, once big in the eighties and early nineties, had mostly vanished as cell phones became smaller and cheaper, but it still had a thriving niche among emergency personnel and was reliable in ways cell phones weren’t. Batteries lasted weeks, if not months, and more importantly, the old-school tech couldn’t be tracked. He’d collected the devices from their stuff in Houston, along with the X-Caliber and Jill’s knife.

  His sister carried one.

  Holden carried another.

  The number on the screen, a prearranged code, told him that Jill had called Liv Wilson to request a meeting, and Liv Wilson had taken the bait.

  She’d mobilized a tactical team.

  All they’d find was Jill’s phone.

  It’d ring, and rank would answer, and Jill would tell them they’d been very, very stupid, and Holden, who’d be in position long before the chase started, would put a bullet through the guy’s kneecap. And Jill would call Wilson again and say she’d try again tomorrow, and then she’d disappear. Barring some other emergency, there’d be no reason for Wilson to stay late at work.

  He dozed and waited.

  The pager vibrated again, confirming all moved forward as planned, and he slept again and woke to notification that Liv Wilson was in motion, vehicle last seen headed in the direction of home.

  A minute later, the pager buzzed with Holden’s response.

  Mr. Taiwan Markets was still at the office.

  Jack stood and stretched, limbering muscles that had stiffened during sleep, and he upped the tempo to get blood moving through sluggish veins. He sucked on dextrose to compensate for too many hours without food, and right on cue, according to the traffic map in his head, the front door opened and the alarm pad sounded.

  A number sequence killed the countdown.

  Two voices—male and female—headed up the stairs.

  That wasn’t right.

  Inside Jack’s head, the mental maze shifted.

  He hadn’t planned on Liv Wilson soothing defeat with angry, adulterous sex and had no doubt that’s what this was, because Wilson, now in the bedroom, confirmed it, telling Security Dude that her husband wouldn’t be home till early morning, because of something-something product launch, something-something time zones.

  The bed groaned. Dirty talk turned vicious.

  The noise of body slapping against body ramped up speed.

  Jack led with the weapon, closet to room, pulling in detail in rapid order.

  Security Dude, shirt unbuttoned, pants around his knees.

  Wilson, stripped down to bra, ass up, face down on the bed.

  Service weapon, holstered, a couple feet to the left of her head.

  Security Dude noticed him first.

  Shock registered before hips stopped thrusting.

  He lunged for the holster.

  Jack fired, bullet to the bed, bullet to the guy’s shoulder.

  Liv Wilson jerked upright in a mad scramble to disentangle.

  Jack said, “Freeze.”

  It was the cliché of every cop show ever, but it had the desired effect.

  The room held motionless, suspended in time.

  Jack moved in closer, muzzle aimed at Wilson’s head, and he snagged the holster strap and tossed the whole thing off the bed. He motioned to Security Dude. “Hands up. Step out of your pants.” And then, “Walk backward till you reach the window and turn.”

  Liv Wilson inched toward the nightstand.

  Jack put another round into the bed.

  “Last warning,” he said. “Next one will hurt.”

  He could see her face now.

  Whatever was on it wasn’t fear, and that was stupid.

  Security Dude reached the window, turned, as instructed.

  Jack motioned Wilson off. Under other circumstances it might’ve
been hard not to look at her, but right now all he cared about was where her hands were and how far he could get her from whatever weapons she had stashed around the room.

  He motioned her opposite the window.

  “Walk backward,” he said. “Turn when you reach the wall.”

  He retrieved Dude’s weapon and, with one muzzle pointed toward the window and the other toward the wall, nudged a foot into the guy’s pants and kicked them to the center of the room. He checked pockets, emptied contents into his own.

  To Wilson, he said, “Where are your cuffs?”

  She said, “I don’t . . .”

  This would be so much easier if killing wasn’t such a last resort.

  He put a bullet into the wall, inches from her head.

  She said, “Bedside, top drawer.”

  He inched to the bed, nudged the drawer open. Reached in, felt the underside, found a small revolver and also the cuffs. He pocketed the gun, dropped the restraints at the end of the bed. To Wilson, he said, “Walk backward. Pick up the cuffs, hold your hands out where I can see them, and continue to the window.”

  This time she did as instructed.

  He had her secure one of Dude’s wrists, sent her back to the wall, ordered Dude bedside and then to the floor, and secured the other end of the cuff to the bed’s metal inner frame. One threat now less of a threat, he snatched a bathrobe from the closet, tossed it at Wilson, told her to put it on, and had her lead the way downstairs. Concerns he’d had about cameras were gone now, at least insofar as the bedroom, stairway, and kitchen were concerned.

  Even a woman with balls the size of Wilson’s wouldn’t be brazen enough to bring a man under this roof while recording the evidence.

  Either she’d shut the cameras off or they didn’t exist.

  He directed her to the kitchen, grabbed her purse from off the island, used her phone to dial Jill’s pager, hurried a barefoot Wilson to the mudroom, had her reset the house alarm, and then pushed her onward, into the garage, and onto the backseat of the Range Rover. He kept her there, muzzle directed at her head.

  Jaw clenched, nose flaring, she glared.