by Gayle Lynds
"Julia Austrian!"
She ignored the voice. Instead she looked over her shoulder. She shouldn't take the time, but she had to know. She felt a small explosion of hope, because she'd pulled ahead. The killer must've lost time as she'd followed across the street.
"Julia Austrian! I'm Sam Keeline. I phoned you, remember!" Sam stared. He was sure. It was her all right, and she suddenly glanced over her shoulder straight at him. He felt himself forget to breathe as he took in all of her. Her face was shiny with sweat, somehow accentuating the beauty of her fine features and voluptuous mouth. Her long hair was a sensual tangle of golden curls and waves. She had a flat belly and high breasts, and she moved with a supple fluidity that made him think of sandy beaches, warm sun, and sex.
As she looked back, Julia saw a burgundy-red, Jeep-style car pacing her, and the guy behind the wheel was leaning toward the rolled-down passenger window, his face earnest. He had sandy hair and a crease between his eyebrows. A stranger. But then she looked into his eyes. They were gray and deep set and caught up in the action. She saw an unconscious feral magnetism in his face. A dangerous face.
She heard him shout again, "Sam Keeline, remember!" He held up some kind of badge in the window. "CIA. Get in the car. I'll help you!"
Help her? Sure. Right. How convenient. The CIA to the rescue? Oh, please.
She shot him a look of utter disbelief and pushed him from her mind. She rushed on toward Lex. Oxygen tore her lungs. How much longer could she run? She was accustomed to exercise, but she was beginning to fear that winning this brutal race was beyond her abilities.
In the car, Sam eased the accelerator to keep pace. Austrian wore navy trousers and a white blazer that shone like a beacon every time she emerged from the shadows on this narrow street of lovely old townhouses, bay windows, and wrought-iron fences.
Meanwhile her pursuer was catching up again. The black-haired woman had raised her pistol several times, but each time the shifting sidewalk throngs had stopped her from firing. As the two women hurtled along, they bumped into people, pushed them aside, weaved a ragged course among them, and left behind a trail of curses.
Sam fumed as he tried to get a clear view. Then one of those moments occurred when different purposes coalesced into the same result: Most of the pedestrians moved off the center of the sidewalk to stop at buildings and cars, leaving a passage as open as if the Red Sea had parted.
The pursuer finally had a clear shot. She raised her gun.
Ahead, Austrian's white-blazered back was a perfect target.
Sam reacted automatically. He couldn't let this woman be hurt. He wanted the Amber Room, and Austrian might know something. As the crowd parted, he yanked his steering wheel to the right and bumped the Durango up over the curb.
Pedestrians screamed and fell to the side. A delivery boy on a bicycle braked abruptly and somersaulted over his handlebars, his pizza box falling ten feet away.
Julia shot back a look of surprise. In an instant she saw what had happened and a chance, perhaps her only one, to escape. She jumped on the delivery boy's bicycle and pedaled away down Seventieth, her breath thin and white in the cold night.
Meanwhile, the street erupted in fresh noise. Wheels screeched. Horns blared. Stunned, the bicyclist got to his feet and roared curses after Julia as she picked up speed and wheeled around the corner onto Lexington Avenue.
"Get rid of that blazer!" Sam bellowed at her luminous back as she disappeared.
The pursuing woman seemed hardly to break stride. As Sam jumped out of the Durango, she leaped up and rolled over the hood of his car like an expert. As she rolled, their gazes met for an instant, and Sam saw a flash of recognition in her cold, flat eyes. It was only a split second, but at the same time Sam had his own flash—she not only knew him, but from somewhere he knew her.
He tried to place the face, the stony eyes, the short black hair. Her hair, wherever he'd seen her, hadn't been black or even short. She had a hard face. It seemed as if those too-perfect features were built on a glacier. The cheekbones were prominent, with seductive hollows beneath. By the way she moved, he could tell she had a good body. But she'd made herself up to look simple and plain, and her clothes were loose and dowdy. This was a woman accustomed to fooling the world. Was that where he knew her? Somewhere in his field years for the Company?
He caught a glimpse of someone yanking out a cell phone. Gone were the days when every New Yorker was passive, blind, and mute to violence.
He could pull his gun. He could kill the woman. But why was she after Austrian? He wanted information.
As she landed lightly on her feet on his side of the Durango, his two fists slashed in a half circle toward both sides of her body in a hasami-zuki scissors punch.
With surprising strength, she blocked him with her forearms, ducked, and brought up her pistol, her finger on the trigger.
He was in her way. She planned to kill him.
Around them, people stopped, paralyzed.
He chopped his hand down hard on her wrist. Her pistol crashed to the sidewalk. "Who are you? What do you want with Julia Austrian?"
She leaned back and shot an animal-quick yoko fumikiri cutting kick at his chest.
He moved just in time to avoid the blow's full force. He grabbed her foot, twisted. And she fell.
Suddenly the yelp of sirens split the air. Police cars.
"Stop him!" a woman in the crowd shouted.
"Look what he's doing to her!" screeched another.
"Hey, asshole!"
The outraged throng swarmed protectively between him and the woman. He shoved against them, elbowed through.
But the woman had scooped up her gun and was already running away, the pistol low and inconspicuous at her side.
"Hold him! Don't let him go!"
Hands tore at his clothes, grabbed his shoulders.
He pushed back and broke free, frantically looking for Julia Austrian.
It seemed to Julia her lungs would explode. But she couldn't stop. She knew where she had to go, and she was going to do her damnedest to make sure she got there. Someone had to answer for Norma, or whatever her real name was.
It wasn't just the fear of the killer that drove her on as she bicycled through the thick traffic. Now she knew her mother's death couldn't have been a simple theft, not if the killer had tailed her all the way to the United States and had gone to the trouble of getting close enough to be her companion.
As long as the killer had thought she was blind, there was no reason to tail her. And if the killer knew Julia had seen her and was worried about being identified, why hadn't she just murdered her as soon as they were alone in the maisonette?
Fear, anger, and baffling confusion powered Julia's feet as she frantically bicycled on. Towering ahead she could see the inverted silver petals of the top of the stainless steel Chrysler Building.
It didn't make sense. How had the killer known she wanted a companion? How had she known about the village service?
Sweating, Julia dodged cars. She was heading south on Lex. She passed the toy shop that was now a pet shop. Passed the big Dalton's bookstore that had been transformed into a Hallmark shop. Change. Everywhere was disorienting change.
Nose rings. Lip rings. Tattoos. Painted hair. Narrow shoulders. Odd clothes.
But none of it mattered.
She was exhausted. Fighting her confusion. Fighting for her life. She wanted to drop onto the sidewalk, rest her face against the cold concrete.
Faster. Faster. Faster.
The only living link to the killer she could think of was her uncle Brice. He'd been the one who'd called the village service. Had hired her "companion."
And then she saw it—the subway entrance at Sixty-eighth. The Hunter College stop. Gasping, she risked a look back.
Behind her, Maya Stern charged down the sidewalk. Julia's white jacket was a beacon, and Stern had followed it easily. She was sweating, vaguely smiling, enjoying the power that flowed to her muscles and the
anticipation of the kill. Because she was closing in. Julia had lost time winding through the traffic, while Stern had found the sidewalk almost bereft of pedestrians.
With shock, Julia saw how near the killer was, a gray shadow in the gloomy night. She dropped the bike and tore down the closest steps. The subway had changed. It was cleaner. There was little graffiti on the tiled walls. And passengers were pushing plastic cards into slots so they could pass through the turnstiles. Which meant the subway was now automated.
It didn't matter. Change didn't matter.
Don't stop! Run!
She didn't need money. I know how to do this. She was a New Yorker—
She slid in behind a man in a long overcoat so close she could smell his Old Spice aftershave. An incoming uptown train below made a low rumble. The turnstile thunked and whirled. The man looked back, annoyed she was passing through on his money, but there must've been something in her face that made him decide not to protest. He closed his mouth and stepped smartly through the metal arms and to the side, out of her way.
She burst past and hurried down the steps toward the uptown platform. She crashed into people. They swore and dodged. Odors assaulted her. Decades of mold, urine, and chlorine bleach.
She reached the bottom, where there was a break in the crowd. She had a clear path to the train. Hope filled her. And then a gunshot blasted past her ear—
Sam Keeline slammed the Durango into a loading zone on Sixty-eighth Street, jumped out running, and saw both women disappear down the subway steps. Heart racing, he sped after them.
The shooter had stopped beyond the turnstiles at the top of the steps where she'd spotted Julia Austrian's putty-white jacket. She'd backed against a wall, aimed, and fired in one of those series of liquid motions that confirmed to Sam how well trained she was. For her, tracking and killing had apparently become as much her nature as breathing.
The gunshot split the air like thunder. But Julia Austrian had blasted away as if her adrenaline were on fire, and the shot had missed. Now she ran along the platform as if the hounds of hell nipped her heels. The other passengers weren't sure exactly where the shot had come from. They panicked, most running back toward the exit, while a few trampled forward toward the far end of the platform.
As people rushed past, Sam fought his way from the steps. Then the would-be killer got off a second round.
He heard a scream. Someone down there had been hit.
Austrian?
As the train left the station, the shooter was moving again, pushing against the throng that was trying to flee. She was heading down to the platform, and Sam pushed his way through the crowd after her. There was nothing quite like a mass of people in panic. Fear was a contagious disease. It took over the brain and nervous system, laid waste to sanity, and gave relief only in flight. Sam felt it in his gut—a sickening compulsion to turn and escape to the safety of the street above, to forget the Austrian woman, to forget the Amber Room. To forget Irini . . . Never.
He didn't like to think about it, but redemption hungered in his soul. Now that he knew he could make a difference, maybe save a life, it flowered. He wanted to save Irini. Save Austrian. He wanted to have a high opinion of himself again.
He barreled into the shooter, his shoulder aimed at her midsection. He connected, impressed by the solidity of her body. He threw her back against the wall.
She reacted with the ferociousness of a rabid cat. She gave him a numbing upper cut to the chin with her elbow and turned her .38 toward him. As if in slow motion, he saw her finger whiten on the trigger and squeeze.
He dodged. The shot was so close it burned the skin of his right temple. His head exploded with the noise.
It took him only seconds to regroup, but already she was gone, a slippery wraith threading among the press of passengers, who were now even more panicked to escape to the street above.
He saw a man in jeans and fleece-lined denim jacket lying on the platform. He had a leg wound. A couple of passengers knelt beside him. Which meant Julia Austrian hadn't been hit. She'd gotten on the train.
Sam rushed back to the stairs. Another train pulled in. As the doors whooshed open, a flood of people poured out, filling the subway with the scent of warm wool and tiredness. Sam pushed his way through them searching for the black-haired shooter. Dammit! Where had she vanished?
20
7:42 PM, SATURDAY
Maya Stern was trapped. She'd seen the Austrian woman leap aboard the first train and the doors close. There was no point taking the next train, because she wouldn't know where Austrian had gotten off. Now she had to escape the subway and call Creighton Redmond immediately.
She'd failed. It soured her stomach and made her irritable.
But she rejected the useless emotions. She reminded herself of her long string of successes: The U.S.-based drink company chairman, supposedly killed by terrorists during a business trip to Ecuador. The inconvenient wife of the CEO of an international banking consortium, found accidentally drowned in a spa pool in New Mexico. Political foes, business rivals, debtors in too deep, annoying former lovers . . . all had died at her hand. She'd planned the operations. She'd executed the targets with the ease of long experience. And she'd been paid handsomely. Her confidence was earned.
So now with her usual calm detachment she buried herself among the flood of departing passengers as they pushed toward the exits. She'd recognized the Company man who called himself Sam Keeline. It'd been years ago in Berlin, and he'd had another name then. From the way he fought—giving no more quarter, despite her being female, than she'd give him—she knew he wouldn't stand on social niceties. He was trouble.
And he wasn't her only problem. Even worse, the subway would soon be blocked. The NYPD would keep everyone inside to question them about the gunfire that had wounded the man in the leg.
Keeline had to be somewhere behind her on the platform, but in the crush of exiting passengers he could still catch up. She had to leave swiftly, but she also had to leave without being noticed. When she reached the steps up to the turnstiles she didn't take them, but pushed past against the crowd coming from the rear of the platform.
As she moved she worked discreetly and efficiently. First she smeared the makeup above her eyes until it was sooty brown. Then she transferred some of the color to her cheeks, giving her a dirty face. From her pocket she took the cut-off tips from the two baby-bottle nipples. She inserted one into each nostril, forcing her nose to swell. She dropped her jaw and jutted it forward five millimeters. Now she looked stupid and mean. She knew this because it was one of the many disguises that had put her at the top of her business. Not even her brother would recognize her.
Next she slipped off her gray, conservative suit jacket, turned it inside out, and put it back on. It was a worn and grease-spotted khaki green. Hidden in the pushing throng, she unzipped her trousers from waist to hem on each side and removed them, revealing the torn black leggings she also wore. She peeled a thin, dingy knit cap from the trouser lining and let the trouser pieces fall to the platform. Soon they'd be trampled into rags. She tucked her black hair up into the cap.
With that, the transformation was complete. She was a street person—dirty and unappealing in her greasy khaki jacket, dilapidated leggings, and shapeless cap. Just one of the invisibles who populated any major metropolis.
She turned back with the now dwindling crowd and climbed the steps to the turnstiles. With any luck, this Keeline would have hurried on and out onto the street searching for her. She watched all around, assuring herself no one was too curious about her. Satisfied, she pushed with the flow up the steps. The fresh night air drew the crowd like a magnet. She relaxed. No police in sight
And then she saw him—Keeline. He was standing at the top, his gaze alert as he examined every face. There was something about him that made her nervous. It wasn't just that he had no false assumptions that she was physically inferior. It was more that he gave the sense of being slightly off-balance. She was shrewd at
split-second analyses of situations and at making swift decisions while executing a mission, but she had little insight into human emotion. So all she could think of was that he was unpredictable and therefore dangerous.
If he interfered again, she'd kill him.
Quickly she dipped her head and bent her knees, making herself shorter in the throng as they continued to climb.
She could almost feel Keeline's gaze upon her, questioning. Her peripheral vision was excellent. As she passed where he stood, she gazed surreptitiously up through her lashes. He was there all right, and he was looking straight at her with a puzzled expression. An odd jolt of fear rattled her. Quickly she enhanced the changes in her face, moving her jaw forward and pressing out the muscles in her cheeks until they were almost flat. She kept her head low. Humble.
He frowned. She moved on. At last she could no longer see him. The back of her neck prickled with a sense of imminent peril. Was he coming after her? It'd be awkward to have to kill him with so many people around. She slipped her fingers inside her jacket to the stiletto that was fixed inside the waistband of her tights. She dipped her head lower, twisted briefly, and caught a glimpse of him.
He was still standing there, but he was no longer watching her. Instead he was worriedly scrutinizing the last of the crowd.
Her hand relaxed on the stiletto. The muscles around her mouth flexed in an unusual expression. She was smiling.
6:42 PM CENTRAL STANDARD TIME, SATURDAY
ALOFT OVER THE MIDWEST
The jet's motors were a quiet hum, resonating through presidential nominee Creighton Redmond, giving him that odd peace that even the most cynical politician or exhausted traveling salesman understood: On the road, all goals were possible.
But it didn't last long. A sense of urgency swept through Creighton like an icy wind. Only three more days until the election, and there was still so much to do, and so much that could go wrong.
He sat forward in his seat and stared out the window. The luxurious campaign jet was speeding west, chasing the sun and the votes to California. Tomorrow would be a long, grueling day of whistle-stops through the length of that critical state. His wife and two younger children were aboard, sequestered in his private quarters behind him. She was probably trying to nap, her earplugs firmly in place, while the children played their tiresome electronic games. All three were necessary window dressing for tomorrow. Ahead of him, the voices of his staff were muted by the door. They were talking strategy, viewing the latest TV ads, and refining tomorrow's speeches.