Bianca shot him as he went up those steps. Right through the kneecap. Lowering her Win Mag as he screamed and fell, she emerged from the cover of a glossy green magnolia to stride across the immaculately kept lawn toward him. The grass was brown and crisp with cold beneath her feet, but there was no snow.
No witnesses, either, except, perhaps, for the half-dozen horses grazing disinterestedly in a nearby field. No one to see a young woman in a black coverall with a black knit cap pulled down over her blond hair. The big stone house was the centerpiece of a hundred-acre farm. Usually it hummed with activity, but on this, the last Sunday before Christmas, all the help had gone home.
His wife was away. As always, Bianca had done her research. Wafford was home alone.
She was there to kill him. Enough of running scared. Time to take the battle to the enemy. One thing that had become clear to her since the CIA kill team had shown up in Savannah was that the only way she could live her life in peace was to stamp out everyone who thought she had no right to live. Before he’d leaped from the helicopter, Mason had said that since Hanes had reported her dead and the house her corpse had supposedly been in had been blown up with a missile, she should be safe. She didn’t think so. Because too many of the people who’d hunted Nomad 44 had found out about her life in Savannah, and she didn’t just want to live, didn’t want to run and start over again and spend the next however many years looking over her shoulder and praying that she wouldn’t be found.
She wanted the life she had made for herself as Bianca St. Ives, and she was prepared to do whatever she had to do to make sure she could have it.
It was survival of the fittest. And from now on, thanks to what they’d made her, that would be her.
“What—what do you want?” Wafford was crying, groaning, clutching his wounded leg as he tried to crawl away from her up the stairs. Twilight was falling; the dying light threw a soft golden glow over the steps. She walked up them after him. The Win Mag was slung over her shoulder now. A pistol was in her hand.
“I want names,” she said. “I want to know the names of everyone who was involved in the Nomad program, everyone who knows Nomad 44 exists, everyone who’s been hunting me.”
Whimpering, he turned his head to look up at her. The light fell on his face. It was twisted with pain—and, as he recognized her, fear.
“My God. Hanes told me you were dead.” He seemed to choke.
“Hanes is the one who’s dead.” His death, in the fiery explosion that had consumed the safe house, had been confirmed. His charred remains had been found. Bianca knew, because Doc was an internet wizard who could find out anything. It was he, for example, who’d found out that Tim and David were at a hospital in Berlin being checked out before they were flown back to the United States, that Lee had been granted asylum in South Korea, that Irene had been reunited with her mother.
It was he who had found out that Colin had returned to London and his business.
And that the ChapStick had actually done its thing.
So far, Hanes’s was the only body that had been found in the ruins of the safe house. But the excavation, and the forensics that went with it, was ongoing.
Was Mason alive? Was he dead?
She didn’t know.
That was one thing Doc couldn’t seem to find out.
“I want names,” Bianca said again. “You didn’t decide that I needed to be eliminated on your own. Who told you to go after me?”
His whimpering deteriorated into sobs. He writhed, clutching his knee. “It’s my job, you have to understand. I was given an assignment to carry out. I— It wasn’t about you. I had no choice.”
“I’m going to ask one more time, and if you don’t tell me I’m going to shoot out your other knee.” Her voice was fierce. “Who told you to go after me?”
“Oh, God. Hal Woodbridge.”
The powerful Senate Majority Leader, currently gearing up to make a run for President of the United States.
Pfft.
The silenced round sang right past Bianca and went straight through Wafford’s heart. He collapsed without so much as a gurgle. Bianca whirled, her firearm at the ready.
Standing about ten feet from the bottom of the steps, lowering his Beretta, was Mason. Something inside Bianca that had been stretched taut as a bowstring ever since he’d stepped off that runner now relaxed.
“That was the name I was looking for,” he said. “You can leave the rest of this cleanup operation to me. Go home, live your life.”
“How did you know I was here?” Because she’d been careful. No one did.
“I didn’t. I just decided I’m tired of running from them. Let them run from me.” A glimmer of a smile curved his mouth. “Like you did, hmm? Well, they say great minds think alike.” He started to turn away, looked back. “Thank you for getting Margery and Marin safely to England, by the way. I’ve got them squared away.”
He turned to go.
“Wait.” Such a quick, almost casual encounter. He’d been her father. One question had been burning in her mind ever since she’d learned the truth. She’d never meant to ask it at all, but—it just came out. “Why didn’t you kill my mo—Issa and me, all those years ago?”
He turned back around, looked at her. She found that she was holding her breath, waiting for him to respond. His face was expressionless, and she thought he wasn’t going to.
Then he said, “She was tiny, you know. Issa. Maybe a hundred pounds. Big dark eyes. She looked like she’d fall over if you breathed on her hard. And young—nineteen. But she was smart. It took me a while to track her down, and when I did that little thing had the balls to come at me with a fire extinguisher. She blasted that foam at me and snatched you up—you were a baby, bawling your head off in one of those bassinet things—and ran. It was a rented room, up a flight of stairs, and she slipped going down the last few steps and fell. I was coming after her by then, and I saw her fall. Only instead of putting out her hands to save herself, she twisted around to try to protect the baby she was carrying—you—so she hit hard on her back. When I got to her she was lying there looking up at me, kind of stunned, with you still cradled in her arms. The fall had knocked the breath out of her, but with me standing over her she managed to suck in enough air to say, ‘Please don’t hurt the baby.’ Not ‘please don’t hurt me’ but ‘please don’t hurt the baby.’ She was looking up into the face of a ruthless killer and she knew it and she begged for you. She was so brave, and so fierce in defense of you. I couldn’t do it. I knew if I didn’t they’d send somebody else, so I told her I’d protect the two of you and I did. Until they killed her.”
His voice went heavy on that last.
Bianca wet her lips. “You kept me.”
His mouth twisted. “She loved you so much. There wasn’t anything else I could do. By then she’d made us a family, had you calling me Daddy. It was the damnedest thing, the way that worked out.”
“You loved her.” It wasn’t a question. She knew him well enough to divine the answer from what he’d said.
“I did.”
She couldn’t ask it. But he must have seen the question burning in her eyes: Did you love me?
“You were such a smart kid. You grew on me. I started to teach you things, and you learned everything I threw at you and more. I could see your potential. The DNA thing they’d done to you—when they sent me after you they’d made it sound like you were some kind of mistake that needed to be erased. But in every way that counted you were just a little girl. You thought I was your father, and after a while I felt like your father.”
A sudden tightness in her throat made it hard to speak. There was so much she wanted to say, but emotion wasn’t something they did. Bottom line was, she owed him. She’d never before realized how much. “You saved my life, and you raised me. Thank you.”
“No thanks needed. I said I felt like your father. I still do,” he said. Then, without giving her a chance to answer, he lifted a hand in farewell, turned and w
alked away into the gathering dark.
37
Tuesday, December 24th
Bianca stepped inside her condo, locked the door and inhaled the familiar scent—plus pine—with pleasure. It was shortly after 8:00 p.m., she’d just finished having burgers with Doc after declining to accompany Evie to a party at her mother’s house, and she was looking forward to spending the rest of Christmas Eve in luxurious solitude, with a hot bath and maybe Netflix for company.
In one corner of the living room, the Christmas tree twinkled merrily. Otherwise, the place was dark.
A gaily wrapped package on the coffee table in the living room caught her eye. The tag on it, in letters big enough so that she could read them from where she stood, said Bianca.
It hadn’t been there earlier.
Hmm.
She and Evie, and Doc, and Hay, had all exchanged presents at the office. Evie had ended up giving Hay a framed, autographed picture of the Georgia Bulldogs baseball team, because the autographed bat she’d originally gotten for him had, um, died.
Bianca crossed to the present, looked at it, sat down on the couch and started to open it. The tag was just that: a tag. The only thing on it was her name.
It had been professionally gift wrapped. The paper gleamed gold, the ribbon was sparkly white.
Inside was a beautiful polished rosewood box with a hinged lid.
She lifted the lid.
It was a music box: a melody tinkled out.
The tune was “Nobody Does It Better.”
She sucked in air.
Then looked up as a tall dark shape stepped into the doorway that led to the bedrooms and leaned a shoulder against the frame.
Colin.
She was so glad to see him it was ridiculous. Her heart made like the Grinch’s and expanded three sizes.
“Evie let me in,” he said.
Because she’d told Evie he’d swept her off her feet. Because Evie thought they were having a whirlwind romance.
Because Evie hated the idea of her being alone on Christmas Eve.
“What are you doing here?”
He smiled at her, that charming, crooked smile that did bad things to her good intentions.
“We have another job,” he said.
* * * * *
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
What would a book be without the publishing team behind it? Not as good, for sure. I want to thank my wonderful editor, Emily Ohanjanians, who has done such a fabulous job with these books; Margaret O’Neill Marbury, for her unflagging support; Meredith Barnes, for keeping on top of book tours and publicity; and everyone at MIRA Books. It’s a privilege to work with such dedicated, talented people!
I also want to thank my agent, Robert Gottlieb, who tirelessly looks out for me, and the team at Trident Media Group.
I want to thank my husband, Doug.
And last and most important of all, I want to thank you, my readers, for sticking with me all these years. You’re the best!
See where Bianca’s journey started with the first book in the Guardian series
Bianca St. Ives is smart, talented and beautiful. She’s also a high-end thief, a master manipulator, a card shark, and a genius of disguise …
Buy The Ultimatum now
Need more Bianca St. Ives?
Clever. Cunning. Highly skilled. There’s only one Bianca St. Ives. And for her enemies, that’s one too many.
Buy The Moscow Deception now
The Fifth Doctrine: The Guardian Series Book 3 Page 30