by Michele Hauf
She heard the approaching car. Shoving the cell phone into a pocket, Saskia picked up her speed. As the nose of a brown sedan appeared from the left, she leaped for the hood and slid across it. Managing to grip the windshield wiper stopped her from flying off and face-planting on the slushy tarmac. The car stopped. She slid off.
Bending forward, she lifted a leg to land a roundhouse kick to the driver’s side window. It didn’t crack.
Saskia opened the door before the driver could lock it. Reaching in, she grabbed the driver, a bald, stout man whose heft made it impossible to lift him out of the seat. Instead, she yanked him toward her by clapping her hands about his head. “Where is Jack Angelo?”
“Who are you, crazy woman?” His thick Finnish accent ended with a growl.
“You know who I’m talking about. Jack Angelo.”
“I have no names. No names. Ever!”
“Fine. The Irishman who was just in your office. You removed a chip from the back of his head.”
“No, I—”
She kneed the man in the side off his face and he yowled. Gripping the steering wheel, she saw his other hand go for the stick shift. Saskia reached in and pulled the keys from the ignition. Then she pulled the man down so the top half of him tumbled out from the car, but he was still held inside by the seatbelt across his waist.
She grabbed his head again and lifted her boot. “The next one is going to hurt. Might even take out an eye. You ever do reparative surgery on yourself?”
“He was at the office!” the man confessed. “But he’s gone now.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know! I never ask. And who would tell me? You know that.”
She did know that. And wasting any more time with this idiot would prove fruitless. Shoving him back into the car, she stomped off, tearing away the mustache as she did so.
If Jack was going off the grid he’d get out of town as quickly as possible. He could have a contact pick him up, though that would be risky. Stealing a car would be wise, but taking the ferry would be too slow. And he knew Clive and Niles had intended to fly. It would be stupid to risk running into them at the airport. As well, Jack did not like to fly.
The only option Jack could possibly go with was the ferry. No ferries ran this late at night, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be the first on the boat in the morning.
Swinging around a corner not far from her place, Saskia ran along the sidewalk and into her building. She’d turned in her apartment key before leaving for the job this evening, but she wasn’t stupid.
She arrived at the door, which she’d left open a hair. Inside was empty and quiet. Using the light on her phone, she beamed it across the floor. No wet or drying tracks that Jack might have left behind had he returned here.
Her phone rang again. She did not want to confirm to Chester that she’d lost the subject, so she didn’t answer. He’d figure it out. Which would not go well for her.
What next? Jack hadn’t given her any clues where his destination was, despite her trying to wheedle that information out of him. She’d only gotten a redacted dossier on him when she’d been assigned this job. Minimal information. Nothing regarding the reason he’d been recruited into the ECU. The key components to guessing a man’s next move were always family, friends, and history.
She had nothing.
Except.
Family is everything to me. Sometimes you take a fall for family. But always, a man is there for them.
Where was Jack’s family? In London? Would he really go back to England after making a clean break from the ECU? It would be the stupidest move he could possibly make.
No, he was too smart for that. And she needed to get to the ferry station.
A text buzzed on her phone. Chester sent her a grainy photo from the airport time-stamped twenty minutes earlier. It was Jack.
Chapter 18
Hiking up her backpack over a shoulder, Saskia strolled into the airport. Half a dozen bleary-eyed travelers wandered the clean white and gray environment, looking as if they’d been lost on a strange planet that sported IKEA trees and tin-can-stars suspended from the ceiling. Behind her, moonlight beamed through the blue-glazed windows high above, giving them a deep azure gleam. It coaxed dreams one could only find from a deep and relaxing sleep.
She could use some sleep. But she’d sleep when she’d confirmed that Jack was nowhere to be found, and indeed, the only place he could possibly be was the ferry station. It didn’t make sense that he would fly. He’d initially traveled sixteen hours by ferry to avoid a simple one hour flight here to Helsinki.
But CCTV photos did not lie. And Chester had been adamant he’d ID’d Jack correctly.
She approached the ticket counter where a yawning woman sat behind one of a dozen computers. She was the only one on this late shift. She must have checked in Clive and Niles an hour earlier. Would all three men find one another in the airport? Belize had been their destination. And Jack’s destination?
Baffled was putting her mental state lightly.
She scanned the departures grid above the ticket desk. The woman sitting before the computer didn’t smile or acknowledge that Saskia stood before her. Two flights had left within the last hour. One to Brazil, another to Amsterdam. Clive and Niles could be on either. And so could Jack.
A few more flights left on the hour. One to France. Another to London… Had he? It was Jack’s home base. And as far as she knew his family was there. Of course, that was conjecture.
There was one way to find out.
Now sans moustache and looking like a woman—bedraggled at best beneath the thick white down jacket—Saskia stepped forward and assumed a shy attitude. She placed her hands on the counter and sucked in the corner of her lip. “Was a handsome man with little hair and a lot of stubble on his jaw in through here a bit ago? Jack, my—” She closed her eyes and tried to affect tears, but they wouldn’t fall. Damn it! “We argued. I want to say goodbye to him. I know he’s headed home…”
The woman behind the counter lifted a brow, but she was not impressed.
“I wanted to give the ring back to him,” she tried. And she patted a coat pocket. “He told me it was his mother’s.”
“I can’t let you through security without a ticket, ma’am,” the woman finally announced.
“Oh, I’ll buy a ticket. It means that much to me. I can’t let him leave like this. He has to know I didn’t mean what I said. I was angry, but also, not thinking straight. No matter what happened between the two of us, I want him to be happy. And I need to give the ring back. I can’t possibly keep it.”
The woman glanced to her computer screen. “The flight to London is not even half full. I can sell you a coach ticket for two hundred euros.”
“Worth it,” Saskia said, relieved, and also shocked.
If Jack was going off the grid, then why return to his home?
* * * *
The flight to London did not leave for four hours. And Saskia didn’t want Jack to see her in the airport, so she wandered around the building, then found a place to rest in the terminal five gates down from where she’d seen Jack’s long dress coat flung over a red plastic seat. He was here. He must be sleeping on a chair, maybe the pair of legs she saw jutting out from behind a support pillar.
If she’d had a disguise on her she would have wandered closer, but she’d packed light.
Setting her backpack on the floor between her feet, she leaned over and caught her forehead in her hands, and wondered if she could manage tears now. She wasn’t sure she even knew how to cry. But it felt like she could. Was this how a person felt when the tears flowed? An ache in her chest, a heavy thud to her heartbeats, and an empty drop that seemed to circle in her belly?
She did not want to go to prison because she’d fucked up the job of keeping Jack in the ECU. Or worse. There was always the thre
at of a tombstone should an asset screw up.
Should she consider running? If Jack could do it, she could. And she happened to know a surgeon who could take out the chip with lightning speed. But she had no cash to hand. The ECU credit card she’d used to purchase the plane ticket was always monitored and strictly budgeted.
And the five hundred thousand Clive was supposed to transfer to her account? That account was owned by the Elite Crimes Unit. She never got to keep the booty from any job. All monies were either returned to the original source, if they’d come directly from a bank vault, or the ECU redirected the funds in a manner that would never be divulged.
“Well, well.”
Unaware that someone had approached, Saskia looked up with a smile growing—until she saw Clive standing over her. “I thought you’d be out of the city by now,” she said. “On your way to Belize. What’s going on?”
“You dump the van?”
“Of course. It’s now a cube. Where’s Niles?”
“He went ahead to Belize. But I figured if I hung out here for a while I’d catch you.”
Not good. Saskia’s fight or flight response clicked to high alert. “Why do you need to catch me?”
“Because like I said earlier, I don’t trust you, Sass. And I still don’t trust you.”
“What the hell does it matter now? The job is done.”
“Did you tell Jack Angelo about the poison?”
“No.” She shook her head and looked down, unwilling to look him in the eye, and trying to keep her calm. A defensive reply would only make her sound more suspicious. And the man couldn’t be aware that Jack was just down the way. “Why? Did he say something to you?”
Clive pulled a bowie knife out of his coat and aimed it at her leg. How had he gotten that through security? She’d had to dump her tiny pocketknife at security and then they’d still X-rayed her.
“You’re lying to me, Sass,” he said in a low, exacting tone, “and I don’t like liars.”
“I’m not. I didn’t tell Jack anything. Why would it matter?”
“It matters because Jack was asking me some strange questions inside the bank.”
“I can’t help what the man chooses as a conversation topic.”
“Of course not. You’re going to come with me. I need some answers about who you really are.”
“You’re fucked, Clive. You know me. We’ve worked two jobs together.”
“And yet you’ve suddenly all these questions.”
“I told you I’m—” Yeah, the wacky hormones defense had gone over not at all. No sense in pounding it in like a bent nail.
“You going to come along with me?” he prompted with a twitch of the blade toward her leg.
“Hell no. I’m waiting for a plane.”
“You’ve other plans now, Sass. I’ve a rental out in the lot. Let’s go.”
She shook her head, eyeing the periphery. No one else in sight. He didn’t have thugs with him. Not that she’d expect them. She could jump up, smash her palm up against his nose, and knock him out. That would give her time to grab the knife and run. To where? She couldn’t go to Jack; that would compromise her. Again. And if the airport had any modicum of security, she’d have officers on her within minutes.
The smell of coppery blood filled her senses before Saskia registered the searing pain of the knife piercing her upper thigh. It cut through her leggings and tore a thick red gash in the skin. Purposely shallow and not a fatal injury. Clive didn’t want her dead. He wanted to be able to move her to a different location. And then? She didn’t want to consider what could go down.
On the other hand, if she got Clive out of here, she could work with that. And she still had four hours…
Clive clutched her hand. “Grab your pack. We’re heading out. If you don’t start walking now, I’ll have to stab the other leg and toss you over my shoulder. Security will think you’ve fainted.”
The idea of losing her mobility was not something she chose to deal with. With a submissive nod of head, Saskia grabbed her backpack, winced at the shooting pain streaking up and down her thigh, and limped off toward the exit with Clive’s knife jammed into her spine.
* * * *
Jack heard the female grunt. It had sounded like she’d taken a punch, but when he dodged his head around the column behind which he’d been standing, unobtrusively observing Saskia for the last five minutes, he saw what had really happened. Clive had stabbed her.
And while his instincts were to run after them and take out Clive, he held back.
He pulled out the new burner phone he’d purchased after ditching the van behind the bank and dialed up Kierce Quinn.
“Who is this?” Quinn answered.
“It’s Angelo,” he said. Of course, he was off their tracking system. As planned. He needn’t worry about the phone being traced. Well, he did, but Quinn wasn’t stupid; he knew exactly where he was.
“We’ve got the London headquarters tracking you, Jack. The boss is not pleased.”
“Wasn’t trying to please anyone in particular. But listen. Saskia’s been taken by Clive Hendrix. I need a track on her.”
“What the hell did you do with your chip, Jack?”
“Quinn, this is an emergency.”
“You can’t be trusted now. I’m going to patch in Chester Clarke from the London office on this one. He’s been communicating with Saskia Petrovik. I don’t know what you’re up to—”
“I’m up to trying to save one of your agent’s arses. Now track her for me. I’m going to try and tail them, but I don’t have a vehicle. I’ll have to jack a car out in the lot. And it’s freezing out there, so I’m not sure how that will go. Quinn.”
“Just wait.”
“Don’t call the boss, Quinn. Oi. Do whatever the hell you want. Just—if you don’t want to lose Saskia, you will track her for me.”
He ran down the concourse. His flight left in four hours. And he intended to be on it.
Chapter 19
Saskia navigated the road heading north away from the city. Visibility had drastically decreased since they’d left the airport. A heavy fog due to rising temperatures made it difficult to see more than a quarter mile ahead of her, so she slowed her speed.
“Keep driving,” Clive insisted from the passenger seat.
“I am driving.”
“Not fast enough.”
“Can’t you see the conditions are dangerous?”
“Fuck the conditions. Just fucking drive.”
“Clive, are you—” She flashed a look at him and while it was dark, his loopy smile beamed. “Are you high?”
She hadn’t known the man to drink or do drugs but he was acting irrational and the knife was swaying from her head to her heart and all over the place. Her thigh pulsed, but she’d survive. Now she was really wishing for that aspirin.
“I might have taken a sniff from the box.”
“The box? What the—tell me what’s going on.”
“Don’t you already know? You and your spy Jack Angelo colluding to try and catch me out?” He chuckled, and it was a drawn out, goofy laugh. “It was easy enough to slip the poison in with the heroin.”
“The heroin? I thought you said that poison was for an unrelated job?”
“And you believed me? You’re more stupid than I thought, Sass. Stupid little girl who likes to play dress up. Do you put on costumes for your lovers? Are you the man or the woman when you have sex?”
She seriously hated stoned Clive. “You stole heroin?” She needed him to give her details. Arrestable details.
“The next time Maksim Tamm comes for his fix, he’s gone.” The man giggled again. “Serves him right for fucking with the bratva.”
Saskia knew that name. It was Russian for brotherhood and had been used to refer to their mafia. The diplomat Tamm was making d
rug deals with the Russian mafia? And obviously he’d done something to piss someone off. Thus, Clive had been hired to take him out. Clever. And who would suspect a bank heist was the reason behind a murder? Twice over.
Though this second heist hadn’t claimed a victim. And it would not. The powder she’d given Clive in the glass vial was inert, and wouldn’t hurt a fly.
But wouldn’t it have been easier just to spike the heroin before putting it in the box? Why hire a second party to go in and make a switch? She didn’t have the leisure to ponder the options. She’d gotten a confession from Clive. The ECU could work with that.
“You’re driving too slow!”
Clive suddenly grabbed the steering wheel. The BMW veered and hit a slick of black ice. The rear tires lost traction, swishing the tail end of the vehicle wildly.
Saskia swore as the vehicle careened off the road and into the thick snow in the ditch. She hit her head on the steering wheel and blacked out.
* * * *
Jack navigated the twenty-year-old sedan he’d hotwired in the airport parking lot onto the main freeway. He’d lost sight of Clive’s car about five miles out of the city, and slowed his speed. He’d noticed Saskia was slowing down, and with the visibility nearing zero and the frequent patches of black ice, he didn’t want to crash into the back of them.
He’d tossed the burner phone so he had no contact with the ECU. But as soon as he got to Saskia, the ECU would send out people to collect her. And him.
He wasn’t concerned with his own plans right now. He’d seen Clive stab Saskia. And while she had been able to limp away, and hadn’t left a trail of blood, she couldn’t be doing well. There was no telling what Clive was up to.
Seeing the sudden flash of red to the right of the road, Jack pulsed the brakes to a sliding stop. And suddenly Clive’s figure rushed into view. The man flagged him down with waving arms. Jack put the vehicle in park, and leaned over to check inside the glove compartment. He grabbed an emergency light stick and snapped it. A frantic shake mixed the chemicals inside the plastic tube. He got out of the car, holding the glowing light high. The winds whipped at his face and he clung to his open coat but the chill seared at his skin as if razor blades.