Beside the big man a second man appeared, wiry and short, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt that exposed his inked-up right arm, a solid sleeve of green and blue. He was muttering to himself some muted incantation as if to summon the power of his dark gods.
The large man grinned as he took another step, closing to six or seven feet, his sinewy cohort staying a step behind.
“You American lady?”
“Yes, American,” she said. “Now step aside.”
“Este es mi callejón privado.” This is my private alley.
“Step aside.”
“Why you frightened?” the big one said. “I nice man.”
“Yes,” said the smaller man. “Him and me both very nice, you see. We treat you good.”
Their English was seasoned by the clipped local Andalusian dialect.
“You lost, no? We help you find your way.”
The big man wore a black polo shirt and camo fatigues. His boots were scuffed and dusty. When he halted, his feet were planted side by side and his hands dangling at his hips, a lazy stance that said he didn’t take Harper seriously. Beside him, his buddy’s eyes twitched. He was stooped forward in a defensive crouch, his glance dodging left and right as if he expected something to leap from the solid walls onto his back.
“That’s fine camera. We take picture? You and me together, a selfie, right?”
His partner leered. “Desnuda.”
The big man came forward two more steps, extending his right hand. He was well inside the range for a roundhouse kick. She felt the tension flow from her muscles, a familiar loosening of her joints. Poised to strike, but content to wait for the best opening.
Big Man halted and brushed his left hand across the front of his shirt as if to clean away the crumbs from a recent meal and make himself more presentable.
“Un paso más y os hare daño a los dos.” She made her warning stern but quiet.
The smaller man grinned at his partner and whacked a hand against his shoulder. “You hear, Ángel? Another step, she hurt us.”
Ángel said to Harper: “Hablas bien castellano.” Praising her Spanish.
“Yo puedo hacerlo.” She could do it, hurt them both.
This showdown was not what she’d been training for, but she accepted the situation, eyes in neutral focus, holding to a spot waist-high, midway between them. Registering their balance, the pace of their breathing.
The big one would be easier. Strong but slow. As long as she stayed outside his range, didn’t let him box her in. Go for his knees, his groin, his throat, anywhere above the clavicle. Too much padding elsewhere to hurt him. If he wrapped her up in those bulky arms, things could go south quick.
She deemed the smaller man the more serious threat. Sneaky quick, possibly a blade in his pants. He had that look. He’d wait for his friend to start things off. Come in for the kill after Harper was injured or down.
She knew what Marco would say. Her lack of vigilance had invited this confrontation. She had, in effect, baited these two men into stalking her, guided them into this dead-end alley. It was the familiar argument rape apologists used. The drunk woman in the short skirt and tight sweater had flaunted herself, asking for the sexual assault. Harper had always been disgusted by such alibis.
But Marco framed the issue differently. In the perilous quest Harper had undertaken, the wrong moves could be fatal. Maybe other victims of crime could be granted their innocence, but Harper could not afford that luxury. For her, all strangers were dangerous, every encounter carried risks. She could not let her mind wander. She could not lose her bearings. Paying attention was now her higher calling.
In Marco’s eyes, she was, at that moment, undeniably at fault. These two were simply tropistic creeps, no more in control of their actions than poisonous flowers twisting toward the sun. She softened her stance.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. “Take the camera and go.”
She unlooped it from around her neck and held it by the strap and offered it to them.
“Fuck the camera,” the little one said as he edged closer.
“It’s old,” the big man said. “No vale para nada.” Worthless.
“Fuck the camera,” his buddy said again. He came another step.
“Ya os he advertido.” You’ve been warned.
She was wrong. Wrong about the little one waiting for an opening. He came first and fast, a wild overhand right that she slipped easily. And she was dead wrong about Ángel being slow.
SEVEN
Santa Cruz District, Seville, Spain
Ángel slid forward in his partner’s wake, and his fist flashed at her face, a jab so quick and true it made it past her defensive dip, grazing her cheekbone. Only a brush, but so substantial it staggered her back several steps and sent her eyes swimming. Both of them were quick and strong but amateurish and sloppy and out of shape. Both were already breathing hard after only one messy swing.
As they angled in on different vectors, Harper blinked away the pain and shifted her feet backward a half step, readying for their next assault. It was clear she couldn’t let the big man make decent contact. Even a glancing blow could do serious damage.
She kept her eyes low and came to a stop, holding her ground. In her right hand the R8 still dangled from its strap. A sturdy camera, twenty years old, it weighed about two pounds with the thirty-five-millimeter lens attached. It had been Deena’s go-to equipment for most of Harper’s adult life and the single possession her mother had bequeathed to her.
Both men halted. Ángel eyed her body as if weighing her erotic potential, then turned his head slightly toward his buddy and hissed something she couldn’t hear.
Harper took the opening, an instinctive move, using this weapon of convenience like the ones she’d practiced with at the dojo under Marco’s steady gaze.
She pivoted to her right, gripping the neck strap to swing the solid heft of the Leica at Ángel’s face. He sensed the blow a fraction late, and the camera whacked him in the skull behind his right ear, then bounced back toward her. She spun cleanly to the left, adding her own weight to the orbit of the two-pound missile, a full rotation and a last-second hitch downward to catch the scrawny man on his chin.
He barked in pain and stumbled sideways, his shoulder banging the stucco wall. While he tried to recover, she stepped forward and kneed him in the groin, then hooked her left leg behind his ankles and with a right hand thrust, she toppled him backward to the pavement, his skull slamming pavement with a hollow thump.
Ángel was on his hands and knees, blood issuing from the ragged gash at his hairline. He looked up at her, growled, and struggled to stand, but she jacked a knee into his face and heard the crunch of cartilage.
Harper didn’t allow him to recover. She stepped closer and unleashed a hammer blow to the back of his head and pummeled him again and then again until he crumpled forward, flattened on the street.
With both men prone, she knew she should flee. That was Marco’s rule. Perhaps it was paranoia, but she couldn’t let this go without knowing for sure who these two thugs were. If they had any connection to Albion.
She rifled through Ángel’s pockets first. Found a single key ring with half a dozen keys, a plastic money clip with five euros, and a folded slip of paper with a scrawled list of grocery items: apples, toilet paper, wine, bread, and baby formula.
Ángel raised his head. His breath was raspy. He tried to spit at her.
“So kill me, bitch. Go on, see if I care.”
She moved to the smaller man, who protested and tried to roll away as she dug through his pockets. She grabbed him by the ears and slammed his face into the cobblestone. He groaned and fell silent.
He had a wallet of graying leather. A single euro in the bill flap, several photos in a plastic foldout array. Blurry color pics taken with a cheap camera, all of them showing a boy with the same wolfish features as his dad. In most of them the kid, maybe nine or ten, was wearing a soccer uniform. In one he was kicking a bal
l toward a guarded goal; in another his arms were flung around his smiling teammates. A father’s pride.
Two hapless muggers. A simple crime of opportunity. She dropped the wallet on the pavement.
No one was stalking her, not yet anyway.
She left the men still breathing, a lifetime ahead to consider their mistake.
When McDaniel abandoned the narrow lane, Gerda checked both directions, saw no one nearby, and slipped into the shaded passageway. She stooped over the small man and grabbed him by the hair and lifted his face from the stone walk, twisting him so he had to look into Gerda’s eyes.
“Lo siento, lo siento. No me hagas daño.”
The pleading little shit.
“Oh, poor Ricardo. Why would I hurt you? You did such a fine job. You’re worthy of praise. You dropped everything when I called and came running. I’m grateful, mi amigo.”
“I miss my boy’s football game to get this beating.”
“I said I was grateful, didn’t I? There will be other football games.”
“You say woman is weak. But no, she is fast and fight like man.”
“And you assured me that you and Ángel were tough, but you’re not so tough, not tough at all.”
“We did as you ask. Atacarla, ved si puede pelear.” Attack her, see if she could fight.
“She hit you with her goddamn camera. You call these fighting skills? The woman is a joke.”
“My twenty euros, I want. Give me.”
“Oh yes,” Gerda said. “I have your payment. And, mi amigo, I’ll even provide a bonus for doing such a bang-up job. Here you go.”
She gripped Ricardo’s jaw with her right hand and with her left she slipped her black silk scarf from her neck. She rocked his head back and pressured the scarf against the splenius capitis and the splenius cervicis, the ropy muscles of the neck. Going slowly so the wretch would absorb the horror of what was coming.
He wriggled in her grasp, but his struggle was futile, as she looped the scarf around with a single wrap, released his jaw, then gripped the ends, crossed them, and tensed the silk binding hard against the resistance of ligaments and tendons. Millimeter by millimeter she tightened the fabric until she heard the gasp, a last sputter, and watched him go limp. Less than thirty seconds and he was gone.
She kept the pressure on until she was certain.
From the beginning, the scarf had been her weapon of choice. Innocuous, in plain sight, always at the ready. For these last few months, Gerda had drilled with the scarf in her hotel rooms, a quick release knot, and with a flick of her wrist she could lash it around her victim’s neck. She’d practiced those moves, repeating and repeating till they were effortless and automatic, till she could employ the weapon in complete darkness, exactly as she’d once done with her gymnastic ribbons.
She rose from Ricardo’s body and turned to finish off Ángel, but the big man was on his feet, stumbling away.
Gerda pursued, gaining with every stride, but outside the alley Ángel headed into a throng of tourists and began to shout in terror, turning to point back toward Gerda.
She melted into a crowd at the doorway of a shop, slipping behind a tall man speaking on a cell phone. She tucked the scarf into her pants pocket and, over the stranger’s shoulder, watched Ángel shove people aside and lope away through the streets of Seville, his wails of panic rising above the rooftops into the autumn sky like the heavenward scream of a rocket.
Let him run. She’d deal with him later. She knew where the man lived. He and Ricardo had served their purpose. Gerda had witnessed the woman’s fighting skills and was unimpressed. Using her camera as a weapon, she’d avoided direct contact until the men were disabled and on the ground. Which only confirmed there was little to fear from her when the time came.
Now Gerda would resume her vigil in the café three doors down from the shabby building where McDaniel had hidden away for the last four weeks.
She retraced her steps through the Santa Cruz neighborhoods and was only a block from McDaniel’s home base when her phone pulsed in her pocket. A text from her employer. His first contact in weeks.
Do you have your target currently in view?
The man seemed to have a telepathic link to Gerda. Half a continent away and he could sense Gerda’s lapse in surveillance.
Of course, I can see her plainly, was her reply.
In Madrid the woman worked in the library. What was she doing?
He’d finally gotten around to reading his old texts.
Gerda answered, Researching materials.
What materials?
Business journals and other magazines.
On what topic?
Olive trees, olive oil.
Gerda walked on. The phone was silent. Typical of his childish manners, Albion never said a formal good-bye. She might not hear from him for another month. She passed tapas restaurants, small cafés, tourist shops with revolving racks of postcards, whitewashed walls festooned with T-shirts and ceramic tiles decorated with flowering gardens. Art galleries, tiny hotels, apartments. All had windows covered by ornate bars in this town of thieves. Most of the streets were too narrow for cars. In the air were the smells of sizzling chicken and onions and the voices of mournful baritone crooners, the rhythmic clapping of hands, and the guitar work of flamenco coming from competing speakers. The balconies above her were draped with laundry and ferns. A motorbike squeezed past. The two boys riding it checked her out and one whistled.
Gerda’s phone buzzed again, and she stepped out of the flow of pedestrians to read the text.
Why did you not bring this to my immediate attention?
She had to scroll back to see what he was referring to. Olive oil.
I did bring it to your attention. I texted you.
Never specified subject. You should have notified me instantly.
Why is that important? Olive oil? You tell me nothing.
The phone was silent. Gerda walked on past the gray stucco building where Harper resided and returned to her seat in the café a half block distant.
As the waiter brought her espresso, her phone vibrated again.
I tell you only what you need to know. To ensure your safety.
You are most kind.
Gerda smiled as she read his reply.
Remove target now. Destroy phone. Text when complete.
She had a sip of her coffee, set it in the dish, then typed, It shall be done.
Gerda pried open the phone, pulled out the SIM card, that small rectangle of plastic embedded with semiconductors, tough as a credit card. Her waiter stood nearby watching, openly curious, as Gerda gripped the two sides of the card, holding it up so the waiter could observe more clearly. Her grip strength had been maximized from years of pole vault, discus, and javelin, hands and fingers of iron. Gerda ripped the plastic card in two. Most would have required a pair of shears for the task. But this, for Gerda, was a minor exertion.
Mouth agape, the waiter stared at her as she counted out the coins for her check, and then Gerda stood and walked away, feeling a bright tingle in the tips of her fingers, as if she were sprouting talons.
EIGHT
Santa Cruz District, Seville, Spain
Back inside the dojo, Harper marched into the training room, shut the door behind her, and went directly to the heavy bag. She kicked it once, then again. Tentative strikes.
Gradually increasing the pace with foot sweeps, knee strikes, axe kicks, jumping front kicks, the momentum building, roundhouse, crescent, double front jump kicks. Kicking without pause, unable to stop.
The Leica R8 was on the floor nearby, smears of blood on its body and bits of tissue snagged on the viewfinder. She would clean it later. But first she needed to do this. Work and work, empty her lungs, jack her pulse to redline and beyond. Tornado kick, spinning reverse, spinning hook, back thrust, side snap. After ten minutes, her heart was slamming, she gasped, eyes stinging with sweat. Spinning wheel kick, side thrust.
Then the punches. The big l
eather bag, 150 pounds, its four chains squealing, the bag swinging away from her and back again. She smacked it full force with a scissor punch, hook, jab, double fist spear hand strike. A furious flurry. Her fists throbbing from the mountain punch, heel strike.
More kicks, punches. Breath scalding her lungs. She punched the bag faster. Fast as automatic-weapons fire, fast as a Bourbon Street tap dancer. Drilling it harder and harder until she was soaked with sweat and her legs softened and she wilted to the practice mat, flung her arms wide, spread-eagled on her back, heaving for air, heaving as if she’d dived to the bottom of the deepest Atlantic trench, touched bottom, and turned back, swimming up and up until she broke through the bright surface of the ocean, gasping.
Minutes later her pulse had slowed and she was climbing to her feet when she heard the squeak of the front door. She quieted her breath and listened. No way Marco and Gabriella could have made it to Barcelona and back already. In the four weeks she’d been living in the dojo, not a single uninvited guest had wandered in from the street, no panhandlers, no nosy tourists. The building was anonymous. Just a street number, no hint of what took place inside.
She rose and slipped to the doorway. But the intruder had already moved past the practice room. There were footsteps on the stairs that led to Harper’s room. She heard the squeaky fourth step, the distinctive crackle of the sixth. She opened the door a slit but from her vantage point couldn’t see the stairway.
She stepped into the corridor, moved quickly to the base of the stairs. They were empty. She could hear the intruder’s tread on the landing, and the familiar squeak of the hinges to her room.
Light-footed, she slipped up the stairs, staying close to the wall to keep from giving herself away. On the landing, she saw the door to her room was shut. She edged along the wall, paused, and listened. The box springs creaked once, as if the intruder were testing the softness of her mattress.
She mapped out the oblique angle she’d take toward the bed, the obstacles, chair, wood table, metal standing lamp. She reached across the width of the door. Gripped the knob, drew a careful breath, then threw open the door, dived head first into the room toward the bed, tucked her left shoulder, rolled, and came to her feet with her right leg snapping forward for a flying roundhouse kick.
When You Can't Stop (Harper McDaniel Book 2) Page 5