by Seeley James
“We were planning on killing you someplace nice and quiet, but we can do it here if you’d like.” Calixthe smiled and nodded to her left. “You’ll notice there are no security cameras in this hotel.”
“Exactly why I chose it,” Pia said. “So far you haven’t pulled the trigger, so you must want something. I want something too.” She tipped her head at Monique. “Before we negotiate, get that vermin out of here.”
Calixthe looked her captive over the way an owner looks at a pet and shook her head. She said, “Sorry, I’ll keep her alive for now. I suspect you’re one of those bleeding hearts who can’t stand to watch another human being die, even if she did try to kill you. So like I said, pull up that chair and sit.”
“No. Tell me what you want.”
“I want to know where your backup went. You’re green, but you’re not dumb enough to come in here alone.”
“Agent Jacob is waiting for you in the lobby,” Pia said. “Agent Marty’s on the street outside, covering the service entrance. Nowhere to run, Calixthe.”
Elgin Thomas flicked a glance at his companion.
Pia shifted her weight and moved her right foot backward. Elgin’s gun followed her. She took a step closer to him. He looked confused and stole another glance at Calixthe.
Pia turned her back on the others and faced him. She said, “You didn’t sign up for this, did you, Elgin? You had no idea she wanted you to shoot someone in an overcrowded restaurant with only one door out. You’ll never get out of here. You’ll be pinned for murder here in Austria. But I’ll bet she finds a way out.”
His eyes wavered a moment before swinging to Calixthe.
“Did she tell you Elgin Thomas is the code name of their mastermind?” Pia said. “Did she mention all of Interpol is looking for this mythical Elgin Thomas? He’s wanted for murder in Cameroon and conspiracy in Geneva. You’re the fall guy. Why else would she ask you to be here?”
Pia Sabel was considered the best in women’s soccer at the header—smashing the ball with the crown of the head where the skull is thickest. She smashed the crown of her skull into Elgin Thomas’s nose.
Blood poured out of him like a faucet. His hands flew up, his gun aimed at the ceiling. Pia smacked the gun from his hand and landed three quick blows into his soft body. He doubled over in pain.
A deafening blast exploded. Sound waves reverberated in the small concrete room as Monique slumped to the table. Pia drew her gun. Elgin staggered toward the front door. She turned to aim at Calixthe, only to find a gun aimed right at her head.
Pia’s endless training at ducking kicked in. She pivoted right as she dropped six inches. Calixthe’s second shot went over her head and into the wall behind her. The gun barrel lowered before Pia could bring hers up. She launched herself into the space Elgin Thomas vacated. Bringing her gun around with both hands, she took aim only to have horrified diners, racing for the exits, knock her down. From the floor, she saw Calixthe running for the kitchen.
“Tania—she’s coming your way!” Pia shouted.
“I see her. Damn! No shot, no shot. Too crowded. Giving chase.”
Pia got to her feet, pressed her fingers to Monique’s neck and felt a pulse.
Monique lifted her head, her sad eyes looking at Pia. She tried to speak but only gurgled. Two diners moved in next to them.
“Doktor?” she said.
“Nein,” one of them said.
“Um, Arzt rufen?” she pleaded. Hoping that meant, Call a doctor.
“Krankenwagen—ehm, ambulance,” the other man said. He pulled out a cell phone to make the call.
The man and his friend seemed concerned. They also knew she was the good guy here. Pia turned and ran through the lobby. Several patrons cowered in the bar to her left. She looked them over. No Elgin Thomas. She ran up the steps to the street.
Near the top of the short staircase, she saw her shadow on the wall ahead of her. He would have seen her coming. She jumped backwards, pressing her back to the left wall. A bullet shattered the glass door. Screams and footsteps followed. Pia scrambled over the broken glass and through the door to the street. Three people ran down one sidewalk, two more in the opposite direction. Two young Chinese women in fur coats cowered against the building.
“Where’d he go?” Pia asked.
The women pointed into the park across the street just as more shots rang out. Pia dropped to the ground. Concrete chips fell on her. She slid backwards away from the door to a darkened patch of sidewalk. She got to her feet, glanced at the traffic. Cars in both directions had stopped. Terrified drivers stared at her as she ran in front of them.
Where might he have gone?
She darted across an open area to a tree in the deserted park. She caught sight of him running across a wide-open plaza toward a statue. She aimed and fired three shots. All misses. Too far.
She gave chase, only a flower garden between them. He fled behind the statue. He didn’t look to be stopping there but going past. Pia approached the statue. A white marble arch decorated with an orgy of naked people framed a golden man with a violin. Johann Strauss was carved into the pedestal. Thomas’s footsteps receded behind the arch. She ran past the statue to get a look.
A bullet pinged the marble. Her eyes located the source just in time to see the barrel pointed directly at her. A flash. She dove backward.
Another chunk of marble chipped away. She ran around the arch to the right, pressed her back to it, clutched her gun with both hands. She took a deep breath and spun around the marble just in time to see him running toward a long balustrade.
She followed.
He took a set of dimly lit stairs. She ran wide, passing his last position, then leaned over the railing above. Below her stood Elgin Thomas, in an alcove, his gun aimed up the stairway.
Her body stretched awkwardly over the tall balustrade’s wide stone top. She tried to aim. Below her was a riverside promenade that ran left and right as far as she could see. Elgin Thomas was alone. She aimed and fired.
Missed. He heard the shot, wheeled and fired at her. She fell backwards unhurt.
On her earbud she heard shots. Tania shouted obscenities and fired three of her own. One more shot rang out. Tania screamed. “Fuck! I’m hit! That bitch!”
In the distance, police sirens filled the streets. Lights flashed against the buildings beyond the trees. Pia considered her options, then stood, planted her hands on top of the balustrade, and launched herself over the top.
She landed, her feet stinging from the impact as she leveled her gun. Elgin ran down the river walk behind her as she staggered a step for balance. Spinning in place, she fired until her gun emptied. She pulled the spare magazine full of lead bullets from her purse and stepped out from the stairwell. Bullets pinged off the ground to her left. She stepped back into the stairwell. Elgin Thomas was gone. Her gut twisted up in knots.
“Tania, you OK?” Pia called out and cupped her hand over her earbud. “Tania? Talk to me. Tania, are you all right?
Chapter 35
* * *
28-May, Midnight
“Put her in there.” Pia pointed to one of the suite’s bedrooms.
“I can walk!” Tania shouted at Agent Klaus, their newly arrived nurse from Berlin. “Leave me alone, dammit.”
A single crutch under one arm, Tania hobbled into the other room and dropped on the bed. She shrieked in pain when her leg bounced. Klaus ran to her side, grabbed Tania’s trembling shoulder with one hand, and cradled her leg with the other. He eased her down while moving her leg over the edge of the bed. He stacked pillows next to the injured leg, raised it, then swung it over the pillows and lowered it gently. Tania smiled.
Pia stood in the doorway.
“Ain’t this nice?” Tania said. “Y’know what would be cool? Score a room like this, find Tom Cruise in the lobby, bring him up here and leave a bunch of wet spots all over the sheets. But no—when I score this room, I have a nine-millimeter hole clean through my leg and the wet spots ar
e blood. Fuck!”
“At least it didn’t hit any bone—”
“You say that one more goddamn time, I’m putting a bullet through your quad so you can speak from experience. I don’t have to be friends with you, y’know.”
“Sorry,” Pia said. “Look, for the last time, this suite is the bait. I’m expecting them to get here between two and four. You aren’t mobile. I need you in the other room.”
“Hey, Klaus, can you believe this shit?”
Klaus looked from her to Pia, shook his head and put up his hands. Language barrier. Pia waved him off. Not worth trying her hand at German again. He backed up and sat in one of the antique chairs next to the bed.
“C’mon, I don’t get to live like this,” Tania said. “Just put some of those extra Kevlar jackets under the covers and hand me the M4. Tell Calixthe I say, ‘Bring it, bitch!’”
Pia placed body armor over her chest and left an M4 within easy reach on the edge of the bed . She pulled the comforter over the top.
Tania said, “You know what I really like about hanging out with you? Those lawyers. Last time I ended up in a police station nobody showed up until dawn, just chilled with the drug dealers and hookers all night. Not you. You got it made.”
Pia didn’t recall her legal team being extraordinary. Two senior partners showed up in the middle of the night to calm an overzealous police detective, exactly what she paid them to do. Detective Janko was offended that Pia brought a shootout to his peaceful little town. Fortunately, his boss knew what a good legal team could do to their careers.
What pissed her off was Detective Janko’s suspicious, anti-rich attitude. Janko had bullet holes in walls, victims in the hospital, and witnesses lined up, but no one in jail. He wanted someone to blame and she was handy. The jerk.
Pia asked, “Want the lights out?”
“Nah, I’m ordering a movie. Don’t worry, I’ll put it on mute and read the captions.”
Pia had no way to explain the danger to Klaus. He had no way to weigh the risk of staying in the suite. She put him in the room furthest from the trouble. Bandage check and re-dressing would happen later. Until then, he would wait.
She entered her room, the one facing the suite. She pressed her back to the door and slumped to the floor. Resting her arms on her raised knees, she buried her face. She recalled Calixthe leading her through the jungle to Boa. She should have seen it then—the woman knew how to run. She was an experienced operative of some kind. The only reason Pia was alive today was because Calixthe underestimated her. Unlikely she’d make that mistake again.
She picked up her phone and saw a voicemail message from Dad.
She wanted to listen to it. But she knew what the message would say. He’d ordered her to come home. Alan Sabel hated it when people, especially Pia, didn’t do what he wanted. He meant well, he was just overzealous about her safety. Which was nice—sometimes. Nothing said I love you like defying the demands of a self-made billionaire with a Type-A personality. She pressed delete, bounced the phone in her hand.
I’m already dead. Every day I live is like an extra day.
Was it her fault Ezra ran out of extra days? Had she been living on extra days since her parents’ murders?
Face it, things had gone badly and the whole mess just kept getting worse. She’d expected to have a healthy Tania for her end game. Now she was outnumbered: Calixthe Ebokea and Elgin Thomas versus Pia Sabel. Two experienced criminals against one gold-medal footballer.
She contemplated her plan and the variables. She came up with a second plan and discarded it. Then another, and another. An hour later she was thinking up yet another plan when she heard the elevator doors open.
She rose and peered out the peephole. Two men, familiar-looking but unrecognizable through the distorted lens, approached and faced the suite across the hall. One raised a fist to knock. Pia stepped out of her room and leveled her gun at them.
“Who are you?” she asked.
They turned around in unison and nearly jumped out of their skin.
“Detective Janko.” Pia lowered her weapon. “Sorry, I didn’t recognize you from the back.”
“Ms. Sabel,” he said, “you must not wave guns around. This is not Texas. There has been enough damage—”
“Which I didn’t cause.”
“We understand your viewpoint. Nonetheless, you are obviously anticipating trouble.”
“I am.” Pia motioned to her room. “Please come in.”
They dutifully stepped inside, then looked around the room. Double beds, smallish space, not what they expected for an heiress. She closed the door and pressed her back against it.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“We could not find any reason to hold David Benson, the man you tranquilized. During the few seconds we could get him coherent, he wanted to press charges against you for assault.”
Janko held up a hand to hold off her objection.
“We found his gun. It was licensed to him. That creates a problem in your story. Officials in Cameroon were not available to confirm any outstanding warrants for extradition. As for you, well…your story is plausible at best. Unfortunately, we found the Belgian tourists you mentioned. They had a very different version of events. They say you jumped the man from behind and beat him mercilessly without provocation.”
Pia stared at the detective, then took a long deep breath. She said, “So what do you want?”
“You must come back to the station to answer questions. There may be charges.”
Pia felt a laugh welling up inside her. At first she fought it, then she laughed out loud.
“The guy you turned loose, David Bonehead? He’s going to come here with a real gun with real bullets to kill me. Would it be all right with you if I shoot him first, then come to the station?”
“This is no joke, Ms. Sabel. I must confiscate your weapon right now. Then you will come with us.”
“Tania Cooper has a bullet hole in her leg, Detective Janko. Monique Tsogo is in critical condition in your hospital. Are you going to provide security for them?”
“If you wouldn’t mind, hand me your weapon.” Detective Janko held out his hand.
Pia pulled out her Glock.
She looked at it, checked the chamber, balanced the weight in her hands, and darted both men.
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” she said. “I would mind.”
If she hadn’t been in trouble before, she was now.
At least she could get her money’s worth out of those attorneys.
How long before Janko and his pal were due back at his office? Would anyone miss them at this hour? Hopefully the reinforcements were lazy enough to wait for dawn. She dragged both men to the far end of the room and propped them up in the narrow space between the bed and the window.
She thought through her plans one more time. David Benson wouldn’t be fully awake for another hour. The polizei might have brought him around with smelling salts but that couldn’t last long. Currently, the odds stood at two to one with Benson as a wild card. The detectives would sleep until six or seven in the morning. That should get her past the expected attack. If the attack never came, she’d have to leave Austria in a hurry.
She returned to the door to keep watch.
After half an hour, someone reached the floor via the central stairway. Her peephole didn’t give her a view that far down the hall. Holding her breath with her eye pressed to it, she waited.
A tall lanky figure finally sauntered into view.
She ripped the door open, stepped into the hall, and darted Lieutenant Alphonse Lamartine. His body hit the floor hard.
“Welcome to Grand Central Station, Lieutenant,” she said. “Hope you find your stay restful.”
Tania called her about the noise.
“Everything’s OK,” Pia said, “but we might need to leave in a hurry.”
Tania made it clear she would stay until someone pried her cold dead fingers off the silk bedcovers.
She checked his pockets. He came unarmed—a small mark in his favor. Paging through his texts she found nothing incriminating. No one named Calixthe or Conor or Elgin was in his contact list. His boss, Villeneuve, texted about ten times an hour for updates on the case. Another set of texts in English involved someone named Susan Duncan, an inquiry about NATO soldiers. Another exchange from Pierre Lamartine and another from Marie Lamartine in French. And one from Duchamps, the hapless street cop.
The most recent text from Capitaine Villeneuve, just two hours ago, piqued her curiosity.
Nous n'avons plus besoin de vos services. Je vous prie de bien vouloir retourner à Chamonix.
She had a feeling she knew what it meant but verified it on a translation site. Villeneuve had sent him home to Chamonix. Before or after he hopped a plane to Vienna?
She took up her position against the door and waited.
Sometime after three in the morning, she heard people coming down the hallway from the central staircase. The swishing of their clothes gave them away. When they came into the peephole’s view she recognized Calixthe, the man posing as Elgin Thomas, and David Benson. All three wore trench coats. They were learning. The coats were as good as body armor against her sleeper darts. Leaving her with headshots only. And she wasn’t exactly a sharpshooter.
Her stomach clenched. Tania was in there. She had to do this or die trying. Calixthe was opening the suite’s door. Benson was holding his gun up, prepared to follow. Elgin was guarding the hall and stairs, looking away from Pia.
She pulled the door open as quietly as possible.