“Details.”
This was her last job. There was no way she would leave without seeing it through to the end. Because like all the other jobs that had preceded it, she didn’t have a choice.
Chapter Thirty-one
Four beefy security guards with handheld metal detectors stood outside the entrances to Mladić’s compound, two at the front and two at the back. After the vans parked near the rear entrance, the guards waved everyone out. One searched inside the vans and used a mirror on a telescoping pole to check the undercarriages, undoubtedly looking for explosives.
“Do they go through this routine every time they have visitors?” Santana asked.
“They take security seriously around here,” Matthias said with a shrug. “Don’t sneeze too loud or you might get shot.”
He was joking, but if one of the guards had a hair trigger, he might not be too far from the truth. Something to keep in mind when she made a move on their boss.
While the first guard continued to inspect the vehicles, the second waved the staff forward. “Arms up.”
Santana spread her arms. “I’m ticklish,” she said when the guard rubbed the metal detector against her breasts rather than waving it in front of her body. “If you keep that up, you’re going to make me spill my coffee all over you.”
She shook the travel mug in her hand to let him know it was still half full. After weighing the cost of copping a free feel against the price of having his suit dry cleaned, he waved her through.
“Good choice.”
She stepped into the entryway and looked around the kitchen. The room was even more spacious than the kitchen in Aron’s restaurant and filled with nearly as much high-tech equipment.
“Are you going to give us a hand,” Matthias asked, “or are you going to stand around and gawk all night?”
“Just looking for a place to put my mug so it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.”
“Good luck with that.”
After Matthias turned his back, she unscrewed the bottom of the stainless steel tumbler, removed the plastic bag of pills from the hidden compartment, and slipped the bag into her pocket.
“Step one complete,” she said to herself. “Let’s do this.”
She emptied the mug, gave it a thorough rinse, and placed it in her backpack, which contained a change of clothes but no valuables. Everything she needed to make a quick escape—money, passport, plane ticket—was on her. After the party broke up, she would spend the night in the airport rather than returning to the rented house. If someone had been tracking her movements as she had been tracking Mladić’s, the change of scenery would throw them off her tail and provide her a secure environment in the process.
“So glad you could join us,” Matthias said when she reached for a case of champagne.
“Are you always this grouchy before an event, or did you save your bad mood for me?”
“Sorry,” he said after they set their burdens in the kitchen and headed back to the van for more. “I always get a little anxious when I come here. This guy—Magnusson—he gives me the creeps.”
“Why?”
He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Don’t you know who he used to be?”
“I’ve heard rumors. Are you saying those rumors are true?”
“I’m saying watch yourself tonight. He’s dangerous. So are the rest of his friends. They act like the rules don’t apply to them because they don’t.”
Matthias maneuvered an oversized food pan carrier toward the ramp leading from the van to the ground. They moved slowly so they wouldn’t spill any of Aron’s culinary creations.
“Then it’s a good thing they don’t apply to me, either.”
“With an attitude like that, you’re going to fit in just fine.”
“With the killers or everyone else? On second thought, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
* * *
While the kitchen staff unpacked and prepped the food, Kristjan Isaacson, the head of Mladić’s security team, took the wait staff on a tour of the house. Margret, clipboard in hand, tagged along.
“The party will primarily take place here on the first floor,” Kristjan said, “but it will by no means be limited to this location. Guests will wander throughout the common areas in the house and on the surrounding property.”
He beckoned for the group to follow him upstairs. The tour stopped in front of a door that seemed to be made of wood but was probably reinforced with steel inserts to prevent an assassin’s bullets from reaching the occupants inside.
“All the rooms on this floor will be open to guests except this one,” Kristjan said. “This is Mr. Magnusson’s room. I humbly ask you as well as the guests to respect his privacy. Understood?” He waited for everyone to give some form of verbal or visual assent before he continued the tour. “Good. Now let’s go take a look at the garden. The stone walkway can be slippery once night falls so you will want to watch your footing.”
“I would advise you to be careful,” Margret said. “Broken glasses pose a hazard to the guests and the expense will be deducted from your salary.”
At this rate, Santana could end up owing Margret at the end of the night instead of the other way around. If that happened, she felt confident it wouldn’t take her nearly as long to repay that debt as it had taken her to pay the one she owed Winslow Townsend. She still couldn’t believe the day she had dreamed about since she was fifteen years old was finally here. But she couldn’t afford to think too far ahead. If she did, she wouldn’t make it out of here alive.
“Now what?” she asked after the tour ended.
“We sit back and wait for the fun to begin.” Matthias held up a pack of cigarettes in one hand and a flask in the other. “A or B?”
“I don’t smoke, and I prefer to keep a clear head tonight.”
“You’re not getting nervous, are you?”
“Now that you mention it.” She held a hand over her stomach as if she were trying to prevent the contents from making a sudden appearance. “Where are the bathrooms? The good ones, not the cramped half-bath Kristjan said we were supposed to use.”
“There’s one across from the library on the first floor and there are two more upstairs, but I doubt you’ll be able to talk your way past the guard posted there.”
“We’ll see about that.”
She headed upstairs and walked toward Mladić’s room. The guard held out his hand as she approached the door. “No.”
“What’s wrong? Is he in there with someone?”
“No, Mr. Magnusson not here,” the guard said in heavily accented English.
“Good. Because I need to use the bathroom.”
She took a step toward the door, but the guard blocked her path.
“No,” he said again. “You use bathrooms downstairs.”
“They’re full.” She rubbed her stomach and grimaced as if she were in severe discomfort. “Something in one of the dishes Aron fed us during the staff meal must have been off because three of us have the runs.” She ramped up the pressure before he could contact another member of the security team to verify her claims. “I can take a dump right here if you want, but you’ll be the one stuck with cleaning up the mess.”
The guard screwed up his face in disgust and moved out of the way. “You have five minutes, and I will be standing outside door the whole time.”
“Whatever works for you.”
After the guard let her into Mladić’s bedroom, she ran toward the bathroom and locked the door behind her. Moving quickly, she took Mladić’s pill bottle out of the medicine cabinet and dumped the contents in the toilet. Then she took the plastic bag from her pocket and slowly poured the pills into the bottle, holding her hand over the opening to muffle the sound. She jumped when the guard banged on the door.
“Are you done yet?” he asked.
“Almost,” she said with a melodramatic grunt. “Just give me…two more minutes. Oh, God, that’s better.”
She
put the pill bottle back in the cabinet, positioning it exactly as she had found it. She used a camera app on her smartwatch to photograph the scene, then she flushed the toilet and watched carefully to make sure all the pills washed away. Satisfied, she picked up a can of lemon-scented air freshener and sprayed half of it into the air. She wished she had something else to add to the olfactory illusion. A rind of Epoisses de Bourgogne would have been perfect. The cheese was so smelly that lawmakers in its native France had made it illegal to carry it on public transportation.
“What took so long?” the guard asked after she opened the door.
“I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t need a second trip. I wouldn’t go in there for a good thirty minutes if I were you.” The guard put his hands over his face and recoiled from the cloud of air freshener drifting toward him. “And whatever you do,” she said as she strode toward the hallway, “stay away from the sheep’s head jelly. That stuff will kill you.”
She sighed with relief as she headed down the stairs. She was tempted to walk out the door and never look back, but she knew her absence would be sure to draw attention. First by the short-handed staff. Then, after Mladić’s death, by his frantic staff.
“The most difficult part of the job is over,” she said to herself. “Now it’s just a waiting game.”
No matter how short, the wait would undoubtedly feel like the longest of her life.
* * *
“Big crowd tonight,” Matthias said after he and Santana returned to the kitchen to refill their respective serving trays. “If they keep drinking like this, we’re going to run out of champagne before the party’s over. That’s a scene I’m not looking forward to.”
“What’s the special occasion anyway?” she asked as she waited for a member of the kitchen staff to give her a fresh batch of hors d’oeuvres.
“Because it’s Saturday? Any excuse to party.” He hoisted a tray of filled champagne flutes to shoulder level. “See you out there.”
“Right behind you.”
She picked up her tray and followed him out the door. She tried not to sneeze when the pungent scent of marinated herring with juniper berries reached her nose. She hadn’t screwed up once tonight and she didn’t want to start now.
She slowly circled the room, pausing near each cluster of guests to give them a chance to sample one of the appetizers on her tray. A few, as Matthias had warned her, tried to sample her as well. She avoided their wandering hands as best she could when she would have preferred to dump the vinegar-soaked fish on their heads or drive her fist into their stomach and follow up with a knee to the face when they doubled over in pain.
She headed toward a pair of new arrivals who were acting as if they had crashed the party rather than being invited to it. They pointed and gasped each time they saw someone sporting an expensive piece of jewelry, and they giggled into their glasses of champagne whenever Mladić or one of his cronies looked their way.
Even though the party was held in his house, Mladić had been fashionably late. He had finally made an appearance nearly an hour after most of the guests did. His arrival had been greeted with a “spontaneous” burst of applause followed by a series of toasts. He had made a short speech to welcome everyone, then he had ordered several of his minions to set up a huge projection screen TV tuned to a KR game. In short, he had spent well over five figures to throw a watch party for his favorite soccer team, and he didn’t seem to notice—or care—that he was the only person in the room who was interested in the game or its eventual outcome. Everyone else, the newcomers included, was there for the free food and drinks.
“May I offer you a—”
The words died in her throat when the women turned to face her. She didn’t know the blonde in the too-short cocktail dress, but she recognized the woman with her. Hekla.
“Does your mother know you’re here?”
“No, she thinks Katrin and I went to the movies.” Hekla did her best to look defiant, but she looked more like a kid playing dress up.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“You could have had a say in where I go and who I choose to go with, but you lost that opportunity when you walked away without an explanation.”
“Is she the one you told me about?” Katrin’s words were slurred, signaling the glass of champagne in her hand wasn’t her first drink of the evening. “You were right. She is cute. I would offer to take her off your hands, but I have my eye on someone else tonight.”
She made a wobbly beeline for Mladić, who was holding court with a bunch of his former lieutenants and an assortment of hangers-on as the announcers on TV droned on about what KR needed to do in the second half to recover from a two-goal deficit. She wasn’t the only woman who was trying to get Mladić’s attention tonight, but she certainly seemed to be the most determined. She pushed herself through the adoring crowd and pressed herself against him. Whatever she said must have been to his liking because he took her by the hand and led her upstairs.
“At least one of us got what we came here for,” Hekla said.
“And what did you come here for? Did you want to be some stranger’s easy lay, too?”
“No.”
“Then please tell me what you’re doing here.”
“Coming here was Katrin’s idea. She said it would be fun, and I believed her. I’m primarily here because I wanted to make sure she had someone to look after her if she had too much to drink, but I’m here for me, too. I’ve been working across from this house for years. I’ve always wondered what went on inside. I wanted a firsthand view of the danger. The excitement. Things I’m not going to get if I’m waiting tables for the rest of my life.”
“And Sigrun—”
“She wants me to take over for her when she retires, but the restaurant has always been her dream, not mine,” Hekla said hotly. “I want to watch the sun set from the top of the Eiffel Tower. I want to watch it rise on a beach in Australia. I want to walk along the Great Wall in China. I want to ride a donkey down the Grand Canyon in America. I want to see the world. When you walked into the restaurant the first time, I thought you were the one. I thought you and I would see the world together. Is that why my mother told you not to see me anymore? Because she thought you would take me away from her?”
“She didn’t want you to get hurt and she knew that, whether I intended to or not, I would do just that.”
“Are you involved with someone else?”
Santana didn’t want to bring Brooklyn into the conversation—into this part of her life—but Hekla insisted on doing just that.
“You are, aren’t you?”
Hekla’s raised voice drew a few stares so Santana lowered hers to make sure they didn’t become the center of attention. “Yes, I am.”
“The whole time?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.” Hekla’s chin quivered as she fought back tears.
“I know, and I’m sorry for leading you on, but it proves I’m not right for you. Your mother didn’t have to point that out to me. I already knew it. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a way to do all the things you’ve dreamed of. And you’ll find the right person to do them with. Just promise me you won’t look for either here.”
“Katrin did. It turned out well for her. If he marries her—”
“He won’t marry her.”
“How do you know?”
A piercing scream brought all conversations to a halt. The only sound was the play-by-play announcer’s excited chatter on the TV after KR scored to pull to within a goal. Katrin, naked except for a sheet loosely wrapped around her body, stood at the top of the stairs. She was crying hysterically and repeating something in her native language.
“What is she saying?”
Hekla’s face was pale. “She’s saying, ‘He’s dead.’ Do you think she means—”
“Grab her,” Kristjan said, pointing at Katrin. “Don’t let anyone leave, and make sure no one calls the police. We will handle this situa
tion ourselves.”
The security guard who had allowed Santana to use Mladić’s bathroom wrapped Katrin in a bear hug. The guests began to panic as one set of security guards raced up the stairs and another moved to block the exits.
“What’s going on?” Hekla asked.
Santana found it ironic that even though she had promised Sigrun she would protect Hekla from danger, Hekla had still found herself right in the middle of it. Was Brooklyn doomed to suffer the same fate if she remained in Brooklyn’s life? She pushed thoughts of future scenarios out of her head as she tried to manage the current one. “You’ll be fine. Just stay calm.”
Kristjan ran into Mladić’s room and back out again. “We need a doctor. Is there a doctor here? You,” he said, pointing to a man who timidly raised his hand, “come with me.”
The man handed his drink to his date and quickly made his way up the stairs. Hekla tried to follow him.
“Don’t.” Not caring about the fine Margret might assess her, Santana dropped the tray of appetizers she was holding and grabbed Hekla by the arm.
“Katrin’s my friend,” Hekla said, trying to pull away. “She needs me.”
“She needs you to keep your head and not do anything stupid. If you go up those stairs right now, those guards might think you had something to do with whatever happened in that room. You can comfort her later. Let’s get through the next few minutes first. Is this the kind of excitement you were hoping for?”
“You were right. I should have left when I had the chance.”
Santana held Hekla in her arms to take the sting out of her words. “It’s okay. You’ll be okay.”
But she wondered if Katrin would ever be the same again, especially after the doctor came out of the room and shook his head.
“Are you sure?” Kristjan asked.
“It was his heart,” the doctor said. “I’m sure of it.”
“He survived a war and escaped a tribunal but dies trying to fuck a twenty-year-old? That’s not how his story should end.”
Heart of a Killer Page 23