Desire

by Louise Bagshawe

  She was beautiful when she slept. Soon he’d start looking for towns, somewhere big enough to buy a couple of mobile phones, throwaway shit. Then he’d need to wake her. She wasn’t staying in the car alone. She wasn’t doing anything alone.

  No way to live. He thought of his contact, hoped to hell the guy was still around. There really wasn’t a Plan B.

  Yuri made his first call before he was out of the drive. He didn’t worry about waiting for the customer to wire the money. They were desperate, and rich. They’d pay up. He hated wasting time. Felix Latham, what a fool. That guy had a rep that was spotty at best. But he was a pro. Taking out the killer of an assassin, one that was famous, the story of the month . . . this was a great job. And ten mil was a payday, even for him.

  He rang a number. One of his best.

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Yeah.’ They didn’t waste time in chat. None of his people wanted to know him very much.

  ‘I want what you got on Murray and Costello.’

  ‘Fuck, you don’t want much.’

  ‘You get paid. Are they in the United States?’

  ‘Not to our knowledge. What’s the rate?’

  ‘Quarter,’ he said. ‘That’s going to include follow-ups. ’

  Now the voice was much friendlier. ‘You must have a hard-on for them.’

  ‘Time pressure. Murray’s got sources in your office. That’s how he wrote up the semen thing. I want to know who he’s talking to; I want a wire on that phone. Everything he says.’

  ‘You want me to tap the FBI?’

  ‘Quarter million dollars. You fucking work for the FBI. You’re IA. You can’t be touched. What the fuck, don’t play games, Woody.’

  ‘Call you back,’ the guy said.

  That’s how you do it, Felix, Yuri thought, satisfied. You don’t mess about with the second string. Hunt the man. Find his contacts and follow the thread. You don’t go looking for them. You wait. Let them come to you.

  He thought about his client. Ten million. A lot of money, even for these people. But he would deliver, like he always did, and his place would be assured. The kills would be worth much more than five each. He didn’t think about retiring. He loved this job, because he loved power. There was no god, there was no morality; it was a bullshit social construct. Fame and money and sex, they were all real. And what he did gave him access to all of them. The client got rid of a problem. He got everything else. He imagined how he would do Sam Murray. With something of a flourish, maybe. He loved poisons, and there were some that would twist the vic into a human pretzel during the agony of his contortions, turn his tongue soot black. Yuri thought he’d do something like that. Call it a professional courtesy to poor stupid Felix. Besides, it would look real good. A calling card. The woman, on the other hand, he would just kill, clean and quick. A bullet, or snap her neck if there was no opportunity to shoot. She was caught up in this from the start. Nothing personal, usually, about his killings; Yuri thought emotion was sloppy, all emotion. Compared to Sam Murray, Lisa Costello was going to catch a break.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘Wow,’ Lisa said.

  She looked up from under her cheap sunglasses. They were standing with hundreds of other tourists around the church of the Holy Family, the Sagrada Familia. The ornate, almost otherworldly building soared into the sky, every square inch covered in neo-Gothic carving; the interior was richly modern architecture.

  ‘Centre of the city. And one of the most famous sights in Spain.’ Sam put his hand on her shoulder, his fingers caressing her through her T-shirt. ‘You can’t go wrong surrounded by crowds of tourists. They don’t pay attention. You get lost.’

  ‘You’re going to meet him here?’

  ‘If I can find him. Yes.’ Sam pulled out one of his cheap mobiles, punched in the number. His heart was in his mouth, but he didn’t want her to see it. There wasn’t much of a Plan B. He’d think of something eventually, perhaps, but if they wanted to get back home, they needed to find a way past the INS.

  Lisa watched him. Something was up. That might be a strange thought given their lives this past month, but she knew this man now, knew him with all her heart. And he was worried. More than the run-of-the-mill anxiety they lived with every second; this was big. He was dialling numbers, waiting, hanging up.

  ‘He’s not there?’

  ‘None of my contacts are good. They’re mostly just dead numbers, suspended accounts. That means he’s either dead or he’s packed it in. It’s not hard to reach these guys if you’re in their loop. Nobody has the numbers but people they trust. They don’t answer, means they’ve disappeared.’

  She moved closer, put a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t worry. We’ve come through worse than this.’

  ‘I do. It’s not easy to get into the United States. We could maybe sneak on a ship, but I don’t have weeks to cross the Atlantic.’

  ‘So we stay right here until you find someone else who does passports. There’s more than one guy.’

  ‘I could, but it might take weeks. You should get back to the States now. The story will hit the newsstands; there’ll be a lot of sympathy for you. Whoever had Josh killed will be afraid and acting out. Easier to find. And I need to be there to track Felix. We have a window, and I don’t want to miss it.’

  Lisa looked at Sam and felt a fresh surge of love. All his mind, all his intellect was bent on her, clearing her name. He was prepared to take any risk.

  ‘The FBI guy told you they have you down as a murder suspect. I could be in the clear, and you could be arrested. Tried, shipped back to Europe, flung in jail for life. Why do you think I started running? Do you want to take that chance?’

  He moved in. Held her, kissed her. God, it was incredible, the way she melted into his arms, just every time. She had never been loved like this. It was as though every cell in her body was under an electric charge.

  ‘We have to get free. Both of us. That means this. That means a hunt. I’m not running for ever. Takes energy away from you.’

  ‘OK,’ she whispered. He was settled; he’d decided for her. Lisa didn’t try to change his mind. She was sick of running, sick of the shadow life. If Sam was going to take the risk, it was his choice, his privilege.

  ‘You solved it.’ He kissed her again. ‘You’re brilliant. The FBI guy. That’s who we’ll call.’ He sighed. ‘I got to trust somebody sometime. And I trust Craig Gordon.’

  ‘The FBI?’ she asked, shivering. ‘They’d arrest us right away!’

  ‘Craig wouldn’t. Not if I can get him to treat us as sources.’

  ‘But there are warrants out. Wouldn’t that be illegal? Blow his career?’

  ‘Yeah. It could.’

  ‘From what you said, this is not a risk-taking guy,’ Lisa objected. ‘Family man, plays by the book. If you go to him, we’ll be in custody within the hour.’

  ‘I trust Craig, like I said. And you have to trust me. He’s our man on this. It’s a crisis, and we have a bargaining chip.’

  ‘We do?’

  Sam held up the slim black phone. ‘Felix’s cell. You see, Craig Gordon knows this guy was the killer, and he wants the man who hired him. He needs this evidence; he doesn’t need us. So he’ll defy protocol and his bosses. Because that’s what helps him get where he wants to go. Taking the actual killer down.’ He grinned at her. ‘Once he understood you didn’t do it, he lost interest in you. Maybe not other people there. That’s how the Bureau is. You’re important, you’re a scalp, a name. But Craig only wants the guy who did it.’

  Woody Harmon could hardly believe it. His phone was buzzing already. Not his regular phone, the new one he had set up to track Craig Gordon. It was easy to rig, designed to ring only when unrecognised numbers called. No secret around the J. Edgar Hoover Building that Craig Gordon, out in LA, was running this case and had a line to Sam Murray. But Murray had vanished. That was what most of them thought. The investigation was wrapped in the kind of security they usually reserved for corrupt politician
cases, the real sensitive stuff.

  But Yuri had said Sam would call. And he fucking had. Within twenty-four hours. Yuri scared the hell out of Woody, fifteen years in the Bureau and an ex-beat cop. Not like he hadn’t seen his share of criminals. This guy, though, was something else. He was a slice of pure evil. And you didn’t fuck with him. He paid very well, and Woody was long since tired of sweating his balls off for the federal government for fuck-all. But he was afraid that he’d be delivering whatever Yuri wanted if he was offering a quarter and a can of Coke. The man was half psychic. He always knew, he always fucking knew.

  Woody’s heart pulsed as he lifted the phone to his ear. Depression and adrenaline pumped through him. He didn’t want Craig Gordon killed. Guy had a rep for being a good agent, real solid. But he was much more afraid of being killed himself. He’d sold out long ago, and there was nowhere to go but forward. He would report this conversation faithfully; he knew that much. You didn’t lie to Yuri. He didn’t like it.

  The plane was a small jet, Delta out to San Diego. A mixture of tourists and returning businessmen. Nobody paid them much attention. Lisa busied herself with a magazine and her bag of duty-free. Her hair was back to blond now, a dark caramel shade. It suited her skin tone, didn’t draw attention. Sam marvelled at her calmness. She was really getting used to this now. Another flight, another fake passport. She looked for all the world just like any impatient passenger waiting to board.

  They were at the last check. He handed their boarding passes over to the airline staffer. She glanced at them, dipped them into a machine, gave him the stubs.

  ‘Have a good flight,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks.’ He didn’t like to speak too much. Paranoia, in case his voice was recognised. Lisa flashed a smile and filed down the gangway tunnel with the rest of the cattle in economy. Yeah, it was going to be a long flight. Craig had come up with the passports, let him know where to collect them. There were tickets waiting too. Sam was incredibly grateful. For all his confidence with Lisa, until the guy actually came through, there always had to be a little doubt.

  But trusting Craig wasn’t the same as trusting the Fibbies. For the first time, a third party knew in advance exactly where they were going. It wasn’t just the cramped seats that would bother him. It was what was waiting once they arrived.

  Yuri spun his Maserati down the Pacific Coast Highway and tried to think. It was not the position he wanted, not quite. That gibbering little coward Woody had tried to placate him.

  ‘But that’s it, that’s all he said.’

  Yuri spat. ‘I want more. The names of the passports. Where they’re being picked up. A flight number. The airport.’

  ‘Call came from Spain.’ He was pathetically glad to be able to supply at least that nugget. ‘He wasn’t on long enough to trace further. Throwaway phone, unregistered.’

  But of course. Sam Murray was no fool. And apparently neither was Craig Gordon.

  ‘You’re certain he said nothing of names. Contacts?’

  ‘No, Yuri. Craig just told Sam he knew where to go, and the stuff would be there. It was like he knew he was being traced.’

  ‘He didn’t know shit. Gordon was just taking precautions. He’s a rules guy. Probably looks both ways and doesn’t jaywalk.’

  ‘I guess.’

  Yuri ran the scenarios in his mind. He could get Woody to send over a list of all field agents, CIA, active in Spain. But that would take time. By the time he had done any serious winnowing of candidates, his two birds would be on a plane. And that was if Craig Gordon had even used an agent. It could be a hooker, a mutual friend, a local cop, a goddamned priest. Anything. He never looked for needles in haystacks.

  ‘And nothing about where they landed?’

  ‘Zip.’

  ‘Keep on him. Start an internal investigation.’

  His contact blanched. ‘Based on what? He’s a well-known boy scout.’

  ‘Based on I fucking told you to,’ Yuri insisted.

  ‘People will talk.’

  ‘Then make it a supervisory thing. Keeping an eye on the Steen case. I don’t care how you dress it up, Woody. He’s the guy Murray reaches for. Track him.’

  He’d hung up.

  And now he was driving south. There were some basic assumptions you could make eight times out of ten. That Murray and the girl would want to come home as soon as possible; that was why they’d called Craig. That they’d want to come back to Cali and find the real killer. So the tickets would be for a flight from Spain to California, leaving a maximum of six hours after the phone call. He had run through the list on his computer. The two most likely flights were Barcelona to San Diego and Seville to LAX. They landed within an hour of each other.

  Yuri was going for LAX, because Sam Murray seemed like a pretty direct kind of guy. If that was wrong, no matter. He knew where they were coming. He knew who they were talking to. They were coming to him.

  Craig Gordon travelled very carefully to the airport. First he was a passenger in a cop car, then he got out, changed to a bus; lastly he disembarked at a hotel and one hour later caught the courtesy shuttle. He scoped the crowd the entire time. He was not being watched, or if he was, they possessed more skill than he did, and he couldn’t worry about somebody that good.

  His normally calm pulse was fluttering. It had been a decade since he’d seen Sam Murray, at least in person. They’d gotten closer in a few snatched conversations lately than at any time since he was a student. Would he recognise the guy? All he had was an airbrushed byline picture. The girl, now. He’d recognise her, the little celebrity, and he wanted to be the only one who did. That meant getting her off the plane and out of the airport quick as possible. In Europe they’d been able to hide. In America, she was a star.

  He wanted her alone. She needed debriefing, and then he would take the assassin’s phone and catch whatever fucker set this all in motion. It was his duty. It was also the only way out from under. He wanted this case off his back. Nothing else was getting done while America obsessed. But Hollywood and millions of dollars did that to you.

  The airport was nice and crowded, the same way it always was. He kept his ID tucked away, and milled around the arrivals portal with all the other families, children wailing, girlfriends waiting eagerly. Every thirty seconds or so he casually scanned the crowd for trouble. Sam Murray expected a second hit, and so did Craig. Maybe a third or more. Whoever had killed Josh Steen was a big player.

  The monitor screens said the flight had landed a little early. Great. He wanted to get them the hell out. Technically speaking he was committing a crime himself. But every field agent did that daily. That wasn’t the problem so much as their safety. He allowed himself to feel a little sorry for the girl; this must really have sucked for her, especially when she’d believed she’d killed her husband.

  But she was made of sterner stuff than your average gold-digger. He was starting to feel that she wasn’t a gold-digger at all. That she’d gotten trapped. And that was still legal in all fifty states. Maybe she’d be good for Sam Murray. And if she was going to take him on, she was a braver girl than most . . .

  Shit. They were here, they were here. Adrenaline rushed through him, making him alert and tense. No need to worry; he’d have known Sam Murray a mile further away, just from how the guy carried himself. Craig scrutinised his old friend for a second. Murray had killed an assassin. That changed a man, profoundly, taking a life. He turned his gaze to the girl. She had her head lowered; clever. She was not meeting anybody’s eyes; she looked to be following Murray using her peripheral vision.

  ‘Jack!’ he said. He waved and shouted. ‘Hey, Jack! Over here!’

  Sam’s head turned immediately. The guy had a good ear for voices. He lifted a hand, not replying aloud, and put the other on Lisa Costello’s elbow, steering her. Craig was interested to note that the girl still did not look up. She pretended to fiddle with her carrier bags. No luggage, he saw; not even a hand case. Smart. These two had learned how to r
un.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, controlling his voice with an effort as they reached him. ‘Hope your flight was OK. Follow me outside, guys, I got a car waiting.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Sam said quietly.

  Craig walked as fast as he could without calling attention to himself. It was hard not to turn around and grip the girl by her wrists. Every second he expected exposure. He was lucky; the passengers were steering their carts, chatting, complaining of exhaustion, paying parking charges. Everybody in their own bubble. That was America. It was useful.

  He got them to the car, put the girl in the back.

  ‘Sit in the middle,’ he said easily. Away from the windows. She was most recognisable. That simple thing would camouflage her. She did as she was told, again keeping her head low. He saw she had a slight figure, good curves. She did not strike him as a tough cookie. But she was managing to survive.

  Sam slipped into the passenger seat. Nobody said anything as Craig fired up the car, drove out of the lot. As he passed through the security barrier, without being prompted, Lisa reached down as if to tie her shoes and Sam looked in the glove compartment; they were keeping their faces from the security cameras. He had a moment of admiration. These two were semi-pro.

  ‘Been a while,’ he said, at last, when they were out on the road, heading to the freeway.