LATE-NIGHT drinkers packed the pub on Rue Sainte-Angèle at one in the morning. Abbey Laurent sat at the bar in the semidarkness, under a low ceiling studded with rough-hewn beams. Her clothes and her mahogany-colored hair were still damp, making her shiver. Her fingers tapped on the keyboard of her laptop, in a tempo greased by the rhythm of the jazz quartet playing a few feet away. She owed her editor, Jacques, three thousand words for the next online edition of The Fort. The article was due first thing in the morning, but she’d waited until now to write it, hoping that the mystery man would give her a story.
Instead, he’d left her standing alone in the rain.
Every few sentences, she took a swig from the bottle of beer in front of her. She found it hard to concentrate on her work. Her problem wasn’t the noise or the crowd; she thrived on those things. She could bang out a story in the middle of the World Cup final. No, she kept thinking about the man who’d stood her up.
Who was he? Where was he?
Why had he gone through an elaborate series of secret contacts to meet with her, only to not show up?
Abbey grabbed her phone and did what she’d already done half a dozen times since she got to the bar. She scrolled back to the very first contact he’d made with her, one week ago, three days after the murder of Sofia Ortiz in New York. It was a text message sent from an unknown phone number.
We need to meet. I can help you get the answers you want.
As a journalist, she received cold calls like that all the time. Most were hoaxes, sent by conspiracy nuts or men who wanted to meet the woman they’d seen in the photograph next to her byline. But something about this man was different. Intriguing. He knew things. He provided her with details about the shooting that the police and FBI had never released. When she checked it out, she discovered that everything he’d said was true.
Her reporter’s radar was pinging.
But Jacques had told her that the meeting was too dangerous. Her editor was nervous by nature, and he was still hyperventilating about the Ortiz assassination and the Washington Square riot. However, Abbey had never been one to let fear stop her from doing anything.
Okay, she’d written back to the mystery man. Your place or mine?
They’d agreed on her place. Quebec City in three days.
She didn’t know his name, or what he looked like, or anything about who he was. He was obsessive about protecting his anonymity and cautious to the point of paranoia. He’d sent her elaborate instructions for making sure she wasn’t followed, and he’d given her an exchange of code phrases so they would know each other in person, like they were spies in some Cold War rendezvous.
She’d say: What do you like most about Quebec?
He’d reply: Those wonderful little maple candies.
And after all that, he’d been a no-show. It didn’t make sense. She checked her messages again, hoping he’d sent her a text to explain, but all she saw were the unanswered texts she’d sent him from the boardwalk.
Abbey sighed with defeat, because she wasn’t getting anything done tonight. Jacques would have to wait for the story. She shut down her laptop and turned around at the bar to finish her beer and listen to the music. The boys in the band all waved to her. This was her place, her neighborhood. Her office at The Fort was four blocks away, and her studio apartment was six blocks away. She traveled constantly, but when she was home, she typically wrote her stories here at the bar until closing time. As a writer, she made almost no money, but the bartender slipped her the occasional drink for free, and in return, she threw a mention of the bar into the magazine whenever she could.
The bar door opened, letting in cold damp air. A few people left; a few others pushed their way inside. She examined the faces of the new arrivals. As comfortable as she always felt here, tonight she had an odd sense of unease. It was the same sensation she’d had on the boardwalk, that multiple sets of eyes were watching her. This was more than the usual attention she got from guys looking for a hookup. No one in the bar looked suspicious, but the feeling didn’t go away, and her lips pushed into a frown.
She felt paranoid. Just like the mystery man.
Where are you?
Even the mellow jazz music didn’t calm her nerves. The bassist was a slinky Spanish woman named Emilia who had magic fingers. On most nights, Abbey loved listening to her play. The trouble was, when she saw her face now, it wasn’t Emilia she saw. It was Sofia Ortiz in Washington Square Park. Her memory replayed that awful moment over and over, when the woman’s neck exploded in a shower of blood, when she pitched backward to the stage, when the screaming began, when the crowd surged out of control. An assassin had murdered a congresswoman right in front of her.
Her source said the killer was a former U.S. intelligence agent code-named Cain.
Who was Cain?
She hadn’t told Jacques the truth about how bad the night had been. There was blood on her shirt after it happened; that was how close she’d been to Ortiz. Then, in the riot that followed, she’d nearly been killed herself. There was gunfire everywhere, craziness, madness! She’d seen one of the anarchists aiming a pistol at her, and she’d only survived because someone in the crowd had run into her at that exact moment and they’d both tumbled to the ground. By the time she got up, the shooter had disappeared, but she could still remember his black hood and the gun pointed at her head.
With her hand trembling slightly, Abbey finished her beer. She got up from the bar, but at that moment, over the noise of the band and the crowd, she picked out two words from someone’s conversation.
“Château Frontenac.”
And then two other words. “Dead. Shot.”
Abbey tried to isolate the conversation. Who was it? She grabbed her laptop and shoved it in her bag. As she waded into the crowd, her ears pricked up to eavesdrop on what everyone was saying. She picked up snippets of talk about sports and drugs and drinks and sex, but nothing about the hotel castle on the cliff. Nothing about murder. And yet she knew, she knew, that something had happened.
And she knew that in some way it was connected to her.
“Police everywhere.”
There! Two burly young men, one black, one white, both in Nordiques jerseys, were squeezed into a corner booth behind the band. Their voices carried over the crowd. She shoved her way through the bar and bent over their table. A dim sconce light cast shadows on their faces.
“Excuse me.”
The two men stopped their conversation and sized her up from behind their beers. They liked what they saw. “What’s up, baby doll?” one of them said.
“Did I hear you say that something happened at Château Frontenac?”
“Oh, yeah,” the white Nordiques fan replied. “I was just up there. Whole area’s shut down.”
“What’s going on?”
“Dunno. I heard people saying there were bodies in the street. Some kind of shooting. Hey, why don’t you sit down, and we can—”
But Abbey was already gone.
She threaded through the mass of people toward the bar door. She needed to get back to Château Frontenac right now and find out what had happened.
When she got outside, the chill hit her wet clothes, and she shivered again. The rain had stopped, but the pavement was still damp. Rue Sainte-Angèle climbed sharply in the darkness, and she began to head up the street. As she did, a man crossed the road to intercept her. He’d obviously been waiting for her.
“Mademoiselle Laurent?”
She glanced nervously both ways. She was conscious of the fact that the two of them were alone on the empty street. Her hand covered the latch on her bag, in case she needed to reach for the Taser she kept inside. Her reporting often took her to uncomfortable places, and she’d learned to be prepared for anything.
The man gave her a bland smile and repeated his question. “You are Abbey Laurent, aren’t you? The reporter?”
“What’s this about? Who are you?”
“We had a meeting. I apologize for being late.”
“You?” She reacted with surprise. “You’re the mystery man?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, where the hell were you?”
“I’m sorry. I was detained. It was unavoidable.”
Abbey relaxed a little, but she studied him with a faint disappointment. He wasn’t what she’d expected. He was tall and solidly built, with thinning blond hair and gold-rimmed glasses that pinched the bridge of his nose. He wore a brown raincoat over a neat, expensive beige suit and tie. He looked like a middle-aged accountant, not a spy, and she’d pictured her intriguing mystery man as more Chris Pine than Jonah Hill.
“I’m glad I was able to find you,” he added in a voice that was almost sugary in its politeness. “Obviously, I went through a lot of trouble to meet you.”
“How did you find me?”
“Everyone leaves a footprint online, Ms. Laurent. Routines are easy to track. We know a lot about you. We’ve followed your reporting for some time.”
“We?”
“I’m a member of an influential group. You said you wanted a story, didn’t you? They’re part of the story.” He gave her another of his bland smiles and waved toward the end of the street. “Shall we take a walk?”
“Yes, okay.”
The two of them headed side by side to the intersection where Rue Sainte-Angèle met Rue Saint-Jean. They walked down the middle of the cobblestoned street past trendy shops and restaurants that were closed for the night. There was no traffic and no other pedestrians. Her mystery man kept his hands in the pockets of his raincoat, and Abbey noticed that he never looked directly at her. However, his eyes moved constantly, examining the shadows around them.
“Looking for someone?” she asked.
“Just being careful.”
“Are you expecting trouble?”
“I always expect trouble.”
“I heard there was an incident near Château Frontenac,” she said. “People were killed.”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you were late?”
“Yes.”
“Was this because of our meeting? Was I in danger?”
“There were dangerous men near the hotel,” the man replied, “but they were looking for me, not you. They were hoping you would lead them to me.”
“And did you kill them?”
This time he stopped and looked at her. She saw that he had icy blue eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses. “Is that what you think I am? A killer?”
“I don’t know what you are. I don’t even know your name.”
“Names are unimportant.”
“Except you know my name,” Abbey said.
“True enough, Ms. Laurent.”
They reached the old stone wall at Artillery Park, part of the city’s fortifications that had been built three hundred years earlier when the British and French were battling for the land. Without asking, the man led her down the stairs into the park, and then he stopped near the grassy hill under the wall. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the air. He smiled at her again, and she decided that she didn’t like his smile. The location where they’d stopped was hidden from the view of other buildings in the area. Alarm bells went off in her head.
“What does this have to do with the murder of Congresswoman Ortiz?” she demanded impatiently. “You said you’d help me get answers. I want to know why she was killed. And who shot her.”
He held his cigarette delicately between two fingers. “That was a terrible night.”
“Yes, it was.”
“You were near the congresswoman when she was shot, weren’t you?”
“That’s right. I was. Do you know who did it?
“The American government thinks it was Cain,” he replied.
“Who is Cain?” Abbey asked. Then she added with an undercurrent of horror, “Is it you? Did you kill Sofia Ortiz?”
The question seemed to amuse him. “Me? Hardly. I’m not in his league. Cain is a ghost. A legend. I’m simply flesh and blood.”
She realized he was playing with her. Toying with her, the way a cat plays with a mouse before it bares its claws. This whole meeting felt off. He’d promised her a story, and now he was dancing around all of her questions. The way he looked, the way he talked, the way he acted, none of it felt like the same man who’d texted her.
And then she remembered.
She hadn’t used the code phrase the mystery man had given her. She’d never confirmed that he was the man she was supposed to meet.
Abbey summoned a casual smile to her face. “So what do you like most about Quebec?”
He stared at her, his brow creased with puzzlement. “I’m sorry?”
“We ask that of all the tourists. Canadians are very polite, you know. What do you like most about Quebec? I mean, I know there’s so much.”
She needed to hear him say the words. Those wonderful little maple candies. She held her breath, waiting.
Say it!
He threw his cigarette to the ground and crushed it under his foot. He took off his gold-rimmed glasses, wiped them carefully with a handkerchief from his suit pocket, and repositioned them on his face. His hands returned to the deep pockets of his raincoat. “I guess the lower town,” he said. “So picturesque.”
She tried to stay calm and not give anything away. She reminded herself to keep smiling and to keep the terror she felt off her face. It wasn’t him. This wasn’t her mystery man. He was a stranger, and more than that, she knew he was a killer.
He was here to kill her.
“I could use a cigarette, too,” Abbey said, unlatching her satchel purse so she could reach inside.
But he wasn’t fooled at all.
Her hand dove inside her purse, her fingers clawing for the plastic grip of the Taser. As she drew it out, the man with the gold-rimmed glasses slipped his own hand out of his raincoat pocket. He held a black pistol with a long barrel, and his blue eyes had the sharp gaze of a hawk. Abbey squeezed her eyes shut and yanked the trigger, and the wires of the Taser ejected, filling the man’s body with fifty thousand volts. His arm lurched; he fired his gun into the air, making her scream. She pulled the trigger again, delivering more electric shocks. He collapsed to the ground, wriggling and jerking in fits, the gun spilling from his hand.
Abbey threw the Taser down.
She ran blindly from the park, making a zigzag path around dark corners to get away, losing herself in the deserted old streets of the city.