Hayward surfaced from unconsciousness in fits and starts. A throbbing at the base of his skull penetrated his awareness. He peeled his eyes open to discover that a deep blue blanket of darkness had been heaved over everything.
His face rested on something hard and coarse with a mild mildew funk—a carpeted floor. He lifted his head and an explosion of pain rocked his senses. A wave of nausea crashed. He winced as he touched the cantaloupe-sized lump in the back of his head. A sharp sting pulsated on top of the dull ache. The skin had been broken and he was bleeding a bit.
“Goddamn,” he said, his mind reabsorbing the context—his search of the Ferdinand-Xavier estate, the blood on the floor of the wine cellar, Katrin’s gold-and-diamond flower brooch, his frenzied road race to Malaga on the Costa del Sol, his search of the beach condo where, a few short months before, he and Katrin had spent a weekend in sublime entanglement.
The safe. The ID card.
The blow to the back of his head.
He listened. If his malefactors were still within earshot, he didn’t want to alert them to his alertness . . . or quasi-alertness. He was still miles away from full capacity. His head hurt like hell, he had one arm in a cast, and they had probably taken away his pistol. His options were limited.
He held his breath, straining to hear signs that he wasn’t alone, but only the distant hum of centralized air-conditioning filled the room.
Faint moonlight spilled in through the window. Bookcases lined the walls. He smelled the ocean. Where had they taken him?
He rolled over onto his side, wedged his body upward with his good arm, brought first one knee underneath him then the other. He entertained notions of standing, but only briefly. The movement made his head throb. The dark room spun.
Hayward sat back on his haunches. His right buttock reported strong discomfort. He was sitting on something hard. He reached down and felt . . . seriously? Was he hallucinating? Had they really left his pistol?
He grasped it by the handle. He could tell by its weight that it still contained a full magazine. His thumb confirmed the safety lever was still off, ready to fire. A lot of good it had done him before, but it was a good omen. It meant that he was unlikely to be entertaining company.
He rose unsteadily and reached for a dark shadow with very straight edges to steady himself, which turned out to be a finely veneered desk. He let the wave of pain and nausea subside then stood to his full height, breathing into the vertigo that eased as his blood pressure adjusted.
The ocean. The bookcases. The desk. The study. I’m still in the study in the condo! Joao Ferdinand-Xavier’s study, where Katrin had draped her gorgeous lines over the desk and offered herself, months before, and where Hayward had both filled and consumed her.
Katrin. Dread filled him. How long had he been out? Minutes? Hours? They still had her, were still having their way with her, forcing her to endure . . . He stopped his mind from imagining the horrors, because it would only fill him with worry and guilt and impotence.
He gripped the Beretta tightly in his hand, his finger extended at the side of the trigger guard and ready to spring instantly to the firing position, and walked slowly to the door. He peered out into the hallway. It was brighter than the study, filled with moonlight and dust motes and a small bric-a-brac table with family pictures. But no company.
Hayward took his time searching the remainder of the condo. He was alone. The front door was closed and locked. He attached the security chain, then returned to the study, closed the window shade, and clicked on the desk lamp. All was in order. Nothing appeared misplaced. His eyes found the wall with the picture hanging ajar like a door, and nested within the picture’s extent, the safe. It too was open, thick and steel and serious.
Hayward expected the safe to have been emptied of its contents. It was, presumably, the reason his attacker had allowed him to open the safe before knocking him out cold. The attacker wasn’t interested in Hayward, but was undoubtedly interested in the contents of the safe, which implied something ominous.
Had the Agency assholes planted Katrin’s brooch in the wine cellar? Did they understand its significance and surmise, correctly, that it would lead him to the condo? Did they need him to open the safe for them? Had Joao Ferdinand-Xavier and his family resisted, refusing to open it for them? God, what it must have cost them.
The safe wasn’t empty. In fact, it was quite full. Hayward removed a thick stack of bearer bonds, typed in English and denominated in dollars. Bearer bonds were as good as cash—better, some would say. He thumbed through the stack, shaking his head, his spirits falling further. Whoever attacked him could have walked out with over a hundred thousand dollars in bearer bonds, but they’d left all that money in the safe.
There was also a healthy stack of Euros, a set of keys dangling from a Ferrari keychain, and a photo album, which Hayward didn’t open. He knew what would be inside, and seeing pictures of Joao and Maria and Katrin would do nothing to help him find and free them.
If they were still alive. He shuddered, digging deeper into the safe, searching for what he knew they were searching for. He wasn’t sure of the precise form it would take—flash drive, hard disk, laptop, tablet, DVD—but he was sure he’d recognize it if he saw it. Data storage of some sort. You wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at the vessel, but the contents would be earth-shattering.
It wasn’t there. Had his attackers taken it? If they had, the Ferdinand-Xaviers would no longer be necessary. In fact, Joao and Maria and Katrin would be worse than unnecessary. They would be liabilities, and they would be long dead by now.
A glimmer of hope wormed its way into his psyche. Maybe the Agency assholes hadn’t found the ChemEspaña data. Maybe it hadn’t been in the safe at all. Maybe they had followed Hayward, waited for him to discover the safe, and waited for him to open the lock with Katrin’s security badge. Maybe they had struck at the moment he unlocked it for them, only to find that what they were looking for wasn’t inside.
Hayward drew a breath, furrowing his brow. Hope was never a course of action, but if he didn’t hope, didn’t bank on the chance that his employers hadn’t found what they were looking for, then what was left? Katrin and her family would be long gone by now, wiped away forever, probably in a fiery car accident or tragic boating mishap or something equally unsuspicious.
Something wasn’t right. He wasn’t right, he realized. It wasn’t right that he was still alive. He was a loose end, and they had promised him that his life was over. Why hadn’t they killed him when they had the chance?
The answer was obvious. They still needed him.
He didn’t have time to ponder the implications. A sound startled him, making him jump. It was loud, insistent, penetrating. It was the goddamned phone, sitting on the desk, four feet from his pounding skull, bleating at an unreasonable volume.
It wouldn’t stop. He thought an answering machine would pick up, or voicemail, but the phone just kept ringing. How many times? Twenty? Thirty?
He stared at it, suddenly more tired than he had ever felt before. Finally, he picked it up.
“It’s your lucky day, fuckwhistle,” a rasping, obnoxious voice said.
Hayward reacted viscerally long before his cognitive processes produced a name to match the voice. A look of disgust crossed his face. Bill Fucking Fredericks. “You,” he seethed, gauzy images of DC and Caracas and Cologne and the Farm flooding his mind, reminding him that as far and fast as he could ever run, the Agency would always be one step ahead.
A loud cackle. “Who’d you expect?”
Hayward could picture the man: fat, balding, jowly, sweaty, vile in fundamental ways.
I’d rather be dead, Hayward thought. “What do you want from me?”
A snort. “Asked and answered,” Fredericks said, “a dozen times over. They want everything.”
“They?”
“We . . . they . . . what’s the difference?”
Hayward shook his head but didn’t respond.
“I’ve been asked to relay a new set of marching orders,” Fredericks said.
“Why you?” Hayward asked. “I thought you ripped off some hacker and retired to Bosnia.”
“Croatia. It didn’t take. Shut up and listen. In fact, you should take notes. You don’t want to fuck this up. I think they’re pretty pissed and they might kill you.”
“They’re going to kill me regardless.”
“Don’t be a drama queen.”
“I’m hanging up now,” Hayward said.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Fredericks said. “Something about . . . Katherine, was it? Katelyn?”
“Katrin,” Hayward said, instantly furious at himself for speaking her name.
“Right. Katrin. Sweet little slice of ass. Not really your type, though, am I right?”
Hayward said nothing.
“I get it. Not taking the bait these days. They trained you up proper, didn’t they?”
“You’re wasting my time,” Hayward said.
“That’s right,” Fredericks said. “You’re on a timeline, aren’t you? Maybe you’ll reach her before they flay the skin off her.”
Hayward’s jaw clenched and his hand tightened into a fist. “Fredericks, I will enjoy watching you die,” he growled.
Fredericks laughed. “So tough,” he said. “Not at all like when we first met. Ah, how you’ve grown.”
“Goddammit, say what you have to say.”
“North pier, slip fourteen, Swan Song. No friends, no firearms. On the hour.”
“And if I don’t show?”
Another derisive laugh. “What the hell else are you going to do with the last moments of your pathetic little life?”
Hayward seethed. “I want proof she’s still alive.”
“I want seventy-two virgins,” came the foul man’s reply. “But neither of us is going to get any satisfaction tonight.” Then the line went dead.
If you had to walk into a terrible situation, it paid to do it as smartly as possible. Hayward wouldn’t have hesitated to bring both a friend and a firearm, counter to Bill Fredericks’s phone instructions, but he didn’t have any friends to speak of. So that left the firearm, which pressed into the small of his back—loaded, cocked, with the safety on, just to prevent shooting himself a new tailpipe as he crawled around on the deck of an extremely expensive-looking sloop called Faer Wynds. Hayward wasn’t sure what they were going for with the cute spelling.
It was the Faer Wynds’s geography that interested Hayward. More specifically, its location on the north pier, three slips away from where the Swan Song was moored. Hayward took cover in the shadows on the far side of the Faer Wynds’s cabin and began a steady, disciplined scan of the area.
The boats bobbed gently in the calm nighttime harbor. Hayward heard the distant grumbling of a big diesel engine, probably pushing a hardy fishing vessel out for a nighttime foray. Or maybe a smuggler was taking his chances, making a midnight run for riches or glory. Seagulls registered occasional complaints, perched atop light poles and superstructure. Riggings creaked and hulls groaned.
Other than that, nothing.
Hayward hazarded a look at his watch, sheltering the glowing hands to avoid drawing the attention of any would-be watchers. Twenty minutes to the top of the hour. Twenty minutes until the start of a new day. Twenty minutes until the deadline. Slip fourteen, north pier, Swan Song. Those were the instructions.
Hayward wasn’t good at following instructions. The cast on his broken arm was proof of that. Hell, the whole predicament was testament to his waywardness.
He continued to watch, scanning his eyes over the pier, checking behind him at regular intervals, watching for motion. The dark was famous for playing tricks on the eye. Was that lump in the distance a human form, still as a statue, with a sniper rifle trained on him? Or was it some nautical object whose name Hayward had never bothered to learn? He caught himself staring, which he was taught never to do. Always best to keep the eyes scanning, searching for motion, without pausing long enough to let the imagination take over.
Minutes passed. He controlled his breathing, drew his weapon, anticipated someone’s arrival. Probably several people. They’d undoubtedly be well-armed and well-equipped, maybe even with night-vision devices, which would make his choice to hide on the deck of an adjacent boat seem a very silly decision. But maybe they wouldn’t have night-vision goggles, and even if they did, following their instructions would violate the cardinal rule of survival: predictability kills.
Then again, they had taught him those rules, so they would expect some degree of unpredictability from him. And in that light, maybe the most unpredictable option would have been to just follow the damned instructions.
He shook his head. Fatigue was catching up with him, toying with his thoughts, roughing away whatever sharp edge might have remained of him after the events of the past week. If there was going to be any chance of surviving the encounter, he would need every bit of his wits about him.
He became conscious again of the time. Five past the hour. Had he heard the instructions correctly? Was it really the Swan Song at midnight? “At the top of the hour,” Fredericks had said. Which hour? He’d assumed this hour, but now he wasn’t sure.
Hayward waited and watched for five more minutes, then ten, then twenty. Half past the hour came and went. And then it was quarter to one in the morning, which was when his patience ran out.
He stuck the pistol back in his belt, rose from his hiding spot, found a ladder on the far side of the Faer Wynds’s deck, descended to the water’s surface, and silently slipped into the harbor.
He smothered a gasp. The cold took his breath away. His face tightened into a grimace and the muscles in his back spasmed. Have to get moving. He swam silently around the back end of the Faer Wynds, keeping his arms and legs beneath the surface of the water to avoid splashing, and turned landward toward slip fourteen and the Swan Song.
It took several minutes to reach the Swan Song, and despite the debilitating cold, Hayward didn’t rush. Stealth was extremely important. He chose a waterborne arrival for surprise, but it was a risky decision. If he was discovered, being in the water could instantly become a fatal disadvantage.
He observed the Swan Song for several moments before approaching. No sounds, no lights, and no movement except the gentle rolling of the tide. He swam to the rescue ladder, listened for movement, and slowly hoisted himself out of the water.
His legs shook with cold as he ascended the ladder. He drew the pistol from his belt and pressed the butt into his gut to silence the sound of the safety lever clicking off. He threw one leg onto the deck, then another, then rolled the rest of his body aboard, ending up in a prone firing position, ready to engage.
No movement. No sounds. He crawled slowly and silently around the deck, pistol ready.
Carefully, he descended the short stairway leading into the cabin. The shadows were darker and it took his eyes time to adjust. Then he saw them: two feet, no shoes, smooth, bare legs ascending to shadows. Hayward thrust the pistol forward into a firing position. “Don’t move,” he said.
Silence. Seagulls. Creaking hulls and lapping waves. Hayward’s heart pounded in his chest. “Who the hell are you?”
No response.
Hayward crept forward, pistol trained where he imagined the person’s torso to be, more of the body becoming visible with each step.
In the pale glow, he began to make out a few details.
Naked.
Female.
Oh, Jesus, no!
Hayward charged into the cabin. “Katrin!” he yelled.
His eyes adjusted to the dark. What he saw made him nauseous. Goddamn, the blood. It was everywhere. Her head was slumped forward toward her bare chest. Long, blonde hair obscured her face. A wide leather belt was fastened around her lap, securing her to the chair. Both arms were strapped to the armrests.
God, no, please! Not this!
Her left wrist had been sliced open.
Hayward leapt forward, tilted her head back, breathed twice into her mouth. He pressed his fingers to her neck, praying for a pulse. There was none.
He shifted position, trying to apply chest compressions. His feet splashed in something. He looked down at the floor. Blood. Half a gallon of it. There was no way she was still alive. She was gone.
He stroked her neck. It was warm to the touch. She had died very recently.
A cry of anguish escaped him as the realization set in. She had died while he sat there on the other boat, doing nothing but imagining demons in the darkness.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, stifling a sob. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
He lifted her chin, wanting to see her eyes one last time, which was when he saw the woman’s face—really saw it—for the first time. It was familiar, beautiful, with strong but feminine lines, the kind of face a man could admire for decades.
But it was not Katrin! His eyes pored over her face again to be sure they weren’t deceiving him. It was Maria Ferdinand-Xavier, Katrin’s mother.
“Jesus,” Hayward whispered, hating himself for the joy he felt that the dead body wasn’t Katrin’s.
He looked around, disoriented, shivering, shock settling in. He hadn’t expected anything good to happen aboard the Swan Song, but he sure as hell hadn’t prepared himself for this.
Bright flashing blue lights suddenly played over the cabin windows. Police, coming from the direction of the pier access road. Hayward’s innards clenched in cold fear. He looked around. He was covered in Maria’s blood. His passport wasn’t stamped. He was armed.
He was fucked.
More precisely, they had fucked him. They’d undoubtedly notified the police of the murder. Hayward was certain they’d included a few savory details, such as the fact that the suspect—James Hayward—was still on the boat.
Quickly, he dashed to the deck, gathered the ropes from around the pier cleats, and tossed them aboard. Then he returned to the cabin, found the controls, and bashed in the ignition box with the butt of his pistol. His fingers fumbled as he stripped the wires with his penknife. He held his breath as he touched the bare ends together.
The Swan Song groaned to life and Hayward inched the throttle back. The boat backed gently out of the slip. He turned the wheel and moved the throttle forward a couple of inches, fighting the urge to slam it all the way to the forward stop.
He guided the Swan Song away from the pier and into the darkness, running lights off, just moments before the first police cruiser pulled to a stop in front of slip fourteen.