| |
SPENCER SIMMS GRINNED and raised his glass. “In the flesh. And what name might you be going by tonight, sweetheart?”
Leine shook her head in amazement at seeing her old acquaintance. “Ava,” she said. They shook hands. His grip was warm and strong, just like she remembered. Spencer had been one of the agency’s rising stars in Europe about the time that Leine and Carlos, her fiancé at the time, were based in Amsterdam. They worked together on a couple of larger ops, and the three of them had struck up a friendship of sorts.
As friendly as a trio of assassins could be, anyway.
His blond good looks, great fashion sense, and strong chin made him the perfect candidate for seducing women and turning them into unwitting informants. He’d left a string of broken hearts, many of whom would have liked to see him dead.
“How have you been? And what have you been doing all these years?” she asked, keeping the man at the other table in her peripheral vision.
“Oh, you know, this and that,” he replied, looking at her intently. He leaned forward and whispered, “Are you working tonight?”
Leine gave him a look. “No. Of course not.” She smiled at him. “It’s certainly good to see you.”
He took a sip of his drink. “You, too. How long are you in Paris?”
“Only a few days. What about you?”
“I’m living here, now.”
“You quit freelancing, right?” The last she’d heard, Spencer had gone out on his own, picking up several lucrative contracts along the way, and earning a reputation for quality work. As word got out, he began to attract less-savory employers with deep pockets. According to one of Lou’s contacts, the last few years he’d been working security for a wealthy French businessman with ties to organized crime.
Spencer shrugged. “I grew tired of not knowing when I would get the next job, or from whom. This way, I can plan my life, such as it is.” He twirled the ice in his glass. “Would you believe I have a steady salary and six weeks of vacation a year?”
“Seriously?” She chuckled. “I never pegged you for someone in need of stability.”
“Right?” He shook his head. “What was the chance of that?”
They grew quiet, the comfort of shared history filling the space between them. Leine sipped her drink and kept a surreptitious watch on the assassin at the table, calculating the odds of interrogating him to find out who he worked for. She hadn’t seen him react to any of the attractive women at the bar, nor any of the men for that matter, so the use of seduction to get him to let his guard down seemed remote, at least for the moment. Once he left, she’d resume her surveillance. An opportunity would most likely present itself then. She would just have to be patient.
For the next ten minutes, Leine and Spencer caught up on each other’s lives, even though both of them knew most of the conversation was akin to the byproduct of shoveling out a horse stall. Their training was too ingrained. Each of their recollections would contain a kernel of truth—enough to keep them from blowing their cover or revealing too much. As she listened to Spencer weave his tale, Leine had the uncomfortable realization that making this dark return to her past had come far too easily.
A short while later, the man at the table threw back his drink and stood, apparently getting ready to go. The other men he’d been speaking to remained seated.
She turned to Spencer and gave him an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I just remembered I was supposed to be somewhere else. Do you come here often? I’d like to continue catching up.” It wouldn’t hurt to keep him in play as a contact, in case the man she was following turned out to be a dead end.
“I’ll be here tomorrow.” Spencer’s gaze flickered to the man near the stage and back to her before he gave her a nod. “I’d like that, too.”
“Great.” Leine slid off her chair and threw a few euros on the bar. “Until tomorrow night, then?”
“Until then.” Spencer raised his glass in a toast and then drained his drink.
Following Rashad’s killer at a distance, Leine checked the time on her phone to make it look like she was late for an appointment. She pushed her way through the crowd and walked out the door into the clear night air. She took a deep breath, glad to be away from the stifling bar, and glanced down the street in either direction. The man was already half a block away. Pulling up the hood of her jacket, she fell into stride behind him.
A few moments later, the faint sound of ringing could be heard. The man dug in his pocket for his phone. He listened for a time and then nodded, said something unintelligible, and put away the device. He kept up the same pace, although he now held himself a bit differently—straighter, she thought—before he disappeared around a corner. Wary, Leine pulled the knife free and slowed her pace. She had her pistol, but there were still a lot of people nearby that might come running if they heard gunshots. She didn’t relish trying to explain herself to a cop.
He’d turned near a shuttered storefront that led into a narrow alley darkened by the lack of a functioning streetlight. The perfect place for an ambush. Leine flattened her back against the wall of the closed shop and peered around the corner.
The alley was empty.
She continued into the barren backstreet, checking all the places a man might hide. Halfway down, a commercial-sized garbage bin hulked against the building wall. She checked under and inside before moving on to the next hiding place. She reached the end with no luck and was about to turn back when she sensed movement behind her. She pivoted, bringing the knife around in a tight arc, and thrust forward and up, expecting to find resistance. Rashad’s killer dodged the blade by centimeters, bringing his own knife, a stiletto, down in a vicious attempt to slice through her hand.
Leine feinted right and the man’s blade missed its mark. Her next thrust met solid flesh. She stepped into the attack, but he was too fast. With a grunt, he sprang backward, dislodging the tip before she could finish the job.
A blood stain bloomed at his sternum, but the wound didn’t slow him down. He came at her with renewed vigor, his stone-cold expression a mask of determination and drive. Leine parried, countering each attempt with a jab of her own, inflicting injury where she could. He continued his offensive, forcing her back toward the wall.
Leine danced left and sliced air, diverting the killer’s attention and giving her a split-second to deliver a brutal kick to his knee. There was a sickening snap and his face twisted in pain. Managing to stay upright, he slashed at her leg, narrowly missing her thigh. She cut him again with a slice to his forearm and sprang out of reach.
She’d hit a muscle or a nerve—his knife clattered to the asphalt and he doubled over. Leine came back with a roundhouse kick, but before she connected he straightened, a pistol now in his right hand. She slammed the side of her shin into his ankle, propelling his good leg out from under him. The gun discharged and he crashed to the pavement.
The round whizzed by her head. She kicked the gun from his hand, and it landed at the base of the wall behind her. He grabbed her foot and twisted—Leine lost her balance and dropped to the ground, landing on her palms. Her knife bounced from her grasp, coming to rest a few feet away.
He heaved on her leg, dragging her closer. She kicked at him, striking him where she could, and stretched for the blade. It was too far.
Grab the stiletto.
Leine rolled over and jackknifed to a sitting position and spotted the killer’s blade on his other side. She kicked him again and felt the satisfying crunch of her heel demolishing the cartilage of his nose. For an instant, his grip loosened and she lunged for the knife. Her fingers closed around the hilt as his fingers closed around her throat. He jerked her backward and she reached behind her, stabbing him again and again in the side. Her last thrust buried the blade deep and his fingers loosened. She jerked the knife free and stabbed him again.
He stopped moving.
Leine rolled to her feet and checked the entrance to the alley. No one had come to investigate the gunshot. Maybe the neighborhood hadn’t been quite as gentrified as she’d thought.
She glanced at the man, noting the blood soaking his shirt. His face was streaked with blood from the broken nose. She touched the back of her neck and her hand came away bloody. There was no pain, so she assumed it was his. She shrugged off her jacket—the back of it was drenched. Thankfully it was a dark material, so the stains wouldn’t be too noticeable from a distance.
In addition to his broken nose, the multiple stab wounds most likely ruptured an organ or two. She bent down and felt for a pulse, but there wasn’t any. She did a quick search of his pockets and discovered a phone and a set of keys. The phone had a fingerprint lock on it, so she grabbed his right hand and pressed his thumb to the pad. That one didn’t work, so she tried his forefinger. Neither did that. With another glance at the entrance to make certain no one was watching her, she pulled up his left hand and tried his other forefinger. That one worked, and the man’s home screen appeared.
She accessed the phone’s settings to change its security to a simple swipe and pocketed both the phone and the keys. Then she wiped the man’s knife and pistol clean on his shirt and slipped them into her pocket. She’d dispose of them when she was a few blocks away. She retrieved her knife and also wiped it clean before replacing it in its sheath.
Voices echoed toward her, coming from somewhere down the street. There was no time to camouflage or move the body. She left him where he lay and disappeared into the shadows.
~ ~ ~
ONCE SHE WAS SURE SHE hadn’t been followed, Leine checked into a small hotel several blocks away. She’d cleaned the worst of the blood from the back of her neck and head and carried her jacket over her arm, folded so the wet part didn’t show. The concierge raised an eyebrow at her lack of luggage, but when she laid cash on the counter he lost the attitude and quickly checked her in.
She walked up the stairs to her room and, after securing the door, took a long, hot shower and washed her hair. Afterward, she checked her body over in the mirror and discovered a large bruise on her hip turning an ugly greenish yellow. Other than a few minor lacerations, the bruise, and a tender ankle, she’d fared all right. She rinsed out her jacket, the blood painting the sink a watery red before it disappeared down the drain, and then hung it up to dry in the shower. Her black cargo pants were clean enough, as was her shirt and T-shirt, both of which she hung in the closet. She wrapped herself in a sheet from the bed, grabbed the dead assassin’s phone and curled up in the chair next to the small table.
The device was a fairly expensive model, telling her it probably wasn’t a burner. She accessed outgoing calls and noted the most dialed number had a Libyan country code. Interesting. There were a few phone numbers with a Paris exchange but none that repeated except for the two calls to Rashad’s flower shop in La Courneuve.
Then she checked the incoming calls. The last entry was a private number and matched the time that he’d taken the last call. She downloaded an app from a secure site she’d used during SHEN ops to identify the number, but the program was unable to track even the originating country code. Whoever called him last was careful and had most likely warned him that he was being followed. Had someone been watching him? Or her? She’d checked for tails and hadn’t seen anything suspicious.
That didn’t mean much if they were good.
She went back to the list and recognized the calls made by Rashad from the flower shop earlier that evening. No other numbers jumped out at her, except for the Libyan one. Her interest piqued, she called the number. It rang three times before a female voice answered.
“What?” the woman asked in an annoyed tone. Leine remained silent, hoping she’d say more so she could get a bead on whether the woman was a lover, or his employer, or possibly his mother.
There was a slight pause before she said, “Hello?” A moment later, the line went dead.
Leine ended the call. The woman had spoken French but hadn’t said enough for Leine to place the accent. She hadn’t reacted like a lover or a friend, choosing to end the call when it became clear the assassin wasn’t on the line.
Most likely a cutout.
Glancing at the time, she checked the phone’s external storage and found a file labeled with yesterday’s date that contained a series of pictures. Each showed the damage done by the bombing to Notre Dame from varying angles. Another file, labeled Maps, had corresponding satellite photos showing nearby structures and street names.
Her heart rate quickened and she continued looking through the phone. The pictures had been sent via secure app to the Libyan phone number. The man she’d killed in the alley was deeply involved in some way to the terrorist who had planned the bombing—and the woman at the other end of the Libyan phone number was key to finding out who that was.
After a couple of minutes of searching and not finding anything else usable, she removed the SIM card and the battery, rendering the device untraceable. She had no idea if tracking software had been installed on his phone, but she wasn’t going to take any chances.
She leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling, planning her next move.