The woman was sitting on the table, twiddling the gun in her hands. Leia’s eyes were only half open. She didn’t want to sleep but her weary body craved it. Next to her, her father shuffled position, rousing her.
‘You should take my offer,’ he said to the woman. ‘You’ll never get a better one. Two million dollars. I know that’s way more than you were supposed to get.’
The woman didn’t register his words at all.
Leia groaned. Her head was pounding. Tiredness, hunger, distress. How long had they been here for now, in this room? Twelve hours? Twenty-four? It felt like days. The man was gone again. How long had it been? To get food, he’d said. Leia and her father had only been given scraps so far, as well as the paltry water. They’d not been out of this room at all, not even for the bathroom. Instead, they’d been provided with a bucket in the corner. Leia’s father had robustly objected to that. To a fourteen-year-old girl being subjected to such humiliation. Yet they’d both had no choice but to use it.
‘So?’
‘I said no,’ the woman replied. ‘Now please shut up.’
Leia’s father chuckled. ‘I know I’m asking a lot of you. A betrayal. But two million dollars, and you walk away. Weigh it up. Two million and you live. Or you get nothing and, most likely, you’ll die.’
The woman said nothing now. Yet Leia knew that slowly her father’s words were wearing her down. Something about the way she sat so solemnly when he talked. The sighs and the deep breathing.
‘Even with this sack on my head, I can tell you love him. He loves you too. But let me put it another way. How much for him to betray you instead?’
* * *
The journey to Copenhagen gave Devereaux plenty of thinking time. She didn’t just think of her past. More recent events dominated her mind. Two people in particular. From all the digging she’d carried out, Paulo’s life remained something of a closed book to her. Information on Kyri’s past was a little more readily available, even if it was far too bland to be the whole story.
At the age of thirty-nine, Kyri, a Cypriot national, had inherited a real estate portfolio from his father, which he’d steadily built over the last three decades. Developments he’d had involvement in included several prominent apartment blocks and hotels along some of the Mediterranean’s most exclusive and idyllic spots. But most of the properties had other partners, and Kyri was wealthy, but far from super-rich. There was nothing in his public profile that suggested a relationship with Pavel Grichenko, either in the past or up until she’d killed the Russian in England last week.
So what was the real story there, and what else was Kyri involved in that Devereaux didn’t yet know?
Questions about Kyri’s past aside, it was Paulo she thought of most, and she was still thinking about him even as she stalked her new prey through the frozen streets of Copenhagen. She wondered with interest when she’d next ‘bump’ into him. There’d been no sign of him in Switzerland, but would he be here in Copenhagen? Or was he done with her now? Was it down to her to find him?
One thing she was sure of, she wasn’t done with him yet.
The woman turned off the street and into the park. Devereaux looked around then headed that way too. They’d been walking for more than a mile already. It was gone 8 p.m., not exactly late, but it was dark and cold out and the streets were quiet. This park was deserted and had no lights on at all.
Devereaux had been on the tail of this woman since she’d arrived in the Danish capital earlier in the morning. She’d had a pretty bland day, all in all. A visit to a gym. A visit to a library. Lunch with her handsome and extremely smartly dressed boyfriend. The rest of the afternoon and early evening she’d spent at his apartment. Devereaux had waited outside there for several hours. He’d come home a little after 6 p.m. Had left again a little after seven. Black tie, chauffeur to pick him up, and everything. Devereaux was half tempted to follow him to see what the shindig was. Why hadn’t he taken his lady with him? Instead, Devereaux had remained in wait, contemplating how long she’d stay in place before she simply went up there to finish the job quickly.
Then the woman had emerged. Alone.
Interesting.
A secret lover’s rendezvous, perhaps? That would make this a whole lot more exciting, though it was seeming increasingly unlikely now that the woman had come into this dark, cold, and isolated park, where she was walking alone.
Odd, to say the least.
The woman was fifty yards ahead, walking quickly in trainers, and with a long and thick coat that went down to her knees. She had jeans underneath. No. This wasn’t a lover’s rendezvous. She wasn’t dressed for it. The woman headed along a twisting path, only barely lit by the lights from the nearby streets and buildings. She moved down a dip, underneath a stone-arched bridge. When she was halfway through the tunnel she slowed momentarily. She didn’t look over her shoulder, or anything like that, but a moment later she picked up her pace.
Then abruptly turned off to the left when she’d exited the tunnel.
Devereaux glanced around her. What the hell?
She moved a little more quickly, still not making a sound. Through the tunnel. She came out the other side then stopped.
Where was she? No sign of the woman now. Devereaux held her breath, strained her senses. Could hear and see nothing.
At least, not until there was a flicker of movement in the patch of black in front of her. In among the trees?
Devereaux moved forward, a little more cautiously now. A sliver of moonlight escaped through a gap in the clouds allowing her to more easily make out the scene. A copse of trees. Thick bushes beyond.
Then there was movement to her right. The snap of a twig to her left.
Breathing right behind her.
The woman wasn’t alone. Devereaux had been tricked.
She ducked and spun and crashed her elbow into the figure behind her. Solid contact. Side of head, she thought. She heard the second person racing toward her on the other side. She sidestepped and tried to right herself, was ready for the attack.
She wasn’t ready for the gunshots.
Bang. Bang.
The first bullet thudded into the frozen grass next to her. The second sank into her thigh. Devereaux grimaced in pain. Adrenaline surged as anger bubbled and she drove forward, grabbed the hand holding the gun. She twisted the arm to adjust the aim then forced her finger onto the trigger. A single pull. A single bullet. A splat as blood and bone and brain erupted – some of it spattering onto Devereaux’s face and clothes. She let go and the body crumpled to the ground.
She had hold of the gun now. She crouched down. Looked closely at the person she’d killed. The face was unrecognizable but she could see it was a man. The second person was shuffling on the ground next to her. Conscious but dazed.
Devereaux stood up and drove her heel down onto their torso. Crack. A scream. Female. Her target? She took out her phone and shone it onto the face. No. Not her target. Devereaux didn’t know her at all.
‘Please,’ the woman said.
Devereaux glared at her, pointed the gun at her face.
‘Please. You don’t have to kill me.’
English. An English accent.
‘The police are coming. Don’t make this worse for yourself.’
That was true. Devereaux could already hear the siren.
‘Where is she?’ Devereaux asked.
No response.
‘Tell me where she is!’
A slight shake of the head.
Devereaux fired again. The bullet blasted through the woman’s eye. She dropped the gun and turned on her phone’s flash and snapped a picture of each of the corpses. She looked all around. No sign of her target now.
Her insides boiled with rage. Blood slid down her leg which throbbed with pain.
As best as she could with the bullet in her thigh, she turned and ran. She retraced her steps. Through the tunnel, along the path. Her eyes busy as she went. No sign of the woman still. She’d bolted, no doubt.
In the near distance, Devereaux could see strobes of blue beyond the wispy tree branches. She reached the road. Turned in the opposite direction of the blue lights and moved as quickly and as calmly as she could until she was deep within the city’s streets.
She stopped in a dark and secluded alleyway, then pulled down her trousers to inspect the wound. The bullet wasn’t too deep. She’d dig it out herself. Later. For now, she’d have to settle. She used her knife to cut a swathe of fabric from her jumper which she tied around her leg to at least stem the flow of blood, and to soak up what she lost to halt the blood trail. She could do nothing now about her blood, her DNA that was already at the crime scene.
With anger and embarrassment still bubbling away, she took out her phone and sent the two pictures to Paulo, along with a message.
Her brain whirred with unwelcome thoughts as she waited. Would she hear back from Paulo at all? Would he want her dead now?
Two minutes later a reply came through.
She clenched her teeth. She’d been wondering all day when she would see Paulo again. What would happen next time she did. Would they have sex again? Would she try to kill him again?
Perhaps neither. Perhaps it was he who’d try to kill her. Perhaps not even him, but simply her replacement.
Her brain fired. She could run. Hide. Recover. Take stock, then action.
No. That wasn’t her style. Paulo, or whoever he sent, was coming. She’d be here to take on whatever came her way next.
She’d wait. She’d be ready. And sooner or later she’d get her revenge for tonight having turned to shit. When she found her, Devereaux would make Penny Diaz suffer like she’d never made anyone suffer before.