WHEN YOU’RE WEAK, play strong, and when you’re strong, play weak. Hayes had taught her that a long time ago, when he was training her for Cold Harvest. If you’re undercover in a hostile city and someone follows you and corners you, don’t draw and then ask questions. That’s for the movies.
Shoot him in the face and exit the situation.
Her name wasn’t Carol Duncan, it was Claire Rhodes. And she was a headhunter, but she didn’t recruit executives. Long ago she’d learned that the only way to sell a lie is to believe it in your bones, to live it as the truth, to inhabit the persona, because you never know who’s watching.
She’d worked for Cold Harvest until a year ago, when her husband was killed, and the teammates closest to her started dying, and the commanders that had turned her into this machine cut her loose.
She sat back over her right heel with her left leg slightly in front of her, her left knee bracing the pistol in the most accurate kneeling firing position. The pungent smell of burned propellant drifted from the .45 and tingled in her nose.
She had fired all four shots.
The target dropped into the undergrowth. She moved quickly, flanking left, following her pistol, and jumped over a downed tree. The carbine had fallen to the man’s side. She dragged it away with her foot by the sling as she stepped over him and patted him down for hidden weapons.
“Who are you?” she said.
Two bullets had hit him in the eye, destroying the socket. He lay on his side.
Claire shook her head. Rusty. The first two shots had missed. In another situation that would have cost her her life.
She pressed her fingertips to the side of his neck. The pulse was barely palpable. His chest was still. His remaining eye fixed on her desperately as he clung to the last seconds of life. Sirens cried deep in the woods behind her: the police.
Even if he could talk, there was no time for intel. The authorities would be here any second.
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s over.”
She aimed the gun at him, turned her head away to avoid the spray, and fired, destroying his brain stem. She scanned the woods for any accomplices, then ducked down and searched his pockets. The sirens were closer now. She had only minutes, but she needed any clue she could find about who had sent this man to kill her.
She pulled a wallet from his chest pocket and opened it. There was a badge with a five-pointed star on one side and an ID on the other.
“Department of Justice. James Grier. Deputy U.S. Marshal.”
She muttered a curse. She had just killed a federal agent. The FBI had watched her for a while after Paul was killed. She knew they suspected her. But why now? Why like this? Why not announce themselves?
Panic rose in her; her thinking became disordered.
“Carol! Carol!”
She looked back to the roadway. A police cruiser had stopped behind the Toyota. It was Tim’s patrol car. She saw him walking through the woods, his sidearm out.
Just turn around, Tim. This game is too dangerous for you. It goes too high.
But he strode on, coming to save her.
She picked up the carbine and crouched beside the lifeless body. Blood ran through the red mud, swirled over the leaves. She pulled back the charging handle, checked that there was a round in the chamber, then dropped the magazine and felt its weight in her hand. Plenty of ammo. She slammed it back in, rested the barrel on the downed tree, and looked through the sight.
Tim moved closer, glanced down, and saw the tracks through the mud.
“Carol! Are you okay?”
He kept the pistol at a low ready. It had been his father’s in Vietnam. He’d never used it on duty, only at the range. She remembered him talking about it at the bakery, talking about his father.
She pressed her cheek against the stock and placed the crosshairs on his heart, moving with him as the trees passed like shadows between them. She’d just shot a federal agent, and now she might have to shoot Tim to get away.
“Carol!”
Turn around, Tim. Please. I don’t want to kill anymore.
He stepped closer. He’d always been kind to her, could see when she was hurting and was there, not demanding, but ready for whenever she wanted to talk, whenever she needed someone to listen. She never did. This is why she had to live the lie. Because when people found out the truth about her, they ended up dead.
Her finger curled around the trigger, and she tracked him as he moved closer. She’d shoot when he stopped.
“Carol!” He turned and looked directly over her head.
Good-bye, Tim. I’m sorry.