Bourne kept an arm around Vandal’s waist as they escaped from the park. When they reached the outside streets, she felt strong enough to walk on her own, but he knew she was badly hurt. They’d left a stolen Kia a few blocks away, on a street that bordered a huge railway yard. When they reached the car, he let her stretch out in the back seat, her head against the window. He used a medical kit from the trunk to clean her up, but the slightest touch of a gauze pad on the side of her head made her wince. He tested her focus by moving a finger in front of her eyes. He didn’t like what he saw.
“I’ve got a doctor I use in the city,” he said. “His name’s Richet. I’ll take you over there.”
“Fuck that,” Vandal replied wearily.
“You may have a concussion.”
“I’m fine.”
“How’s your memory?” he asked.
“How’s yours?”
Bourne couldn’t help but smile. “Did you see anything in the trees?”
“I saw a Guy Fawkes mask about a second before my lights went out. Shit, those things are creepy.”
“Those masks are all over the La Vraie riots,” Bourne said. “And someone in a Guy Fawkes mask killed the messenger you sent me near the Bastille.”
“Does that mean it was Le Renouveau?” Vandal asked.
“I think somebody wants us to believe it was Le Renouveau. But it doesn’t feel like their style.”
“So who was it?”
Bourne frowned. “Lone assassin. Stealthy. Highly skilled. Enough smarts to get the drop on a pro like you. Deliberately wearing a disguise to make us think somebody else was behind the hit. Who does that sound like?”
Vandal’s eyes narrowed as she understood what he was saying. “You think it was one of us? Someone from Treadstone?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether you told Nash about the meeting tonight,” Bourne said.
She stuttered, which was as good as a confession. “Look, Cain—”
“Somebody knew where the meeting was going to go down,” he snapped, cutting her off. “Monika picked the spot. That was only two hours ago. And yet a killer—a pro—was already waiting for us.”
“My situation is complicated,” Vandal told him.
“Yes, I get it. I know you’ve got divided loyalties. But you said Nash would do just about anything to keep me away from Monika, right? Now we’ve got a lone killer wiping out the connections at Chouat’s office and targeting Monika. The whole thing smells like a Treadstone operation.”
“Why would Nash go that far?” Vandal asked. “I mean, killing her?”
“This is Nash. The ends always justify the means. It all depends on what secrets he’s trying to protect.”
Vandal’s head sank back against the car window, making her grimace. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”
Bourne said nothing.
She closed her eyes and kept talking. He could hear the exhaustion in her voice.
“I don’t know how you do it, Cain. Seriously, I don’t know how you stay sane. The things they do to us. Jesus. They look for lost souls, you know? That’s their whole game plan. Like Nova. Everything she went through as a kid? Her parents getting killed on that boat? Treadstone only wants the damaged ones. The ones they can manipulate. The ones with nothing to live for.”
He shifted into the other seat in the back of the Kia and let Vandal drape her legs across his. He made sure no one was watching them from the street. “Does that include you?”
“What, damaged? God, yes. Of course. Like I said, it’s complicated. I never told you about it?”
“No.”
She looked away, avoiding his eyes. Nervously, she stroked her fingers through her black-and-purple hair. He could see remnants of blood on her face, and her mocha skin looked dirty and drawn. Her muscles twitched, her whole body tense.
“Eight years ago, I murdered my husband,” Vandal said.
Jason waited in silence for a while. Then he asked, “Did he deserve it?”
Her lips made a scowl. “Like, did he beat the fuck out of me? Or shove his dick into half my friends? No. It wasn’t like that. People always assume it’s the guy, but I was the bad one. I was a cocaine addict, in addition to being a cheating bitch. Lloyd stuck by me a lot longer than I deserved. Big mistake on his part. Finally, he gave me an ultimatum to quit, but I was high as a kite. I told him I’d see him dead before I quit. I backed that up with four shots from a Glock.”
Bourne closed his eyes. “Shit.”
“This was in Los Angeles. Even with the lefty loonies in charge out there, it’s hard to get off if you do that. I pled guilty, got twenty years.”
“But here you are.”
“Yeah. Here I am. Guess I’ve got a guardian angel, huh?”
“A guardian angel named Nash,” Bourne said.
She nodded. “I got clean behind bars. I went back to what I used to be really good at in high school.”
“Which was?”
“Gymnastics.” She bent her arm to show her muscles. “I’m really good. So good apparently somebody noticed my physical skills and thought I might be useful to them. Three years into my sentence, I got a new cellmate. Short-timer, check fraud. Not the kind of person who would normally get put in with a murderer, but I didn’t think about that. She and I hit it off. She was smart, got me to open up, talk about things I never talked about with anybody else. Then again, what else is there to do in there, huh? I told her my life story, and she sussed out everything that was in my head.”
“She was a shadow,” Bourne concluded.
“Right. Not like I knew what that was at that point, but yeah, Treadstone sent her in to check me out. See if I was good raw material. Figure out all my strengths and weaknesses, whether I was mentally up to the job. Not long after that, she got sprung from my cell. A week later, I got called to a room to meet with a tough little son of a bitch. Said his name was Nash Rollins. He offered me a choice. Sit and rot in prison for half my life, or sign my soul away to an organization called Treadstone. That was an easy call. At least it was back then. I don’t know, if I could go back in time, I might tell him to shove it and take my chances with the parole board.”
“So you’re loyal to Nash because you made a deal?” he asked.
“I’m loyal because if I fuck up, he sends me back.”
“Ah.”
“I guess the bottom line is, you can’t trust me.”
“I don’t trust anyone,” Bourne told her. “But I still need your help.”
“Why? We’ve lost her, right? Monika’s gone underground again.”
“Maybe. Or maybe not.” Jason dug Monika’s burner phone out of his pocket. “She left this in the grass. She knew I’d find it. At first, I thought that meant she was cutting me off, but now I’m not so sure. I mean, if she wanted to make sure we had no way to track her, the smart play would have been to toss the phone in the canal, not leave it behind where we could trace the pings and see where she’s been.”
“Or she dropped the phone when she got hit,” Vandal suggested, “and she didn’t take the time to find it when she was hauling ass out of here. She probably knows there’s nothing on it that could compromise her location.”
“It’s still a risk. Fingerprints. DNA. Would you leave a burner behind like that?”
Vandal shrugged. “This woman nearly died the last time she was with you ten years ago. Now you’re together for like five minutes and somebody sends an assassin to take her out. If I’m in her shoes, you’re the last person I’d ever want to see again. So if she’s leaving you any clues, I’d have to ask why.”
“Well, first let’s find out if she did,” Bourne said. “I’ve got a contact at MI5. Actually, he was Nova’s contact. But he should be able to run the data on Monika’s phone.”
He retrieved his own phone and found the contact information he wanted. He dialed, and a stuffy British voice answered before the phone had a chance to ring twice.
“Who is this, and how did you get this number?” Anthony Audley asked sharply.
“Hello, Tony.”
There was a long pause on the line. Then Audley said in a frosty tone, “Cain?”
“That’s right.”
He wondered if the man would hang up on him. They’d never met, but he knew that Anthony Audley had had an on-again, off-again affair with Nova. He’d also heard rumors in the intelligence community that Audley blamed Bourne for Nova’s death.
“It’s been a long time,” the Brit went on finally. “Since the fracas at the WTO.”
“I remember.”
“I wish I could say I miss our little chats, but that would be a lie. Are you in the UK? I’d appreciate a warning about your arrival in future, so I can alert my team about the inevitable violent and suspicious deaths.”
“I’m not in the UK,” Bourne replied, ignoring the jab, “but I’m looking for someone who may have a home base there. She was using a burner phone with a 44 country code.”
“And you want me to run the pings and see where she’s been?” Audley guessed.
“Yes.”
The British agent hesitated. “You do realize I’m under no obligation to help you. You’re not even officially part of Treadstone anymore, are you? The word is, you’re at arm’s length from your old colleagues.”
“True.”
“So who is this woman? Is she a British citizen?”
“I don’t know. She’s German-born. If she’s in the UK now, she’s living under a false identity even if she’s naturalized.”
“Why do you want to find her? To kill her?”
“No.”
“And yet the women around you have a way of winding up dead, Cain,” Audley said acidly.
“In fact, I’m trying to keep her alive.”
“Is this a Treadstone operation?”
“No, it’s personal,” Jason said. “She’s part of my past.”
“The past you don’t remember.”
“Yes.”
Audley was silent again. “One question.”
“Okay.”
“It’s about Nova,” he said. “Were you with her when she died?”
“I wasn’t, but we were working on an operation together. So if you want to blame me, Tony—”
“I don’t,” Audley replied. “Truly, I don’t. I knew who Nova was. Whatever the operation was, she knew the risks. And she had plenty of opportunities to live a safe life with me. She chose you instead. I have no problem with that. But I do want to know if she suffered in the end.”
“I don’t think so. She was shot. And she killed the woman who shot her before she died.”
“Good for her.” Audley sighed. “All right, give me the phone number.”
Bourne rattled off the digits.
“I’ll call you back,” the man told him.
Jason ended the call. In the back seat, Vandal shook her head. “It’s funny.”
“What is?”
“All of us in the business pretending that we’re robots. We don’t feel a thing. We don’t care. We fuck each other, but hey, it’s just sex. What a crock of shit. That guy loved Nova, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did,” Jason agreed.
“Did you love her, too? That was the whisper back then.”
“I did at one point,” he admitted. “Or I thought I did. We were making plans for the future. That was stupid for people like us.”
“Then came Abbey Laurent,” Vandal went on. “The writer. You loved her, too, right? And now you’re fucking Johanna and pretending you don’t care about her, which is so obviously a lie.”
Bourne’s jaw hardened. “What’s your point, Vandal?”
“No point. I like you, Cain. When you put four bullets in your husband, it kind of sours you on men, you know? But you I like. I think if we fucked, I could fall for you. And there’s probably a good sixty or seventy percent chance that I wouldn’t end up shooting off your balls with my Glock.”
“Sixty or seventy, huh?” Jason asked.
“Maybe as high as seventy-five.”
His phone rang, and Vandal gave him a grin.
“Tony,” Bourne said, taking the call. “What did you find out?”
“That phone has only been active for one day,” Audley replied. “It signed on for the first time yesterday evening.”
“Where?”
“In the middle of nowhere. It pinged off an A1 cell tower south of Berwick-upon-Tweed, near the coast in Northumberland.”
“What’s near there?”
“There’s a causeway to Holy Island, one of those roads that’s only accessible at low tide. Not much except a lot of sheep out there, plus the old Lindisfarne Castle. Pretty spot, but cold as hell when that North Sea wind blows. A couple of hundred hearty souls live in the village, but that’s about it.”
“Thank you, Tony.”
Bourne hung up the phone. “A tidal causeway. Remember the message she sent me? ‘Time buries us all like a rising tide.’ I thought she meant Mont Saint-Michel, but now I wonder if this was about Lindisfarne.”
“When I searched Chouat’s office, there was a bottle of Lindisfarne Mead on his desk,” Vandal added.
Jason nodded. “Chouat said it came with the note for David Webb. Sounds like Monika’s leaving me a trail of breadcrumbs.”