Vandal and Johanna sat in the cold darkness amid the heavy equipment of Monika’s arsenal mounted on the walls. Every light in the house was off, and the attic itself was pitch-black, without any windows. The rain had stopped, but wind shrieked through the centuries-old frame, making the house groan like a wounded animal.
“What is that noise?” Johanna asked, breaking the long silence between them. “It sounds like fireworks.”
“Gunfire,” Vandal replied. “It’s coming from the other end of the island. The castle.”
“Oh my God. We need to do something. We need to help Jason. Jesus, we can’t just sit here and let him die!”
Vandal said nothing.
She felt her own frustration deepen because Johanna was right. Vandal wanted to be there, in the middle of it, gun in hand. It killed her to know a firefight was going on—that Cain was in jeopardy—while she sat here on the sidelines. But when she stood up, she had to grasp for one of the angled roof beams in the attic to keep herself from falling. Far away, the gunfire continued in booms of thunder.
“I’m no help to anyone like this,” Vandal murmured. “I’m fucking useless.”
“Then let me go,” Johanna said.
“And get you killed? No way. Cain said to keep you safe.”
“What the fuck does it matter if I’m safe? He’s out there. He needs help.”
Vandal grabbed a flashlight from her pocket and pointed it in the woman’s face. Johanna’s long blond hair was soaking wet, her ivory skin shiny and damp. Her blue eyes stared up at her with frantic intensity. Vandal was sure that if she said yes, Johanna really would grab a gun and run for the castle.
“Seriously,” Johanna went on. “Let me go.”
“Not a chance. You don’t know what you’re doing, and you’ll make it worse. Look, Cain’s a survivor. He’s better off alone. If you’re out there, he’ll protect you instead of himself. No, I’m sorry, you’re not going anywhere, and neither am I. We both need to stay here. We wait.”
Slowly, Vandal slid back down to the floor. By habit, she pulled the Glock from her holster and checked it and rechecked it and then shoved it back in the leather case. Despite everything she’d said, she was tempted to ignore Cain’s instructions, ignore her concussion, and make a run for the castle. She could draw fire. She could give them a distraction. Something. Anything.
Her mind told her again: Cain’s better off alone.
But what if he needed help?
Johanna spoke out of the darkness. Her voice had a calm bitterness. “You don’t like me, do you?”
“Whether I like you or not makes no difference,” Vandal replied.
“You say that, but I see something else in your face whenever you look at me.”
“There’s nothing in my face.”
“Is it Jason? Is that the problem?”
“I told you, there’s no problem.”
Johanna was quiet for a few seconds. “You know, I didn’t ask to fall in love with him, if that’s what bothers you. But it is what it is. I think he’s falling for me, too. Is that why you don’t like me? Are you jealous?”
“No. I’m not.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well, believe it. I don’t care what’s going on between you and Cain. I feel absolutely nothing about that.”
“Why, because emotion kills? According to Jason, that’s the rule.”
“Yes, it does.”
“Jason told me the two of you never had sex,” Johanna murmured. “Is that true?”
“It’s true.”
“Did you ever want to?”
Vandal didn’t bother lying. “Once, for one night, but it didn’t happen. He was right, and I was wrong. End of story.”
“I know it can’t last between us,” Johanna said, “but for right now, he and I—”
She stopped midsentence.
Her body twisted in the darkness, and she was only inches away, her breath fast and hot on Vandal’s face. She clutched Vandal’s arm, her nails pinching, and her voice sank into an urgent hiss. “Jesus.”
“What? What is it?”
“Don’t you hear that? Someone’s in the house.”
Vandal closed her eyes and listened. At first, she thought Johanna was wrong—how could this amateur have heard an intruder before Vandal did?—but then she felt the frame of the cottage shift below them. A door had opened somewhere, letting in the roaring wind. Vibration crackled like electricity through the old timbers.
Footsteps.
In an instant, her Glock was back in her hand.
“Stay here,” Vandal whispered.
“Fuck no.”
“Johanna—”
“I’m coming with you unless you shoot me.”
Vandal sighed. Using her flashlight, she made her way to the hinged door in the attic floor. The door opened silently; Monika obviously kept it lubricated. She let the ladder drop to the bedroom closet, and she slid down the rails, with Johanna following closely behind her. The house was dark. She scoped their route out of the bedroom, but when they reached the old cottage stairs, she switched off her flashlight and held Johanna back. They both listened to the whistle of the wind.
The vibration in the house had stopped.
“Nothing,” Vandal murmured.
“He’s gone?”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’s waiting for us.”
Vandal took the stairs slowly. As she neared the ground floor, the wind got louder. She smelled the chill of fresh air and felt it raising goose bumps on her skin. The front door was open. The outside gales pushed the door back and forth soundlessly like a seesaw. The house felt deserted now, but was it? She stayed where she was, playing a waiting game to see whether the intruder would move first.
Johanna reached the lowest step right behind her. Vandal swiveled and put her lips to the younger woman’s ear. “I’m going to check the garden. Don’t move. Even if you hear something, don’t move. I’ll be back in two minutes.”
Vandal went outside, leaving the door to swing with the breeze behind her. The cold air helped with her dizziness. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she could make out the shapes of the trees and the horizontal line of the stone wall. Around her, branches and leaves rustled together as if shouting out a warning. She moved into the wet grass, far enough that she could see the wooden gate leading to the street. Like the front door, it was open. She knew they had closed it when they arrived.
Someone had come inside.
Slowly, she circled the house. The pound of the waves increased as she got to the back garden that looked toward the sea. When she crossed to the rear gate and checked the cliff’s edge, she saw no one in the moonlight in either direction. The area looked empty. And yet her Glock itched in her hand. That was instinct. Something was wrong. Her mind tried to separate the wind from the other noises around her, but her brain kept sending crazy signals.
What was that?
Was that a gunshot?
Or was she hearing things that weren’t there?
When she checked her watch, she saw that almost ten minutes had passed while she left Johanna alone. Too long. She needed to get back to the house. She continued around the garden until she reached the open door, but when she went inside, she saw in the gloomy shadows that the area in front of the stairs was empty now.
Johanna wasn’t there.
Shit!
Had she gone upstairs again? Had she heard something and taken refuge in the attic? Or had she run outside?
Vandal risked a low call. “Johanna?”
Then once more, urgently. “Johanna, are you there? Where are you?”
No answer.
Shit shit shit!
Vandal risked turning on her penlight, and she aimed it at the floor. Her heart sank when she spotted a dark red reflection shining back at her. From the doorway, she saw a trail of blood.
A lot of blood.
She followed the glow of her flashlight, but her brain did somersaults that made her stagger. She slumped sideways and banged her head. Propping herself up with one arm against the wall, she descended a couple of steps to the sunken living room with its brick fireplace. It smelled of old ash, and the wind howled down the chimney like a banshee. Vandal swung her light around the room, and then she stopped in horror with her flashlight beam aimed at the middle of an antique rug.
The bloodstains led there drop by drop.
To a body.
The top of the castle felt like the roof of the world. The night sky stretched endlessly in every direction, and the island spread out below them, barren and dark. In the tumult of the wind, Bourne could barely stand up straight. He noted the positions of the killers, ten or twelve feet away, rifles ready with fingers on the triggers, each of them separated from the other by about six feet. Chrétien Pau stood in the middle, slightly in front of the rest, no gun. The wind blew his long coat back like a cape, and his face had the grin of a devil.
Four men.
Four men against eighteen rounds in his SIG P365-XMACRO. Plenty of firepower if he could reach it. But he couldn’t. As soon as he tried to draw, they’d shoot him.
Monika stood next to him, close enough that he could feel her shoulder brushing against his. The words from Pau—I want you to kill her—elicited no reaction. She didn’t tense or flinch; he felt no fear from her. Fear was an emotion, and Monika had deadened herself to emotion years ago.
She was Treadstone.
He imagined her mind whirling with possibilities, the way his was, searching for a way out. The only no-win scenario Bourne believed in was death, and until you were dead, there was always a chance to turn the game around.
“You have ten seconds, David,” Pau continued. “Make your choice.”
Bourne made sure his face showed nothing. Poker players never did. “And if I refuse?”
The man from Le Renouveau shrugged. “I’m not really giving you a choice. You know that. You both die either way. But there are many ways to die. If you kill her yourself, it will be fast and painless for her. If not, if I’m forced to let my men deal with her, then it will be agonizing and slow. I’ll make you watch her suffer an excruciating death before you face the same punishment yourself. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You see, David, for me the satisfaction is in making you do it. Having you submit to me at long last. That’s worth giving up the pleasure of Monika screaming for my mercy. But it’s a fine line, and my patience is limited. Kill her.”
“Monika means nothing to me,” Bourne replied. “This isn’t ten years ago. Maybe I want her to suffer for what she did to me.”
“If you want to kill her slowly, be my guest. But now you have five seconds.”
Jason heard the clock ticking in his head. He didn’t think Pau was bluffing.
“As you wish,” he said.
Déjà vu.
Bourne shot out his right arm like the blow of a hammer, striking Monika’s chest below her throat and jolting her backward. She stumbled in surprise, losing her balance against the castle wall. He turned and advanced on her with his fists clenched, but he couldn’t say anything. He couldn’t tell her what he needed her to do.
Fight.
But she understood the game. Her eyes turned feline, hunter against hunter. Her teeth bared, and a menacing little growl purred from her throat. She lashed out with one leg aimed at his gut, and he staggered two steps back as if she’d kicked the air out of his lungs. She swung a hand, fingernails raking his face like claws, and this was no fake. He felt a sting as she drew blood, and the sight of the blood seemed to arouse her. She charged, and Bourne jabbed at her throat like a piston. He drew his fist back just as his knuckles connected with her windpipe, but she clutched her neck anyway and gagged. He aimed a blow at her chin, grazing it, and she snapped her head sideways as if dizzied by the impact. He took her by the shoulders and drove her backward, slamming her hard against the castle wall.
Below the wall, inches away, was a hundred feet of night air.
He bent her body at the waist until she cried out with pain. Her hair whipped around her face; her head and shoulders dangled over the edge. He grabbed her throat with one hand, squeezing it, cutting off her air. Her arms and legs flailed; her feet came off the ground. He kept pushing, farther back, farther back, her screams coming fast and wild as he forced her toward the point of no return.
The fall. The drop.
“Left shoulder,” he whispered.
She knew what to do.
As Bourne choked her, as she kicked and struggled, her right hand slipped inside his jacket and drew his Sig Sauer from its holster.
Then she fired through his coat.
She fired again and again and again and again, exhausting every shot.
Bourne held her tightly as she emptied the Sig across the castle battery, and when he heard the crack of the eighteenth round, he swung her backward away from the wall, hoisting her into the air like a shot put toward whatever was behind them.
Then he finally twisted around. He had a split second to assess the situation as he dove for the ground. Two of the killers were down, dead of multiple gunshots. Pau lay on his back, twitching and skittering backward, a bullet in his shoulder. But the fourth man was still standing despite wounds to his arms and legs. The man swung his rifle toward Monika, who crawled along the battery floor toward one of the fallen guns. He fired, his aim off thanks to the bullet in the meat of his shoulder, but when he fired again, the next shot landed in Monika’s thigh. She reared back with a shout of pain.
The killer fired again, barely missing Monika’s head.
Bourne leaped for the nearest rifle, which lay in a pool of blood next to one of the killers, who had a bullet from his Sig in his forehead. He scooped it off the ground, rolled onto his back, and fired a tight burst toward the killer. The bullets sprayed over the castle wall into the night, but one found its mark in the man’s stomach. The killer shuddered, then swiveled his weapon toward Bourne, still firing. Dirt and stone blew into Bourne’s face, momentarily blinding him. By instinct, he rolled right, hard and fast, the frantic motion knocking the rifle out of his grasp. Bullets chased him, and a cutting pain burned across his shoulder. An inch to the left, and it would have tunneled into his ribs and sliced through his lungs.
A body blocked his path. For a terrible instant, he was a motionless target. He stiffened, expecting a kill shot, wondering if he would even feel the bullet hit him. But the shot never came. The blast of a handgun exploded from a new direction. His eyes cleared, and he saw Monika on her back six feet away, a Glock in her hand.
The killer pitched forward, one of his eyes gone where her bullet had entered his skull.
Bourne scrambled to his feet. A bloody slash made a line across his shoulder and arm. He helped Monika to her feet, the Glock still in her hand. They turned back to the castle wall, and she aimed the gun toward the bodies of the fallen men.
Toward Chrétien Pau.
But Pau wasn’t there.
“Please put the pistol down, my dear,” Pau said.
He stood halfway across the battery floor, one arm limp at his side where he’d been shot, but the other arm cradling one of the rifles.
Monika pointed the barrel of the Glock his way.
Pau managed a smile. “Brave. You’re wounded, and all you have is a handgun. I don’t honestly think your aim is good enough to take me out at this distance. Neither is mine, I confess, but with this weapon, it’s quantity over quality.”
“I guess we’ll find out,” she said.
“I guess so,” he agreed. “Shall we?”
Pau fired.
So did Monika.
The one-handed recoil made him lurch off balance, and the bullet from the Glock missed him entirely. But his shot hit her forearm, went through and through, and the pistol dropped from her numb fingers. Pau took hold of the trigger, and his eyes burned with delight. He steadied himself and aimed at her again.
Then Pau’s skull burst and brains erupted outward like candy from a piñata.
A giant wound opened up his forehead. Bone, blood, and brain sprayed onto the stone floor. He didn’t even have time to look surprised; he was still enjoying his victory as he died. When his body collapsed, Bourne saw a woman standing right behind him, her arms outstretched with a suppressed Ruger rock-solid in her hands. She had one eye closed, one eye open as she aimed.
It was Johanna.
The man on the rug in Monika’s cottage wasn’t dead. He was still alive, face down, but the volume of blood on the floor told Vandal that he wouldn’t be alive for long. She ran forward and heaved the man’s body over by his shoulder until he was on his back. The movement jerked him to consciousness, and his lungs gasped for air. She shined her penlight into his face, then hissed in surprise when she recognized him.
“Jesus! Nash!”
The Treadstone handler’s eyes blinked open. His face, which was pale and drawn, contorted in pain. She ran the light over his body and saw two gunshot wounds, one in the meaty flesh of his side, the other an exit wound in his upper chest.
“There’s a trauma kit in the attic,” Vandal told him. “Don’t die on me, okay? I’ll be right back.”
But Nash grabbed her wrist in a limp grip. “Wait.”
“Nash, I need to stop the bleeding right now.”
He struggled for words. “No, no, be careful, there’s a shooter in the house. Vandal, someone shot me here. Handgun, suppressor. Someone saw me lying on the floor and shot me in the back.”
“Nash, we’re alone. No one is here but you and me. Unless—shit!”
“What?”
“Johanna must have grabbed a gun when we were in the attic. She thought you were one of them. So she shot you and ran.”
At her feet, Nash inhaled sharply and bit down on his lip. “Who is Johanna?”
“Monika’s sister.”
“Her sister? Vandal, what the fuck are you talking about?”
“Le Renouveau traced Johanna to Salzburg. They tortured her to find out where Monika was, but she didn’t know. So Johanna went looking for David Webb in Zurich. She’s been trying to find her sister.”
“Vandal, Jesus!” Nash spat the words back at her. His head lifted off the floor, and his grip tightened on her wrist with a burst of energy. “Don’t you get it? Monika Roth is a Treadstone cover identity. It’s not real. It was never real. We made up the legend for Shadow when we sent her to Europe. There is no Monika.”