Lubec, Maine
Helene Reichmann concealed her car on the deserted stretch of road overlooking the sea. A black van pulled in behind her. Several men dressed in black combat gear and equipped with night vision and automatic weapons flowed out. Within minutes they had dispersed, melting into the windswept trees that edged Ritter’s driveway.
Moving slowly, she picked her way down the pitch-dark driveway, pausing frequently to allow her vision to adjust to the intense dark and to listen. Not that either senses would do her any good if Lopez had gotten here before them.
The lights of a lone two-storied beach cottage came into view and she quickened her pace. Ritter’s hideaway, built in a north-facing cove that not only carried a similar name but in its own small way mimicked the icy hell that the port of Lubeck in Germany had been, was tiny compared to the mansion he kept in Boston. Ritter liked his privacy, particularly when he came to the beach, and it was that hermit philosophy she was counting on. He employed a local woman to cook and clean, but he didn’t have any staff living on the premises.
Security lights flooded the porch as she walked up the steps. Flexing her fingers against the cold, she pressed the buzzer.
Long minutes later, she wondered if she’d gotten it wrong and he wasn’t here. Parker had been running for the mountains when Lopez had cut him down; it was possible Ritter was doing the same, although she would put money on the fact that Ritter wouldn’t panic. She leaned on the buzzer again.
The door swung open a few inches.
Ritter’s gaze was wary. “Helene?”
She flinched. “I told you never to call me that.”
“What do you want?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, we have an emergency on our hands.”
He looked past her. “How did you get here? Where’s your car?”
Helene took the impact of the solid cedar door as it slammed closed on her shoulder. Wedging one booted foot in the gap, she fumbled in her pocket, produced a gun and pointed it through the gap. She hadn’t chambered a round, but the old fool wouldn’t know that. “We need to talk.”
The pressure on the door eased. Helene stepped inside and closed the door. “Into the library.”
Ritter was an entrepreneur, a mathematical genius with an uncanny talent with stocks and shares. He had taken the small chunk of the cabal’s money she had allotted him and built an empire.
He stared at Helene with his light gray eyes, and a shudder worked its way down her spine. He had always been odd, a little too brilliant and insightful, and with that uncanny instinct for the future. In her opinion, despite his prodigy status, at times he verged uncomfortably close to abnormal—and not in a good way. Sometimes she had been convinced he could read her mind. Years ago she had been almost certain he had guessed about the book.
His stare was fixed but slightly unfocused now, as if he was looking at something she couldn’t see, a trait that had always infuriated her. When he spoke he used German, his voice halting and guttural, spinning her back to the months spent at the institute in Berlin, the long weeks cooped up on the Nordika. “You haven’t come to talk. You’ve come to kill me.”
She lifted the gun. The first bullet caught him in the center of the chest, the second an inch off to the left. He died quickly, with surprisingly little fuss and hardly any mess.
Dispassionately, she stepped back from his crumpled form and the pungent smells that filled the room, and positioned the gun back in her pocket. One more loose end tied up.
Leaving the light on in the study, she systematically walked around the house and switched every other light off. When she was satisfied that the house was secure, she mounted the stairs and sat in the deep shadow of the first landing. The position gave her a clear view of the front door and the study.
Satisfied that the trap was set and that she had taken every precaution, she took out the gun and settled in to wait for Lopez.