Midnight came and went, and Jason still hadn’t spotted the assassin anywhere near the Melrose. He sat in a cobblestoned park on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, hidden by the darkness and the trees. For hours, he’d watched people come and go under the black awning of the eight-story hotel. She hadn’t emerged; she hadn’t arrived. And yet, if the man from Wolf Man Travel had been telling him the truth, Lennon’s handpicked killer was somewhere nearby.
Where?
And who was she targeting?
Bourne checked his watch again. He glanced up and down the street, where the traffic had thinned as it grew later. It was time to end his vigil for the night; he could begin again in the early morning. He’d already checked in to his own room at the Melrose, and he’d made a master keycard for himself. As soon as he located the assassin, he could follow her, trap her, and extract the information that would lead him back to Lennon.
But for now, there was no sign of her inside or outside.
On the street, Bourne watched a taxi pull up to the curb. In the warm nighttime glow of the hotel lights, a woman got out of the back. He saw her for only an instant as she turned toward the doors. His mind made an instant calculation, watching the shape of her face and the frame of her body. It wasn’t her. This woman wasn’t the killer he’d seen near the High Line in New York.
Then, as she disappeared inside with a drunken wobble in her gait, Jason froze. He tried to focus on her again, but she was already gone.
His brain caught up with his eyes. All day, he’d made quick judgments on the people coming and going from the hotel, ruling them out as the woman he was looking for. Beyond that, he didn’t care who they were. But now he felt sweat on his body, and his heartbeat sped up in his chest. He closed his eyes, recapturing that momentary glimpse from his memory, seeing that face again.
It couldn’t be her!
It couldn’t!
The hair was all wrong. Black, short, not long, lush, and red. The clothes, downscale and not trendy, didn’t look like her style at all. And why would she be here, now, in this place, at the exact moment when Bourne was tracking a killer? It made no sense!
But he leaped to his feet, because he knew he was right.
Abbey!
The woman at the hotel was Abbey Laurent.
Jason marched through the park and across the four lanes of Pennsylvania Avenue. The emotion he’d forced out of his soul for months—for two years!—roared back. Abbey. The Canadian journalist he’d kidnapped and interrogated and then let go, only to have her come back to him. The fearless woman who’d traveled across the country with him as he hunted the Medusa group. The confident lover who’d slipped naked into his arms in a hot, humid motel room near Amarillo, Texas. The quirky, smart, funny, sexy girl he’d said goodbye to forever outside the Château Frontenac in Quebec City.
Abbey. He’d cut her out of his life to keep her safe, but there she was, back again. His attraction to her returned in a rush of desire. It was as if none of the time apart between them had happened at all.
But what was she doing here?
When Bourne walked into the lobby of the Melrose, he saw that the woman—was it really Abbey, or was his mind playing tricks on him?—had already disappeared. He looked left and right, but didn’t see her anywhere. Abbey was a nighttime girl; he knew that. She stayed up until all hours. Was she meeting someone for a late drink? Had she already gone up in the elevators?
He crossed the hotel’s striped marble floor to his left, past cool dark columns, where the lobby was decorated with cushioned rose-colored chairs, leather sofas, and dozens of rows of well-stocked bookshelves. The bar was already closed, and no one was sitting in the lounge. There was no sign of her.
Then Jason glanced to the far side of the lobby again, and his heart stopped.
Up a handful of steps, a woman waited outside the hotel’s two elevators. Not Abbey. She wore a trim navy suit, and if anyone looked quickly, they might think she was part of the hotel staff. But she wasn’t. Her body was small, strong, wiry. Long, full brown hair made a waterfall around her shoulders. He spotted her face in profile and noted the golden skin and prominent chin.
The assassin. It was her. She was here. Yoko. He also knew with dread clutching his stomach that it was no coincidence that Yoko had appeared at the same moment as Abbey Laurent.
Bourne headed across the lobby. He couldn’t run or attract attention to himself; he couldn’t let her see him. Then a quiet bell sounded as one of the elevators arrived, and Yoko vanished inside the car without a look in his direction. He ran now, but he was too late; the doors closed, and she was already gone. He shot up the handful of steps, watching the numbers above the elevator as the car climbed toward the top of the hotel.
Six. It stopped on the sixth floor.
He jammed the button, urging the other elevator to hurry.
Yoko was in the hotel. A killer was on the sixth floor. And so, he knew, was Abbey Laurent.
The taxi ride from the beer hall had sobered Abbey a little, but she was still unsteady on her feet. She felt sick and knew she should have drunk less and eaten more. When she got to her hotel room, she didn’t turn on the lights immediately, because the brightness would hurt her eyes. She used the bathroom, then crossed to the windows, which looked out toward the dark ribbon of the Potomac and the towers of the Watergate complex. For more than a year, this city had felt like home. She’d felt as if she’d found a place here. But now that home had cast her away.
Abbey fell backward on the king-sized bed. She didn’t bother getting undressed. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but instead, her eyes flew open again as she heard a rapping on the hotel door only seconds later.
“Shit,” she muttered.
They’d found her. The media or the protesters or any of the others who’d been hounding her for two days. She’d been recognized. Someone had seen through her disguise and followed her into the hotel. Abbey thought about pretending to be asleep or in the shower, but whoever was there knocked again, and she realized she was being stupid. It was after midnight. No one would be confronting her now.
She got off the bed and went to the door, and when she looked through the peephole, she saw a small woman in a navy blue suit. She had long brown hair, and her mouth was creased into a polite smile.
“Yes?” Abbey called through the door.
“Ms. Laurent? This is Maja from the front desk. I’m sorry to bother you, but we saw you come back in, and I’m afraid there’s a problem with your credit card.”
“Shit,” Abbey muttered again. Then she called through the door. “Can this wait until morning?”
“I’m afraid not. It’s hotel policy. This will only take a moment. I can process a new card from here.”
She sighed. “Yeah, all right.”
Abbey opened the door.
Bourne stared down the sixth-floor hallway. It was empty and quiet. He had his gun in the pocket of his coat, finger already around the trigger. He walked quickly, focusing all his concentration on what he could hear behind the hotel doors. Most of them were dead silent at this late hour. He heard a few people snoring. One couple was having loud sex. But he heard nothing to tell him where Abbey was.
She needed him. He knew that. Somewhere on this floor, a killer was with her, and Jason was running out of time. Yoko was a pro. She’d be in and out in a few minutes, and Abbey would be dead.
But he reached the hotel’s rear wall, and still he heard nothing. Urgently, he retraced his steps from door to door, running now. Sweat poured down his face. His heart pounded, and all his muscles tensed with fear and panic. There had to be something! Some noise! Some clue to where she was!
There.
What was that? He stopped at a door and listened. Barely audible on the other side, he heard a low, erratic thump, like a foot jarring against a heavy door. That was all. Then, a second later, someone gasped, and he recognized the smothered noise of a struggle. Jason shoved the Treadstone key quietly into the lock, and as he launched his shoulder against the door and charged into the room, he already had his Sig out of his pocket.
The lights were off. All he saw was the dark glow from the city through the windows. In the next instant, his eyes adjusted and painted the terrible scene. Abbey dangled on a thin rope jammed through a hook at the top of the bathroom door. The rope was wound tightly around her neck, choking her, and her feet were inches off the floor. She couldn’t breathe and couldn’t make a sound, but she fought wildly, struggling and kicking to dislodge Yoko, who held her tightly as Abbey’s oxygen bled away.
The noise of the door alerted Yoko now, and she let go. As Jason swung up his gun, the killer planted one leg on the carpet and spun, kicking the Sig out of Bourne’s grasp, where it landed in shadows somewhere on the far side of the room. She charged, drawing her gun from her belt, but Jason grabbed her wrist as she raised the barrel. He twisted hard until Yoko screamed and the gun dropped. With a surge of adrenaline, he swung her entire body like a hammer throw, launching her off the ground and hurling her into the hotel room wall.
Yoko hit hard, crumpled, but then shrugged off the impact and was instantly back on her feet. As Jason bent for her gun, she took two steps and kicked, her foot landing under his chin and snapping his head back. He staggered, dizzied by the blow, and fell against the hotel bed. As he righted himself, he saw Abbey frantically clutching at the cord wound around her neck, but she couldn’t free herself. She twisted and shunted, trying to dislodge the hook hammered into the top of the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Her eyes bulged; the color of her face deepened into purple.
She had no air. She had only seconds.
Yoko charged again. She drove Jason backward onto the bed, her body on top of his. She was small but ferociously strong. As he tried to throw her, she clung to him and held on, her forearm crushing his throat. He headbutted her face, breaking her nose with a sickening crack, but the spray of blood over both of them didn’t slow her at all. His left arm snaked free, and he hammered the side of her head, then wrenched her head back, far back, until he could sense the bones of her neck ready to break. She let go at the last second and sprang away, but he hooked a foot around her ankle, tripping her. She toppled onto the carpet, and he pushed off the bed, stripping a knife from its scabbard on his ankle. He landed on her, slashing with the blade, but she deflected the blow, which cut deeply through her shoulder.
Her knee hammered his groin. Her teeth bared. She hissed.
On the wall, Abbey’s arms and legs twitched, then grew still.
Bourne drove a fist into Yoko’s chest so hard that it nearly stopped her heart, and the killer was paralyzed for an instant. That was long enough. His arm free, he drove the point of the knife straight up into her chin, through her jaw and mouth, into the center of her head. Blood spurted between her locked teeth and out her nostrils. She squealed in agony but didn’t die, and with a silent roar, he drew out the knife and struck again, a brutal blow down through her throat and windpipe, severing her spine and burying the blade so deeply it stuck in the floor under her body.
She was done now, flailing and gurgling.
Jason yanked the knife free. He flew to his feet and jumped for Abbey, who was now motionless and unconscious. He grabbed the cord that held her off the ground—it was not nylon rope, as he’d thought, but the silk belt of a bathrobe—and sliced cleanly through it with the blade. Her body dropped. He unwound the belt from her neck and pushed down heavily on her chest with both hands. Kneeling over her, Jason prepared to do CPR and force air into her lungs, but with a croaking gasp, Abbey’s chest swelled. Her eyes flew open. She coughed and choked, dragging oxygen back into her body, and in the next seconds, the pink color began to return to her face.
She was alive.
On the floor a few feet away, Yoko was dead.
Abbey stared at him as if she couldn’t believe he was real. She shook herself, then threw her arms around his neck, and her raspy voice whispered in his ear. “Oh, my God, it’s you. You’re here. You’re really here. Jason.”