“What name do you want my family to call you?” Quinn had asked Orlando before they’d left for Minnesota. “Your real name?” Orlando was not the name she’d been born with. Like most in the secret world, she’d taken on a new identity, burying who she had been.
She scoffed. “I hate my real name.” She was silent for a moment. This would be the name Quinn’s family would always know her by, so it wasn’t something to be taken lightly. “Claire was one of my father’s favorite names. He always said he wished it had been mine.”
“Then that’s what it is now.”
After the women left, Quinn said, “Sorry.”
Orlando smiled. “It’s fine.”
Quinn was just raising his beer to his lips when the back door to the house swung open and Liz stepped out. She looked around at those milling outside, then spotted Quinn. With sudden determination, she began walking toward him.
“Uh-oh,” he said.
“It’s okay,” Orlando murmured. “She’s not going to cause a scene. Not here.”
As he watched his sister approach, Quinn couldn’t help but be amazed at how the little tomboy he used to know had grown into such a beautiful woman. Not model beautiful, not put-together beautiful. Naturally beautiful, the kind of beauty not everyone noticed right away, but once they did, they would never forget. Liz could just roll out of bed, throw on a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and a baseball cap, and she’d still be more attractive than most women.
Of course, the half scowl on her face wasn’t particularly helping her looks at the moment.
“Would you mind if I borrowed my brother for a few minutes?” she asked Orlando once she reached them.
“Not at all.” Orlando started to stand. “I have a call I need to make anyway.”
“No need to get up. I feel like a walk. Thought maybe Jake could go with me.”
They both looked at Quinn.
“Sure,” he said. “Here.” He handed his plate to Orlando, grabbed his bottle of beer, and stood up. “Let’s go.”
They walked in silence, Liz striding out a few feet ahead of him. She guided him down the dirt road that led to the barn. The building was big and white and in need of a new coat of paint. It had been at least six years since their father had stopped actively farming, so after the animals had been sold off and the fields on either side of the house had been leased to a neighbor, maintenance of the barn had no longer been a priority.
Liz turned onto the path leading around the left side of the barn and into the woods.
Once they were among the trees, the trail narrowed, much of it overgrown from disuse. For several years when Quinn had been a kid, he had taken the path every day. When his sister, eight years younger than him, had been old enough, she had done the same.
They walked for ten minutes before Liz finally stopped exactly where he knew she would — the site of the old fort he’d built for himself. It wasn’t long after he outgrew it that Liz had made it her own. Only the fort was gone now, reclaimed by nature, the wooden walls rotted and turned to mulch. Quinn could see a few rusty nails protruding from the surrounding trees, but that was about all that was left.
“I used to think you made this for me,” Liz said.
Quinn took a couple of steps forward. The ground was covered in brush and saplings, just like it had been when he’d first chosen the spot. Back then he had cleared it, and built a wooden floor that sat a foot above the soil on two-by-four beams and old bricks.
“I guess maybe I built it for both of us,” he said.
Something caught his eye. It was black and half-buried next to a tree. He knelt down and tugged on it until it came free. It was a license plate. Black background with faded orange-yellow letters. The three upper quarters were taken up with the number, while below was a single line:...
It was the only one he took, though. California. It had seemed exotic and exciting and, most of all, far from Minnesota. He remembered staring at it for hours, dreaming about escaping to San Francisco or Los Angeles or San Diego. He smiled at the realization he’d actually achieved the dream.
“What?” Liz asked.
“Huh? Oh.” Quinn tossed the plate on the ground. “Nothing. Just … nothing.”
She stared at it for a moment. “Mom’s going to need help,” she finally blurted out.
“Is that what you wanted to talk about?”
“I have to go back to Paris tomorrow. I’m already missing too many classes as it is.”
“I can stay for a couple more days,” he told her. “But after that, I have to return to work.”
As far as Liz and his mother knew, Quinn was an international banker. It was a cover he often used on the job, too. It helped explain his extensive travel.
“So I’m supposed to just stay? I’d have to take the term off.”
“Relax,” Quinn said. “Of course you should go back. Uncle Mark and Aunt Carole are going to check on Mom every day. And I’ve spoken to Reverend Hollis. He’s going to have some of the ladies from the congregation help her out until she’s feeling better.”
“That’s your solution? Get others to do it for us? Great.”
“Liz, come on. It’s going to be fine. I’ll be here for—”
Quinn’s phone buzzed. Instinctively he pulled it out and looked at the screen.
David Wills again.
Liz rolled her eyes. “Work, right?”
Quinn sent the call to voicemail and shoved the phone back in his pocket.
“You’re going to have to leave sooner than you thought, aren’t you?”
“I said I’d stay for a couple more days, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
She took a step away, looking deep into the forest. “You know, I used to think … I used to think that maybe …” She paused for several seconds. “You know, never mind, Jake. Just … never mind.”
She turned and started walking back down the path.
“Liz,” he called out.
She didn’t stop.
“Liz!”
But she had already disappeared among the trees.
Quinn ached at the distance between them, but didn’t know what to do about it.
Despite their age gap, they had been close once. Right up until he’d left home. She’d been nine then, and he knew she’d been at an impressionable point. But he’d had no choice.
He had hoped one day she’d understand. One day she’d realize he’d done it for her, and would forgive him. But so far, that day had yet to come.
His phone buzzed again, notifying him he had a message. He listened to it.
“Good news,” Wills’s recorded voice said. “I won’t need you until October third. We’re still firming up your first op location, but at the moment it looks like Los Angeles. I’ll call with more details in a couple days.”
Quinn erased the message, then stuffed the phone back in his pocket.
At least he hadn’t lied to Liz about how long he could stay.
The minutes they’d lost had been more than just the hundred and twenty they’d spent sitting on the ground. The delay had caused them to arrive in the late afternoon, when the freeways of Los Angeles turned into parking lots.
She swore under her breath.
“What is it?” Kolya asked from the window seat next to her.
“Not important.”
Because of the near debacle in Hong Kong, and contrary to the precautions they’d taken since they’d left home on their mission, she had decided to keep Kolya close. At least this way he was with her at all times.
She knew it was a huge risk. Dombrovski had been very adamant during their training. “Never give him any means to know who you are. Constantly change your identities. Travel alone. And always assume he is looking for you.”
And looking for them he was. If Dombrovski’s own murder back home hadn’t been enough proof, losing Luka in Bangkok was. Luka had been closing in on one of their targets, Petra just ten minutes behind him. But by the time she reached his position, he was dead. Their team of four suddenly down to three.
She sent up a silent prayer that this break in protocol didn’t lead to a similar disaster.
Taxiing to the terminal at LAX seemed to take as long as the flight, but finally the plane slowed, then stopped. A second before the engines died and the seatbelt tone went off, Petra was up and moving down the aisle, bag in hand. She got to within two rows of the front door before an overweight man in an ugly brown suit stood to open one of the overhead luggage compartments, blocking her way.
She glanced over her shoulder. Kolya hadn’t done as well as she had. The boy was strong and had some useful talents, but, like in Hong Kong, his youth often denied him the experience she desperately needed him to have.
A minute later Petra was walking rapidly through the concourse. Koyla caught up to her just as she reached the escalator to the baggage claim area. As they rode down, they both scanned the crowd standing near the bottom.
“There,” Koyla whispered, looking toward a man holding a sign that read PEGGY ROBERTS.
“You know what to do,” she said.
He nodded, then moved off the escalator in the direction of the nearest carousel.
Petra went to the left through the crowd, her eyes searching for any signs of trouble. They were so close. This had to be it. Here they would uncover the information they needed. She was sure of it.
She found a spot near a group of French tourists. They were slowly gathering their luggage and arguing about the location of the bus to their hotel. She watched as the throngs of recently arrived struggled with one another in attempts to locate their appropriate carousels, then secure spots where they could wait and silently hope their luggage would be the first to come down the chute.
Despite the size of the crowd, Petra did her best to check every face, sometimes taking in several people in one quick scan, sometimes lingering several seconds on a person who, for any number of reasons, required more attention.
The driver holding the ROBERTS sign continued to stand near the base of the escalators, his gaze flicking from one person to the next as passengers descended from the terminals above. He had the bored look of someone who had done this a thousand times before.
Kolya, on the other hand, looked anything but bored or inconspicuous. He had done as instructed, and was standing near one of the carousels, but he seemed more interested in the man with the ROBERTS sign than in the bags circling on the never-ending conveyor belt. The luggage was where his focus should have been, creating the illusion that he was just another generic member of the masses.
Petra swore under her breath, but knew there was little she could do. Kolya had not received the several years’ worth of training that she and Mikhail had. He was new to the art of deception, his only education coming sporadically when Petra or Mikhail found time for a little instruction.
Because of this, she had tried to minimize Kolya’s involvement, keeping him busy with the things he was good at, or at least could handle. Like driving or acting as communications point. Bringing him along on this trip to Los Angeles was taking a chance, she knew, but the alternative would have been to leave him with Mikhail in New York. And while Mikhail liked the kid well enough, his patience level with Kolya had dipped even lower than hers. If things got too involved, she could just stick Kolya in a motel room somewhere, as she had done when she and Mikhail had gone on their unsatisfying hunt for David Thomas.
No, not unsatisfying. Bitterly disappointing.
Mikhail had tracked down Thomas’s last known address to a house in Clifton, New Jersey. But they arrived to find the Englishman had been missing for a week.
And they all knew “missing” in this case could mean only one thing. The man was dead.
Just like Freddy Chang in Hong Kong, or Stacy McKitrick in Bangkok.
Chang’s body had been fished out of the East Lamma Channel the day after Petra and her small team had arrived in Hong Kong. And in Bangkok they had at first lost Luka, then McKitrick herself had turned up dead on a walkway along one of the old city canals.
So close.
Perhaps Thomas would turn up in the Atlantic at some point, but even if he did, it didn’t matter. Dead was dead, and of no use to her. She needed at least one person from her photograph to be alive. She couldn’t question a corpse.
But now with Thomas sharing the same fate as most of the others, the list of possibilities had been reduced to two names: Kenneth Moody, last known location Philadelphia, and Ryan Winters, last known location Los Angeles.
At least one of their two targets had to still be alive. If not …
Petra wouldn’t even let herself think about it. She and Kolya were here in Los Angeles pursuing Winters, and Mikhail was back on the East Coast hunting down Moody. They were doing everything they could. Thinking more was just wasting energy.
She did another quick sweep of the baggage area, decided their arrival had gone unnoticed, then walked over to carousel number two and tapped Kolya on the shoulder. Without waiting for a response, she walked over to the man with the sign.
“Ms. Roberts?” the man asked.
“Yes,” Petra said with a slight Southern twang. “I’m Ms. Roberts.” She had worked very hard at perfecting an American accent, and had done well enough to fool most people.
“Great,” the man said, his smile more functional than earnest. “My name is Frank. No bags?”
“Just what we’re carrying.”
This didn’t seem to surprise him. He’d undoubtedly seen it all in his job. “Would you like to wait here while I get the car?”
“We’ll come with you.”
“Keep to the speed limit,” Petra instructed, not wanting to draw the attention of the police.
Once they were back on Ventura Boulevard, she entered their destination into the GPS mounted in the dash, then examined the route. Laurel Canyon Boulevard was a mile to the east. From there it would be a quick drive into the hills to Winters’s house. She guessed ten minutes tops.
Above them, the sky had turned a deep blue, but few stars were visible through the haze of the city lights.
“Our flight was delayed after we’d already boarded. If you had checked our status online, you would have known that.”
Mikhail was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, his tone had softened. “Where are you?”
“We just retrieved the car from the motel.”
“No problems?”
“None. Anything on Moody yet?”
“I found someone who remembered him. A neighbor. Said he thinks Moody moved to New York, but he wasn’t sure.”
Petra frowned. “Keep looking.”
“What do you think I’m doing? Sitting in a bar getting drunk?”
Petra closed her eyes. “Of course not. I know you’re doing your best. But we can’t afford to lose another chance.”
“We’ll find them.”
“We found Chang and McKitrick and Thomas, too,” she reminded him.
“I meant alive.”
“Have you heard from Stepka?” Petra asked.
“No. You want me to call him?”
“I’ll do it.”
She hung up. Stepka’s role in the operation was that of technical support. Dombrovski himself had ensured that Stepka got the best training available. Something the young man would undoubtedly use to make millions once their mission was finished. He was based out of a Moscow apartment. A significant amount of their funds had been used to equip the space with the best computers and communications gear.
Petra calculated the time difference. Moscow would just be waking up, which, knowing Stepka, meant he was starting to think about going to bed. She made the call.
“Yes?” Stepka said in typical hurried fashion.
“It’s me,” Petra said.
“Hold on.” The delay was only a few seconds long. “Where are you?”
“Los Angeles. Heading to the address you found for Winters.”
“Excellent.”
“Have you made any progress on the other matter?” she asked.
She had tasked Stepka with trying to find out who had been hired to erase the people she and her team had been trying to find. If they could figure that out, they might be able to get one step ahead of them. That could very well be the difference between failure and success.
“I’m still working on it.”
“Work faster,” she told him. “We need to know.”
“I’m doing what I can,” he insisted.
“If Winters and Moody are dead, too, then the only lead we’ll have left is whoever’s doing the killing.”
“I know!”
“We can’t afford to—”
“Petra,” Kolya interrupted.
She put her hand over the phone. “What?”
“We’re almost there.”
As Kolya drove the sedan leisurely down the street, Petra took another glance at the house. Through the front window, she could see the dark shapes of several people. She told Kolya to keep driving, then instructed him to turn down the next street and park. She opened the glove compartment, but it was empty. A bit more anxious, she slipped her hand under her seat and dug around until her fingers touched a hard object wrapped in what felt like cloth. She pulled it out.
It was a canvas bag, the kind someone would use at a grocery store. From within she pulled out the Baby Glock subcompact pistol Mikhail had arranged to be waiting with the car.