Return of the Assassin (Assassin Series 3) (35 page)

Especially since she’d been dead for three years.

Maya was indistinguishable amid the women moving along the water – a sea of black hair and tanned skin – and she liked her odds more at night. Even if her adversaries had photos, which she assumed they must if they had done their homework, in the gloom it would be hard to pick her out, and with Carnival in full flow, many were wearing masks or costumes, further complicating any possibility of identification.

Her hand throbbed with dulled pain as she considered her options. It would be a matter of hours, at most, before the body outside the back door was found and the police went on full alert, issuing an all-points bulletin to bring her in for questioning. Even in a low-key country like Trinidad and Tobago, three dead bodies would demand an explanation – one that she wasn’t in any hurry to make.

She ducked into a souvenir shop and bought a black baseball hat emblazoned with a logo of the island, and a long-sleeved T-shirt with a poorly drawn sailboat illustration. Looking up, she impulsively grabbed a carnival mask with a feather fringe, which she stuffed into her purse before paying. When she exited, she looked more a punky teenager with the hat on backwards than a twenty-eight-year-old. Hopefully, it would be good enough to throw any watchers.

As she moved around a group of boisterous young men, she spotted suspicious movement on the far sidewalk. Maya lifted her phone from her purse and used the screen as a mirror before she raised it to her ear to fake a call. She’d seen enough. A man with a shaved head, obviously not local, wearing a windbreaker in spite of the temperature, was keeping pace. He definitely wasn’t there for the street party.

Maya pretended to chat to a non-existent friend as her mind raced through possible responses. First thing, she’d need to ditch the phone. Even though it was a disposable that she bought airtime for on a card, it might pose a threat – most governments, clandestine groups and sophisticated private surveillance companies could track cell phones or activate the handset to eavesdrop, even if the phone was turned off. She didn’t think it was an issue with a burner phone, but at this point, she needed to assume that the level of technology her pursuers had access to was unlimited.

A fire-breathing man spray-painted entirely in gold appeared in the street next to her and blew a yellow stream of flame into the night sky. Partygoers fought to take pictures until a drunk woman flashed her two companions with a shrill laugh, drawing more photos and creating a temporary diversion for Maya, who took the opportunity to round a corner and drop the phone into a trash can before picking up her speed. Up ahead was a bar she knew, which had a back outdoor area as well as the main barroom. That would pose an opportunity to lose the tail, assuming that whoever this was didn’t go overt and start gunning down everything that moved. Judging by the earlier attack, they wanted to take her out with a minimum of fanfare, although that had quickly gone sideways on them.

The doorway to the bar, El Pescador, was just a few more yards on her right. Music and laughter emanated in waves from within, and it sounded packed, which could work in her favor.

She slipped past a group of drinkers standing just inside and pushed through the mass of bodies, the rear outdoor area her target. A few jostled patrons shot her dirty looks as she pulled the new long-sleeved T-shirt over the one she was wearing. There was no point in making tracking her easy for her pursuers. She flipped the baseball cap onto a table and quickly pulled her hair into a ponytail, fishing a hair tie from her purse, the reassuring bulk of the silenced pistol brushing her knuckles. Within seconds, she was another woman – this one a serious college student on holiday.

Maya resisted the temptation to look back and see if her stalker had followed her into the bar, and instead pressed her way through the final five feet to the rear courtyard. There were fewer people outside, although she knew that within a few hours the entire establishment would be standing room only.

She looked around and spotted the area of the outdoor wall that had brought her to the bar – two bathrooms she remembered were in a brick enclosure that had open air over the commodes. Maya darted to the women’s room and locked the door, wasting no time in standing on the toilet seat and reaching to grab the lip of the wall.

Her injured hand screamed in protest as she pulled herself up and over, dropping silently into the alley before sprinting off. Whoever was chasing her was improvising now – there was clearly no plan other than to terminate her, and they were probably shorthanded since three of them had been neutralized at her shop.

A chunk of mortar tore off the façade next to her, and she heard the distinctive sound of a ricochet, so she increased to a flat-out run to put distance between herself and the shooter. Another shot missed by a wider margin – she dared a glance over her shoulder. The gunman was firing through the rear bathroom window, probably standing on the toilet to reach the aperture, which had iron bars on it to prevent breakins. She didn’t want to waste any of her precious bullets, so she raced to the end of the long block rather than shooting back. A silenced 9mm round would lose accuracy every yard she put between her and the gun. Given the distance, she liked her odds – which changed when she turned the corner into an even smaller street and confronted a running figure thirty yards away brandishing a pistol.

They must have been communicating, probably by radio or a private com channel.

The gunman hesitated for a split second, and Maya fired through her purse. Two of the rounds went wild, but the third connected, and he went down, shooting even as he dropped. She felt a tug at the bottom of her new shirt, and she saw a smoking hole in the loose folds around her waist. The bullet had missed her by no more than a centimeter, which was enough, but still too close.

Another round went wide as the shooter tried to hit her. Moving a few steps closer to him, she pulled the Beretta free of her purse, aimed carefully, and fired. The man jerked as his weapon rattled against the cobblestone, and then he lay still.

Maya approached cautiously, gun trained on his inert body, and when she reached him, she toed his gun out of reach. She noted that his Beretta was the twin of hers – then her legs swept from under her, and she was falling backwards. The shooter had sweep-kicked her, and she hadn’t reacted in time, realizing her error even as she went with the momentum and rolled.

The pain from the impact shot up her side as she hit the hard street, but she ignored it and concentrated on maintaining her grip on her weapon even as she tried to get far enough from the downed man to avoid any more damage from him. Her wrist struck the ground and went numb for a split second, and she involuntarily dropped the pistol with a wince.

He kicked at her again, but she surprised him by launching herself at his face, leading with her elbow. She felt a satisfying connection with his jaw and heard his head smack against the street’s rough surface. She followed it up with another brutal downward blow with the same elbow and heard a crunch as his nose fragmented.

Her head snapped back and blinding pain shot up her jaw as his fist bashed into it, then she felt impossibly strong arms wrap around her upper torso, seeking a hold. She pivoted with his pull and rammed the heel of her damaged hand into his ruined nose, but he twisted at the last second, avoiding the lethal strike that would have ended his life. Maya instantly followed with an eye dig, ignoring her hand’s protest as she drove her fingernails into his corneas. This time he wasn’t quite fast enough, and he howled in anguish – the first noise either of them had made during the deadly contest.

The scream was cut off by her next strike: both palms slammed against his ears, instantly bursting his eardrums – an injury she knew caused unspeakable agony. His arms fell away from her as they groped for his head, and she completed her follow-through by slamming his skull against the pavement. The sickening crack confirmed that the fight was over, and he lay still, blood trickling into the gutter from underneath him.

She rolled away, rose to her knees, then stood and stepped to where his weapon lay. Confirming that it was the same as hers, she popped the magazine out and slipped the full clip into her purse. There would be time to reload her gun once she had some breathing room.

Another figure peered around the corner of the building at the end of the block, the muzzle of his silenced pistol pointing in her direction – she instinctively reacted, whipping the clip-less pistol at him and pulling the trigger.

The lone chambered round that remained in the gun discharged, and she watched as the side of his face blew off and his body collapsed back behind the building.

After dropping the empty gun, she scooped hers up and approached the latest attacker’s motionless form as she mulled her options. She could either keep running or stay and concentrate on taking out anyone else pursuing her. The momentary glimpse she’d gotten of the latest shooter hadn’t looked like the man who’d been following her, so there was at least one more out there. Maybe more.

She peered cautiously in the direction she’d come from, but the alley was empty. The gunman in the bar bathroom had likely elected to exit from the front entrance and loop around. That was valuable information. She could anticipate his approach.

Still watching the alley, she reached her throbbing hand down and quickly went through the fallen attacker’s pockets, noting the telltale smashed earbud wedged under his head. State-of-the-art closed-loop com gear – as expected.

His weapon was another Beretta clone, so she exchanged the clip for the one in her pistol and then melted into the darkness of a nearby doorway, prepared for the next attack.

Which never came.

She waited expectantly but nobody materialized. One minute, then two, and nothing.

From the opposite direction, she heard conversation in Spanish over shuffling footsteps. It sounded like three young men arguing about where to go next. Their evening would be ruined when they came across the corpses, but that wasn’t her problem.

She needed to get out of there, grab her pre-prepared escape kit, and disappear forever.

Maya eased from the gloom, quiet as a ghost, and edged into the night, the echoing voices of the young men following her down the street as she became one with the shadows.

Sirens keened in the distance as she marked out an unobtrusive pace – just another local on her way home after a long day.

That she would wind up being hunted by the police was a given. The only question was how long it would take. If they had help, such as an anonymous call fingering her, it could be near instant. If they had to piece things together after finding the bodies at the café, she probably had a few hours.

But she couldn’t count on catching any breaks – she hadn’t yet. It was safest to assume the authorities would start looking for her any minute, which made getting to her escape kit priority number one.

Four blocks away, she turned and continued towards the park – her destination an English pub owned by a woman she’d befriended shortly after arriving on the island, who had helped her find an apartment and put her in touch with many of the workers needed to finish out the internet café. Chloé was a French ex-pat in her early forties who had been through two husbands, was on number three, and had wound up living on Trinidad by accident, as many did. She’d come on vacation and fallen in love with the bar owner – Vincente, husband number three. They had a nice business carved out catering to islanders looking for something different. Four months after meeting her, Maya had asked Chloé to store a few boxes in her cellar.

The King’s Arms was slow this Friday night. Most of the action was down at the waterfront for Carnival, and there were only a few stalwart hard drinkers at the bar, and three fat Germans enjoying a loud argument in their native tongue over why nobody but Germans could brew decent beer. Maya spoke seven languages, but when she entered, she kept her understanding to herself, even as they made leering comments to one another at what they’d like to do with her.

Chloé was wiping down the bottles with a cloth.

Maya approached her with a smile.

Chloé frowned in return. “Sweetheart! What happened to you? What’s wrong with your hand?”

Maya knew she looked worse for wear. She glanced down at the bloody mess of paper towels she’d hastily wrapped around her hand, keenly aware of the bruising that must have been starting on her face.

“I’m such an idiot. I was trying to hang some new art, and it got away from me. I was using wire to suspend it, and it cut me when I fell off the chair I was standing on. I’m going to get stitches after I’m done here.”

“What? Stitches? Good Lord! Did you hit your head hard?” Chloé exclaimed, her mothering instinct coming out.

“Hard enough, but my hand got most of the damage. It looks way worse than it is. It was so stupid using a swivel chair. Listen, Chloé, I need to get into the box I left with you. I’m sorry about the hour, but is there any way I can? I’ll only need a few minutes.”

“Are you crazy? Go and get that hand taken care of. The box can wait.”

“I know, I know, but I’m here now, and I have a few things I absolutely need to get.”

Chloé sighed her resignation. “If you say so. I can open up the cellar, but I’m single-handed so you’ll need to manage by yourself. Vincente is at Carnival with some friends. We expected it would be dead tonight. Everyone’s out in the streets.”

“I’ll only be five minutes. I know exactly what I’m looking for.”

“
Cheri
, you’re worrying me. The hospital will take hours to treat you. Let me make a phone call to a friend of mine – a doctor. A general practitioner, but he should be able to handle a few stitches. He lives above his offices. Only a few streets away.”

Maya considered the offer, balancing it against her sense of urgency. She’d need to take care of her hand eventually or risk being in a situation where it could incapacitate her.