Three Jack McClure Missions Box Set (140 page)

Jack, covered in blood, heaved the attack dog’s corpse off him and rose shakily to his feet.

“Are you all right?” Annika said.

“I should be asking you that.” He brushed by her into the room. “Good God.”

Arian Xhafa was on the floor, his naked back a mass of bleeding wounds. His fingers were curling and uncurling spastically and he was trying to get up on his hands and knees.

Jack walked toward him. “What the hell did you do to him?”

“What he did to me.” Annika was right beside him.

He watched Xhafa crawling his way toward the chair.

“Only worse.”

“Only worse,” she affirmed.

Jack glanced at her. “Is it over now?”

Her carnelian eyes were hard and, also, he thought, a bit sad.

“You know better than that.”

Behind her, Xhafa, hands on the chair’s arms, pulled himself up.

“I only counted five guards,” he said. “And where is the Syrian?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Xhafa’s right hand slide beneath the chair’s cushion. In an instant, he had whipped around, a 9mm in his hand. Pushing Annika, Jack squeezed off two shots. One passed through Xhafa’s neck, the second took off the back of his head.

Annika did not turn around. Instead, she stared into Jack’s eyes. “All that work,” she said, “for nothing.”

Was she serious or being facetious? That was the thing about Annika. You could never be sure.

*   *   *

Liridona led Alli into a warren of well-furnished, almost opulent rooms. She crossed the floor and opened one of the windows. This was the side where the ivy grew thick against the wall.

Liridona, at her shoulder, looked wide-eyed. “What are you doing?”

“Getting out of here.”

“I can’t.” Liridona shook her head wildly. “I’m afraid of heights.”

“We have no choice. This is the only way out.”

Liridona shrank back. “No.”

“Look.” Alli pointed to the streetlight that rose up at the rear corner of the house. “All we have to do is get over there and it will give us an easy way down.”

“I can’t. Please.”

“I won’t let you die here.” Alli grabbed her. “Put your arms around me.” She felt the girl’s rail-thin body as she climbed onto her back. “Now when I swing out, wrap your legs around me, too.”

Holding on to the window sash, Alli put one leg over the sill, and grabbed for the nearest vine before realizing that their combined weight was too much for her.

Then she felt Emma close beside her.

“Use your fingers and your toes.”

Alli nodded. Quickly, she untied her boots, kicked them off, and dropped them out the window. Then she swung her leg out again, this time using her toes as well as her fingers to hold on to the ivy where the vines were thickest.

Behind her, Liridona sounded like she was praying. Across they went, moving laterally, hand over hand toward the streetlight. After three handholds, Alli could feel the weight trying to drag them off the vine. Then she heard a brief ripping, as one part of the vine pulled away from the wall, and her heart beat like a triphammer.

Liridona, her eyes squeezed shut, interrupted her prayers to whisper, “What was that?”

Alli was too busy to answer her, and Liridona did not ask again. A fist of ice had formed in the pit of her stomach and she fought down a wave of panic. She thought of Jack and took deep breaths to calm herself, but the streetlight still looked as if it was a football field away. For a long, gut-wrenching moment, they swung above the narrow concrete walkway between buildings. If they fell, there was nothing soft to break their landing. Gritting her teeth, she returned to crabbing her way across the network of vines. One step at a time, she told herself. One step at a time.

They were still several arms’ lengths from the streetlamp when the vine gave way. Liridona shrieked as they began to fall.

Kicking out against the wall, Alli swung them back and forth like a pendulum. At the apex of the arc nearest the streetlight, she let go with fingers and toes. For a moment they flew through the air. Then the streetlight smacked her in the stomach and they slid down until she could get her arms and legs around it. She hung there for a moment with Liridona shivering on her back. Then she inched them down. When they reached the cement, Liridona continued to cling to Alli, sobbing with relief and shock. Alli rocked her for a moment, then pushed her gently against the side of the house.

“Stay here,” she whispered.

Liridona’s eyes went wide. “Where are you going?”

“I can’t leave Thatë and Vasily behind.”

She went quickly along the side of the safehouse until she reached the front corner. Peeking around, she saw Xhafa’s men drag Thatë’s body out the front door and pile it on Vasily’s corpse.

Part 4

Blood Trust

The Present

And so time turns a corner, or flows down a well, only to return to the place where it began.

32

Alli was in the middle of the student riot in the city plaza. The fog, a metallic brown from gunpowder, garbage, and the grit of the streets, thrust itself like a living thing against her. She was buffeted by the currents of running people. Screams found her, as insistent as the tolling of bells from the cathedral, which seemed to watch indifferently with its elongated El Greco face.

In the melee, Alli lost sight of Liridona altogether, and her heart beat even faster in her chest as she plowed her way through the mob, nearer now to the mass of truncheons lifting and falling, to the sprays of blood and bone, to the tilted bodies, to the cries of pain and terror.

Then she spotted one of Arian Xhafa’s men, his tall frame sinister as a bat, rising for a moment above the heads of the students. Her way lay directly in the path of the militia. She calculated that there was no time to circle around, so she plunged ahead until she was close to the line of truncheons, advancing en masse like a phalanx of Roman soldiers. On hands and knees, she made herself inconspicuous, crawling through the churning legs of the militia until she eeled her way to the other side.

Scrambling to her feet, she looked around and spotted the men pushing Liridona around a corner. On the fringe of the mob at last, she ran toward the corner. Running with her heart in her mouth, running toward the sudden roar of gunshots that spurted at her from around the corner.

“No!” she cried. “No!”

Hurtling around the corner, she was jerked off her feet. She stared into the monstrous eyes of the Syrian. The blue eye, the green eye. They regarded her as if each had a separate intelligence, both cold as permafrost.

From somewhere out of her sight, she heard Liridona weeping, and, like glass shattering against stone, she began to struggle free. But the Syrian shoved the barrel of his pearl-gripped .45 into her mouth.

“Once again, quiet.” His voice a constricting iron band. “Before the end.”

The air shivered as Edon, appearing out of nowhere, swung a tire iron into the Syrian’s back. His body arched forward and he let go of the .45 as he fell. Darting down, Alli picked it up.

“How—?” She aimed the pistol at the Syrian, but she heard Liridona’s scream.

“There’s no time!” Edon shouted, turning and running down a dank back alley.

Alli sprinted after her. “Stay back!” she called. “Stay back, Edon!”

Catching up with the girl, Alli ran past her. She could see Liridona between the two men. On the run, she shot one of them in the shoulder. The other turned his handgun on her and she shot him dead. The first man grabbed his wounded shoulder, then, shaking himself like a dog coming in from the rain, ran straight at her. Liridona leaped, barreled into the back of his knees, and he stumbled down onto the filthy concrete. Liridona scooped up his handgun and, as he twisted his torso up and took a swing at her, shot him point-blank in the face.

33

“She’s remarkable, you know.”

Annika, sitting next to Jack on the ferry from Vlorë to Brindisi, on the eastern coast of Italy, looked over to where Alli was talking animatedly with Edon and Liridona. The first thing they needed to do when they reached Italy was to go clothes shopping.

Jack was dog-tired, and he ached all over. He wondered whether he had a fever. He’d lost his antibiotics somewhere during their strange and bloody odyssey. It would be good to get home.

“Is that what you meant to say?” His voice was soft.

Annika glanced at him for a moment. “I feel … I don’t know, I feel close to her.”

“She feels the same way toward you.”

This brought the ghost of a smile to Annika’s face. “I must get back to my grandfather.”

“Surely he has people taking care of him.”

She nodded. “Very good people.”

“Then come back to D.C. with us.”

Her eyes looked inward. “Maybe,” she murmured, as if to herself, “if only for a little while.”

Now it was Jack’s turn to look at the three girls across the companionway. “I saw you talking with Liridona.”

Annika was silent for a moment. The ferry rocked slightly from side to side. The great diesel engines vibrated through the decks.

“She told me the secret that cost Arjeta her life, and almost cost her hers. Arjeta had been in the compound in Vlorë. Apparently, it wasn’t Arian Xhafa’s compound. It belonged to the Syrian.”

“The man Alli encountered at the safehouse and then again in the street.”

Annika nodded. “The Syrian had a woman with him in the compound.”

“A mistress?”

“Possibly, but from what I’ve heard about the Syrian I doubt it. No, this woman is a computer prodigy. She handles all of the Syrian’s international transactions.”

“A computer whiz.”

“A first-class hacker.”

Jack shook his head. “Okay, but why would the Syrian consider her a secret worth killing for?”

“Because,” Annika said, “her name is Caroline Carson.”

*   *   *

Gunn sat in his car, smoking a cigarette. He was parked in the lot of a sleazy motel off a highway in suburban Maryland. From what he could see during the forty minutes he’d been parked, the motel was a trysting place for traveling salesmen and account executives getting their rocks off with someone else’s secretary. Every once in a while a delivery would be made to one of the rooms. When that happened Gunn got out of the car and followed the delivery boy to see if he’d been summoned to room 261.

Gunn, following John Pawnhill like a bloodhound, had seen him make his escape and was briefly impressed. He’d seen him get picked up by a man Gunn didn’t recognize. He had followed them out here to this motel with its blinking neon sign, buzzing fluorescent lights, and a soda machine that didn’t work. The sound of passing traffic was a roar as relentless as the surf.

At 10:52, a white car with the logo of a nearby Chinese restaurant pulled into the parking lot. Once again, Gunn removed himself from his car and, stretching, strode after the young man. He delivered two large paper bags to room 261. Gunn saw a glimpse of Pawnhill’s driver as he took possession of the food and handed over some money. He screwed the suppressor back onto his Glock. The delivery man went down the stairs, got into his car, and drove away.

Gunn walked up to the door of room 261 and knocked.

“Who is it?” a voice came from the other side of the door.

“You didn’t give me enough money,” Gunn said in a passable simulation of the delivery man’s voice.

The door opened a crack, Gunn shoved his Glock through it, and shot the driver squarely in the forehead. As the driver’s body arched backward, Gunn kicked in the door and strode inside. Pawnhill threw a white cardboard container of food at Gunn. Gunn dodged away, aimed, and shot Pawnhill twice in the chest. Pawnhill crumpled. Gunn walked up to him and, for good measure, put two more bullets into him. Then he turned and left.

*   *   *

The night is a time for memories,
Vera thought as she lay on her bed in Fearington. She remembered her childhood, when she and Caro shared a room. Of course, they each had sumptuously decorated bedrooms, but she and Caro had insisted on being together at night. She remembered how Caro used to read to her from her favorite book,
The Little Curiosity Shop,
stories about a fabulous old store in London’s World’s End, crammed to the rafters with magical wonders. She sat up suddenly and, swinging her legs over the side, stared at the bed across from her. Alli Carson’s bed. It was empty now, of course. Who knew where Alli was, or if she was still alive? Vera glanced over at the foot of the bed, and then, because she couldn’t help herself, she stared at the neatly tucked-in sheet, she stared at the pillow with its black case imprinted with white skulls. Strange fucking girl, but, oddly, she missed her. Maybe she missed hating her.

She lay back down, but knew right away that sleep was on some other continent. So she did what she always did when she couldn’t sleep—went to her desk, turned on the task lamp, and fired up her laptop. She was going to open her Web browser when she noticed a new folder on her desktop. It was titled “curio_cabinet.”

She felt a little thrill go through her. There had been a curio cabinet in
The Little Curiosity Shop
where all the most magical items were kept under lock and key. She scanned the folder with her security software, but it was clean. Also, it was encrypted. Every time she tried to open it, she was asked for a password. She thought for a moment, then typed in “TLCS.” That didn’t work. Then she thought of the curio cabinet itself. Of all the special items in it, the most magical to her was the book that opened a doorway to the Land of the Fayries. What was the name of that book? She screwed up her face in concentration. Ah, yes.

She typed in “Maeve’s World.”

Wham, she was inside the folder. Her heart beat faster. Could this mean what it seemed to mean? Then her heart sank. The folder contained only one minuscule file. But still … She opened the file and read:

HEY THERE, SIS. HOWZ TRICKS?