She crosses the road and cuts down a side street, looking at the parked cars along the way. She needs to get a ride to Brighton and fast. She doesn’t trust that Alexi won’t try to sell the information he has to someone else, perhaps a third party who’ll pass it to Vasquez. Alexi has always been greedy. Even so, she knows he isn’t stupid. If he does sell on the information, Alexi will be certain to keep himself hidden from the Network, throwing another hacker under the bus for his own safety if he has to.
Maybe I should have killed him, she thinks as she sees a car that will be easy to steal. But the thought of murdering Alexi slips away as she considers how useful he’s going to be to her in the future. Yes, she knows exactly how to manipulate him for her own devices, and he won’t even know she’s behind it.
‘Hey? What are you doing? That’s my car!’ says a voice behind her.
Neva turns to look at the disgruntled driver, keys in his hand.
‘I was going to steal it,’ Neva says. ‘But now there’s no need.’
‘What the fuck…?’ says the man.
Neva kicks him in the stomach. He doubles over, gasping for breath, and the keys to his car drop from his fingers. Neva catches them. Then she chops her hand across his neck. He stumbles to the ground, head cracking on the pavement. She doesn’t want to kill him, but she needs time to make it to Brighton before the police look for the car. She drags the man down an alley. Taking cable ties from her backpack she ties him up. Then she puts gaffer tape over his mouth. He is unconscious so she feels he shouldn’t be a problem for a while.
Going back to the street, she opens the car and gets in. She flips open the glove box and finds a sat nav inside.
‘That’s useful!’
She sets the machine to take her to the address of the guesthouse in Brighton. Then she starts the engine and drives away.
Chapter Nineteen
Neva
Even though Brighton is only fifty-three miles from Neva’s starting location, it takes almost two hours to reach the seafront. She finds a parking spot down one of the side roads, and then, using wet wipes, she cleans down the steering wheel, glove box, sat nav, door and keys. She leaves the keys in the ignition and the door unlocked: an open invitation to any thief that happens to be passing.
She walks away from the car and heads for the Seaview Guesthouse. In the window the sign is showing ‘vacancies’.
Neva walks up the steps and enters. Inside, the reception area is old-fashioned and gloomy. No one is at the desk, but there is a bell push with a sign that says, ‘Ring for attention.’ Covering her fingers with her jacket sleeve, Neva presses the button and hears a distant ring. Then a woman comes downstairs and smiles at her. The woman is young, early twenties, which surprises Neva because the place is so dated and tired.
‘I’d like a room,’ Neva says.
‘How many nights?’ asks the woman.
‘One.’
She pays cash and the woman doesn’t question it. She hands her a receipt along with a key.
‘First floor, left-hand side. Room 5.’
Neva hurries up the stairs. She unlocks the door and walks inside.
The room is hot and stale. She goes to the window and opens it, letting fresh air circulate. She does indeed have a ‘sea view’, but that is not why she’s here.
Neva paces the room, determining all possible escape routes. She’s on the first floor, but the guesthouse also has a basement at just below ground level. That means she’s elevated by not just one storey but two. Too far to drop out and land without injury. She looks over at the next hotel. There is a blue canvas canopy over the entrance. A good place to catch her fall, but she rules this route out also because it is quite a distance from her window. If forced to leave that way she will have to slide along on a very narrow ledge that is only wide enough for her toes.
Her plan is to find Fracks, question him, then get away before anyone knows she’s here. Therefore, she hopes not to need an escape plan. This place is not ideal on that score.
From her rucksack she removes her Glock and loads it, making sure the safety is on before stowing the gun in the back of her jeans. She tests the mechanism of her wrist holster; the knife slips into her hand without a sound. She pushes it back in place and then puts her rucksack under the bed.
Closing the window again, she leaves the room and wanders down the landing, listening at the other doors. It’s eight o’clock in the evening and most guests are already in their rooms. There is a couple arguing loudly over a television in room 6, a family in room 7 – she can tell this because she hears a child complaining as his mother tries to coax him to go to sleep.
In room 8 – the one directly opposite hers – she hears the sound of a television but nothing else. There may be someone in there watching it but she isn’t sure. She goes up the next set of stairs to the landing above and does the same. Across the bottom of the final set of stairs leading up, there is a sign saying, ‘Staff Only’. She doesn’t go up as she’s not interested in the employees; she wants to find Eldon Fracks.
As she passes down the right-hand side of the corridor, she hears someone climbing the stairs. She turns and walks back to the stairs as though she has just left her own room. A man approaches. Neva glances at him but he isn’t familiar to her and isn’t Fracks – she’d seen him when she had pulled surveillance on Beech’s business premises – and so as he reaches the landing, she passes and begins her descent downwards.
She’ll have to watch out for Fracks and get to him when she knows what room he’s in.
There is a blur of movement and the man on the second landing throws himself down the stairs. Before Neva can pull out her knife, he catches hold of her by the throat. She cuffs him hard in the face. His eyes water but he doesn’t loosen his grip as he begins to choke her. Neva kicks and punches; some land, some don’t. She uses her weight to throw them both down the stairs. They roll, entwined.
At the bottom of the stairs the man cracks his head on the newel post and is momentarily stunned. They are thrown apart and Neva jumps to her feet and flicks the blade into her hand. She feels for her gun but it is missing, fallen away somewhere during the tumble.
The man is up on his feet with equal stealth. He sees her knife and laughs.
‘Who are you?’ she asks.
‘I’ve wanted to meet you for some time,’ the man says.
Neva holds the knife between them. She wants to locate her gun but can’t take her eyes from her assailant.
‘Really? Well, if you wanted a date there are better ways to approach a girl,’ she says.
He laughs again, and then the man’s face loses all sign of humour. A coldness sweeps over his features, a blank emotionless stare replaces the wary watchfulness. He dives at her.
Neva leaps aside, slipping away from his grasp as she anticipates his move. She backs up to her own door near the stairs, even as he throws himself at her again – obviously a favoured move.
He’s a child of the house; the moves are familiar, even though his face isn’t. He’s a generation above hers at least. Possibly from Olive Redding’s batch.
He’s holding a gun now – her Glock – lost and now found by the enemy.
‘We can do this easy or hard,’ he says.
‘I’ve never been a fan of easy,’ she comments but there is no wit evident on her face as she slips back into her old killer patterns. A fight is like a game of chess, after all. The winner is determined when they make the moves that the opponent doesn’t anticipate.
In her mind, Neva runs through the possible scenarios of fighting an assassin with equal knowledge and skill to herself. A montage of motions and responses flicks across the back of her eyes like a film being played. This is not a skill that they taught her, but one she developed herself. Killing him is easy. In each set-up she wins the battle. She doesn’t want to kill him though, and that is the challenge.
He’s impatient, ready to move on her, even as she strategises. He watches her, poised like
a cobra ready to strike as he moves back and forth on the balls of his feet. He wants to execute her, that’s the thing. He believes himself invulnerable, more than capable of taking her – which is a dangerous confidence to have. She’s seen this behaviour before: he’s become a victim of his own fascination with death and his belief that he is a bringer of it. The only problem here is that this man’s emotional instability makes him weak.
She smiles and pushes her knife back into her wrist holster. He gives that cold, sharp laugh, and arrogance makes him toss the Glock aside. It clatters to the wooden floor. He takes up a fighting position.
‘They tell me you’re the best,’ he says. ‘I’m going to prove them wrong.’
He moves in, they begin to fight, taekwondo moves, mixed with karate and judo. Fast and furious, but unemotional. They attack each other. He’s bigger than her, and there should be a discrepancy that will make him the victor, but Neva is lighter on her feet. She moves with balletic grace.
Using his weight and impatience against him, Neva dives down as he lunges at her. She throws him over her back, chopping at his throat to incapacitate him. He anticipates this even as he’s destabilised, leaping clear.
Adrenaline floods Neva’s blood. Her moves speed up; she attacks before her assailant and he isn’t expecting the reappearance of her knife. As soon as it drops into her hand, she buries it in his thigh, then twists to do the maximum damage before pulling it out.
The man gasps, and his leg gives under him. Neva kicks him in the face. He falls back with a dull thump. She’s on his prone body in an instant. Using the hilt of the knife, she hits him hard on the temple, knocking him unconscious.
Gripping his jacket, she heaves him across the landing to room 5. Then she opens the door and drags the body inside. A brief look outside onto the landing confirms that no one has heard or seen anything, which would be something of a miracle if either of them hadn’t been taught so well to fight in silence. There’s a small splash of blood on the grubby reddish carpet down the centre of the corridor, but Neva knows that no one but herself will notice it against the dizzying and faded pattern.
She picks up her Glock from the floor, and then goes back into her room, closing and locking the door behind her.
Removing the cable ties from her pocket that she had prepared for Eldon Fracks, she secures the man’s wrists and ankles and then splashes water on his face to bring him around.
He wakes to find himself restricted.
Neva is sitting on the edge of the bed.
‘You think I’m the only one coming to look for you?’ he says.
‘I think you’re the first to arrive, but I’ll be gone before any others follow. Your arrogance was your downfall.’ She tuts. ‘What would your handler say about how you lost because you let emotion get in the way?’
‘Fuck you!’
‘That wound is deeper than it seems,’ she points out.
The man looks at his leg. Blood is seeping from the wound, pooling under his thigh.
‘I could make a tourniquet, give you more time to be found by your colleagues. Or I can just gag you and let you bleed out. What would you do in my shoes?’
‘I’d slit your fucking throat,’ he says.
‘Now, now. There’s no need for aggression. Such a wasted emotion,’ Neva says.
She takes a sheet off the bed and begins to rip a long piece off it. Then she doubles up the strip, making it stronger.
‘Part your knees and don’t try anything because those cable ties cut like paper but a hell of a lot deeper,’ she says.
Recognising her intention to deal with his wound, he does as instructed. She ties the strip tightly around his thigh. She looks around the room. She picks up a pen that’s been left on the dresser with a satisfaction questionnaire. She slips the pen inside the makeshift bandage and then twists it to add restriction.
‘There,’ she says. ‘I think that should give me enough time to work on you.’
She’s intrigued to see a sliver of fear cross his features.
‘You’re much more of a talker than they told me you were,’ he says.
‘Who is “they”?’
He shakes his head in instinctive refusal.
She cable-ties his calves, further restricting his ability to move.
Neva takes another strip off the sheet. She grabs the man’s jacket again and pulls him into the bathroom. He tries to kick and struggle to prevent her, but the ties hold fast and he tires quickly from the effort and the blood he’s already lost.
‘I’ve always thought drowning would be a horrible way to die,’ she says.
Then she pulls his body into the shower and begins wrapping the sheet around his face. He kicks and twists and protests again. Neva cuffs him until he’s quiet, then she starts the shower.
His muffled cries halt her.
‘Want to talk?’ she asks.
She unwinds the sheet from his face.
‘You piece of shit,’ he spits at her.
Neva gives him a grim smile. ‘Oh, that may be true. After all, I was trained by the same people as you. But the difference between us is that I don’t really enjoy killing. Don’t get me wrong – it doesn’t upset me to do it. It’s just a means to an end. But it’s messy. And I only have limited clothing with me. So not so practical either.’
She winds the cloth back over his face. Then she holds his head under the running shower.
The assassin struggles as he begins to suffocate. She pulls him back, removes the cloth, lets him breathe again.
‘Anything to say?’
He spits at her again.
She winds the wet cotton over his face again and puts him back under the shower. A few more rounds of this make the assassin more compliant.
‘Who sent you?’ she asks.
‘The Network.’
‘Don’t be stupid. I already know that. Who in the Network?’
He shakes his head, ‘I don’t know.’
She wraps the cloth over him again. Puts him under the water. He’s growing weaker now with blood loss and the torture. Neva knows she’ll have to get something tangible soon or he will pass out and her time with him will end.
‘Who?’ she asks again.
‘Vasquez…’ he gasps when she releases his face again. ‘He’s called Vasquez.’
‘What about Fracks? Is he really here or was that a set-up?’
‘Not here,’ he says. ‘We’re looking for him.’
‘Where do I find Vasquez?’
‘I can’t. He’ll kill me…’
She repeats the process of drowning him. When she pulls him out, though, he’s almost unconscious. She slaps his face, bringing him back.
‘Where is Vasquez?’
‘A men’s club…’
‘The Methuselah?’ she asks.
There’s a commotion outside her room in the corridor. Feet ascending the stairs from below. Neva lets go of the man. Time has run out. She stabs her blade into his throat. His windpipe ruptures. Then she slices his jugular for good measure. At least that way they won’t learn what he told her.
She washes her blade and her hands, then stows it back in the holster. From her rucksack she removes a wig, a dark blonde bob and a hairnet. She stuffs her hair into the net with practised speed. Then pulls the wig on, pinning it in place.
She pulls the rucksack over her shoulders, places her Glock inside for safekeeping. Then she goes to the window.
Having previously determined this would be a difficult thing to do, Neva now has no choice. She climbs out of the window. The ledge is narrow, and she moves along on her toes like a ballerina on point, while she faces the wall of the guesthouse, gripping onto the structure as much as possible. As the ledge runs out, she glances at the hotel next door. The bright blue canopy stands proud over the door. It’ll be a leap. If she misses, the fall will be substantial, and she would be lucky to merely break a limb.
She hears a loud banging on the door of the room she’s just left. She looks
at the canopy again. Concentrating, she works out how her body must move to reach it. Then without hesitation she throws herself backwards off the ledge, twisting like a diver. She half lands on the canopy, her chest slamming down against the frame, which buckles under her weight but breaks her fall. She’s winded. Gasping for breath, she pulls her body fully onto the canvas while she regulates her breathing. Then she holds the edge of the canopy and flips herself down and off, as though she’s leaving a circus net.
Above her she hears the door of her room crash open. She stands unseen under the canopy as she hears the screams and yells above.
‘She must have gone out of the window!’ someone calls.
Beside her under the canopy, someone has tied a small poodle to one of the railings. Neva unties it and starts to walk away. She pauses as the dog sniffs around the base of a tree.
Hide in plain sight, she thinks.
The door to the Seaview crashes open and two men emerge, shouting at each other. The dog starts to bark as though the noise terrifies him. Neva glances back as the men start looking around frantically. She picks up the dog, hushing it as any caring owner would do. One of the men runs past her.
‘What’s going on?’ she cries after him in a Polish accent.
The man ignores her as he runs full pelt down the pavement. When both of the men have disappeared in opposite directions, Neva puts the dog back on the ground and the two of them walk away.
Chapter Twenty
Neva
She’s calm as she ties the dog up outside another hotel. The adrenaline filters out of her blood, and the assassins who had come after her have long gone.
She’d watched one of them hurry back, passing her as she bent to pet the poodle. A coal-black people carrier with darkened windows had collected him and the car had sped off down the promenade as they did a search for anyone fitting Neva’s description. Their lack of efficiency amuses her because she remained under their nose the whole time.
Fracks was never in Brighton: Alexi set me up, she thinks.
Kill or Die Page 10
