Liars' Legacy

by Taylor Stevens

  The carry-on was her weakness and his touchstone.

  No matter how she disguised the thing or where she left it, she always circled back to claim it, and what should have been a prop, a transition piece, or a distraction to facilitate shedding one persona for another had become a homing beacon instead.

  From her very first abandon-and-return, he’d understood.

  She’d perceived enough of a tangible, credible threat at that outdoor table in Berlin to assemble an arsenal. She was traveling armed and traveling heavy.

  But whatever she’d prepared to fight wasn’t in this French village. He knew that because she’d left the suitcase behind, tucked out of sight in the station’s tiny ticket-master office, a courtesy she shouldn’t have been granted but had been because few were capable of telling her no.

  If patterns prevailed, she’d return to collect it.

  That was the only logical thing he had to hold on to in this illogical venture, and the only thing stronger than the nagging possibility she’d brought him to this location to lose him. Well, not just to lose him.

  There were a hundred faster, easier ways to get rid of him if ditching him was what she wanted, and none of them involved a daylong detour into the foothills southeast of Geneva.

  No, this village, this town hall, was too specific. She’d come here looking for someone or something. But letting him believe he had the drop on her the whole long way, setting him up in an impossible surveillance position, and leaving him waiting and watching at the front while she slipped out the back and caught the last train out for the night, knowing he’d be stranded in a town with limited transportation options, that was exactly the kind of thing she’d do for personal entertainment.

  The longer she strung him along the more hilarious she’d find the payoff.

  She was twisted like that.

  Unpredictable, raw, electric, alive.

  It made her a new kind of danger and a different kind of challenge, which was why he was still standing here, watching that damn door, ignoring the Klaxon sounding through his head. That, and he wanted to know what in this small town possibly mattered enough for her to risk betraying her brother’s trust when trust was what they needed most to keep each other alive.

  He stole another glance at the time.

  The persistent nagging grew stronger.

  This whole thing would have been so much easier if he could just talk with her, but that was out of the question and also non-negotiable. He’d observed enough targets through the crosshairs to know that even she, manipulative, emotional chameleon that she was, wasn’t a good enough actress to prevent subconscious body language from telegraphing the presence of an armed companion.

  For him to be of any value, she couldn’t know.

  That had been fine enough in concept when he’d first set out in Houston.

  In practicality, he felt like a voyeuristic creep.

  That surprised him—a lifetime spent peering into people’s lives, and now he was uncomfortable? But he should have seen it coming. Nobody, guilty or innocent, took kindly to learning they’d been spied upon, and hunting someone he cared about to protect her when she didn’t believe she needed protecting was a far cry from picking pockets, as he’d done as a kid on the streets from Calamar to Cartagena, or running skip traces for pocket money after a promise made to the father he’d never met resulted in a new life in the United States, or tracking down those outside as he followed that trailhead into the world’s underbelly to where he observed the most intimate moments through the crosshairs.

  The last thing he wanted was for her to feel repulsed by him.

  That’s what this would earn him if she knew.

  So, no. And also, no.

  Murmurs and footsteps reverberated in the solemn acoustics. Parishioners came and went, lighting candles, counting rosary beads, whispering prayers.

  It’d been two hours and forty minutes now.

  The mairie would close soon.

  The next train departed shortly after that.

  Even if she walked out now—assuming she hadn’t already slipped out the back—he no longer had enough time to find out what she’d been after.

  He’d reached the self-imposed cutoff.

  He would return to the station and look for her suitcase.

  Either it’d be there or it wouldn’t, and then he’d know.

  Reluctance held him at the window, refused to let him go.

  To leave now was to acknowledge the possibility she’d absconded.

  Every minute he delayed was a minute he didn’t have to face that truth.

  The pragmatic part of him grew angry at the self-delusion. He gripped the bag and stepped away from the window, but the glass door opened, and she was there, head down, stride long, moving fast across the plaza with the focus of someone who had no time to waste. Nothing in her presence, her posture, said she was aware of his.

  But nothing about her could ever be taken at face value.

  He turned for the rear, for the small door behind the offices, which would let him out to a side street. His hurry was a different kind of hurry. He knew where she was headed, knew she wouldn’t leave town without that suitcase, but once she had it, there was no telling what she’d do next.

  CHAPTER 17

  Hotel Galileo

  Prague, Czech Republic

  KARA

  SHE STEPPED OFF THE ELEVATOR AND STROLLED TOWARD THE LOBBY, conscious of her posture, of every step, trying not to overcompensate, like someone trying to pretend they weren’t pretending to look relaxed and normal. This was just her, on the way out to grab a bite to eat, exactly like she’d told Juan as she’d walked out the door.

  Food and coffee, that’s all she needed to think about.

  Coffee, food, coffee, food, around the corner, then past the front desk.

  Lying was never meant to be part of the job.

  Nor was keeping Nick in the dark, but traitorous as it felt, she saw no way around it. Her priority was watching her back and watching Nick’s, and two assassins on the same flight out of Dallas wasn’t a coincidence.

  The war room had missed it—which she highly doubted—or intelligence was deliberately being withheld, and the reason didn’t really matter if the end result was the same. Her team was being primed for failure, maybe worse. The only way to protect them and protect herself was to know what they were up against.

  She’d seen an Internet café a couple blocks down on their way to the hotel. That usually meant international calls, as well, and that was where she headed.

  One number, ten minutes, that’s all she needed.

  She pushed out the hotel doors into a biting wind, turned her coat collar up, dug her chin down into the warmth of body heat, and followed the cobblestones.

  She’d left her department-issued phone behind, out in the open, on the bed, beside the laptop, where, if it came to it, no one could deny seeing it, and she hoped like hell she’d never need the alibi. Not that she was doing anything illegal, but the way she was going about it could be spun as such, and she’d rather not lose years of her life to the brig at the hands of someone like Liv, who’d gladly frame carrying either of those devices on this jaunt as an attempt at unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

  Familiar outdoor signage welcomed her, and she stepped off the street into a cozy room with a bakery and coffee bar at the back, computer-laden tables at the windows, and a menu on the wall that priced out phone and Internet services.

  A few words, a handful of koruny got her a phone line.

  Four in the afternoon in Prague meant ten in the morning on the East Coast.

  To do this meant pretty much now or never.

  She dialed from memory.

  She didn’t have friends, tried hard not to make enemies, and filled the in-between by collecting and nurturing favors like her career depended on them, because it pretty much did. Twenty-nine-year-old Bartholomew Baker, whose drunken, beer-bottle-brave mouth may or may not have gott
en him a hair’s breadth from losing his clearance, position, and career, was one of those who owed her.

  Bart worked at headquarters, a separate department, one in which Liv Wilson’s tentacles had far less suction.

  He answered with a gruff hello.

  Kara said, “I’m calling in my favor.”

  No pleasantries, no introduction, no need to make her life more difficult. He knew who she was, and he’d give her what she wanted, not just because she was the one asking, but because she was letting him off easy.

  She said, “I need you to run a flight manifest against the Broker list for me.”

  A pause hung in the air. Typing clicked across the line. He said, “Something happened with your clearance?”

  “No.”

  The typing stopped. The phone shifted from one ear to the next. His voice lowered, turned cautious. He said, “Then why are you coming to me for this?”

  “Because I need it done.”

  Silence followed. She could hear the mental gears grinding and didn’t fault him for that. There’d be less room for confusion and suspicion if she’d asked for something that’d get him fired or jailed.

  He said, “You’re burning your chit to have me access something you can just get yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because none of your business.”

  “Look,” he said. “I’ll get you what you want, but at least let me know what it is I’m not seeing here, so I can keep my own ass covered.”

  “There’s nothing to cover. I just don’t want my name on the requisition.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think one favor’s gonna solve that problem.”

  The attempt at humor fell flat.

  She said, “You’re burning my daylight.”

  “Whatever you say, boss lady. How soon do you need it?”

  “How soon can you run it?”

  “Now if you want.”

  She gave him the Dallas–Fort Worth flight information.

  A minute passed. Bart said, “Manifest against the Broker list gives me one match. Christopher Holden. You know the name?”

  Kara’s thoughts slowed to a crawl. That wasn’t right.

  She said, “Only one match?”

  “Just the one.”

  “Where’s he rank?”

  “Third, but the first two are placeholders—no aliases, nothing but kills and skills. Need me to dig around and see if we’ve got any other links?”

  “Nah,” she said.

  The higher up the list, the greater the threat and more urgent the liquidation priority, but you couldn’t liquidate what you couldn’t find, and there were killers up and down that list who’d been smart enough to stay anonymous, even to the Broker. Placeholders meant the war room knew they existed, but hadn’t identified them yet. They weren’t her problem.

  Jacques Lefevre was her problem.

  And now, apparently, so was Christopher Holden.

  Bart let out a low whistle. “This mother’s a piece of work.”

  Kara wanted details, didn’t have time for a verbal lesson, and would need to see them with her own eyes anyway. “Send me the Broker’s original op file,” she said, “and everything we’ve got on him.”

  “Same e-mail?”

  She didn’t care if the war room knew she was looking, she just didn’t want them to know right now, and her official work account was the only way to protect herself against a clearance violation. She said, “Yeah, but rename before you send, something generic, and then I need to know where Jacques Lefevre ranks on the Broker list.”

  A beat of silence followed and lengthened. Bart said, “The name shows up on the flight manifest but not on the list. Maybe he’s one of the placeholders.”

  No, that wasn’t right, either.

  The war room had known what this guy was even before they’d known who he was, and the whole reason headquarters had mobilized Nick’s team as fast as they had was that he was on the Broker list. Now that they’d locked in on him, the name he’d flown under, even if it was an alias, should still point back to the list.

  She said, “I’ve got a second manifest for you to run.”

  Bart grunted. “This favor’s turning into multiple favors.”

  “And you’re turning into a whiny baby, so I’d say that makes us even.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “So am I.”

  He grunted again. She gave him the information for the Frankfurt to Berlin flight and waited, focus jumping from street to silence and back again.

  He said, “I’m not pulling up any matches.”

  “Not a single one?”

  “I didn’t stutter.”

  “One more,” she said, “and then I’m done.”

  “So you say.”

  “Go back to the Dallas–Frankfurt manifest. Run every name on it against the war room’s op files, including personnel.”

  “Oh, now we get to the part where I need to cover my ass.”

  “Just run the fucking manifest, Bart.”

  Bart typed and clicked. He said, “You know, if you weren’t such a ballbuster, you wouldn’t have to work so hard to get people to do things for you.”

  “I’ll come see you for congeniality lessons when this is over.”

  He said, “Flight out of Dallas to war-room op files and personnel files gets me your original Christopher Holden guy.”

  “That’s it?”

  “You slay me with the questions. There’s also Emilia Flynn, your buddies Nick Carson, Juan Marino, and . . . Oh, this is cute. Looks like a whole party of your kind was on that flight.”

  “How many?”

  “Eight, including you.”

  That accounted for Nick’s and Emilia’s teams and ruled out anyone else working for headquarters who might have tagged along, but it still got her only a single liquidation target, and the wrong one at that. She said, “Send me the op files on the placeholders and the next eight names down the list.”

  Bart paused. The silence thickened, and she could hear the hesitancy.

  She said, “I’m searching for a needle in a haystack right now, so unless there’s been an adjustment to my clearance that I don’t know about, there’s no reason why there’d be any heat on this. Man up and send me the damn data already.”

  “And then we’re settled?”

  “Then we’re settled.”

  “Need about ten minutes to pull it together,” he said.

  She hung up without a good-bye, squared her bill at the coffee bar, purchased a couple pastries and caffeine to go, and made her way back to the hotel, Styrofoam in hand, focus on the pavement, thoughts bolting like a herd of spooked horses in a multidirectional gallop.

  She was familiar with need to know, and accepted her place in that hierarchy.

  That her team’s target wasn’t on the liquidation list for the reasons headquarters claimed didn’t matter. Why he’d made the list didn’t change the objective or her obligation to shut up, follow orders, and do the job, but it mattered a whole heck of a lot in terms of being successful at her job.

  Who the target was, what he was, determined how they pursued him and how they took him down. The information headquarters withheld could make the difference between putting him in their crosshairs or winding up in his—and that was just one target—it didn’t even factor for a second assassin competing with them for the kill.

  Christopher Holden was a whole other issue.

  Top of the list meant he was highly dangerous and a high liquidation priority.

  Probably why they’d sent Emilia after him.

  She wouldn’t begrudge that truth, Emilia was good.

  But unless she’d already managed to put him down—and the look on her face outside the Frankfurt terminal was anything but assuring—Christopher Holden was an assassin with a liquidation team at his back, competing for a kill on their target, who may or may not be aware of the assassin tailing him. Meanwhile, headquarters had failed to
notify the two teams of the others’ objectives or presence and had put them all on a collision course, with a hundred ways to die.

  Beautiful.

  Her thoughts turned in that direction, spinning off threads that left her so preoccupied, she didn’t register the real-world patterns until they were nearly close enough to touch. The color jolted her first.

  Three times now she’d seen that same red and black coat.

  She’d seen it across the street when she left the hotel.

  She’d seen it pass the window when she was in the Internet café.

  And here she caught it in her peripheral vision while checking for cars before crossing. She resisted the natural urge to look again and pushed on with the same distracted stride, fighting hard to keep realization from seeping into her posture.

  She was vulnerable—unarmed, isolated from her team, didn’t even have a phone on her—and was being watched, shadowed by an enemy who knew what she was here to do. She’d have felt fear—probably should have felt fear—but analysis wouldn’t let her.

  He could have killed them in Frankfurt.

  He could kill her now.

  But if he was half as good as she knew he was, she never would have become aware of his presence unless he wanted her to know he was there. Hell, if she’d been more aware of what went on outside her head, she’d have registered him the first time, and he’d have moved on.

  But she hadn’t, and so he’d come incrementally closer.

  What was he gonna do next? Walk up and shake her hand?

  She reached the hotel doors, caught a glimpse of him in the glass.