Across the room, the doorknob started to turn. Mila did everything she could to keep any reaction off her face.
“You…you were right,” she blurted out, wanting to fill the room with noise. “I…I didn’t know before I got here. I thought this was just a regular run.”
The assassin smiled. “Of course you did.”
The knob stopped.
“The man who was down here with me. I don’t know him. He’s not the one who told me.”
The door moved inward a fraction of an inch.
“Who was it, then?”
“The man who picked me up at the airport. The driver.”
“And who is he?”
She leaned forward slightly, tensing the muscles in her legs. “Someone I’ve worked with before. A…a friend.”
“A name, Mila.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the door clear the frame. This was her only chance.
“Not in this life, asshole!” she yelled as she launched herself at the assassin.
She grabbed the wrist of the hand wearing the ring a split second before her shoulder slammed into his chest. He fell back onto the floor with her on top. With all her strength, she pinned the wrist down with one hand and went for his gun with the other, but he was already pulling the pistol out. She latched on to the barrel and pointed it away from her, then slipped her hand down over his as the assassin pulled the trigger.
The bullet ricocheted off the wall into the floor less than a foot away from her leg.
“Let go of me, bitch!”
He tried to push her off, but she shoved him back to the floor. She knew she wouldn’t be able to keep him down much longer. Though she was strong for her size, he was stronger.
She glanced toward the front of the room. Julien stood just inside, one arm wrapped around the other man’s neck, the other around the man’s torso. He leaned backward, lifting the spotter into the air so the guy’s feet were dangling. The man twisted and turned, trying to break free as he struggled to breathe.
The assassin pushed her again.
This time she tumbled off, but was able to keep her hand on the gun.
The assassin grinned as he whipped his other hand around, palm open. She could see the needle coming straight at her, so she slapped his arm away, and rolled to the side. The move, she immediately realized, both saved her and condemned her to death as she lost her grip on the gun.
“Long and painful, then,” the assassin said as he rose to his feet.
__________
THE MAN IN Julien’s arms continued to squirm, moving just enough to get gasps of air here and there and remain conscious. Julien tried to squeeze harder, but his bulk prevented him from completely sealing his arm against the man’s neck, and causing the bastard to pass out.
In the middle of the room, the other man pushed Mila to the side and tried to slap his other hand against her. Mila rolled out of the way, letting go of the gun.
There was no question what would happen next. The man was going to shoot her.
“Long and painful, then,” the assassin said.
Still holding the spotter by the neck, Julien whipped the man’s legs around and smacked them into the back of the gunman’s head. He then tossed the guy at the assassin, and smashed into both of them, bringing them to the ground.
His first instinct was to grab the gun. What he got instead was the assassin’s wrist. He slammed the man’s hand against the floor over and over, trying to free the weapon.
“Julien! Watch out for the ring!” Mila called out.
The ring?
He almost reacted too late as the assassin’s other hand arced toward him. At the last second he saw the needle and pushed the hand to his left, unintentionally guiding it into the spotter’s shoulder.
The spotter gasped in surprise, then began to spasm before going limp.
The assassin tried to pull the gun free from Julien, but he lost his grip and it skittered across the floor away from both of them. He brought his ringed hand back, obviously trying once more to stick Julien.
Boom!
The top half of the assassin’s hand blew apart, the ring gone.
He fell back, clutching his damaged hand to his chest and groaning in pain.
Julien twisted around and saw Mila standing a few feet away, holding the pistol. He pushed himself to his feet.
“Sorry,” he told her. “I was delayed.”
“You’re here. That’s all that matters.”
“We need to go.”
Mila didn’t move.
“Someone might have heard the gunshot,” he said.
“They’d have been here by now.”
The assassin looked at her, trying to control the pain on his face. “We’ll just keep coming after you,” he said, forcing the words through clenched teeth. “You might as well give up now, because I will find you.” As he took a deep breath, he glanced at Julien then back at her. “I’ll tell you what. Our instructions were to avoid any extra bodies. You give yourself up; your friend gets a pass. How about it?”
Julien knew Quinn’s plan was no longer viable. How could they fake her death now? The man who’d been sent to kill her knew the truth, and soon those who ordered the termination would know, too. The best they’d be able to do was knock the guy out, lock him up here, then get the hell out of Vegas.
“How about this?” Mila said.
__________
MILA TOOK A step closer to the assassin. “You tell me who wants me dead, and maybe I’ll let you live.”
“How should I know? I’m just the hired help.”
“You said I tangled with a very powerful man. Sounded to me like you know who it is.”
He winced for a second. “Words only. Meant to get you to cooperate.”
She didn’t believe him for a second. There was something in his voice earlier that made her sure he knew more. She leaned toward him. “Who is it?”
His good hand suddenly reached for the gun she was holding. She jerked back out of range, and his hand flailed as if he could grip the air and pull the pistol to him. He yelled in frustration and pain. His hand dropped to the floor near the bloody mess that had once been part of his other hand.
Almost instantly he stopped yelling, his eyes growing wide. He raised his hand back up and turned the palm so he could look at it. Sticking out of the pad near his thumb was the needle-enhanced ring.
The assassin’s hand clenched involuntarily. “Oh, God.”
It took Mila a second to realize what was happening. She’d thought there wasn’t enough poison left on the tiny spike to kill again. But when the muscles on the assassin’s neck tightened, and his jaw began to shake, she knew she was wrong.
“Do you have an antidote?” she asked quickly. She couldn’t have him die on her, not yet.
He tried to smile. “Why would I…bring that?”
She knelt down beside him. “Who wanted me dead? It shouldn’t matter to you anymore. Just tell me!”
He sucked in a breath that she worried might be his last, and his eyelids fluttered shut.
She dropped the gun, and grabbed his face with both hands. “Tell me!”
Silence.
“Tell me!”
She thought it was too late, that he was gone. Then his eyes opened a fraction of an inch. “The lion,” he whispered.
“The lying what?” she asked.
“Lion,” he repeated in a voice she could barely make out. “Lion.”
There was no need to ask him again. He was done answering questions, forever.
Lying? Lie on? Lay on? Leon? Whatever it was he was trying to say didn’t make sense to her.
“Someone’s coming,” Julien said.
He grabbed the gun off the man he’d been choking, moved to the side of the door, and motioned for Mila to join him. They pressed against the wall, pistols ready as the door eased open.
For several seconds there was no noise. Then they heard Quinn’s voice say, “Mila? Julien?”
CHAPTER 38
OUTSIDE VENICE, ITALY
QUINN KNEW THE story from there, at least as far as Vegas was concerned. The first thing they did was jam the maintenance closet door closed in a way that only they would know how to easily open again. Then he and Julien had escorted Mila to the parking garage.
The car they had procured for her escape was a nondescript Toyota Camry with California plates. Their original plan had been for her to head south with Julien through Arizona to the Mexican border at Nogales. There, using an impeccably fake Canadian passport, she would cross over on her own and continue south via bus to Guaymas, on the Sonora side of the Gulf of California. Julien would dispose of the getaway car, then work on putting a more permanent plan in place for her. Once everything was ready, he would travel to Mexico to brief her, then send her on her way to her new life.
But with the two extra dead bodies in the basement of the Manhattan, Quinn needed some help, so instead of traveling with Mila to the border, Julien stayed behind.
As soon as Mila drove away, Quinn had called Jergins and confirmed that the body he’d seen at the hospital was indeed Mila Voss, and that the person Kovacs’s man had spotted was someone else entirely. Jergins was both glad Quinn would be able to handle things, and annoyed at the last-minute fire drill Kovacs’s team had put them through.
“Tell him to call me,” Jergins had said.
“If I catch him before he leaves, I’ll let him know.”
Next came the cleanup. Quinn and Julien wrapped up the bodies, collected stray bio matter, and obscured the bloodstains they couldn’t remove with quick-drying paint.
They waited until three a.m. to move the bodies out. Because they were in a casino, there were more people around than they usually had to account for on other jobs, but Quinn’s and Julien’s movements went unnoticed and soon they were driving out of the city.
The pre-dug grave was in the middle of the desert, twenty miles from anything else, and was more than deep enough for the three bodies. After each went in, Quinn poured a thin layer of his special mix of powdered dissolving chemicals over it, adding an extra layer on the faces and hands. He’d only planned for one body, so was worried there wouldn’t be enough, but he was able to stretch it out.
The project officially completed, Quinn returned to Los Angeles alone, while Julien worked out the details for Mila, details Quinn had never known. In fact, he and Julien had made a pact to never discuss Mila or Vegas again, something they had broken only once, two years later, when Julien had talked to Quinn about the apartment in Rome.
What Quinn did next was figure out how to cover up Kovacs’s disappearance. He had no feelings one way or the other about the assassin. It would have been a hell of a lot better if they had been able to accomplish everything without killing him and his spotter, but that was not something they could undo.
He seeded information that made it seem as if Kovacs was doing jobs in various locations around the world that kept him on the move every three or four days. Quinn had even written up a report of the Vegas job for him, and submitted it through Kovacs’s hacked email account.
The trickiest part was killing off Kovacs. Quinn had to wait a certain amount of time so that links back to Vegas would not likely be made, but if he waited too long, he risked the very real possibility of someone discovering that the last few months of the assassin’s life had been faked.
He picked his time and spot with care: three and a half months later; Colombia, South America. The assignment: a drug lord assassination. While waiting for the target to appear, Kovacs and his spotter—a guy whose name turned out to be Conner Adams—were captured and subsequently tortured. According to a news report Quinn was able to get into several of the Bogotá newspapers, the chopped-up remains of two unidentified Caucasian bodies had been discovered in the jungle. From there it was a fairly simple job of connecting the dots behind the scenes so those in Quinn’s world would know whose bodies they were.
It was a lot of work, and caused him more than a few anxious moments along the way, but it had succeeded. Once it was done, and Kovacs and Adams were official dead, Quinn was able to think about Vegas less and less. Finally, there came a point when it was like none of it had ever happened.
Mila’s unexpected resurrection put a stop to that delusion.
“The Lion,” Quinn said. “How did you figure out it was him?”
The Lion was a label used by some people in the industry when referring to Christopher Mygatt. His mane of blond—now almost white—hair was no doubt in large part responsible for that.
“I went over those last words the assassin said again and again until it was driving me crazy. Because of the Portugal flight, it was a safe assumption that the person behind everything worked in the government. It was Julien who finally figured it out after I told him the whole story. Over the next several months, he did some checking and found the connection.” She paused. “We couldn’t be sure, but what did it matter? It wasn’t like I’d be able to walk up to him and confront him. But then he started popping up in the news. And the rumors about his future started. And then that article.”
She shook her head as if she still couldn’t believe it. “If he was the guy who wanted me dead, the guy who’d been behind the kidnapping of an American citizen, I couldn’t just stand by and let him gain power again.” She drifted off for a moment, then said, “My mother came to the US as a teenager. She and my grandparents escaped from Poland. When she became an American citizen, she was so proud. That’s why I went into the work I did, my own little way of giving back to the country that welcomed my family, I guess. What Mygatt did…that’s not the country my mother believed in. I knew I had no choice, have no choice. I have to stop him.
“The first thing I had to do was make sure I wasn’t blaming the wrong guy. It took me a while, but I was able to identify one of the men who’d been watching the prisoner on the flight. I was hoping he would confirm the Lion’s identity, or at least point me in the direction of someone who could. I was supposed to meet him in Dar es Salaam. He showed up at the hotel, but he didn’t make it to the rendezvous point. I got nervous, so I bugged out, then…”
“We’ve seen the footage,” Quinn said.
“Footage?”
“Hotel security camera. Lawrence Rosen crashing into the sidewalk, you running up to him. That’s how they found out you were still alive.”
She closed her eyes. “Camera. Right. I knew it was there, but I didn’t think I’d be noticed.” She opened her eyes again. “After that, I was desperate. The only names I had were Rosen and another guy named Olsen. I found out Olsen is pretty entrenched in DC, so getting to him would be a last-resort option only. I needed another name, someone I could talk to.” She told them about Stockholm, and finding out about an agent named Evans who’d had a part in both the prisoner flight and her attempted termination. “I saw it on his face, and knew that the Lion and Mygatt were the same, but he tried to kill me before I could make him talk. I had to shoot back.” Her jaw clenched in anger, and she looked at Quinn. “You found out for sure, though. Now I know.”
Quinn looked out the window, lost in thought.
He understood that those fighting terrorism would, at times, need to employ extreme measures. Sometimes he agreed with the method, sometimes he didn’t. But abducting a US citizen and sending him to a secret foreign prison to die?
What Mygatt had done was unimaginable. He had violated Gorman’s fundamental rights as a US citizen, in a way worthy of a place like North Korea. Furthermore, he had covered it up so thoroughly no one suspected the truth. There was no doubt in Quinn’s mind that the senator would use all his resources to find Mila and eliminate her. Permanently. And if he succeeded in becoming director of the CIA, those resources would be unstoppable.
He had told Peter he needed to get her someplace safe, but the only way Mila would ever be safe was if they accomplished what she’d set out to do.
By the time they reached Marco P
olo Airport, Quinn had come up with a very loose framework for a plan. At his suggestion, they purchased tickets for Geneva and made their way to the gate.
Once there, Quinn pulled Orlando to the side and sketched out his idea. Once he finished, she stared at him, her face stone. If he didn’t know her so well, it would look like she thought he was crazy. But that wasn’t it at all. Her mind was spinning, playing out all the possible scenarios, considering details he hadn’t even thought of yet.
A full thirty seconds passed before she moved again. When she did, all she said was, “I need to get to work.” She then pulled her computer out of her bag, and found an empty seat near their gate.
Nate was next.
“Whoa,” he said, once Quinn had finished. “That’s a bit…risky, don’t you think?”
“Beyond risky,” Quinn said. “If you don’t feel comfortable with it, you can walk away. No judgment.”
“Not an issue. I’m not going anywhere. I was just pointing it out.”
“It might be our last job.”
“Well, something has to be. But, just to go on the record, I’d prefer that it’s not.” Nate seemed to lose focus for a moment, then pulled out his phone. “I should…I should call Liz.”
Quinn was momentarily caught off guard by the mention of his sister’s name. “Don’t tell her.”
“Seriously? You think I’m that stupid?”
“No. Sorry.”
“I just want to see how she’s doing.” Nate paused. “Maybe have a little phone sex.”
The Destroyed Page 26
