Chapter Twelve
Ses Oliveres Restaurant
Port de Sóller, Mallorca, Spain
Liesel stopped breathing, her lungs refusing to move as her sister, Sofie, sat in the chair next to her. Sofie reached out and squeezed Liesel’s forearm as if doing so was the most natural thing in the world. The gesture was simple, familiar, but it gave Liesel the chills.
“Hi, Schnecke,” Sofie said softly. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
Liesel had a hard time swallowing. Her eyes were fixed on her sister’s hand on her forearm, like the hand was an alien object.
The nickname. The touch. Sofie’s voice. None of it seemed real.
Her baby sister, dead for five years, or so she’d believed, was now sitting beside her.
Alive. Breathing. Touching me.
Liesel was motionless, but in her mind, the memories came crashing in.
The funeral, the empty coffin, the years of grief and guilt.
She wanted to cry, to laugh, to fucking scream.
She wanted to throw her arms around Sofie and never let go, but at the same time, she wanted to grab her little sister by the shoulders and demand to know where the hell she’d been all those years and why she hadn’t given her sign of life.
It was Caspian who broke the spell.
“I’m Caspian,” he said. “I think we met once. In Kenya.”
Sofie looked at him, clearly surprised. “I don’t think so.”
“You were just outside the Kibera slum, at the back of a motorcycle,” Caspian said.
“I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about—”
Caspian cut her off. “Don’t. I know you were there, and Liesel knows it too,” he said.
Sofie’s expression darkened. “Is that so?” she asked.
“What were you doing there? Help me understand,” Liesel said.
But Sofie didn’t reply to her. Instead, she looked at Caspian. “I saw you, too, you know?” she said.
Caspian let out a dry chuckle. “Yeah . . . I figured you had. You took out one of Dolores Araujo’s bodyguards.”
“What is this? An interrogation?” Sofie asked.
“I just want to make sure we’re on the same side,” Caspian said. “You came to us, remember? So, no more games. Answer your sister’s question.”
Sofie pursed her lips, then looked at Liesel.
“I was there to protect you,” Sofie said. “That bitch, Araujo, she would have sent killers after you for killing her ex and wrecking her operation in New York. I . . . I couldn’t let that happen.”
Liesel already knew that—Caspian had told her as much when he had shared with her his reasons for conducting his own unsanctioned operation in Kenya—but she was still taken aback by Sofie’s words. “How did you know about Araujo?” she asked. “What’s your connection to her?”
“As much as I’d like to chat about me and what happened in Africa, Schnecke, now isn’t the—”
“Time?” Liesel finished for her, doing her very best to keep her voice from rising. “Well, make the time, little sis. Because for the last five years, I thought you were dead. Do you have any idea what that’s done to me?”
Sofie looked away. Liesel’s heart pounded in her chest, and she could feel the rage building inside her. What game was her sister playing?
“I’m sorry, Liesel. I really am,” Sofie said a moment later. “But I can’t.”
Liesel shook her head. “I love you, Sofie. But if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on—”
“There’s no time for that,” Sofie insisted, grabbing Liesel’s hand. “My life’s in danger. And so are yours.”
Liesel shot a glance at Caspian, then back at Sofie. Her sister’s tone was different than she remembered. It was edgier, unstable.
And her eyes . . . they don’t look the way they used to. Something happened to her. But what?
“Why would our lives be in danger?” Caspian asked.
“I know you both have questions, and I promise, I’ll answer all of them. But not here. You need to follow me. Right away.”
Sofie let go of Liesel’s hand and pushed her chair back, getting ready to leave. But Caspian caught Sofie’s wrist.
“No,” he said. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
Sofie stared at him for a moment, then slowly sat back down.
“I’m not a good person, Liesel. I’m not like you,” Sofie said.
“What are you talking about? You’re not making any sense,” Liesel said, exasperated by Sofie’s unwillingness to share anything with her and Caspian. Was she suffering from PTSD? Or had she completely lost it?
“In Afghanistan, I was given an opportunity. And I took it. I wish I hadn’t, but I did.”
Caspian leaned in. “What kind of opportunity?”
“To provide intelligence.”
Liesel felt her chest tighten. “To the Taliban?” she asked in a whisper.
Sofie recoiled. “No. Of course not,” she snapped back, disgusted. “To Hearts United.”
Liesel blinked. “The charitable organization? That Hearts United?”
“You know any other?” Sofie asked, then added, “Yes, that one. But Hearts United isn’t what people think it is. It never was.”
Caspian scoffed. “Come on. Hearts United is one of the most respected NGOs in the world. The good they’ve done—”
“Stop. Just stop!” Sofie said. “You know nothing, Caspian. Nothing!”
Liesel raised her hand, coming to Caspian’s defense. “No, he’s right, Sofie. Hearts United’s reputation is beyond reproach. If you’re telling us otherwise, you need to give us more than riddles.”
Sofie glared at them. “I shouldn’t have come. Asking for your help was a mistake.”
Then, from the corner of her eye, Liesel noticed two men cutting across the promenade.
They were heading straight for the restaurant.
There was something about them that stood out.
They didn’t fit with the crowd of vacationers and sunburned families who were searching for a restaurant to enjoy dinner.
The men’s clothes were utilitarian and looked nothing like what most tourists wore.
Their eyes were scanning as they walked, not lingering on anything for too long.
One of them met her eyes briefly but then quickly looked away.
Sofie must have noticed them, too, because she said, “They found me.”
“Who found you?” Caspian asked.
“These two were part of the team who grabbed my contact this morning,” Sofie said, rising from her chair. “Follow me. There’s a rear exit behind the kitchen. Come now, or you’ll die.”
Liesel froze, her mind spinning.
Part of the team who grabbed my contact this morning . . .
Then something clicked in her brain.
“Paul Hobb. Your contact was Paul Hobb?”
Sofie, who had already taken two steps toward the restaurant, turned to her, eyes wide. “How . . . how did you know?”
Before Liesel could answer, Sofie jerked backward, violently shoved by an unseen force.
And then something hit Liesel, hard, and she was thrown sideways, her world spinning as her shoulder slammed into the tiles of the terrace.