Chapter Fifteen
Port de Sóller
Mallorca, Spain
Mia Hernandez stood over the lifeless body of Maximilian Kross, who had landed face down on the floor of the hotel room, and calmly fired a security round into the back of his skull. His head jerked once.
Fifteen.
She lowered the pistol, its suppressor still warm.
She relieved Kross of his room key and pocketed it.
He had been a fair lover, but she’d had better.
Much better, if she was to be honest. But it wasn’t only Kross’s performance in bed that had been disappointing.
His lack of common sense and situational awareness was almost shocking.
She was sure there was a time when Kross had probably been a top operator, but time caught up with everyone, didn’t it?
In her professional opinion, Kross had been running on faded instincts.
Why else had he let her get so close to him?
Her orders had been clear. Assess and report.
This morning, after he had left the luxurious suite for what ended up being his final operation, Mia had transmitted her assessment and recommendation to Operations. They hadn’t waited long to authorize the kill. She thought it was the right call. Kross was slipping. And that couldn’t be allowed.
Contractual or not, Kross knew things. After the great work he’d done in Manchester, he’d become privy to operational details that couldn’t be permitted to live in the memory of a man who was no longer sharp.
His work had been valuable, but like any tool dulled by time, Kross had become a liability.
At least he went out with a win, she thought, hoping that one day she’d be given the same opportunity.
It was because of Kross’s work that they’d finally located and neutralized the mole, hadn’t they?
And . . . I let him sleep with me. Three times. How’s that not a win?
Mia pulled her encrypted phone from her bag and typed.
It’s done.
The response, as usual, arrived seconds later.
Very well.
Now, she needed to make a clean getaway from the crime scene she had orchestrated. She pulled a pair of latex gloves from her purse, then spent the next five minutes methodically wiping down door handles, the nightstand, the light switch, and every other surface she had touched.
When she was done, and with her gloves still on, she unlatched the window and slipped outside, lowering herself cautiously onto the narrow ledge that ran along the fourth floor.
She pressed her back flat against the stone wall, holding her small backpack in her left hand.
One step at a time, she inched sideways toward the window of the adjacent room, which was already cracked open.
The night was warm, and as it had been for the last few days, the sky was cloudless and the stars sharp.
The town had gone mostly quiet after the gunfight at the restaurant, but now it was beginning to stir again, as if trying to convince itself everything would be okay.
Somewhere beyond the rooftops, laughter floated up, along with the occasional rev of a moped engine.
Mia reached the window, and for a moment, she paused.
It would be so easy to fall.
Or jump.
A slight lean forward and gravity would do the rest. She wondered if it would hurt.
It might. But probably not for long.
She didn’t want to die; she enjoyed her work too much. The control, the adrenaline rushes, the thrill of being part of something much, much bigger than her; she loved it all.
I’m an instrument of chaos, she told herself.
Still, this urge, this flicker of temptation to let go was stronger than it had been before.
It wasn’t the first time she’d felt it. She’d fought it before, in Paris, where the Seine had called for her from the edge of a bridge, and in Marrakech, after a difficult performance on the piano at the hotel Oberoi.
It had always been fleeting, easy to dismiss. But not tonight.
Tonight, as she stood on the ledge four stories above the street, the impulse roared louder than it ever had, rising like a tide inside her chest. It was daring her to let go, to find out if anything waited beyond the fall.
Enough!
Mia gripped the wall harder, forcing herself to concentrate on everything she still had to accomplish. She had a job to finish, and work steadied her. It always had. She gritted her teeth and refocused her footing.
Move, Mia. You can’t stand here much longer. Someone will see you.
She reached for the window and opened it fully. She entered the room, which was almost identical to Kross’s room.
The woman was exactly where Mia had left her.
She was on her bed and unconscious from the powerful sedative Mia had given her.
Mia sat her upright on the bed, then pressed the pistol she’d used to kill Kross into the woman’s right hand.
Mia positioned the woman’s finger on the trigger, guided the suppressor to her temple, then gently squeezed the trigger.
The gun discharged, and the woman slumped sideways.
Sixteen.
Mia went through her mental checklist. Midway through it, she remembered she still had Kross’s room key in her pocket. She pulled it out and slipped it into the dead woman’s jeans pocket.
Voilà.
Her deception wouldn’t fool a thorough police investigation, but it would buy her more than enough time to leave the island.
Mia got up from the bed and made her way to the door.
From her bag, she took a snake camera and uncoiled the thin cable before connecting it to the small handheld monitor.
Mia lowered herself to one knee beside the door and slid the tiny lens under the gap.
The camera was infrared capable, high res, and tuned for low-light conditions.
She worked the control dial with her fingers, slowly panning left and right. The hallway was empty.
She retrieved the camera, tucked it back into her bag, and opened the door. She closed it behind her, then, using the room key she’d taken from the dead woman’s wallet earlier, she unlocked the door, opened it, threw the room key on the nearby bathroom counter, and closed the door again.
Satisfied that if anyone were to check the log, they’d see that the woman had used her key to enter her room at that specific time. With the hallway still free of guests or staff, Mia made her way to the service staircase, descended four floors, and exited the hotel by the rear service entrance.
Outside, like she’d seen while on the ledge, Port de Sóller was coming back to life.
The people were trickling back out, and the terraces were filling again.
Two blocks away from the hotel, she reached the bicycle she’d locked to a bike stand hours earlier.
She had just undone the chain when her phone vibrated.
Operations.
We know you have a concert in Budapest in three days, but we have an immediate tasking for you. Details are in your inbox. Let us know by 11pm if you can do it. Another asset can be on location in two hours if necessary.
Mia smiled. Operations had given her a new assignment. She swung onto the saddle and started pedaling. The urge to jump she’d felt on the ledge was gone, replaced by something sharper, something familiar.
Purpose.