Chapter Forty-Three
Valencia, Spain
Mia lowered the phone. She’d tried to call Verena twice now, and there had been no response. She tapped open the tracking app. A red dot pulsed a quarter mile off from the brokerage office, moving slowly.
She’s on foot.
Mia had asked Verena to intercept the man before he entered the brokerage.
It was imperative to stop him from getting the records tied to Veloce.
Had Verena failed? Was she now following him?
Mia walked past the brokerage firm, forcing herself to think things through.
It was possible that Verena had simply been incapable of acting in time.
If that was the case, and Mia had been in Verena’s shoes, what would she have done?
Wait. I would have waited outside.
Then she would have tailed him, and hopefully she would have been able to spring a trap before he could communicate his findings to whoever he was working with.
That’s what she would have done, and that’s probably what Verena had done too.
That also meant that Verena was now tailing solo a man who had proven to be dangerous.
She tapped her phone again. The dot was still moving. Mia’s options were narrowing. She could double back and talk to the receptionist at the brokerage firm to try to find out what intel the man had managed to access. Or she could go after Verena.
The brokerage could wait. It would still be there in an hour. She couldn’t say the same about Verena.
Mia scanned the streets. She needed a way to catch up to Verena. She could hot-wire a car, but that wouldn’t help her if she had to access the narrow streets Verena seemed to be headed toward. No, she needed something smaller, something she could park anywhere.
There was a bus idling near the traffic circle at the intersection of Calle del Dr. Marcos Sopena and Calle d’Eugènia Vines, but that wouldn’t do either.
A cyclist with a dog in a backpack rolled past her, then her eyes locked onto a young woman pulling to the curb on a turquoise moped.
The woman climbed off her scooter and pulled the keys from the ignition with one hand while her other reached to unclip the helmet strap.
Mia crossed the street in a light jog. The woman looked up just as Mia closed the final few feet.
Mia snatched the keys from the woman’s hand and slid onto the seat before she could even register what was happening.
Mia started the engine, kicked the stand free, and veered into traffic, accelerating hard as she checked her phone with one hand.
Behind her, the young woman shouted something, but she was already too far away for Mia to hear what she said.
The dot had stopped moving a minute ago. Mia checked the screen again as the moped bounced over a manhole cover, and she almost dropped her phone. Verena’s phone was still live, still feeding a location. Not like Francisco’s phone, which Mia had thrown into the canal.
If the dot stayed put, she’d be there in less than two minutes.
Mia leaned harder into the throttle, speeding past a delivery van, then a silver hatchback, nearly clipping the driver’s side mirror.
Traffic had been difficult to navigate near the water, but now, as she moved inland and past the last row of beach restaurants and into the residential grid, the congestion thinned.
The buildings got tighter and the streets narrower, but there were also a lot fewer pedestrians.
She slowed as she approached the street that Verena’s signal was coming from. Mia knew better than to go blind into what seemed to be a backstreet, so she drove past it, looking left as she did so.
She had eyes on them for only a second, but she saw all she needed to see to establish what was going on.
Verena was pinned against the wall of a building twenty or twenty-five feet into the alley.
A man stood in front of her, his body blocking Verena from stepping away.
Mia hadn’t seen his face, as his head had been slightly turned, as if listening for something Verena was saying.
Damn it.
Mia pushed past the alley by half a block, coasting to a stop beside a bus stop bench. Despite the urgency, she let the moped idle for a few more seconds as she scanned her surroundings.
The side street she was on wasn’t empty, but it was manageable.
A couple strolled along the opposite sidewalk, their eyes on their phones, and an elderly woman tugged a rolling grocery cart behind her.
Closer to Mia, a pair of pigeons pecked at something near a storm drain, unbothered by the occasional vehicle passing less than two feet from them.
Didn’t they know how close to death they were? They had to, right? So why didn’t they care? Mia was about to shake her head at the birds’ stupidity but stopped herself. Wouldn’t they do the same about her if they knew what she was doing for a living?
She parked the moped near a white sedan and climbed off.
In her fanny pack, in addition to her garrote, she carried the SIG Sauer P365 she’d acquired on the black market on Ibiza.
It was a small weapon, but it carried thirteen rounds.
She wished it had red dot optics for faster target acquisition, but it didn’t.
She’d have to rely on the gun’s iron sights.
Mia unzipped the fanny pack and slipped her hand around the grip of the pistol, but she didn’t draw.
The old woman was gone, and the couple had turned a corner. Only the two fearless pigeons remained. Mia moved fast, crossing behind a parked van and circling wide. The angle wasn’t perfect, but from forty feet out, she had a partial line of sight on Verena and the man.
Verena’s mouth was moving, and her right shoulder hung limp by her side, as if it had been popped loose. Mia winced. Not because Verena was clearly in pain, but because she was talking to the man. Mia wondered if she shouldn’t have dealt with Verena the same way she had with Maximilian Kross.
It’s not too late, she thought, pulling the pistol out but keeping it low against her thigh.
She was thirty feet out when the man turned his head slightly, as if he’d sensed something.
Mia raised her pistol.