Chapter Fifty-Three
Portland, Maine
Mia’s flight out of Miami had been as dull and unremarkable as she had hoped.
She and Henry had booked different airlines, checked in for their flights at different terminals, and never saw each other during their journey to Portland.
In fact, their itineraries hadn’t intersected until Maine, and even then, they had exited the airport hours apart and had headed to separate car-rental counters.
Each of them had checked one bag. Inside those bags, under neatly folded clothing and locked in hard-sided containers, were their firearms. Each had brought along a suppressor and spare magazines.
Mia also carried a knife and the last of the antibiotic cream for the wound on her ear, though it was healing nicely, and the scar was mostly hidden beneath her hair.
The sun was low behind a thick bank of clouds, casting a gray pallor over Casco Bay. She had checked, and no rain was expected, but the air had that sticky, weedy scent that was often present during low tide.
Cutter Street’s lot wasn’t busy at this hour, but she’d seen a few joggers running along the Midslope Trail since she’d parked her rental car an hour ago. To her left and down the slope, anchored sailboats rocked gently in the harbor. The Cleeves and Tucker Memorial stood in the distance.
Two conquerors, probably, she thought, but didn’t care enough to check.
From her vantage point, Mia could see the Anderson house through the thinning trees above the promenade. Her angle wasn’t the best, but the feed coming in from the drone Henry was piloting from somewhere north of the target told her everything she needed to know.
She glanced down at her phone, where the live feed displayed a stabilized bird’s-eye view of the Anderson’s three-story colonial home.
The porch lights were on, and while the curtains were drawn in some of the windows, they were open in many others.
There were three vehicles parked in the long driveway: a Jeep Cherokee, a luxury pickup truck, and a dark sedan.
Henry flew the drone lower, and she saw a figure pass behind a window.
It was a man, but she couldn’t tell who it was from this distance.
Since Henry had launched the drone twenty minutes ago, she’d spotted five different people inside the house.
While it was possible there were more people than that, she knew there were at least two women and three men present at the property.
Thanks to the photos Mpassi had forwarded to her and Henry, Mia had been able to identify the three men. While she would recognize Caspian Anderson anywhere, she’d never set eyes on his brother, Nelson, or their father, Richard, before tonight.
Henry’s voice came in through her earbud. “What do you think?” he asked.
“Looks like a family reunion to me,” she replied. “Exactly what we were hoping for.”
She studied the video feed. The lights were on in almost every room. It didn’t feel like a trap. But she wasn’t about to underestimate Caspian Anderson. She’d seen him in action. In Valencia, he’d almost taken her head off. She’d been lucky. She wasn’t planning on giving him a second chance.
She’d gotten off the phone with Mpassi half an hour ago. He’d given her and Henry the final green light, and his orders couldn’t have been clearer. The Anderson brothers and Liesel Bergmann had to be dealt with.
Tonight.
Mpassi had been adamant about it. Mia had asked to speak to Westcott, although apparently he wasn’t available. But Mpassi had promised her she’d be able to reach him tomorrow.
To complete tonight’s mission, there wasn’t time for clever cover stories or drawn-out surveillance.
She and Henry weren’t about to pose as cable-company techs or go knocking on the Anderson’s door with phony clipboards pretending to be sales reps.
No, they would go in hard and quick, using surprise and violence of action.
She would have preferred to pick her own timing for the operation, but if Mpassi needed these three people gone by the end of the day, she knew he had a good reason. This was the final stitch in closing the wound Verena Kaine had opened, and it was up to Mia to end things now.
Caspian Anderson had been the wild card in all of it, and now he was at the center of what was left. She didn’t know how exactly the operation would go down, but she hoped she’d be the one to finish him off.
For this op to work, though, Henry would have to take the lead. Caspian had already seen her. If he spotted her again, they’d lose their biggest advantage—surprise. And if that happened, it could turn to shit real fast.
But she hadn’t trained with Henry. She knew he was competent, but there was always a risk when two operators who had never moved side by side joined forces for an operation like this one.
Apart from their time together in Aruba and their lovemaking sessions in Miami, they didn’t know each other’s rhythms, and breaching a house with an unknown layout was a recipe for chaos.
She was about to take a sip of water when a flicker on the screen caught her attention.
“Zoom in on the backyard,” she said.
The drone’s camera adjusted, zooming in as the rear sliding door of the house eased open. A man stepped out on the back balcony, wearing a red apron and holding a pair of tongs in one hand. His build was heavier than Caspian’s, and he was older.
“It’s Richard Anderson,” Mia said.
She watched as Anderson set the tongs down on the grill, lifted the lid, and checked the burners.
He then turned back toward the house. Mia’s mind clicked through the implications.
An opportunity had just presented itself.
She now knew that the back door was unlocked, which meant they had a second point of entry.
Henry must have come to the same conclusion, because he asked, “How do you want to do this?”
“We have our access,” she said. “You take the front and ring the bell. They’ll answer, someone always does.”
“And you?”
“I’ll move from the rear. Once you’re in, I’ll follow. We hit them from both sides, but for God’s sake, check your fire, okay?”
Henry didn’t reply directly, but he said, “I’m ready to move whenever you are. I need three minutes to get to the house.”
“Fly the drone over the side of the house for me and zoom in,” she said. “I need to figure out how to reach the backyard without being seen.”
She scanned the terrain and noticed a tree line to the east of the Anderson house.
There seemed to be a slight dip in elevation between the adjacent property and the fence.
If she moved fast and kept low, she could reach the backyard in less than twenty seconds from the street. She shared her plan with Henry.
“I’ll go on your mark,” he said.
“Not yet, H,” she said. “I want to see if anyone else steps outside. I’d rather pick them off outside than get stuck inside with at least five unknowns.”
“Five minutes?” Henry asked.
“Give it ten,” she replied.
There was a pause, then Henry’s voice came back quieter, but she could tell there was a smile behind it. “You’re still giving the orders, huh?”
She allowed a small laugh to escape her lips. “That was always the arrangement,” she said.
“I didn’t mind back in Miami,” he said. “I kind of like it.”
“Yeah . . . I know,” she said.