The Shadow Friends (The Martini Club #3)

Chapter 1 Ingrid

Ingrid

Her life was not supposed to end this way.

Then again, in her profession, one never knew how it would end.

She had hoped her final exit would happen many years in the future, and it would be painless, perhaps while she dozed in a rocking chair with a fire gently crackling in the hearth and a cat purring on her lap.

Or perhaps the end would be heralded by a crushing pain in her chest after one last triumphant climb up a mountain.

She had not expected it to come today, with so many years of life still ahead of her, and not in this old stone house, amid the fields of blooming lavender.

It was a breathtakingly beautiful place to die.

Through the window, framed by ancient wooden shutters, she could see the hills of Provence, cloaked in the golden haze of summer.

The air that wafted in through that window was perfumed with the scent of flowers.

This was a day that should be savored, a day to sip pastis in the nearby village and nibble on olives and peanuts.

Instead, she would die trapped in a bedroom with a wounded young woman who was bleeding to death beside her.

Ingrid had locked the door and had desperately shoved furniture against it to stave off the invaders, but those pitiful barriers would not hold them off for long.

Already, the men were battering against it, and while the door was solid, made of centuries-old oak, eventually the attackers would burst through.

For Ingrid, death would probably come swiftly, with two merciful bullets in the head.

But for Sophie . . .

“Cannot—cannot breathe,” Sophie whispered.

Ingrid looked down at the woman she had been assigned to protect.

Sophie was barely a woman, really, only twenty-two years old, but blessed—some would say cursed—with the courage of a warrior.

She had trusted the Agency to keep her alive, had believed all their assurances that Moscow would never find her in this safe house, tucked away in a quiet corner of Provence.

And for weeks, they had kept Sophie safe.

While Ingrid’s colleagues in Paris and Marseille had worked to dismantle the Russian syndicate, Sophie and Ingrid had felt secure enough here to venture outside every morning to pick flowers and sip coffee in the garden.

Who would think to look for Sophie in this old stone farmhouse at the end of a private dirt road?

To even access the road, an attacker would first have to contend with Ingrid’s two Agency colleagues, stationed in the gatehouse at the top of the road.

With these safeguards in place, and their location classified, no one should’ve been able to find them.

But somehow, they had been found.

Their first warning had been a curl of dust spiraling up in the distance, kicked into the air by the tires of an approaching vehicle.

All vehicles first had to be cleared by Simon and Gordon, the two agents in the gatehouse, but Ingrid had received no heads-up from her colleagues about a visitor. She’d radioed the men to confirm.

No one answered.

She’d called out to Sophie, who was crouched in the garden, snipping a bundle of lavender stalks.

With her straw hat and summer-streaked blond hair, Sophie looked like a winsome country girl, happily flushed from the sun, without a care in the world.

The way a young woman should look while spending her summer in France. Contented. Unafraid.

“Sophie, go in the house,” Ingrid had said.

Sophie looked up, and when she saw Ingrid’s face, she quickly rose to her feet. Now she, too, spotted the fantail of dust rising from the road. “Who is coming?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Go inside.”

At once Sophie dropped the bundle of lavender stalks that she’d so lovingly harvested and she retreated into the house.

Again, Ingrid radioed the gatehouse. Again, there was no response.

The dust cloud kept moving closer. She could now see it was a black SUV, and it was moving fast. Something is wrong, she thought. She followed Sophie into the house, barred the door, and issued a Mayday to her backup team in the village.

Then she grabbed the rifle.

Through the rifle scope, she watched the SUV roar closer.

She could make out the silhouettes of five heads inside the vehicle.

She kept her rifle aimed at the driver, but she held her fire because the situation was still unclear.

They could be friendlies. There could have been a comm failure. Her finger twitched on the trigger.

The SUV skidded to a stop in front of the house. Four men stepped out. Armed, dressed in black.

Definitely not friendlies.

She fired and took down one man. The others immediately scrambled for cover behind the vehicle. A barrage of return fire shattered the kitchen window and glass exploded into the room, clattering across the floor.

“Sophie!” she yelled. “Go upstairs!”

No answer.

She turned and saw the young woman, her face pale and contorted in pain, slowly sliding down against the blood-spattered wall.

“Sophie!”

More bullets tore into the kitchen and thudded into the cabinets. Wineglasses and chinaware disintegrated.

As Ingrid scrambled toward Sophie, shrapnel bit into her leg, and warm blood trickled down her skin. Even as she dodged the hail of gunfire, her focus was only on Sophie. Get her out of the room. Out of the line of fire.

She grabbed Sophie around the waist, slung the rifle over her shoulder, and pulled the young woman out of the kitchen.

There was no escape route from this house.

Their only option was to retreat upstairs to one of the bedrooms, bar the door, and hope that rescue arrived in time.

Sophie’s legs had gone limp, and she was little more than deadweight as Ingrid hauled her up the narrow staircase.

By the time they reached the second floor, Ingrid was dragging her, leaving a trail of blood on the floorboards.

From downstairs came the sound of pounding, kicking. How long would the door hold?

Not long enough.

Ingrid pulled Sophie into the upstairs bedroom and laid her on the floor. The young woman’s blouse was saturated with blood and she was gasping for air, but Ingrid had no time to attend to her wounds. A blast shook the house.

They had plastic explosives.

She bolted the bedroom door and shoved a dresser and chair against it. Scrambled behind the bed and crouched against the mattress with her rifle aimed at the door. The first one through that door would be a dead man.

“Please . . . help . . .”

Ingrid reached out and touched Sophie’s hand. Already it felt like the hand of a corpse, the warmth of life draining away. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.

Voices shouted downstairs in the kitchen.

Russian. They were inside the house. Footsteps thudded up the stairs.

Her finger was already squeezing the trigger, ready to fire, as they banged on the bedroom door.

Each blow shook the dresser, her last pitiful line of defense.

Her heart was banging as well, like a wild animal trying to beat its way out of her chest. It would not take long for them to break through.

She could take down the first one or two of them, but there was only one way this would end.

The syndicate demanded it. Sophie, who’d dared to betray them, must now suffer the consequences.

As Ingrid leaned into the mattress, her finger poised to fire, she thought about all the pleasures she would never live to enjoy, the breaths she would never take, the sunsets she would never witness.

She thought about the man who waited for her at home, the man with whom she could have spent the rest of her life.

Gone, those possible futures, all gone. Now it was down to these final moments, the invaders pounding at the door, the sweat trickling down her cheek like a warm teardrop.

How many rounds were left in her rifle? She didn’t know, but she would keep firing as long as she was able to, as long as she had bullets. Make them pay dearly. Make them . . .

The blast splintered wood, sent shrapnel flying.

The shock wave threw her backward, and her head slammed against the wall.

For a moment she saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing.

No discomfort, just the black numbness of death.

Then, faint and distant, the staccato of gunfire. Men shouting. Footsteps.

They are coming. Here it ends.

“Ingrid.”

She drew in a shuddering breath, and pain stabbed her ribs, sharp as a blade. Pain meant she was alive. Pain meant they weren’t finished with her yet.

“Ingrid!”

She opened her eyes. To her wonder, she saw a face she knew well, a face that was now staring down at her in panic. Rodrigo’s black hair was powdered with a layer of dust, and his cheek was spattered with blood. Not his blood, she realized, but another man’s.

“Help her,” whispered Ingrid. “Help Sophie.”

He gave a sorrowful shake of the head and looked away. She followed his gaze to the body lying nearby.