Chapter 41 Ingrid
Ingrid
Fortress Maggie. That’s how she now thought of the farmhouse. Her hiding place, her refuge. But tonight this farmhouse was her Alamo, the place where she would make her last stand.
Assuming the killer took the bait.
Ingrid paced from the kitchen to the living room, pausing long enough to glance at the front door.
It was solid oak, impossible to kick open when bolted.
But every fortress had its vulnerable points, and a hundred-year-old farmhouse like Maggie’s could not be made impenetrable.
If a cold winter wind could seep in through these walls, so could an intruder.
She paced back into the kitchen and braved a quick glance out the window at the night beyond.
She did not linger there; she’d make too tempting a shot for a sniper.
She stayed by the window only long enough to make it clear to anyone who might be watching that yes, she was still here, and alone, in the house.
An opportunity waiting to be plucked. Up on the barn rooftop, Rodrigo and Lloyd were also watching, waiting for Hannah to approach the house.
It could be a long night, for all of them.
She went to the coffee maker, where the carafe was still half full.
She could not stomach the thought of another cup; she’d drunk far too much coffee this past week and suffered through too many jittery, overcaffeinated nights.
She didn’t really need the caffeine now; her heart was already thrumming, her ears buzzing with the whoosh of her pulse.
And she was hot; God, she was hot and sweating in this Kevlar vest, even on this cold October night.
She thought about Lloyd, crouched on the barn roof, his muscles by now probably aching, his joints stiffening. He was not trained for night ops. She might be the bait, but Lloyd was the one outside and exposed. Rodrigo had promised to watch over him, but if something went wrong . . .
She paced into the living room, the dining room, and back to the kitchen.
Make your move, Hannah. Come and get me.
Or had they misread the situation? Surely Hannah expected them to launch a rescue op to retrieve Maggie, and with their manpower split up, their focus scattered, it would be the logical time for Hannah to strike at Ingrid.
Or had they overthought it? Which dimension chess game was Hannah playing?
She sat down at the kitchen table and stared at the photo on Maggie’s laptop.
The EXIF data was still displayed on the screen, with the coordinates of where the photo had been taken.
Maybe they were wrong. Maybe it really was this simple: Hannah knew that time was running out for her, and she had gotten careless.
Even more carelessly, she’d used Maggie’s cell phone when she’d sent that photo, releasing a burst of cellular data.
Using that data, the Argus team was working to triangulate the phone’s location at the time the photo had been sent.
Carelessness? Or was it part of a larger plan?
She heard Rodrigo’s voice over her headset: “A-okay?” he asked.
“A-okay. Your status?”
“No sign of movement.”
“And Lloyd?”
“Right here,” said her husband.
“How’s your first night on surveillance?”
“I’m not particularly enjoying it.”
She laughed, a gratingly false sound of bravado. “There’s a thirty-year Speyside waiting for you when this is over.”
“I just want it to be over.”
So do I. She stood up and poured a cup of coffee she didn’t want, spooned in sugar she didn’t need, and thought about what would happen if Hannah did not make a move tonight, or tomorrow night, or the night after.
What if the woman had scented danger and aborted the mission?
By now, she could be on her way to the border or to the coast, where a boat might be waiting for her.
Or maybe Moscow had told her their information was incorrect and Ingrid was not the defector they thought she was.
While this would spare Ingrid’s life, it would also leave her with an unsettling lack of closure.
Hannah would be beyond their reach, living out the rest of her life in some comfortable dacha.
She would never face justice for the lives she had ended.
“Ingrid,” said Rodrigo. The voice in her earpiece, earlier so relaxed, was now sharp with tension.
“Here,” she said.
“We have a problem. They’ve triangulated the cell phone’s location at the time the photo was sent.”
“The same cottage on Lake Cameron?”
“No. It was in or near Blackberry Farm.”
“Here? But how could she . . .” Her voice trailed off as she thought about the last time they’d walked into this house, when they’d returned from town after examining Maggie’s abandoned truck.
Had she sensed, even then, that there was something different in the air?
When they’d briefly disarmed the security system, had someone else slipped into the house at the same time?
Someone who’d then sent the photograph to launch Ingrid’s friends out the door on a rescue mission?
She went very still. Every house vibrated at its own frequency, and she strained to hear through the whisper of the refrigerator, the ticking of the kitchen clock, for a note that did not belong. The sound of an invader.
“Get out of the house now,” said Rodrigo. “We’ll be down to meet you.”
“I’m coming,” she said, and reached for her weapon.
Just as a gun barrel pressed against the back of her head.
“I’ll take that,” said Hannah Murray, removing the gun from Ingrid’s hip. Then she yanked off Ingrid’s earpiece and slammed it under her heel. “Now turn around.”
Slowly, Ingrid turned.
“I have questions,” said Hannah. The woman was utterly ordinary, neither attractive nor unattractive. That ordinariness would have served her well, allowing her to slip into any situation unnoticed, dispatch her target, and slip out again. Just as she had done at the Cod Cove Resort.
Just as she had done twenty-eight years ago, in Provence.
She would have been in her twenties then, perhaps posing as an innocent young tourist who’d taken a wrong turn and ended up on a dead-end road through the lavender fields.
How easy it would have been for her to approach the men at the guardhouse.
How easy for her to lean toward Gordon and smile as she plunged a stiletto in his eye.
To next walk into the guardhouse and slash Simon’s throat.
And when her team came under attack, and her colleagues began to draw fire, she’d chosen to retreat on foot across the lavender fields, and stroll out of the valley, into the nearest village.
There was no fifth man, thought Ingrid. It was a woman.
“I’m not your target,” said Ingrid. “Lilia Kuraskaya died two months ago, in California. They’ve sent you to kill the wrong person.”
“So I’ve gathered.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I want to know who’s behind this. Who is hunting us down. I don’t want to end up like the others.”
“The others?”
“In Amsterdam. In Madrid. They’re all dead.”
“Friends of yours?” Ingrid glanced toward the window. With her comm link destroyed, Rodrigo and Lloyd wouldn’t know what was going on inside the house. She took a pace backward, trying to draw Hannah toward the window. Toward exposure.
“Friends?” Hannah gave a disgusted shake of the head. “Vory contractors. Easy money, they probably thought. Then Amsterdam happened. And Madrid. And I knew something was wrong, someone wants us all dead. Now your name is on the list?” Hannah shook her head. “I don’t like it.”
“I’m not too thrilled about it either.”
“Someone feeds Moscow information, a contract goes out, and we get lured into a trap. We’re the ones being hunted.” She raised her gun, and Ingrid looked straight into the barrel. “Who’s behind this?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’re part of it. You chose to be a target.”
“I never chose to . . .” Ingrid stopped.
Suddenly the answer became clear to her.
It had been staring at her the whole time, and she’d refused to see it, because it meant questioning everyone she’d trusted, everything she’d believed in.
Someone else chose for me. Someone with access to classified information known only to Central Intelligence.
Someone who’d hired Argus to achieve his goals.
Someone who had given Ingrid’s name and location to the enemy, knowing Moscow would act on that information and send an assassin.
“We’re both being used, Hannah,” said Ingrid. “You don’t want to be here. Neither do I.”
“Who is doing this? Who’s pulling the strings? I just want to—” Hannah’s head suddenly snapped around at the sound of the back door banging open.
Footsteps thudded into the house. Footsteps Ingrid recognized, and they were moving toward the kitchen.
No. God, no.
Hannah spun around. Her gun swept toward the kitchen doorway just as Lloyd burst into view.
She fired.
A deafening blast simultaneously shattered the kitchen window, sending a hailstorm of broken glass across the room. A shard sliced into Ingrid’s face, but she was too shocked to feel any pain. All she registered was the trickle of warmth down her cheek.
In the silence that followed, Ingrid stood paralyzed as she stared down at glass and blood. And two bodies.
Lloyd.
She stepped over Hannah and dropped to her knees beside her husband. “No,” she moaned. “No, no, no . . .”
He opened his eyes. Winced as he took a breath. “Ingrid,” he whispered.
“Oh God.” She looked down at the blood on his shirt. “Oh God, no . . .”
More footsteps pounded into the house, but she didn’t bother to look up as Rodrigo stepped into the kitchen. Her attention was on Lloyd. Only Lloyd.
“Let’s take a look, shall we?” said Rodrigo. He pulled out a knife and slit open Lloyd’s shirt to expose the wound. The bullet had entered at the outside edge of the Kevlar vest. “It just missed the subclavian artery. Lucky man.”
“Lucky?” Ingrid snapped.
“At least she didn’t go for a head shot.”
“You were supposed to keep him safe!”
“How could I stop him? When I realized she was inside the house, he was already halfway here.”
She heard more footsteps approaching. Even before the man stepped into the kitchen, she knew who he was.
It was the same man who’d saved Lloyd and Maggie in Amsterdam.
The man Ingrid had met only days ago in Madrid, standing over the dead Vory with the gray hoodie.
The man who had used her as bait by feeding her name to Moscow.
He came through the doorway, walked across the broken glass, and stood over Hannah’s body.
Slowly Hannah’s eyes opened.
“She’s still alive,” said Jon Marcus.
Hannah looked up at him with a gaze that was fully aware. The bullet had ripped into her neck, and blood was streaming from her torn jugular, pooling in a dark halo around her head.
“Stop the bleeding,” said Rodrigo. “It’s not too late.”
Marcus said nothing, just kept staring down at the woman.
“There’s still time to save her,” said Rodrigo.
“Save her?” Marcus shook his head and pulled out a 9mm. “I’ve waited twenty-eight years to do this. Now it’s time to finish it.” He pointed his gun at Hannah’s head and pulled the trigger.