Chapter 47
CHAPTER
FORTY-SEVEN
My breath comes out in short spurts as I slither through the shadows.
The ballroom, once silent as a grave, is now alive with conversation. If you’ve ever wondered what a room full of a hundred smugly triumphant criminals sounds like, it’s loud.
I sprint soundlessly along the balcony and down the stairs.
Twenty or thirty yards in the opposite direction on the second floor, the only remaining unguarded doors stand open. I just need to get there before the excitement dies down and my cover is blown.
No one’s speaking in my ear piece. Yet.
I’m reaching the bottom steps to the ballroom foyer when a guard comes around the bend and we lock eyes.
He lunges closer, reaching to grab me. I jump, lifting myself onto the bannister, and use the momentum to kick my legs out and shove a heel into his eye.
He shouts, hobbling, my shoe stuck in his face, nearly fully blind from the pain alone.
“Can I borrow that?” I ask a server who’s just stepped into the foyer.
He squeaks.
I kick off my second heel, toss the empty champagne glasses, and bash the guard’s head with the silver platter. Once, twice. I twirl it in my grip and go for a third. He falls to the floor like a downed tree. Taking a rest, I hide around the corner of the hall I need to use.
“Do you have any—” I motion vaguely at the server, handing him his dented platter.
He blinks rapidly and offers me the champagne bottle under his arm.
“Thank you,” I reply with a smile, downing a few long gulps when another guard comes strolling down into the foyer from the hallway.
Good thing it’s champagne, I think, smashing the remnants of my champagne over the back of his skull. I’d hate to waste a good whiskey. He falls on his face with a rather loud crack.
The server’s frozen, watching as I collect their weapons and destroy their ear pieces.
Sadly, I don’t have any holsters, so I do the next best thing—I bury their guns in the soil of a nearby potted fern.
Who’s going to look in the fern? I do, however, remove the second man’s kevlar vest and fasten it over my torso.
I leave the server to process his trauma and slither into the dark hallway.
The walls are vibrating with applause, a muffled roar from here, but I know I don’t have all night. Graham doesn’t have all night.
My stomach lurches, muscles warm and taut for another fight.
From the foyer to the other end of the hallway, it’s almost pitch-black, none of the sconces lit and no windows to let in the moonlight. The hairs on the back of my neck stand. A figure appears, too close for comfort by the time I can see him.
“Hey!” he shouts.
To my right, the noise from the ballroom is beginning to die down. Looks like it’s fists and knives from here on out.
I really wish I had my champagne bottle right about now.
The behemoth of a man swings, and he manages to catch my jaw.
I reel to the other side of the passageway, reflexively cradling my face, dodging another blow while I blink away the stars.
A fist flies toward my side next and I don’t move fast enough.
The crack slams up my spine and into my skull, the sharp, reactive breath like shards of glass in my lungs.
He begins to reach for a weapon while I’m disoriented.
No time, no time, no time.
I grab onto the brass sconce overhead, prepared to use it as a launching pad for a triangle choke. Instead, the moment it bears weight, it rips from the wall and I have to stumble to avoid another punch.
We both glance at the fixture in my hand. Well, this works.
The guard lunges, overconfident. I step inside, utilizing our height difference, and bash the front of his face with a brass-sconce-uppercut. He opens his mouth with another shout, spewing teeth instead. I send a knee to his crotch. He sputters and doubles over.
Good grief, go down already.
Jumping onto his back now that he’s closer to my height, I slip an arm around his throat and choke him out. I have to use all my strength to keep him from making a sound when he hits the floor. Thankfully, this one has a knife.
Running away, I don’t realize he’s bled all over me until I wipe a hair away and smear it down the left side of my face.
My gun is drawn when I step into the dim glow of the ballroom. Manon is monologuing again. No one notices me, all their backs turned. I stick to the shadows at the edge of the room and plot my advance. The thick curtains hanging down every window provide ample opportunity.
“—I wasn’t made aware, of course, until?—”
She’s saying when I creep toward the closest guard. I slice behind his knees, smack the base of his skull with the butt of my gun, and ease him to the floor. I watch a few guests glance curiously at his semi-conscious groans of pain, then refocus on Manon.
Perfect, a room full of people with no conscience.
“—it was my mother’s legacy, the reason she was so brutally murdered. It fell to my father upon her death, but he was a coward?—”
The next guard—a stout man around my height—notices me from his peripheral, slicing my thigh with his knife before I can get a grip.
I hiss, clenching my teeth against the pain, and swiftly disarm him.
With the threat of a slit throat, he opts for my arm around his neck.
If anyone bothers to care, he’s slumped against the wall, looking like he’s snuck too many glasses of champagne.
My fingers reach for the cut on my thigh. It left a hole in my dress and a blooming crimson rose. Bloody, but hardly deep enough to require stitches. I smash the pain down where I hid my cracked rib, pulsing in the back of my brain like a silent alarm, and move on.
“—and now I am here to reclaim what was rightfully mine all along—the key to the kingdom.”
I can see Graham from here, slightly more conscious now, although one eye is bruised and a jagged slash on his jaw has bled and dripped off his chin.
There are still too many guards, and I can no longer stealthily slip through the curtains without being noticed.
Sooner or later, one of the men I incapacitated will wake and alert the rest.
Stealing their ear pieces only bought me so much time.
If there was ever a moment to spring into action motivated by blind faith alone, it’s here.
Emerging from the curtains, I press my gun to the nearest guard’s temple and hiss, “Your weapon—now. Remove it or you’re the next dead body in the room.”
His back tenses. Slowly, he retrieves his gun from under his suit jacket, tossing it to the floor.
At the sound of clattering metal, the guests whirl around, and there’s at least a hundred people staring at me with looks ranging from shock to disgust to boredom.
I’m holding the guard by the twisted back of his shirt collar, tight enough to restrict his airways, maneuvering him like a rag doll around the perimeter of the crowd and toward Manon.
She lifts an eyebrow, unamused. Graham mutters something, eyes trained on me, desperately shaking his head.
Except there’s no going back now.
“If you truly believe that I care about that man’s life, then I think you’ve underestimated me.” Manon taps her cane. The remaining guards lift their guns, pointed at me. “And oh, how I detest being underestimated.”
In a last ditch attempt to stay the bloodshed, I shove the guard forward, sending him careening through the crowd. They push him aside as if he has an infectious disease.
Her smile is tight and mirthless. “You have spared him, but not yourself. Curious.”
A thick, suspended second crawls by like molasses. She reaches for her gun, and this time, I see it. My gaze locks with Graham’s. I nod, winking once before my eyes slide shut.
I hear the clink of the ejected casing. The metallic scrape of a fresh cartridge being inserted.
And I think, this is it.
At least I went down fighting.
A shot rings out, followed by a pop. Lightning shoots from my ear and down the good side of my jaw.
“Stop,” rasps a familiar voice, ringing and reverberating through my skull. “I’ll give you what you want—anything—just let her go.”
When I open my eyes, he’s standing, one hand pressed against a wound on his torso and the other tightly clamped onto Manon’s wrist. The world on my right is distorted and stifled, leaving me off-balance.
My stomach churns and I swallow a surge of bile.
Blood trails from my ear to my neck in warm, thick rivulets.
I quickly inspect it. Mangled but relatively intact.
The bullet must’ve torn clean through the lobe and burst my ear drum.
A millimeter of difference and I’d be dead.
Manon’s lips part a fraction, something like realization flashing across her features. Then it’s gone as quickly as it came.
“I was right,” she says to her brother, “you love her.”
The muscles in Graham’s jaw jump, like he’s bracing against another wave of pain. He studies me, chest heaving and sputtering, brows pulling together. His skin has gone pale.
“I do,” Graham wheezes.
Manon scowls at him and rips her wrist from his grasp. The force nearly knocks him over. “I hadn’t thought you were capable of love,” she spits.
The guests seem as enraptured as me by the display of emotion from the infamously cold Consultant.
He swallows. Drags in a thin breath. “I loved you once—” He winces, swaying on his feet. “—I love Manon, my sister—not… not the person you’ve become.”
Manon points her gun at me, finger on the trigger. “I can kill her anyway and force you to give it to me.”
“If you do that, you can peel the skin from my flesh,” Graham snaps, eyes flashing. “And you will never know how to get rid of Raffaele or take the ISA for yourself. All that evidence—gone.”
The silver bullet. A fitting and devastating revenge.
Whispers ripple through the ballroom. I inch forward. Her guards step closer, guns aimed at me.
Behind us, a trickle of guests escape through the open doors, sensing the situation unraveling. Manon flicks her hand in that direction, and the doors are shut. Her gaze sweeps from Graham, to me, to the spectators, revolver cutting a path each way she turns.
“I have a long memory,” she says, singling out one of the men who tried to leave earlier. “Soon, there will not be a corner of this planet you can run to.”
With her attention fixed, I advance again.
“But what happens when you don’t gain control of the ISA?” I interject, lowering my weapon in an attempt to make her feel less threatened. Either way, Graham’s given me a few minutes of immunity until Manon’s resolve cracks. “What happens when they all leave tonight and you’re only the Consultant?”
Her lips twist into a snarl, revolver pointed back at me.
“Only the Consultant? I built this empire with nothing but blood and bones,” she hisses.
“Nothing from my father, my mother’s belongings all ripped from me—” As if remembering his existence, her arm hinges back to her brother, pressing her gun to his skull, eyes remaining attached to mine.
The pool of sweat on my back goes cold. “No—Graham had to throw it all away without a second look.”
Another step.
“That’s not true,” Graham rasps, “I didn’t know what the hard drive was when I found it.”
“More lies,” she hisses.
He swallows, like every word is another wound opening. “I’ve never lied to you—I thought the reason he cared so much for that painting was because it hid more of his money.”
The Vermeer.
“I gave it all away to colleagues, assuming you’d want nothing to do with it—” Graham pauses, swaying, and I think he might fall over. “There was no reason for me to believe otherwise, not until—” His eyes lock onto mine, something meaningful passing over. “—until Chelyabinsk.”
My head shakes before I know what I’m doing. The gun trembles in my hands. Graham’s watching me like he’s not bleeding out, as if my forgiveness is more important than his life.
“You didn’t know?” Manon notices the exchange and turns to me with a derisive laugh.
“How pathetic you must feel, realizing that you were nothing but a pawn all this time. Not a hero, not a villain—a nuisance. And you—” She looks at Graham.
“—you chose prison over ruining the man who murdered our mother. All those years I spent fruitlessly attempting to ensnare him, and meanwhile you had all the evidence safely tucked away.”
Their curious partnership. Of course it wasn’t real, at least not to Manon. She was trying to implicate him in her crimes. But Raffaele is far too meticulous for that.
I’m merely a few feet away. My mind is reeling, I can’t hear much out of my left ear, and I desperately want to vomit.
But I turn it all off like a good agent, like I’ve done for years and might never have to do again, because I know Graham.
I trust Graham. Whatever this is, and whatever part I do or don’t play in it, I’m getting him out alive or I will die trying. That’s my mission now.
Slowly, as not to antagonize her guards, I tuck my handgun into a loop on my vest.
Their last command was not to harm me. For now, I’m safe.
Graham drags a long, ragged breath, more blood seeping through his fingers with the effort. It’s a miracle he’s still standing. “And why would I trust you with it? Look who you’ve become,” he gasps. “I should have let it all die with me.”
“It’s never too late for that, dear brother.” Manon presses the muzzle harder into his skull. “But first?—”
The gold of her revolver glints in the candlelight. Her arm begins to swivel back to me. I reach for the barrel and yank it down. She fires the shot, ear-splittingly loud. Metal scalds the flesh of my palm. I can’t afford to react.
I wrench it the other direction, her trigger finger shattering, and throw it in on the floor where a bullet hole now resides. Her cane clatters beside her. Charred skin screams as I grab my own gun.
The muzzle is flattened to her temple before anyone can blink.
My arm snakes around the front of her throat. She grips my forearm, trigger finger hanging at an unnatural angle, sputtering from the shock.
I drag her left and right in a circle. “Shoot, and your boss dies!” I shout at every weapon pointed my direction.
Graham’s rocking on his feet, eyes glassy and unfocused.
We’re vastly outnumbered here, stuck on an island in middle-of-nowhere Scotland in a castle brimming with criminals.
There’s a gun trained on the back of my head no matter which direction I pivot.
Any moment, all the men I maimed and left in my wake will come stumbling through the doors, and all hell will break loose.
My pulse is hammering, muscles fatigued.
I’m well and truly out of moves, Graham, I think once our gazes find each other.
Manon comes to her senses, struggling against my hold, and screams, “Kill her!”
My heart stops.