“None,” Nova said. “Should we drop the hammer?”
“Soon,” Quinn said.
His phone vibrated again.
Still alive
The rain had increased, soaking the road and chasing most people off the streets.
“Now,” Quinn said to Petra as they passed Victoria Station.
Ahead, the light was changing. Petra pressed the accelerator to the floor, then swerved the van around a car that was slowing for the light, and raced through the intersection.
“Did they make it?” Quinn asked.
Petra looked in the mirror. “No. There were too many cars between us.”
“Lose them,” he said.
Petra took the next right, then went several blocks before taking a left onto a quieter residential street. As she continued to work her way through the neighborhood, Quinn kept checking to see if the other car had returned, but it hadn’t.
“Where’s our tail?” Quinn asked.
Mikhail spoke Russian into the phone, then looked back at Quinn. “They’ve gone south. Back toward the river.”
Quinn smiled. “And Palavin?”
Mikhail spoke into his phone again, then said to Quinn, “Nearing Victoria.”
“Take us to point three,” Quinn told Petra. He then called Palavin.
“We’re here,” Palavin said. “We’ll park on the north side. You’ll have three minutes to find us, or the deal is off and your sister is dead.”
“I think you misunderstood me. We’re not meeting at Victoria Station,” Quinn told him.
“I’m done playing your games. Come get her and give me my property.”
“Step three. You should write this down. Fifty-one point seven—”
“What the hell is this?” the Ghost said.
“Figure it out,” Quinn told him, then gave him the rest of the GPS coordinates. “You should be able to get there in an hour. I’ll give you fifty minutes. And if you do anything to my sister, I will expose you, Mr.
He hung up the phone.
“Well?” he asked Mikhail.
The Russian was sitting across from him, listening to his own phone. “They’re still at Victoria,” he told Quinn. “Wait … they are on the move again.…” There was a pause of several seconds. “Heading … toward … point three.” Mikhail said something in Russian, then to Quinn, “Definitely heading toward point three.”
“Okay,” Quinn said. “It looks like we’re on.”
THE HOUSE WAS TWENTY MILES NORTHEAST OF the city, outside Chelmsford, near a little town called Sandon. It was down a rural road lined with fields and the occasional home. The house belonged to a Dr. Ryan O’Sullivan and his Russian wife, Ilya, both friends of Nova’s. When Quinn had scouted it with Orlando and Petra that afternoon, his only question had been where the doctor and his family were.
“Nova says the husband and wife are out of the country at a medical convention, and that the children are away at boarding schools in Ireland,” Petra told him.
“Any chance someone will show up unexpectedly?” Orlando asked.
“He says zero.”
Quinn took another look around. “All right. This will do.”
At the front of the property was a small pond that served as home to a pair of black swans. Quinn had seen them that afternoon, but the only movement on the water now was the frenetic dappling caused by the rain from the storm.
The house at the back of the property was two stories in front with two single-story wings that ran further back on each side. Though Nova had supplied a key, Quinn had no intention of entering. Their business would be dealt with out front, between the house and the pond.
The closest neighbors were a good four acres away to either side, separated by rows of trees and brush. Behind the house, nothing but a tree-ringed field.
When they arrived, Orlando was waiting for them. Her job had been to make sure no one had shown up.
Petra parked the van in front of the house, visible from the road, then Quinn and the two Russians joined Orlando under the carport on the south end of the house.
“How is he?” he asked Orlando, still thinking about Nate.
“Not great, but he’s hanging in there.”
Quinn took a deep breath. In all his years in the business, he had never been seriously shot or lost a limb. In
