chance.”
“So you moved on to Quinn.”
“I have no one left.” Petra knew she sounded desperate, but she didn’t care.
The woman stared curiously at her for a moment. Petra almost felt like she saw sympathy in her eyes. Then the woman looked past Petra, toward the front door.
Petra turned her head to see what the woman had seen. Mikhail was keeping an eye on the other woman, but otherwise there was nothing—
Her gun was suddenly wrenched from her hand. She started to turn back around, but before she could she was flying backward into Mikhail. They both fell to the floor, Petra on top.
“Gun,” the woman said.
She was standing over them, Petra’s weapon in her hand pointing at Petra’s chest.
“Slowly,” the woman said. Mikhail’s gun flew up over his leg and landed on the floor near the woman’s feet.
Not taking her eyes off them, the woman crouched down and picked it up, then stood again. “Now, what exactly is it you want to talk to Quinn about?”
WHEN QUINN ARRIVED AT ST. PANCRAS STATION, the inbound Eurostar was already disembarking. Hundreds of passengers were spilling out the doors from the passport control area into the main concourse and mixing with the hundreds of others making their way to and from the domestic trains, or passing through on their way to the Underground at the far end. Barely controlled chaos. If Nate had stuck to his training, he and Liz would have blended in with the departing crowd, being neither the first nor the last to leave. And sure enough, when the exiting crowd was at its height, Nate and Liz appeared.
The look on Nate’s face was all business as he surveyed their new surroundings, while Liz looked tense and tired. Quinn also noticed something else. Not only were they holding hands, but Liz’s other hand was wrapped around Nate’s forearm, keeping him close.
Nate made eye contact with his boss a moment later, but kept walking into the station with no acknowledgment.
Quinn let them pass, and continued to scan the crowd to see if anyone was interested in them. When he was confident their arrival had been unobserved, he joined the flow of exiting passengers.
A minute later he came up to Nate on the side opposite his sister.
“Here,” he whispered as he slipped two Oyster cards into Nate’s hand. “Underground. Piccadilly Line. Southbound.” He then picked up his pace and disappeared back into the crowd before his sister noticed him.
The waiting crowd on the Piccadilly southbound platform was large but off its rush-hour high. When Nate and Liz arrived, Quinn stayed visible just long enough for Nate to spot him, then he took a step back out of sight.
As soon as the next train eased to a stop, Quinn wormed his way through the other travelers and entered the opposite end of the same car Nate and Liz had stepped onto. Again he caught his apprentice’s eye. He held two fingers against the support pole, indicating they were only going two stops. At Holborn, Quinn made his way to the westbound Central Line, making sure that Nate never lost sight of him. From there it was a one-stop ride to Tottenham Court Road, then back outside into the gloomy morning.
Quinn waited, tucked into a shallow recess, until Nate and Liz exited, then he moved beside them and said, “This way.”
“Jake?” Liz said.
“Let’s not talk here.”
“How did you know this was where we were going?”
“Liz, please. Just a few minutes more,” he said, then led them to the apartment Orlando had rented on Charlotte Street.
The moment they were inside and the door was closed, Liz said, “Can we talk here? Or am I still supposed to stay quiet?”
“I’m sorry,” Quinn said. “We had to be careful. We couldn’t risk anyone overhearing us.”
“What the hell is going on?” she asked.
“Everything’s all right now,” Nate said. He reached out to touch her on the arm, but this time she pulled away.
“All right? Are you kidding me?” She looked at her brother. “Have you gotten yourself into some kind of trouble? Is that what’s going on?”
“We don’t have time for this right now,” Quinn said. “I have to get back to Orlando.”
“Orlando? Florida?”
Quinn shook his head. “Not the city. Claire.”
“Claire?” Liz said, surprised. “Your girlfriend? She’s mixed up in this, too?”
“We work together.”
“So she’s not your girlfriend?”
“No, she is,” Quinn said. “But we also work—Never mind. That isn’t important.” He was being drawn into a conversation he neither had time for nor wanted. “I needed to make sure you were safe. And now that you are, I have to go make sure you stay that way.”
