Never Trust A Lady

an unbroken string of high-profile hits, many of them so discreetly done, it wasn’t until the fall of the Soviet Union that it had been known for certain they were hits, and not unfortunate accidents or death from natural causes. Discretion and restraint-those had been Emma’s trademarks. She’d had a reputation for never using an ounce more muscle than it took to get the job done.

Like at the auction, Hawk thought. Using just enough poison on Aaron Campbell to knock him out, but not enough to kill him. That was Galina, all right.

And Loizeau? But he’d seen her, spoken to her, face-to-face. So of course he’d had to die. Neatly, cleanly, hadn’t even seen it coming. That was Galina, too.

Dear God…Jane. It came to him suddenly, like a hard left to the midsection. If anyone in the world could identify the woman, Jane could. They’d been friends. Shared meals, confidences, a hotel room…a tube of toothpaste. Would that make a difference to Galina Moskova?

Hawk knew the answer to that. His heart felt like a lump of ice.

“Ten years or so ago,” Campbell was saying, “apparently our Emma saw glasnost coming, saw the handwriting on the wall, and went AWOL.”

“We assumed her own people had shut her down,” Hawk said in a leaden voice. “Permanently.”

“Yes, well, I’m sure Emma saw that in her cards and that’s why she split. Anyway, seems she went underground for a while, then quietly opened up for business, near as we can tell, about seven, eight years ago- private business. Now she works for the highest bidder.”

“Hired gun on an international scale.” Hawk swore softly.

“Yeah, but apparently not limited to that. She’s been a busy lady. We’ve turned up connections to the Libyans-”

“God. Not-”

“Yeah, and as I said, the Israelis want her for their crash also-”

And we’ve connected her to Sicily. And that means…

“-And we’ve got suspicions about half a dozen other terrorist bombings in Europe over the past eight years…”

Marseilles…April 1990. A beautiful spring day, warm sunshine and a mistral blowing, making the masts in the small-boat harbor clank with their own kind of rhythm, like a band of children making music with spoons and pots and garbage-can lids. Two days left of spring break from Tom’s job teaching history at the American School in Milan…They’d spent the morning on the beach, watching the windsurfers dip and dart though the waves like butterflies. That afternoon they’d planned to explore La Canebiere and look at the model ships in La Musee de la Marine. Jason had been promised ice cream, but it was sieste time, and everything was closed They’d walked past cafe after cafe, teasing Jason and telling him stories to distract him, when they’d come upon the street…he couldn’t remember the name of it now…a street with no traffic, paved with stones and lined will all sorts of little shops and cafes. And in the middle, the merry-go-round playing a tune…what was the name of it? It was from a movie with Leslie Caron, he remembered, and for years he’d heard it in his dreams. Hi Lili, Hi Lo, he thought it was called.

“Hawkins? Are you still there?”

“Yeah.” It came out so garbled, he cleared his throat and repeated, “Yeah, I’m here.”

“You know this changes things.”

No kidding.

“If this is Galina Moskova we’re dealing with, then she’s got to be working for somebody with big bucks. I mean, government-big. She wouldn’t come cheap.” Campbell paused. “I’m thinking Libya.”

“Well, whoever it is,” Hawk said through the truckload of rock in his throat, “I don’t think she’s gonna be sitting here in Cooper’s Mill, North Carolina. waiting for her customer. She’s gonna be going to see the boss. So if you’re figuring on waiting for the rendezvous and getting both birds with one stone…”

“Right. So we move on her as soon as we know she’s got the disk. Uh, by the way, Hawkins?”

“Yeah.”

“What can you tell us about Mrs. Carlysle? We, uh, seem to have lost our… Ahem. The, uh, surveillance equipment we had on her seems to be down for some reason. You wouldn’t know anything about that, I don’t suppose.” Campbell’s voice was carefully neutral. “Or where she might be at the moment?”

“No, I don’t.” Hawk rubbed a hand over his eyes and then across his unshaven jaw. He felt like nine miles of bad road. “But I’ve got an idea she may be headed your way.”

“Say again?” He could hear the FBI agent’s voice crack.

“You heard me. I don’t know where she is. But I think she might be on her way to a meeting with our suspect.”

Campbell borrowed Hawk’s word and made it his own. “You don’t think she means to warn her?”

“Warn her of what, for God’s sake! Use your head. She doesn’t know anything. Look-I don’t know what she’s up to, but I’ll tell you this-she hasn’t got a clue who she’s dealing with.”

There was a pause, during which Agent Campbell held a mumbled conversation with someone on his end, and Hawk made the discovery that none of the cow pastures he was driving past now bore any resemblance to the ones he’d driven past last night.

“Hawkins?”

“Yeah.”

“You figure Mrs. Carlysle to be heading for the suspect’s house or her store?”

Hawk thought about it while he was peering through the windows and checking all his mirrors, hoping to find something that looked the slightest bit familiar. “My guess would be the house,” he muttered. “Too early-the store wouldn’t be open, would it?” Damn. It seemed to him one cow looked pretty much like every other cow. And the same went for daffodils.

“Yeah, you’re probably right In that case, we should be okay.”

“How’s that?”

“I just got word-suspect’s on the move. She just left her house in a blue van, and is heading into town. We are in position. What’s your ETA?”

“Damned if I know,” Hawk snarled, and disgustedly hit the wheel of the red Nissan with the palm of his hand. “I think I’m lost!”

“My goodness, such a lot of cars for this early in the morning,” Jane said to herself as she glided through the green signal light and onto the brick-paved square. She wondered if it was jury-selection day over at the courthouse, or if maybe the Rotary Club was having a breakfast meeting at the Cooper’s Corner Cafe.

Connie’s Antiques looked dark and empty, but that didn’t mean anything. Connie was almost always in her shop early on Monday mornings, especially if she’d been on a buying trip over the weekend. Often Jane would leave for work half an hour early on Mondays, just so she’d have time to drop in at the shop and see what treasures her friend had brought home this time. Connie would have the teakettle on. and a tin of those English biscuits she liked, and she’d tell Jane all about her trip, and Jane would admire-and sometimes wistfully drool over-her latest purchases.

Right now. Jane thought, she’d most likely be in the back of the shop somewhere, just as usual, busy unpacking, cataloging, pricing and marking the things she’d bought at the auction in Arlington. Just as usual…

Oh, God, she thought, please don’t let it be true. This is Connie. Connie…my friend.

But her heart was pounding so hard it hurt, and she kept taking deep breaths that didn’t do any good. Her hands were like ice, and her legs felt weak and shaky.

Okay, she was terrified.

But she had to know. She had to.

Connie’s van wasn’t in its usual place in the tiny unpaved parking lot behind her store. Jane pulled into a spot far enough away from the back door so there would be plenty of room for the blue van and settled down to wait.

Alone in the quiet car, Tom came to her. She could smell him…feel his warmth soaking through his sweater and