Last to Die

gun was still pressed to her skull, shoved so hard against her scalp that it felt like a drill bit about to punch a hole through bone. Who would find their bodies in this blighted building? It could be days, even weeks before anyone noticed her abandoned car. Before anyone thought to trace its owner.

Frost thumped down to his knees beside her. She heard the beeps of a cell phone being dialed, then Denzel said: “We’ve got a problem. You want me to finish it?”

She glanced sideways at Frost and saw terror in his eyes. If they were going to fight back, this was their last chance. Two of them against an armed man. One of them would almost certainly take a bullet, but the other might make it. Do it now, while he’s on the phone and distracted. Muscles tensing, she took a breath, maybe her last. Twist, grab, deflect …

Footsteps clanged on the stairway and the gun barrel suddenly lifted from her scalp as Denzel stepped away, beyond her reach. Beyond any hope of wrestling the weapon from him.

The footsteps ascended to the top of the stairs and moved toward them, heels clipping sharply against the wooden floor.

“Well, this is a problem,” said a shockingly familiar voice. A woman’s voice. “You can both get up, Detectives. I guess it’s time to drop all pretenses.”

Jane rose to her feet and turned to face Carole Mickey. But this was not the lacquered blonde who’d claimed to be Olivia Yablonski’s colleague at Leidecker Hospital Supplies. This woman wore sleek blue jeans and black boots, and instead of a matronly blond helmet shellacked with hairspray, her blond hair was gathered in a tight ponytail that emphasized a model’s jutting cheekbones. Once, she would have been a stunning beauty, but middle age was now etched in that face, in the creases fanning out from her eyes.

“I take it there’s no such company as Leidecker Hospital Supplies,” said Jane.

“Of course there is,” said Carole. “You saw our catalog. We carry the latest in wheelchairs and shower seats.”

“Sold by sales reps who never seem to be in the office. Do they actually exist, or are they all like Olivia Yablonski, running operations around the world for the CIA?”

Carole and Denzel glanced at each other.

“That’s a very big leap of logic, Detective,” Carole finally said, but that two-beat pause told Jane she’d hit the target.

“And your name isn’t really Carole, is it?” said Jane. “Because I know his isn’t Denzel.”

“Those names will do for now.”

Denzel said, “They asked me about Nicholas Clock.”

“Naturally. They’re not idiots.” Carole picked up the fallen weapons and offered them back to Jane and Frost. “That’s why I’ve decided it’s time we worked together. Don’t you think?”

Jane took back her Glock and considered, just for an instant, turning the gun on Carole and telling her to screw that working together crap. These people had drawn a gun on her, had forced her and Frost to kneel with the full expectation of death. That was not something you easily kissed and made up over. But she choked back her temper and shoved the gun in her holster. “How did you just happen to be here?”

“We knew you were headed this way. We’ve been keeping an eye on you.”

“This is like the Leidecker company,” said Frost. “Another fake business, this one used as Nicholas Clock’s cover.”

“And this is where they’d come looking for him,” said Carole.

“But Clock’s dead. He died aboard his yacht.”

“They don’t know that. For weeks, we’ve been leaking rumors that Clock is alive, that his appearance has been altered by plastic surgery.”

“Who’s looking for him?” asked Jane.

Carole and Denzel exchanged looks. After a moment, she seemed to come to a decision and said to Denzel: “I need you outside to watch the street. Leave us.”

With a brisk nod, he left the room, and they heard his footsteps clanging down the stairs. Carole watched from the window and didn’t say a word until she spotted her associate outside.

She turned to Jane and Frost. “Boxes within boxes. That’s how the Company controls information. He knows what’s in his own little box, but nothing outside it. So now I’m going to give you a box, which belongs to just you two. Not to be shared. You understand?”

“And who knows it all?” asked Jane. “Who owns all the boxes?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“That’s not part of your box.”

“So we get no idea of where you stand in this hierarchy.”

“I know enough to run this operation. Enough to know that having you two mucking around in this threatens everything I’ve worked for.”

“The CIA’s not authorized to run operations on US soil,” pointed out Frost. “This is illegal.”

“It’s also necessary.”

“Why isn’t the FBI handling this?”

“This was not their mess. It was ours. We are simply cleaning up what should have been finished years ago.”

“In Rome,” Jane said, quietly.

Carole didn’t answer, but her sudden stillness confirmed what Jane believed. Rome was where it started. Where the lives of Nicholas and Olivia and Erskine had intersected in some catastrophic event that was still casting ripples in the lives of their children.

“How did you know?” Carole finally said.

“Sixteen years ago, they were all there in Rome. Erskine, working as a foreign service officer. Olivia, working as a so-called sales rep.” Jane paused, made an educated guess. “And Nicholas, traveling as a consultant for Jarvis and McCrane. A company that exists only on paper.”

She saw confirmation in Carole’s face. The woman stared out the window and sighed. “They were so cocky. So goddamn sure of themselves. We’d pulled it off before, so what could possibly go wrong?”

We. “You were there, too,” said Jane. “In Rome.”

Carole paced away from the window, her boots clicking across the wood. “It was a straightforward operation. Only Olivia was new to the team. The rest of us had worked together before. We knew Rome well, especially Erskine. That was his home base, and he had all the local assets lined up. People in place. All we had to do was swoop in, snatch our target, and get him out of the country.”

“You mean … a kidnapping?”

“You sound so judgmental.”

“About kidnapping? Yeah, I tend to be.”

“You wouldn’t be, if you knew the subject in question.”

“You mean your victim.”

“A criminal who’s responsible, both directly and indirectly, for the deaths of hundreds of people. We’re talking Americans, Detective. Our fellow citizens, killed in multiple countries. Not just military personnel, but also innocents abroad. Tourists, businessmen, families. Some monsters simply need to be exterminated, for the good of society. Surely you both understand that, considering your jobs. It is, after all, what you do. Hunt down monsters.”

“But we do it within the law,” said Frost.

“The law has no teeth.”

“The law tells us when we’re over the line.”

Carole snorted. “Let me guess, Detective Frost. You were a Boy Scout.”

Jane glanced at her partner. “Well, that was right on the money.”

“We do what needs to be done,” said Carole. “Everyone knows that extreme measures are sometimes necessary, but no one wants to admit it. No one wants to own it.” She moved toward Jane, close enough to be intimidating. “If you want a safer world, you need someone to do your dirty work. That someone would be us. We were there to take a monster out of circulation.”