“You don’t know what she looks like?” Albert asked. The disbelief in his voice reminded me of a disgruntled restaurant patron.
“She’s new,” I snapped. “All we got from our guy is that her contact name is Bea. She first surfaced about six months ago, but she’s gained impressive credentials since. She’s credited with the assassination of the president of Southern Kordofan as well as General Imran Salim, Ambassador Baldric Smythe, and the women’s rights activist Safia Mian.”
Albert shrugged. “You’ll get her.”
Despite the fact that I still wanted to punt him out the door and watch him roll down the hill, his confidence warmed me. “That’s the plan. However, Safia, besides traveling with two superbly trained bodyguards, also kept a Seer on her payroll. The fact that the Seer never had a clue about the origin or identity of Safia’s killer means we’re going against superior skill and atypical power.”
I put a lot of no-big-deal into my tone, but underneath I was shaking hard enough for my organs to sprint for the nearest sturdy doorway. Because I wasn’t convinced we were going to survive this mission. The third we’d originally requested might’ve been able to understand and combat the kind of power I’d described. A warlock with impressive skills and a helluva record, he’d have come in handy both in sniffing out our assassin and in warding off any surprises Floraidh and her coven might throw at us. The fact that Vayl, who’d been denied nothing in his eighty years with the department, had been assigned Cole instead did not bode well for support on the home front should this mission start to stink. And I’d already begun to smell sulfur.
Albert, still mulling Safia’s fate, said, “Well, there had to at least be a fight, right? I mean, with that kind of firepower at hand, the activist bimbo didn’t die quietly, did she?”
Albert didn’t wince. He’d taken too much of my crap and seen too much other shit in his time for either sarcasm or arson to part the stones that held his expression in its regular, harsh lines. “So Bea’s a firebug?” was all he asked.
“We thought so at first,” I replied. “Nearly all of the bodies had been thoroughly charred. But now we think she was trying to disguise the real cause of death.”
“Which was?”
“Snakebite.”
Albert shifted in his seat so he could see me better. “Why would that make any difference?”
“Not sure. But the sprinkler system preserved one of the bodies well enough that we can surmise it was covered in bites, almost like somebody had dumped a barrel of snakes on it. And these were ones from a particular species. The most venomous land snake in the world. It’s called the Inland Taipan, a shy mouse eater that’s only found in Australia. Strange deal, because Safia and her people were living in Lebanon at the time.”
The longer I talked about the Taipan the tighter Vayl clutched the wheel, until it began to creak under the pressure. He loathed snakes. Even worse than I disliked tight spaces. I wanted to reach out, give my boss a comforting pat. I lifted my hand, looked at it, ran it through my curls.
Meantime Albert had not digested my news well. The bushy eyebrows inched upward as his green eyes pierced right through me. Ten years ago I’d have given up every secret I thought he hadn’t already discovered under that glare. Now I just waited silently for his verdict. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “Inland Taipans as an assassin’s tool? That’s pretty sick. Did you bring antivenom?”
“Yeah. But I gotta tell you, it’s not a hundred percent effective. Something about the venom can sometimes sneak past the cure. Obviously we believe she’s a Medusa, so we’re hoping to kill her before she makes her move.”
As Albert imagined the horror I’d just described, a woman who wound her pets around her hair like a turban only to set them loose on her unsuspecting victims when the killing mood struck her, he produced that sucking-on- teeth noise that made my ribs ache. It meant he was about to say something important. I waited for him to tell me he was impressed that the CIA trusted such a tricky assignment to his own daughter.
“You should’ve brought a warlock,” he said before turning back to his map.
I leaned over to Cole. “I
Chapter Four
Albert surprised me by navigating us straight from the A9 to a winding country road to the long tarmac lane that led to Tearlach. As we drove toward the house, I realized it may have been our first trip together where he didn’t decide on a last-minute detour to some obsolete hole like the Museum of Big Gray Rocks or the Littlest Loch in the Nairn Valley.
“Would you take a look at this place?” Albert said as he folded the map.
“Reminds me of thter„e Hansel and Gretel story,” Cole replied.
Much like the woman herself, Floraidh’s place exuded warmth and hospitality. From a distance we could glimpse orderly gardens just beginning to blossom in the promising warmth of mid-May. They surrounded a four- story confection whose designer must’ve had a wife who adored jewelry. So why not throw a bunch of doodads on the house as well? Six gables that I could see made the roof a reshingler’s nightmare. The front porch, which ran around three-quarters of the house, had been enclosed to begin with, along with the two sunporches that jutted above the main entrances, which were at its east and west ends.
“What the hell kind of monstrosity is that?” wondered Albert as he eyed the four smoking chimneys and the
