Such a waste.
In the second monitor: Wise was straddling Murphy, contemplating another finger. It was hard to tell, but it looked like it was two fingers gone: index finger and thumb. Murphy wouldn’t be snapping his fingers to the oldies ever again.
Meanwhile, speaking of the digitally impaired, DeBroux was standing in the corner, clutching his injured hand to his chest. Another of Girlfriend’s clumsy little dismounts.
Her own weakness.
Girlfriend was supposed to save him until the end. Like, hello, #7 on the list? Instead, she sliced open his fingers, distracting her from Wise, who was able to exact some punishment before being taken down. Even then, it was only temporary.
The impromptu torture of DeBroux also prevented Girlfriend from dispatching #5, Roxanne Kurtwood. Granted, she was a low-level target, but she was supposed to have been used for the audition, not accidentally neutralized by her own partner.
All told, Girlfriend could boast only one and a half kills out of a potential seven: Ethan (and that was a sloppy, old-school kill) and Murphy, her first. Time was running out. And one of her remaining targets—the one she had failed to kill—had access to two weapons. Not exactly a resume-builder.
Maybe Keene was right. He did fall in love way too fast.
Ania held her breath, closed her eyes, and then cut the wire that read CUT ME.
Not that these measures would do a thing to protect her from a burst of weaponized sarin. It was human reflex. Over the years she’d learned to keep many things under control, but sometimes, humans needed to flinch. She allowed herself the luxury.
The device did nothing.
Murphy, again.
She leaped from Ethan’s shoulders. Without her to balance it, the corpse slid off to the right, his head smacking against a red water main before spinning around and face-planting onto the concrete slab.
Sorry, Ethan. One more stop before you can rest and await your cremation.
Inside your girlfriend’s office.
That was the only way to salvage a small part of the original plan. Haul Amy Felton back inside, and allow her to gaze upon the corpse of her beloved. Wait for the reaction, which would be captured on the fiber-optic cameras.
Ania hoped she had enough left in her for a decent scream.
Then … execute her. Whatever method came to mind would be fine. Maybe Felton would kill herself when confronted with the corpse of her beloved. Wouldn’t that be something?
It was coming down to the end, anyway, and thanks to Ethan’s adventures in the fire tower, security was blown. She needed to wrap up.
Prepare for travel—herself
Then move on to the conference room, and complete her final transaction with David Murphy.
Ania opened the fire tower door quickly, scanned both sides of the hallway. Clear. She propped the door open with her foot and dragged out Ethan’s corpse.
She was too weak to heave him over her shoulders again. Her trapezius muscles had been worked beyond failure; even Paul’s kinky demands had not been enough to keep her body in the shape she desired. Another reason to leave America, and its slothful lifestyle, as quickly as possible.
Just a little longer now, she told herself. Down the hall, through the door, a quick left—and if all was clear— three doors down to Amy’s office. Then no more carrying bodies. No more physical exertion, beyond strapping the escape gear to her body.
And plucking David Murphy’s eyes from his face.
Crushing his skull.
Running her fingers through his brains.
Hearing the sound of the boom, hot and furious, below them all.
Keene was on his second glass of orange juice when his source called back.
“Working on a Saturday, are you?” said a male voice with a Geordie accent.
“Oh, is it Saturday?”
“Funny. I have what you need.”
They were speaking through a VoIP connection, scrambled and rescrambled a half dozen times between their two locations.
Ordinarily, VoIP was about as a secure as a college sophomore with two roofies at the bottom of her pint glass. Unless, that is, you had encryption and cryptographic software not available to the general public. Which could make VoIP remarkably secure, especially when considering that most intelligence agencies would no sooner tap a VoIP connection than tap a set of two soup cans and string.
Keene was a bit of a VoIP fanatic. It was his favorite way to communicate, short of encrypted e-mails. He
“Shall I send you a research packet?” his source asked.
“Yes. But how about some highlights.”
“Now?”
“I’m insanely curious.”
“Fine. Your boyfriend there …”
Keene chuckled.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just your choice of words. I’ll tell you later.”
“You say that as if we’ll ever be in the same room again.”
“So bitter. Please continue.”
“Your man? He’s not telling you everything about Philadelphia.”
“Really.”
“If someone gave the order to dismantle that company, it didn’t come from us.”
“The orders mentioned a bit more than
“I know.”
“Who could authorize something like that?”
“Who couldn’t?”
Just as Keene had suspected. You try keeping a chain of command together in an organization that didn’t exist.
“What else can you tell me?”
“This will all be in the research packet, but it appears that our company in Philadelphia flew a bit too close to the sun.”
“How so?”
“Financing something they really shouldn’t have. A kind of weapon and tracking device rolled into one.”
“Which we didn’t authorize.”
“It didn’t come from us.”
Damn it.
“Look,” his source said, “if you’re planning on going to Philadelphia, don’t. There are already alarm bells going off. If I were you, I’d stay by the sea.”
Keene thanked his source, made vague plans about meeting up for a drink in Ibiza one of these years. “Sure, Will, I’ll be here holding my breath while booking the plane ticket online,” his source replied. Keene pressed the cold glass of orange juice to the side of his face. He felt feverish.
Ania dropped Ethan in front of Amy’s door. Inside her bracelet was a master key for every office on the floor. She’d made it her first day of work. Turned out to be relatively useless. For an intelligence organization, people here had a funny way about not locking their doors. Too many of them were probably raised in the American
