found herself sucked back to Paris, in the Place des Vosges, where she had felt unsettled about something she couldn’t articulate. Now, waiting to be killed in the Ghost Station, the nagging thought defined itself, albeit a bit late. As usual, it was the odd sock.
“I should have known,” she said to Wynn. She shook her head, unhappy with herself. “I should have smelled it back at the hospital when your ‘dying words’ were urging me to nail the bastards who killed my mom, that’s what you said.”
“I did.”
“But I never asked myself, if you were CIA and were so passionate about avenging my mother’s death, why didn’t you do it yourself? You had ten years and all the resources.”
He smiled. “Don’t feel bad. I’ve fooled more experienced players than you, and for much longer.” A train began to approach them from downtown. Blocks away, but the soft rumble drifted up the tunnel. Nikki’s chest seized with sudden urgency.
“Why did you have my mother killed?”
“Because I didn’t fool her. When she found out I had gone independent in the interval between Paris and when I reactivated her in New York, she had to go. She just had to. Up to then, she thought working for me meant she’d still been working for CIA. Then she found out who I was really working for and, unfortunately for her, what the project was.”
“You killed her for that?”
“Your mother’s sense of mission is what killed her. She was just like you.”
They stood as statues when an uptown train raced through, rattling the station and making the hair on their heads lift and swirl. The moment it passed, Petar took out his gun. Tyler Wynn holstered his under his sport coat and climbed down the ladder to the tracks. “Should have four to six minutes before the next train.”
“You’ll have plenty of time,” said Petar, switching on his Mini Maglite. “Catch you after.”
Nikki watched just Wynn’s disembodied head move along the platform as he walked the tracks. “Tyler.” He stopped. “What’s in the pouch?”
“You’ll never know.”
“Wanna bet?”
Wynn said, “Shoot her, if you have to.” Then started his walk back to the 96th Street station.
Heat made up her mind she would kill Petar.
That’s how she would survive. The only question was, would she enjoy it? And what would that make her if she did?
Alive. That was all she cared about. The morality of how she felt, she would gladly sort out in her old age.
She had already figured out their plan. It wasn’t hard to. The next train would rocket past in four to six minutes, and the idea was for her to be in front of it when it did. So she had five minutes, give or take, to get it done.
“So there’s no way to call this off?”
Petar didn’t engage. He stood silently, close enough to be accurate with his Glock but distant enough to be out of reach if she made a run at him. At the moment, their plan was better than hers.
“A head start for old times’ sake?” Still no reply. He watched her but without looking at her.
It was hard for Nikki to even see Petar as the same man she had fallen for. She had not gone to Venice in the summer of ‘99 seeking romance but passion of another kind: her love of theater. Other students interning at the Gran Teatro La Fenice had asked her out, and she had a series of first dates, but nothing serious. Until the night at the Ai Speci wine bar when she met an earnest-looking Croatian film student visiting the city to shoot a documentary on Tommaseo, the renowned Italian essayist. Within a week, Petar Matic had moved out of his hostel into her apartment. After Venice, they spent a month touring Paris before she returned to Boston to start her fall semester at Northeastern. He surprised her by sliding into her booth one morning in the student union, saying that he missed her so much, he’d enrolled there himself.
“Just tell me one thing, you owe me that,” she said, still trying to engage him. “Did Tyler actually go to all the trouble to find out who I was dating and then recruit you to kill my mother?”
That got a reaction from him. He snorted and shifted his weight back onto one of the support pillars. “You like to flatter yourself? Go ahead.”
“I’m not flattering myself, I’m just trying to figure out Tyler’s approach. ‘Hello, young man, would you be interested in earning a few extra dollars murdering your girlfriend’s mom?’”
“See, that’s where your head’s up your own ass. Nikki, do you honestly believe our relationship was ever about romance?” Heat felt herself absorbing yet another emotional shock but kept the conversation going, kept pushing.
“Sure felt like it to me.”
He laughed. “It was supposed to. Come on, do you think we met in Venice by accident? Like it was Kismet? It was a job, man. The whole thing was a setup.”
“You mean like ‘accidentally’ running into me and Rook in Boston? Was that to find out what I knew?”
“No, I was just tailing you. Or was, until fucking Rook spotted me. My assignment in Venice was to get in your pants and work that to get close to your mom.”
“To kill her?”
“Not at first. To find out some things.”
“And then kill her.” Nikki gritted her teeth, fending off her own fury to stay focused on getting him distracted.
“Yeah, kill her. Like I said, it was a job. I’m good at it.”
“Except for the suitcase.”
“Right. I fucked that up. I used that old piece of shit to carry papers from your mom’s desk and forgot all about it. Hey, it was ten years, I’m allowed one.”
“That’s not all you screwed up.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The High Line. You were the sniper, weren’t you?”
“And?”
“And you blew the shot.”
“I didn’t blow the shot. There was an earthquake.”
“Then you blew the second shot.”
“No way.”
“And the one you could have taken at the end of the line. I saw the laser dot. But instead, you jumped.”
“You’re crazy.”
“You bet I am.” Nikki took a step toward him.
“Stay where you are.”
She took another step. “I want you to shoot me.”
“What?” He shined the light in her eyes and raised his gun, but she took another step. “I’m warning you, stop.”
She moved closer. “You seem to be real good at slipping knives in women’s backs. Can you put one of those bullets in me? No you can’t. Come on, Pet. Face-to-face. Right here. Bring it on. I’ll even make a better target for you.” She moved closer yet.
But he took a step back and bumped into the support pillar he’d been leaning on. A sound like the low roar of the sea floated up the tunnel. The train was coming. Right on time. He wagged the gun, gesturing her to step to the edge.
Heat stood firm.
“Go on. Let’s not make this harder than it has to be.”
“For whom, Petar?” She took one more stride closer. They were only three feet apart, and for the first time, she could look into his eyes. And he, into hers.
“Now,” he shouted.
“Do you really think I’m going to make this easy for you? Stand with my back to you so you can give me a shove?”
