“Don’t you dare!” Albane chuckled and then moaned in pain.
AJ slid his hand along the small of her back and felt for wetness under her vest. He gently pulled his hand out and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. Dry, nothing slippery. He then held his fingers up into a beam of moonlight, to double check himself.
“No blood. I think the vest did its job. But that doesn’t guarantee against a broken back. The force of a round at that velocity is like getting hit with a crowbar. We need to get you out of here.”
“What about the shooter?”
“He’s been neutralized. You have VanCleave to thank for that. And Abbey’s spiders.”
“Do you hear that?” Albane asked in a hush.
“Sirens.”
“The police, no doubt.”
“It sounds like they’ve brought a chopper too.”
“Time to go.”
“The authorities are coming. We should go. Now,” VanCleave yelled to Kalen.
“What about Zurn?” Will said, keeping Raimond on the ground and at bay with the Sig. “We can’t just let him go.”
Kalen glared at Raimond as he freed his bloody left hand from the piano wire noose. “Tie him up. Leave him for the police.”
“And him?” Will asked, glancing up at Stefan Zurn, who was still hanging upside down precariously from the scaffold platform.
“Leave him. He’s not going any—”
Before Kalen could finish his sentence, the calf strap on Stefan Zurn’s ankle holster gave way, and the unconscious sniper plummeted head first to the ground.
“STEFAN!” Raimond screamed. He looked at the broken body of his fallen brother, splayed unnaturally across the marble tiles, surrounded by an expanding pool of dark red blood. Hatred welled up in his eyes. He had nothing left to lose. Nothing left to live for, nothing except for revenge. Zurn slipped his right hand inside the flap of his button down shirt. His fingers found the grip of a Glock 26 9mm pocket pistol concealed snugly in an underarm holster. He looked away from his fallen brother to Will, the man who had ruined his life.
“Weapon!” VanCleave yelled, but it was too late.
A single shot reverberated like a thunderclap inside the church.
Will buckled.
Julie screamed.
She looked from Will to Raimond, expecting him to fire another shot. Raimond’s eyes twitched; he had a strange vapid smile on his face. Then, he collapsed prone onto the marble floor: his shooting arm extended, the barrel of the Glock still smoldering.
Kalen knelt and withdrew a small dagger from the base of the bounty hunter’s skull. He could not bring himself to look at Julie; his were eyes lowered in shame. He had failed, delivering the death strike a split second after the impulse from Raimond’s brain had traveled to his trigger finger. The 9mm round had found its target and pierced Will’s chest.
Julie ran to Will and knelt at his side. His face was already going pale. She cradled his head in her hands, tears streaming from her eyes.
He reached up and touched her cheek.
“I never betrayed you,” she said.
“I know,” he whispered.
“Can you hear those sirens? Help is coming. You’ve just got to hang on until they get here,” she pleaded, stroking his forehead.
He managed a fragile, tentative smile. “My legs are cold.”
“Don’t you leave me, William Foster. Do you hear me? Please, please don’t leave me.”
“I love you, Julie.”
She held him tight against her chest as she wept. “I love you too.”
Chapter Forty-Two
“What I’m saying is that I don’t fucking believe you, Robért,” Meredith hissed.
“Believe what you want, Meredith. It is what it is,” Nicolora said.
She glowered at him from across the table.
“I’m not Jesus; I can’t raise Foster from the dead,” he added, and then casually stuffed a whole piece of spicy tuna roll, dripping in wasabi-infused soy sauce, into his mouth with a pair of chopsticks.
A waiter approached the couple and asked if they would like another bottle of sake for the table. She ignored him. He shook his head no, and the waiter skittered away with prudent haste.
“Failure is the last thing I expected from your organization on this assignment. I’ve seen your teams negotiate impossible situations, solve intractable problems, some beyond mortal comprehension. But this? This was easy. A simple search and rescue, and you couldn’t pull it off. I don’t understand,” she ranted.
“Meredith, what you fail to recognize is that this outcome is entirely your fault. If you want to blame someone, then blame yourself.”
“My fault! My fault? I hardly see how this is my—”
“You were lazy and cheap. You hired amateurs, when you should have hired professionals from the beginning,” he interrupted.
He thrust a scolding finger at her and continued.
“Haven’t you learned anything from me? The most efficient way to solve a problem is to eliminate as many variables from the equation as possible — not introduce new ones, for God’s sake. Especially independent variables over which you have limited or no control. The Zurn brothers were absolute wild cards. You set a brush fire to try to catch your rabbit, but ended up burning down the entire forest. If anyone should be disappointed, it should be me.”
She bit her lower lip. Abruptly, her expression softened. She blinked coyly, flashing him her best bedroom eyes.
“No,” he reprimanded.
“Tell me where he is,” she begged.
“I said no.”
“What did you do with him?”
“I didn’t do anything with him. After he was shot by your man Zurn, the Austrians intervened. I had no choice; I pulled my team.”
“You must know something.”
He shrugged. “My sources tell me that Foster died and was discreetly laid to rest. That’s all I know.”
“Where? I’d like to pay my respects.”
“No, you don’t. You want to dig him up!”
“Robért! How could you think such a thing?”
Nicolora stuffed another piece of sushi into his mouth, a rainbow roll this time. “This place is brilliant. Best sushi in Boston.”
“You’re really not going to tell me, are you?” She pouted.
“No.”
“I could still salvage things if you just—”
He cut her off. “Enough, Meredith! There’s nothing left to salvage.”
She looked down at her lap. “This will ruin me, you realize.”
Nicolora wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin from his lap. His thoughts drifted to the sample vial Kalen had lifted from Foster’s pocket in the Karlskirche that fateful night. Contrary to the charade he was now playing with his ex-client and ex-lover, all had not been lost. At this very moment, AJ was working late in his lab at The Tank trying to replicate Vyrogen’s work. And while it had never been Nicolora’s intent to pirate Meredith’s research, circumstances had left him no choice. The real FBI had since fixed its spotlight squarely on Vyrogen and Meredith, and he would not permit the greatest medical discovery of the twenty-first century to be confiscated away into some government black hole. No. He would be the secret’s custodian. Both the Nicolora Foundation and The Think Tank could reap great rewards from this golden seed. He would leverage phil-anthropic and commercial opportunities to bring his public and private faces esteem and wealth. He was confident his new RS: Bio would succeed where Meredith’s team had failed. In his experience, any problem could be solved with enough time, resources, and money … all of which he possessed in abundance.
After a painfully long pause Nicolora finally said, “Let’s leave this dirty business behind us for the rest of evening, shall we?” Then, staring brazenly across the table at her stark cleavage framed by the plunging “V” neckline of her emerald-colored dress, he added, “Let’s talk about something more stimulating. You look ravishing. Is that a new dress?”