‘He is my son,’ I said and she steadied the gun. ‘Okay, okay,’ I said. I raised my hands. ‘Leonie. We can talk about this.’
‘No. No talk. I am leaving. With my son.’
‘The child in the picture you showed me… ’
‘That was my first child. My daughter. I had to leave… Ray Brewster when I got pregnant. I didn’t want him to be the father. He wouldn’t have let me be tied down with a child; in case I ever had to run with him. Children complicate everything. So I went.’ She steadied her voice. ‘I would have liked… someone like you, Sam, I so don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to. I will keep him safe in a way you can’t, not with the life you lead, the enemies you have. So move to the wall, and keep your hands up, and let me leave.’
‘What happened to your daughter?’ As long as she was talking, she wasn’t shooting me or leaving.
‘She died. She died.’ And I thought the grief would make her body fold. ‘Meningitis. It takes them so fast. She… I had done work for Anna. On the babies’ new identities. She gave me Daniel. She said… he could be mine. A replacement, but he’s not. I loved Taylor just as she was, she was the greatest, Sam… oh, God… ’
‘I bet she was.’ My own face felt hot and heavy. ‘Leonie, please.’
‘… but… but she gave me Daniel and I love him just as much… ’ her voice broke to a whisper. ‘And you are not going to take him away from me.’
I could see how Zviman and Anna had planned this ending. I, the ex-CIA, killed Jack Ming, the one man CIA Special Projects wanted more than anyone else. Then I died, at Leonie’s hand, when my defenses were down, when victory was in my grasp. Leonie as a partner would ensure that I would not betray or move against Nine Suns, and, if I did, she had every reason to kill me.
Leonie would have a bigger motive for wanting me dead than anyone in Nine Suns. I could take away the thing most precious in the world to her.
‘Give me my son,’ I said. I opened my hands toward her.
‘He isn’t yours. I’m his mother. I’m the only mother he’s ever known. That… that… traitor you married, she gave him up, she gave him up… ’
‘I never did,’ I said. ‘You know how hard I have fought to find him-’ And then I heard it.
‘You!’ she screamed, and the sympathy she seemed to feel for me turned instantly to venom. ‘I have fought a thousand times harder… ’
I raised a finger to my lips. ‘I heard something. Downstairs. Someone’s here.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re trying to scare me or trick me… you want to go down there and get a weapon because I’ve got the gun… ’
‘Leonie!’ I hissed. ‘ Someone is downstairs.’
She shut up, my tone slicing through her fury. Listening.
I held out my hand for the gun. After a moment she stepped forward, hand shaking, and gave it to me.
‘Hide,’ I whispered. And she nodded, my son gurgling against her shirt. I looked at him for one second. His eyes met mine, his little mouth parted and a spit bubble formed and burst like a flower given a five-second life. I have never wanted to hold another human being so badly in my life.
Instead I checked the gun for the remaining clip and I eased onto the mezzanine.
89
But, to Mila’s surprise, Braun didn’t come around the van’s back door.
He walked away from the van. She could hear the soft hiss of his footsteps on the gravel.
Unloading his prisoner wasn’t a priority. Fine by her. She risked a glance out the front window. Braun stood by a BMW, looking down at the ground. Talking to the ground.
It must be someone lying next to the car.
Then Braun shook his head and he walked into the grand house, a gun in his hand.
She sliced through the remaining ropes, kicked them away. Her hand went to her watch. The garrote’s wire was inside, just as when she had used it against Anna’s men in New York. She palmed the heel of her boot, with the miniature Japanese knife. The blade protruded between her ring and middle finger. Two small weapons. She hoped they would be enough.
She let herself out of the van through the driver’s door and dropped to the ground. She looked under the van to see if she could spot who was lying by the BMW. She saw legs, but they were upright now. Gray pants, nice shoes.
She heard a trunk open. She peered around the van.
The blond mohawk. Yaakov Zviman. He looked up toward the house and she saw a rising bruise on the side of his face. Sam hit him, she thought.
Zviman hoisted an ax out of the BMW. He took two steps toward the house.
Then he stopped.
She ducked back around the van, cursing the gravel. It made a whispery noise that was unavoidable. She froze.
He couldn’t resist. Surely Braun had told Zviman his prize was in the van and he, instead of going inside to help Braun, he was coming here to gloat. To make sure it was her.
Because it would only take a second, he must have thought, and he was a weak man. And she knew he thought it would strike blind terror into her heart to see his face, her being bound and helpless. And it would have. She knew what kind of revenge he would take on her for her maiming of him. The cruelty of it would be all but unimaginable.
‘Oh, baby,’ he called to the closed rear door of the van. ‘I don’t have the hours it will take to do you properly, not right now, but in a few minutes. I’m going to slice you up good in front of your friends and if you scream I cut a piece off them. Then I’m going to kill them in front of you-’ and he swung open the van door and it was empty. Just the sliced ropes and the unlocked cuffs. She could hear his suck of surprised breath.
Let him be scared for one second, she thought.
She rounded the van’s back door and she aimed a hard punch at the side of his neck with the blade extending from her fist. She wanted an artery. She missed as he jerked back but the knife scored north of his jaw, a hard puncture into cheek. The blood welled up; she aimed again at his eye.
He ducked, she missed, and, grunting with pain, he swung the ax. But he was off balance and no muscle behind the swing, and the edge bounced off the van’s door, four inches from her head. He nearly dropped the ax.
She swung her fist again, looking to slice his throat, but he kicked her midsection. She stumbled back and now he had both hands on the ax, and momentum and balance. Her blade was a sting, his ax a missile.
‘Oh, bitch, dream come true,’ he said. ‘I’ve waited for this. I’ve so waited to feel you die.’
‘Really?’ she panted. He had a rage, she remembered. Make it work for her. ‘Does the thought of hurting me make you hard? I mean, what’s left of it?’
He swung the ax, viciously, in an arcing trace. He missed her by inches. Then swung it back, the blunt edge catching her hand when she made the mistake of a panicked slash. The heel blade flew out into the gravel.
‘I don’t even know what I’ll do first to you,’ he said. ‘I made a list once. It ran to three pages.’
‘Go get your list, raggedy man. I’ll wait.’
At her words he stopped swinging wildly at her. His grin was inhuman, the stuff of a leering boogeyman. He steadied the ax, and they did a little dance on the gravel, back and forth. She badly wanted to run. But her shoes were awkward without the heels and he could throw the ax into her back. Better to keep her face to him.
This went on for thirty long seconds. He wouldn’t quite commit. She realized, even as he choked with rage and spite, that he was afraid of her.
‘Wow, raggedy man. Wielding an ax against an unarmed woman. And still you won’t fight.’
He snarled and chopped at her. Missed. She’d had an idea and she circled back toward the van. He stepped in too close and she got a grip on the handle, trying to pry it from his fist. He shoved her against the side of the van, and powered a mighty blow.
The ax slammed into the steel side of the van, perforating the metal. It missed her head only because she fell, her heelless boots slipping and skidding out on the gravel.