Trevor Jackson reviewed the report of Annja Creed’s whereabouts. It had taken several hours to pass from the two men in the van in New York, through three successive layers of cutouts, before it reached his ear. That was fine with him; he’d rather sacrifice a little time in the interests of security than have men knocking down his door at night and arresting him for actions against the Crown.
Treason wasn’t something the authorities took lightly.
Shaw had made it clear that he didn’t care what happened to the woman; it was the torc that mattered. Recover that and everything else was just a bump in the road that would either be smoothed over, or hammered flat, depending on the issue, once the torc was in their hands.
With that in mind, Jackson selected three men from the RHD’s roster, good solid men with experience in this kind of thing. All of them had seen action before, both on behalf of the RHD and elsewhere, but he still wasn’t totally convinced that they could handle the Creed woman.
He turned and picked up the file lying nearby, the one he’d assembled as soon as they realized who it was that had taken the torc. He’d read it thoroughly several times and still didn’t understand how this woman had managed to escape from him and his men, not once but twice now. The two men who’d reported seeing her on the road had been professionals, men who’d been active during the Troubles, who’s seen action against armed soldiers every bit as trained as they were. Somehow she’d beaten them.
Not just beaten them, he thought with chagrin, but made them look like total fools, their bodies left lying in a ditch beside the road for the police to find.
Never mind the fact that they still hadn’t found the car the two men had been driving.
It pissed him off just thinking about it.
Still, he didn’t have anyone better available, so these three would have to do.
He pulled the photo of Annja out of the file and stared at it for the hundredth time, as if it might contain some hidden clue to the woman’s success, but there was nothing there he hadn’t seen before.
And yet…
His instinct told him he was missing something.
Something important.
But what?
He considered what he’d read in the file. The many adventures the woman had been involved in. The many times she’d escaped at the last minute, slipping away from death’s bony grasp. It didn’t matter if the threat was a natural disaster, like the tsunami in India she’d miraculously survived—or man himself, like the Albanian terrorists she’d supposedly tangled with in Nepal recently; every single time she’d been able to snatch success at the last second from the yawning jaws of defeat. If he was a different kind of man, he’d almost believe she had a guardian angel watching over her.
He dropped the photo on his desk in disgust.
Enough of this nonsense. Guardian angel or not, this time Annja Creed will not escape. By sunrise, she’ll be dead and the torc will be mine, he thought.
Jackson picked up his phone and made a call to the men he had standing by.
Annja had some planning to do before she’d be able to get herself to Paris—no easy feat when the police and a few killers were looking for her. She tried to concentrate but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get her mind to focus. It kept coming back to the events of the past few days, worrying at them like a dog with a bone. She knew she was missing something, something that tied all this together somehow, but she just couldn’t figure out what it was. And until she did, it seemed her subconscious just wasn’t going to leave her in peace.
Maybe some exercise will help, she thought.
The idea of a run through the city streets appealed to her. She dressed quickly, throwing on a loose pair of pants and a sweatshirt to ward off the morning chill. She did a few stretches to get the blood flowing and then took the stairs down to the ground floor. With a nod at the sleepy clerk behind the counter, she stepped out the lobby door and headed off down the street.
The air was crisp and cool enough that she could see her breath each time she exhaled. She’d run in worse conditions, however, far worse, and she knew a little bite in the air wouldn’t slow her down any. It might, in fact, help her feel more calm once she got back to the warmth of her hotel room.
She took it easy at first, warming up the muscles and getting into a rhythm, then began to push herself harder, her feet slapping the pavement as she forced a faster pace. She could feel the frustration and tension of the past few days pouring out of her, burning away in the rush of endorphins the exercise pushed into her system. After the first mile she felt good. After the second, great. By the time she had the third one behind her, she began to feel a little tired and that was her signal to head back to the hotel.
Maybe now, with that gentle ache running through her bones, she could sit down and make some plans.
The clerk wasn’t at the desk when she came in, but she didn’t think much of it.
He’s probably in the back room somewhere, she thought.
As she neared the top of the fifth flight of steps, her thoughts on the warm shower that awaited her above, she heard the floor of the hallway above her creak as someone shifted their weight.
It was a small, furtive sound, and that was what caught her attention.
People, ordinary people, don’t try to avoid making noise when they walk down a hallway, Annja knew. They trundle along like a herd of elephants, completely unaware of how much noise they generate in their passing.
What she’d heard was someone doing their best not to give themselves away.
Thankfully their best wasn’t good enough.
Annja immediately stopped moving. She stood where she was, her gaze fixed on the landing still several steps above her. When no one appeared after a long moment, she lifted her left foot and, very carefully, took a lateral step toward the wall. She knew the floor would be less worn there, less apt to creak and groan, and right now she didn’t know how many were waiting up there for her and even the smallest advantage might be important.
She was three steps from the top of the stairwell and she kept her gaze fixed firmly on the landing above her, waiting. If the sound had, in fact, simply been the innocent result of someone coming down the hallway toward the stairwell, they’d appear above her any second now.
One, one thousand.
Two, one thousand.
Three, one thousand.
No one was coming.
Yet she knew someone was there. She could sense them waiting above her.
The landing at the top of the steps was a few feet wide, just enough space for a person to take a step or two before intersecting the end of the corridor that stretched away at a ninety-degree angle to the left. Since she couldn’t see anyone standing on the landing, the sound must have come from the corridor itself. Perhaps, like her, whoever was waiting for her was pressed up against the wall on the other side of the corner, ready to jump out at her when she came around it.
She glanced back down the staircase behind her and saw that it was still empty.
That was good; it meant they weren’t trying to box her in. They weren’t professionals, then, she thought with an inward sigh of relief, knowing that increased her chances of coming through this without serious injury by a considerable margin.
It probably wasn’t the cops, either, for they would have been waiting for her in the lobby, reducing the potential threat to the hotel’s other patrons and giving the cops more room to maneuver if the need presented itself.
That left only the people who’d tried to kill her twice already. The Red Hand Defenders.
If that’s even what they were really called.
The sound of another scuff reached her ears.
He’s nervous, she realized. He doesn’t know where I went or what I’m doing. All he knows is that I should have reached the top of the steps by now. Since I didn’t, he’s wondering what I’m up to, wondering whether I’m standing here waiting for him to show himself or if I’ve turned around and gone back down the stairs already.
She intended to take advantage of that.
Annja summoned her sword to hand, thankful for what felt like the ten thousandth time since she’d become its bearer that it could just appear and disappear at will. Very carefully, so as to not make any noise that might give her away, Annja lifted one foot, placed it on the step above her and then slowly settled her weight on it. When it didn’t make any noise, she shifted her weight, lifting her other foot and bringing it up next to the first. Now she was one step closer to whoever was waiting for her above.
She paused, listening, and when she didn’t hear a response she repeated the procedure, then did it again, until she stood on the landing. She kept her back away from the wall, not wanting to brush against it, and moved right up to the very edge of the corner.
For a second or two there was nothing, but then she heard him, very close on the other side of the corridor, breathing sharply through his nose as he mentally pumped himself up for what was to come.
She imagined what they must look like, both of them pressed up against opposite sides of the same corner, each of them waiting for the other to make a move, doing their best not to give anything away in the process.
Annja had no intention of letting him go first.
Switching the sword to her left hand, she suddenly reached around the corner, grabbed the man waiting there by the front of his shirt and yanked him around the corner.
She caught a glimpse of the surprise on his face and the gun in his hand as he went stumbling past her and then the forward momentum she’d imparted to him carried him headfirst down the stairs she’d just ascended.
There was a short, sharp cry that was cut off abruptly with a sickening thud.
Annja barely heard it; she’d already dismissed him as a threat. Instead, she was focused on whoever else might be waiting for her. Knowing that most gunmen were trained to shoot for the center mass, Annja spun around the corner in a low crouch, intending to buy herself an extra second or two should there be anyone else waiting to attack her.
The hall was empty.
It was only when she rose out of her crouch and moved forward a few steps that she could see the door to the room she had rented was open slightly, the light from inside spilling out into the corridor like an arrow directing her path.
She quietly moved to the other side of the hallway, so that she would be on the same side as her room, and then approached at a slow and careful pace. She held her sword before her like a talisman, prepared to deal with anyone who emerged from her room, but she reached it before anyone did so.
With the tip of her sword, she slowly pushed the door open.
There was a man standing on the far side of her hotel room, his back to the door. The contents of her backpack were strewn on the bed in front of him and he was slicing up what little clothing she had with a knife, to see if she had hidden anything inside the seams.
Annja’s gaze flicked to the baseboard where she’d hidden the torc and, seeing that it appeared undistributed, thanked her lucky stars that she’d taken the time to find a hiding place for the necklace when she’d first arrived.
“Well? Anyone out there?” the intruder asked in a gruff voice, looking up as he did so.
Their gazes met across the room.
He went for the gun lying on the bed in front of him, scooping it up and bringing his arm up in Annja’s direction.
She’d been expecting him to do something along those lines though, and she moved a split second faster than he did. Even as her brain registered the threat—
Gun!
—she was already turning sideways to present a smaller target and whipping her arm forward in a throw that would have made Sister Margaret, the nun in charge of physical education at the orphanage in New Orleans where she’d grown up, proud.
The sword left her hand, tumbled end over end twice and then embedded itself point first in the intruder’s chest. The force of the throw allowed the sword blade to cut through skin and muscle like it wasn’t even there, until, at last, the point of the weapon emerged from the man’s back between his second and third ribs and slammed into the wall behind him, pinning him in place like a butterfly to a specimen board.
The shot he had been preparing to fire at her went wild, the bullet slamming into the wall a good two feet to her left, the sound of the shot itself muffled from the silencer attached to the end of the weapon’s barrel.
The man hung there, his eyes wide with surprise, blood pooling at the edge of his mouth as his strength rushed away from him and the gun fell to the floor at his feet.
From across the room Annja willed the sword to disappear, and as it did, it released the man from its grip. He slid slowly to the floor, blood pulsing from the wound in his chest with every beat of his heart.
Annja crossed the room and kicked the gun away, then stuck her head in the bathroom to assure herself that it was empty.
Satisfied they were alone, Annja knelt in front of the dying man. He was already staring off into the distance, and Annja knew he didn’t have long. Still, she had to try.
“Who sent you?” she asked. “What do you want?”
The sound of her voice seemed to bring him back to the here and now, but it wasn’t enough. He looked in her direction, opened his mouth to say something and then died.
Annja watched it happen, not feeling anything. These people had tried to kill her several times now and she had no sympathy for them. It didn’t matter if they were just following orders; that wasn’t an excuse in her book. They’d come after her and her own; there was no way she was going to let that just slide. If she had to take out every single one of them to remain safe, that’s exactly what she planned to do.
Unfortunately, she didn’t know anything more now than she did earlier.
The sound of a door opening and closing again in the hallway outside her room brought back her sense of urgency.
The gunshot might have been muffled, but eventually someone was going to use that stairwell and they’d find what was left of her first assailant.
She couldn’t be there when that happened.
But first she had to know.
She reached forward and tore open the man’s shirt enough that she could pull it down over his right shoulder.
The tattoo of a red hand stared back at her.