“We’re gonna have to get him out of here,” Bear said.

  “She can’t have gotten far,” McKenzie said. “We need to bring her in once and for all.”

  “I’ll go after her,” Noble said. “Stabilize him, Bear.”

  Noble took off for the open back door, unsure what waited for him on the other side. Would O’Neil stay? Would she take off to another unknown location? How far could she get? She obviously knew the lay of the land, having used the house before. Probably spent hours wandering the woods in preparation of an event such as this.

  He made it ten feet into the clearing before he stopped. They were surrounded by woods. And if she hadn’t taken off. If she waited just inside. He was as good as dead. But she would have shot by now. There’d be no point letting Noble get any closer to her. He took a step in the soft ground, stopped, and looked down. He scanned the dirt in front of him, beside him, and behind him. Every step he took left a clear dent in the ground. Proof that he had been there. O’Neil stood about five-foot-eight. Weighed about a buck-fifty, if he was guessing. Her feet wouldn’t sink quite as far in the ground as his, but they would leave an impression. Sure, it might rebound, but not within a couple of minutes. The only imprints there belonged to him.

  Noble turned, looked up the wall to an open window.

  O’Neil never left the house.

  She was upstairs.

  His right foot slipped in the mud as he tried to run back to the door. His knee hit the ground. Cold wet spread across the joint as his pants absorbed the muck. He regained his footing and lunged for the door. But he didn’t make it inside before the next gunshot.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Noble threaded the MP5 through the doorway and stuck his head in far enough to look for a five-foot-eight, one-hundred-fifty-pound woman with blonde hair holding a pistol.

  There was no one like that.

  He stepped inside. His boots, still slick from the wet ground, slipped on the linoleum. He kept his hands on the submachine gun instead of reaching to steady himself. Didn’t need to, anyway.

  One shot. That’s all he heard. Had Bear or McKenzie reacted first, taken O’Neil out?

  Noble inched forward, shuffle stepping toe to heel. He saw the couch first. McKenzie wasn’t there. Cribbs was still on the floor. The shadow from the wooden beam had shifted six inches to the left. The sun bathed Cribbs. He looked worse than a few minutes ago.

  Where was Bear?

  Noble took two larger steps. Froze.

  “Oh, no.”

  He stared down at his partner, who lay on his side, eyes closed. Five long seconds passed. The big man’s side rose and fell. Noble exhaled. Bear was still alive.

  Had O’Neil taken McKenzie hostage?

  Noble dropped all pretense of caution and started for the opening. Bear opened his eyes, managed to say, “Jack.” And that was all. But there was something in the way he scrunched his face, furrowed his brow, that enhanced the single syllable that escaped his lips. O’Neil was there. She was waiting for him to step out and give her a target she’d have zero chance of missing.

  So Noble stopped and went to a knee. He closed his eyes for a second and visualized the woman he’d spent half a day with. The woman he’d rescued from a dingy apartment in Aleppo. The woman he’d shared a private jet with. The woman who’d slaughtered four trained operatives in a safe house in Istanbul.

  She would show no mercy to him. Hadn’t to Bear or Cribbs. Hadn’t finished the job yet, either. Maybe she wanted to prove a point to McKenzie.

  She’d be holding McKenzie with her left arm, on her left side. She might have a couple of inches exposed. Noble would have to aim high. He’d get one shot. If he missed, she’d fire her weapon and shove McKenzie forward. That would give her enough to make it through the door. From there, it would be a footrace. Noble figured he was faster. But she knew her way around. Once she made it to the woods, he’d never catch up. And he couldn’t give chase for long. Too many people needed medical attention.

  He took a deep breath and held it until his heart rate dropped a beat. It wouldn’t go down too far. Not with all the adrenaline coursing through him. He rested his fingertip on the trigger, taking out the slack. He opened his eyes and studied Bear for a moment. Bear looked as though he might’ve passed out. How bad were his wounds? Noble couldn’t tell.

  A heavy gust of wind blew through, slamming the door behind him with a loud crack. He almost squeezed the trigger in response. And he knew that was his moment. If it had startled him, it would have startled O’Neil. In the moments following she might let her guard down. Not much. A sliver, if that. But that was enough to increase Noble’s odds.

  So he whipped around the corner. The MP5 became an extension of him. He held it high and tight to his shoulder. He supported it with his left hand. He kept his face slack. He looked for the five-foot-eight, one-hundred-fifty-pound woman with blonde hair, the one whose life was about to end.

  She wasn’t there.

  McKenzie had one hand on the gunshot wound on his side. In his other he held Cribbs’s Browning. A thin smile played on his lips. He didn’t bother to say anything.

  The roar of the gunshot was met with the anticipation of fire tearing through Noble’s chest. He dove to his right, on his shoulder, and rolled through. When he came up, McKenzie was grimacing as he pivoted and realigned his shot.

  Noble didn’t give him a chance. He threaded his finger through the guard, took out the slack in the trigger, and squeezed. Then he squeezed again. And a third time for good measure. In all, nine rounds punched through McKenzie, starting at his bellybutton and working up to an inch below his Adam’s apple. He stumbled and staggered. He dropped the Browning 1911 and it hit the floor with a heavy thud. McKenzie dropped like he’d been hanging by a wire from a tree that had just been snipped.

  Noble got up and walked over to the man who stared up at him wide-eyed, mouth agape. He was dead before he hit the ground.

  Noble turned and went to Bear. His partner’s eyes fluttered as he looked up smiling.

  “Glad to see you’re standing.”

  “Is it bad?”

  Bear shrugged. “Don’t think so.”

  “Save your strength.” Noble slid over to Cribbs. Felt for a pulse.

  Cribbs opened his eyes. “You get him?”

  Noble nodded as he reached for his phone. He had to get help. His mind raced through the files in his memory. He had committed the number Steele had given him to memory, but his mind was blank.

  “Your phone,” Cribbs said.

  Noble looked down at him, confused.

  “Call the number I put on your phone.”

  Noble glanced at the screen and punched the send button with his thumb. He held the phone to his head and waited. It rang, once, twice, three times. It kept ringing. He wondered if it was just ringing on the phone Cribbs had brought in.

  And then it clicked and there was a pause. “Hello?”

  “Steele?”

  “Jack, is that you?”

  “It is.”

  Cribbs said, “Tell her we’re at the place near Vienna.”

  Noble did, and he added, “Cribbs and Bear are in bad shape. We need medical transport now.”

  “What happened?”

  “Get on a flight over and I’ll tell you when you land.”

  There was a long pause. He heard her voice rise and fall in the background, though he couldn’t make out exactly what she was saying. She came back on the line. “They’ll be there within fifteen minutes.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll be there in seven hours.”

  He hung up the phone and looked around the place. At Bear, who held his hand to his chest. At Cribbs, who looked like the life was draining with every passing second. And at McKenzie’s corpse. Where was O’Neil?

  He stepped over McKenzie and pulled open a small door, revealing a narrow set of stairs. He climbed them into a small attic with an open window overlooking the backyard. Seated on the floor next to it was O’Neil. She had two gunshot wounds to her abdomen and chest.

  She licked her lips. She stared at him. She flinched as tears cascaded down her cheeks.

  “I didn’t mean for this—”

  Noble didn’t care what she had to say. He pulled the trigger.

  Her glazed eyes stared out at nothing. All he was left with were questions, and he didn’t figure she could answer them.

  Why had McKenzie shot Cribbs?

  Why had he shot Bear?

  Why not kill them?

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Noble leaned his head back against the back of the purple vinyl chair in a small waiting room. They’d escorted him from the general waiting area to another smaller one near surgery. He’d been there for six hours, at least.

  They had managed to squeeze Bear, Cribbs, and Noble inside the helicopter. Cribbs wanted to talk, but the medics refused to let him. They stuck an oxygen mask on his face and injected some fluid into his arm and he was out. Same with Bear, minus the talking.

  Now they were lying on tables, cut open, surgeons attempting to undo the damage McKenzie had done. The physical damage, at least. There were other scars that might not ever heal.

  Alexa Steele pushed through the double doors ahead of a red-faced nurse yelling at her in German.

  “Jack,” she said.

  Noble rose and crossed the small room to meet her. They hugged like they were long lost friends or lovers, bodies pressed tight, arms closing and almost squeezing the life out of one another.

  “What the hell happened here?” she asked.

  “I’d like to know the same thing,” he said.

  “My uncle didn’t do it, right?”

  “No, it wasn’t him.”

  She pushed herself back, but didn’t let go of Noble’s shoulders. Her eyes were wet. Her mouth open a bit, bottom lip trembling. “McKenzie?”

  Noble nodded.

  Steele let go and found a seat, stumbling back into it. She sank into the cushion. A bewildered look on her face. She must’ve been searching through files and intelligence and hushed conversations trying to find a link between McKenzie and O’Neil.

  “O’Neil?” she asked.

  “Dead.”

  “McKenzie did it?”

  “Best I can tell.” No point telling her he’d finished the woman off. “She was upstairs in that house, shot multiple times. In the gut. In the chest. Finally, in the forehead.” He took a seat next to Steele. “When we found McKenzie, he had been wounded. Gunshot to the abdomen. Looked like a through and through that might’ve missed all the major organs it could’ve hit.”

  “She got him first.”

  “Possibly. Maybe he got her first, and she fired back, and he hit her again. She retreated upstairs. Got the window open. Was gonna jump. But he got there before she could. In fact, I think that’s when he shot her the second time. She knew she was done, so she slumped down the wall and maybe pleaded for her life. She had some money from that thing with Samara.”

  It was a shot in the dark trying to piece it together.

  Steele said, “What thing with Samara?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me. It made no sense. Two or three weeks, and he hardly damages her? We got a lot to figure out here, Steele. A lot.”

  She nodded, said nothing.

  “So anyway, she pleads, she negotiates, but in the end, McKenzie knows it’s his ass on the line, so he executes her. Then he shoots Cribbs. Not a fatal shot, but close enough. We surprise him before he can finish the job. He gets me out of the picture, disables Bear, knowing I’ll come back in.”

  Steele nodded some more.

  Noble continued. “Thinks I’ll run into the room where my partner is wounded. Meanwhile, I’m thinking O’Neil is holding him hostage. So he knows one way or another, I’m gonna be shocked by what I find. A damn miracle that .45 round missed me.”

  “And then you shot him.”

  “And then I shot him.” Noble’s gaze trailed down to the floor.

  Steele reached over and grabbed his hand in hers. “You did what you had to do. And I think I’m starting to see what happened here.”

  Noble was curious, but something else was pressing on him. “What can you tell me about Farah Nazari, or whatever her name is?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “She on our side, or…?”

  “If the price is right.”

  “She killed Samara.”

  Steele nodded. “That’s correct.”

  “So the price was high enough.”

  “We didn’t pay her for that.”

  “She did it on her own?”

  “We think so.”

  Maybe Farah hadn’t conspired with O’Neil after all. Maybe she had been on Noble and Bear’s side. “Can you tell me her name?”

  “Can’t do that. But you can ask her yourself if you ever run into her again. You’ll find this world of shadows we inhabit is a small one, Jack.”

  The double doors opened and a small man with wisps of gray hair poking out from underneath his surgical cap walked into the room. Blue eyes hid behind his gold-framed glasses. He stopped in front of Steele and Noble.

  “How are they?” Steele asked.

  “There were a few complications with Mr. Cribbs, but he will survive and should recover without major problems. Mr. Logan is alert and doing well.”

  “Can we see him?” Noble said.

  “Not for a few hours.”

  “When can they return home?” Steele asked.

  “We’ll accommodate your requests, ma’am.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “We need to leave as soon as possible.”

  Chapter Sixty

  Less than forty-eight hours later they were home. Cribbs was recovering in a private facility. He requested Steele, Noble, and Bear come to meet with him. Alone. They sat around his bed in a small white room that smelled like Lysol and was filled with the beeps and whirrs of medical machinery.

  “Keith Witherspoon is the link.” Cribbs wiped pasta sauce off his upper lip and then forked more into his mouth.

  Noble and Bear shared a glance. “The same Witherspoon from that day in D.C.?”

  “That’s the guy,” Cribbs said between bites. “The order came from McKenzie, which I found not unusual, but surprising that he was requesting I send you two dumbasses—and I say that in the past tense—to do the job. I mean, if you screwed it up, holy hell, what a price there’d be to pay.”

  “We almost did screw it up. You said you wanted it that way, to test us.”

  Cribbs smiled. “That might’ve just been quick thinking on my part, son.”

  “So you didn’t set it up?”

  “Look, what matters is that Witherspoon was killed because he was about to talk. He knew secrets that McKenzie didn’t want to get out.”

  “We saw a file, though,” Bear said. “Something about letting people die. Pissing off gangsters.”

  “One hundred percent rubbish,” Cribbs said.

  “Why is this the first I’m hearing about this?” Steele said.

  “I figured it out on the way to Budapest. McKenzie and O’Neil were working with Samara.”

  “Why?” Steele said.

  “Why else? Money.” Cribbs swallowed hard, downed half his glass of water. “They were brokering a weapons deal that included a nice cache of surface-to-air missiles. Imagine what Hezbollah would do with that?”

  “But he served our country for years?” Steele shook her head, disbelieving what her uncle was telling her.

  “McKenzie had debts,” Cribbs said. “Ones he couldn’t cover.”

  “So Witherspoon,” Noble said.

  “Right,” Cribbs said. “Witherspoon was close to the truth. McKenzie had to flip the script, so he arranged for O’Neil’s capture, but convinced Samara to go easy on her. You guys saw the outcome of that first hand.”

  “She was shaken,” Bear said.

  “Or at least acted like she was,” Noble said.

  “And Samara knew you were coming for him,” Cribbs said. “Didn’t he?”

  Both men nodded and said nothing.

  Cribbs said, “It all went down a little too smooth, too. Maybe you didn’t pick up on that, it being your first real job. But it did. McKenzie planned to have all three of you killed, but his girl over there, Farah, went against the grain. She bailed your asses out getting you back to Istanbul. Then O’Neil went rogue. You guys got out of that safe house at the right time.”

  “Clearly,” Bear said.

  “Then it was just a matter of time. You two flushed her out, dwindled her resources, until McKenzie caught up with her in Austria.”

  “You knew it was him at the airstrip,” Noble said.

  “I did,” Cribbs said.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “Because I figured you’d call Alexa here, and she’d call someone, maybe McKenzie himself. It’d get to him somehow, and he’d find a way to wiggle out of it. There’s no chance of that happening now.”

  Noble pictured McKenzie staring up at him with death’s gaze.

  Steele said, “Tell me again the business McKenzie had with Samara?”

  “He was brokering a deal, gonna arm him up, get him access to some devices that would’ve put Samara and his people at the forefront of the fracas over there. Samara had access to a donor with some deep pockets. McKenzie figured he’d cash out, disappear.”

  “How do you know all this?” Steele asked.

  “I’m a pretty good spy,” he said, smiling.

  “What about O’Neil?” Noble asked.

  “She came to me maybe a year ago, talking about wanting to get out soon. Take care of her son. She was wondering what kind of money they might throw at someone like her to, I don’t know, live a normal life. Stay out of the spotlight. I made it clear that wasn’t a possibility, and if she was harboring those thoughts, she was good as dead.”

 

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