Page 1 of The Shadow Friends

Then

Chapter 1

Ingrid

Her life was not supposed to end this way. Then again, in her profession, one never knew how it would end. She had hoped her final exit would happen many years in the future, and it would be painless, perhaps while she dozed in a rocking chair with a fire gently crackling in the hearth and a cat purring on her lap. Or perhaps the end would be heralded by a crushing pain in her chest after one last triumphant climb up a mountain. She had not expected it to come today, with so many years of life still ahead of her, and not in this old stone house, amid the fields of blooming lavender. It was a breathtakingly beautiful place to die. Through the window, framed by ancient wooden shutters, she could see the hills of Provence, cloaked in the golden haze of summer. The air that wafted in through that window was perfumed with the scent of flowers. This was a day that should be savored, a day to sip pastis in the nearby village and nibble on olives and peanuts.

Instead, she would die trapped in a bedroom with a wounded young woman who was bleeding to death beside her. Ingrid had locked the door and had desperately shoved furniture against it to stave off the invaders, but those pitiful barriers would not hold them off for long. Already, the men were battering against it, and while the door was solid, made of centuries-old oak, eventually the attackers would burst through. For Ingrid, death would probably come swiftly, with two merciful bullets in the head.

But for Sophie . . .

“Cannot—cannot breathe,” Sophie whispered.

Ingrid looked down at the woman she had been assigned to protect. Sophie was barely a woman, really, only twenty-two years old, but blessed—some would say cursed—with the courage of a warrior. She had trusted the Agency to keep her alive, had believed all their assurances that Moscow would never find her in this safe house, tucked away in a quiet corner of Provence.

And for weeks, they had kept Sophie safe. While Ingrid’s colleagues in Paris and Marseille had worked to dismantle the Russian syndicate, Sophie and Ingrid had felt secure enough here to venture outside every morning to pick flowers and sip coffee in the garden. Who would think to look for Sophie in this old stone farmhouse at the end of a private dirt road? To even access the road, an attacker would first have to contend with Ingrid’s two Agency colleagues, stationed in the gatehouse at the top of the road. With these safeguards in place, and their location classified, no one should’ve been able to find them.

But somehow, they had been found.

Their first warning had been a curl of dust spiraling up in the distance, kicked into the air by the tires of an approaching vehicle. All vehicles first had to be cleared by Simon and Gordon, the two agents in the gatehouse, but Ingrid had received no heads-up from her colleagues about a visitor. She’d radioed the men to confirm.

No one answered.

She’d called out to Sophie, who was crouched in the garden, snipping a bundle of lavender stalks. With her straw hat and summer-streaked blond hair, Sophie looked like a winsome country girl, happily flushed from the sun, without a care in the world. The way a young woman should look while spending her summer in France. Contented. Unafraid.

“Sophie, go in the house,” Ingrid had said.

Sophie looked up, and when she saw Ingrid’s face, she quickly rose to her feet. Now she, too, spotted the fantail of dust rising from the road. “Who is coming?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Go inside.”

At once Sophie dropped the bundle of lavender stalks that she’d so lovingly harvested and she retreated into the house.

Again, Ingrid radioed the gatehouse. Again, there was no response.

The dust cloud kept moving closer. She could now see it was a black SUV, and it was moving fast. Something is wrong, she thought. She followed Sophie into the house, barred the door, and issued a Mayday to her backup team in the village.

Then she grabbed the rifle.

Through the rifle scope, she watched the SUV roar closer. She could make out the silhouettes of five heads inside the vehicle. She kept her rifle aimed at the driver, but she held her fire because the situation was still unclear. They could be friendlies. There could have been a comm failure. Her finger twitched on the trigger.

The SUV skidded to a stop in front of the house. Four men stepped out. Armed, dressed in black.

Definitely not friendlies.

She fired and took down one man. The others immediately scrambled for cover behind the vehicle. A barrage of return fire shattered the kitchen window and glass exploded into the room, clattering across the floor.

“Sophie!” she yelled. “Go upstairs!”

No answer.

She turned and saw the young woman, her face pale and contorted in pain, slowly sliding down against the blood-spattered wall.

“Sophie!”

More bullets tore into the kitchen and thudded into the cabinets. Wineglasses and chinaware disintegrated.

As Ingrid scrambled toward Sophie, shrapnel bit into her leg, and warm blood trickled down her skin. Even as she dodged the hail of gunfire, her focus was only on Sophie. Get her out of the room. Out of the line of fire.