Page 77 of The Shadow Friends

Over their earpieces they heard a sharp intake of breath. A shocked epithet.

“Status?” Rodrigo repeated.

“Shit,” came the terse reply. “You need to come up and see this.”

Ingrid and Rodrigo stood at the back entrance, staring through the open doorway into the kitchen. The floor was tiled in a black-and-white checkerboard, a pattern that was echoed in the backsplash behind the sink. It was a bright and modern look that went nicely with the new induction stove and stainless steel refrigerator, but some of those floor tiles would now need to be replaced. Once blood seeps into grout, it can never really be removed.

And there was a lot of it in this kitchen. Enough to tell Ingrid that despite the bullet in his brain, the man had lived for at least a minute or two, long enough for his heart to keep pumping as he lay dying on these pretty black-and-white tiles. She recognized the victim as the man in the gray hoodie who had moved in on her this afternoon in Plaza de Agustín Lara, the man who’d been about to shove her into the waiting van. This house was where they would have killed her. Somehow, though, the tables had been turned on him. Instead, he was the one who’d met death in this house.

“There’s more upstairs,” Rodrigo’s man said ominously.

Ingrid and Rodrigo eased around the pool of blood that had spread like a halo around Gray Hoodie’s head. With every step they took, they risked leaving forensic traces of their presence, but they had already violated the death scene just by stepping inside, and they could not stop now; they needed to understand how this had happened, how their targets, the men sent to kill Beatriz, had instead been targeted.

The living room seemed startlingly pristine, almost sterile, after the kitchen. Ingrid saw white walls, unadorned by any artwork. Polished wood floors, a black leather sofa, a glass-topped coffee table. Not a residence where people actually lived, but a house for visitors who would rent the place long enough to enjoy their holiday, or accomplish their mission, and then move on. She reached the stairway and paused. She saw no blood on the steps, no clue yet that anything was amiss on the second floor. A suppressor would have kept the killing of Gray Hoodie so quiet that anyone upstairs would not have known anything was amiss. And why should they expect an attack? Hunters never imagine they are, in fact, the prey.

Rodrigo started up the steps, moving in catlike silence, and she followed him, her heart beating faster with every step as she steeled herself for what waited upstairs. Thank God Lloyd wasn’t here, but was safely tucked away in the parked car with a loaded gun at his side, just in case. By now he was probably wondering what had happened inside the house, but he’d agreed to stay put. He would not have to see this, would not be haunted by these images.

They reached the top of the stairs. Nothing here to alarm them, just a hallway with white walls that still had the scent of fresh paint.

Rodrigo’s man, who’d come up the stairs behind them, said grimly: “In the last bedroom.”

They moved down the hall. Past a bathroom with men’s toiletries on the sink counter, past a guest room with rumpled bedcovers and an open suitcase on the floor. The men hadn’t intended to stay long enough to unpack. They’d come to do the job and get out. Instead, the plan had changed on them, in ways they’d never expected.

At the last doorway, Rodrigo halted. His broad shoulders blocked her view into the room, but his shocked stillness warned her of what lay inside. She pushed past him, through the doorway.

The man lay on his back on the floor, his arms stretched out at his sides, as though to embrace the heavens. He was young and bare chested, and a black tee shirt lay crumpled on the floor, as if he’d just peeled it off and tossed it there when the first bullet punched into his back. He must have spun around to face his attacker as the second bullet sliced into his throat. It would have sent him reeling backward, gasping and fighting for air as his trachea filled with blood. Was he still conscious as the gunman stared down at him? Was the face of his killer the last thing he saw?

“This makes no sense,” said Ingrid. She crouched down and stared at the tattoo on the man’s bare arm. “He’s Vory. Who did this?”

“A dispute over death contracts? A rival gang? That would not be such a bad thing.” Rodrigo stood up. “Vory versus Vory. The underworld eating itself. We could just stand back and let them eliminate each other.”

Ingrid stared at the dead man’s face. He was only in his mid-thirties, like the dead man in the kitchen. “They’re both too young,” she said. “They wouldn’t have been in France.” She turned to Rodrigo’s operative. “Did you find a stiletto on either of these men?”

“No, ma’am.”

“So our fifth man is still out there.”

“And we’ll keep looking for him,” said Rodrigo. “There’ll be other chances to draw him out. Other targets to tempt him.”

A voice suddenly said, over their headsets: “Sir, we have a situation down here. The kitchen.”

“Now what?” muttered Rodrigo.

Ingrid followed him back down the stairs, through that spotless, soulless living room, and into the kitchen. As she stepped through the doorway, the first person she saw was Lloyd. He stood frozen, staring down at the body on the floor. He didn’t look up at her; the sight of death seemed to have paralyzed him.

“Lloyd, what are you doing here?” she said. “I thought we agreed—”

“It’s not Mr. Slocum’s fault,” said another voice. She turned to see a dark-haired man she did not recognize walk in through the kitchen doorway. He was in his forties, tall and athletically built, and he coolly eyed the body on the floor. “I see this particular problem has been addressed.”

“Not by us,” said Ingrid. “The men were both dead when we got here.”

Lloyd looked at her, stunned. “Both?”

“There’s another body upstairs, in the bedroom.” She eyed the man who had just joined their little party, and it unsettled her, how dispassionately he regarded the dead body. How at home he seemed in this blood-spattered kitchen. “I’m afraid I haven’t had the pleasure.”

Lloyd said, “This is Jon Marcus. He’s the man who saved my life in Amsterdam. If he hadn’t stepped in, Maggie and I would both be dead in that warehouse.”

Ingrid’s gaze sharpened. “You’re Agency.”