Page 99 of The Shadow Friends

“What?” said Jo. “What’s happened?”

In all the time she’d known Declan Rose, she’d never seen him at a loss for words. He was the Martini Club’s peacekeeper, the diplomatic charmer who was always ready with a smile and an affable quip. Now he just stared at her, too anguished to utter a word.

It was Ben who answered her question. “Maggie’s missing.”

Chapter 38

Hannah

There was already one dead body on the floor. Before the night ended, Maggie Bird’s would join it, although Hannah did not relish adding yet another corpse to her lifetime tally. There was hardly any point to killing her now anyway, since the police already knew who Hannah was, and Maggie’s death would not improve Hannah’s dire situation. The moment her house in Amesbury was breached, and she’d remotely viewed Jo Thibodeau’s face on her surveillance camera, she knew she’d been compromised. After all the years she’d flown under the radar, all the years she’d lived as Hannah Murray, American, the masquerade had come to an end.

What a shame Andrei’s death turned out to be needless.

The young man’s body lay in the corner of the cabin, curled in a fetal position. She had covered his face with a blanket because it pained her to look at him. He was just an innocent, caught in the jaws of a ruthless machine that was bigger than both of them. She was not often tasked with taking a life, and when she was, she did not enjoy it. Andrei’s death was one she particularly regretted, but her hand had been forced when he’d spotted her back in Purity yesterday afternoon, sitting in her parked car. Even worse, when he’d rapped on her window to say hello, he’d glimpsed Cyrillic on her phone, part of a message sent by her handler.

“Oh!” he’d said in surprise. “You can read Russian!”

That’s when she knew she had no choice. So she had invited him to tea.

Now his blood was spattered across the wall, where it had dried in a brick red starburst. Eventually someone would have to clean up this mess, but it probably would not happen until next spring. Hannah would be thousands of miles away by the time the owner of this seasonal cottage returned to Purity and found the decaying body.

Or bodies. Because Maggie’s would be here as well, rotting in this rustic little vacation house with knotty pine walls and a picture window that faced the wooded lakeshore. Like all the other cottages on Lake Cameron, it would remain dark and unoccupied all winter, and already, it smelled of dust and dampness and abandonment.

Hannah looked down at Andrei and gave a mournful sigh. Such a tormented young man. In Belarus, he would have faced ridicule or worse because of his attraction to other men. He’d tried to hide it from Hannah, but she had known, of course. She, too, understood the challenges of trying to blend in, to appear unremarkable. To look like any other middle-aged woman one might see pushing a housekeeping cart in a hotel.

Which was where she had first met Maggie Bird, in the hallway of the Cod Cove Resort, outside Mikhail Maslov’s hotel room.

“I hear you call yourself a farmer,” Hannah said.

“Who told you that?”

“I have sources. They know Ingrid Slocum is hiding in your farmhouse.”

She saw the flash of alarm in Maggie’s eyes. She must have been wondering who, in her circle of trust, had leaked that information to Moscow.

“Your sources have made a big mistake,” said Maggie.

“What mistake would that be?”

“They’ve sent you to kill the wrong person. Ingrid Slocum isn’t who they want.”

“I don’t care one way or another. I just do what I’m told.”

“Killing her will only make things worse for you. The police already know who you are. The FBI’s in your house right now.”

“You think I don’t know that? The instant they broke in, my security system alerted me. Now tell me about your security system.”

“What system?”

Hannah held up Maggie’s cell phone, which had been powered down to avoid being tracked. “It can be turned off remotely, I assume?” Hannah pressed the barrel of her gun against Maggie’s head. “Disable it for me.”

“Why should I, if you’re going to kill me anyway?”

“Because it would be a lot less painful. But we have all night.” Hannah tucked the gun in her waistband. “Let’s start over. Tell me about Ingrid Slocum.”

“She’s the wrong target. The woman you want is already dead.”

“How do you know this?”