Page 105 of The Shadow Friends

“I’m coming,” she said, and reached for her weapon.

Just as a gun barrel pressed against the back of her head.

“I’ll take that,” said Hannah Murray, removing the gun from Ingrid’s hip. Then she yanked off Ingrid’s earpiece and slammed it under her heel. “Now turn around.”

Slowly, Ingrid turned.

“I have questions,” said Hannah. The woman was utterly ordinary, neither attractive nor unattractive. That ordinariness would have served her well, allowing her to slip into any situation unnoticed, dispatch her target, and slip out again. Just as she had done at the Cod Cove Resort.

Just as she had done twenty-eight years ago, in Provence. She would have been in her twenties then, perhaps posing as an innocent young tourist who’d taken a wrong turn and ended up on a dead-end road through the lavender fields. How easy it would have been for her to approach the men at the guardhouse. How easy for her to lean toward Gordon and smile as she plunged a stiletto in his eye. To next walk into the guardhouse and slash Simon’s throat. And when her team came under attack, and her colleagues began to draw fire, she’d chosen to retreat on foot across the lavender fields, and stroll out of the valley, into the nearest village.

There was no fifth man, thought Ingrid. It was a woman.

“I’m not your target,” said Ingrid. “Lilia Kuraskaya died two months ago, in California. They’ve sent you to kill the wrong person.”

“So I’ve gathered.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I want to know who’s behind this. Who is hunting us down. I don’t want to end up like the others.”

“The others?”

“In Amsterdam. In Madrid. They’re all dead.”

“Friends of yours?” Ingrid glanced toward the window. With her comm link destroyed, Rodrigo and Lloyd wouldn’t know what was going on inside the house. She took a pace backward, trying to draw Hannah toward the window. Toward exposure.

“Friends?” Hannah gave a disgusted shake of the head. “Vory contractors. Easy money, they probably thought. Then Amsterdam happened. And Madrid. And I knew something was wrong, someone wants us all dead. Now your name is on the list?” Hannah shook her head. “I don’t like it.”

“I’m not too thrilled about it either.”

“Someone feeds Moscow information, a contract goes out, and we get lured into a trap. We’re the ones being hunted.” She raised her gun, and Ingrid looked straight into the barrel. “Who’s behind this?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you’re part of it. You chose to be a target.”

“I never chose to . . .” Ingrid stopped. Suddenly the answer became clear to her. It had been staring at her the whole time, and she’d refused to see it, because it meant questioning everyone she’d trusted, everything she’d believed in. Someone else chose for me. Someone with access to classified information known only to Central Intelligence. Someone who’d hired Argus to achieve his goals. Someone who had given Ingrid’s name and location to the enemy, knowing Moscow would act on that information and send an assassin.

“We’re both being used, Hannah,” said Ingrid. “You don’t want to be here. Neither do I.”

“Who is doing this? Who’s pulling the strings? I just want to—” Hannah’s head suddenly snapped around at the sound of the back door banging open.

Footsteps thudded into the house. Footsteps Ingrid recognized, and they were moving toward the kitchen.

No. God, no.

Hannah spun around. Her gun swept toward the kitchen doorway just as Lloyd burst into view.

She fired.

A deafening blast simultaneously shattered the kitchen window, sending a hailstorm of broken glass across the room. A shard sliced into Ingrid’s face, but she was too shocked to feel any pain. All she registered was the trickle of warmth down her cheek.

In the silence that followed, Ingrid stood paralyzed as she stared down at glass and blood. And two bodies.

Lloyd.

She stepped over Hannah and dropped to her knees beside her husband. “No,” she moaned. “No, no, no . . .”