AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’re familiar with this arrangement?”
“Yes.”
“Then return to your office. Load the files and any instructions you were given onto a thumb drive.”
“Thumb drive,” she repeated numbly.
“That’s right, Isabella. You’re doing well. This will all be over soon.” He pointed to a hotel across the street. “Bring the files to me there. Room two hundred. It’s an easy number to remember. Repeat it back to me.”
“Two hundred.”
“Very good. Do it quickly, Isabella. Your daughter’s break from class won’t last much longer, and my man has orders not to let her out of his sight. If I don’t call him off by the time she gets up to go back to class, he will kill her. Do you understand?”
The woman’s eyes were fixed and a tear had formed in the corner of one of them, but she managed to nod.
“Then go.”
She broke from her trance and stood, walking unsteadily toward her law firm’s building.
The dog bounded after her, but Gadai gripped the leash firmly. He, too, would have liked to follow. The uncertainty—and indeed danger—of sending her back to her office unaccompanied was an unacceptable risk in his opinion. But Taj’s orders had been clear.
After a few more moments he rose, glancing at his watch. Just enough time to get rid of the filthy beast before picking up his room key.
CHAPTER 21
NEAR LAKE CONSTANCE
SWITZERLAND
SCOTT Coleman came over the top of a rocky outcropping and leapt to the steep slope below. His thighs burned and his heart pounded powerfully in his chest as he half-ran, half-skidded down twenty yards of loose dirt.
“Approaching your position,” he said, making sure he didn’t sound out of breath. Despite a training program designed and monitored by a soulless Norwegian coach, he was feeling the relentless grade and the weight of his pack. The passage of time was hard on men in his profession. Better than the alternative, though.
“Roger that, Scott. We were wondering what had happened to you.” One of Wicker’s veiled jabs. See how he felt when he was pushing fifty.
The clearing he entered was probably only thirty feet in diameter, bordered with dense trees choked with even denser bushes. McGraw was in a tree on the north side, barely visible in camouflage fatigues and hat. He was holding the modified hunting rifle that he preferred for shorter ranges, scanning through a Schmidt & Bender scope.
“What have you got, Bruno?”
“Garbage.”
Coleman moved toward the east side of the clearing, stopping when he caught a glimpse of the gray wall surrounding Obrecht’s property. After carefully moving a few leafy branches, he got an unobstructed view of what McGraw was talking about. They were stuck in a trough between hills. From Coleman’s position on the ground, nothing more than the wall and the top of the mansion’s roof was visible. The gate was a complete write-off—too far south for even McGraw to see.
“Do you have a view into the courtyard?”
“Barely.”
“How many guards do you have eyes on?”
“I’m down to two. Intermittent.”
Coleman swore under his breath and pulled out a range finder. Just over 450 yards to the wall. To make matters worse—if that was even possible—they were no longer blocked from the wind. The gentle right-to-left breeze they’d had on top of the knoll was now being accelerated to eight knots as it funneled through a canyon to the east.
To say their new position was a tactical disaster would be the understatement of the century. He might as well have brought a cooler and some beach chairs for all the use they would be stuck in this hole.
“Can you hit either of them?” Coleman said.
