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NEARCAZENOVIA
NEWYORK
USA
CLAUDIAturned down the grill and used a wire brush to clean off what looked like years of grime. The outdoor kitchen was a feature she loved, but this one had a bit to be desired. The day was stunning, though, with temperatures in the high seventies, blue skies, and a significant reduction in the bugs that had plagued them earlier in the week. Anna had been insisting that they put the grill to work and tonight was the night. An American feast that Mitch would have loved—steak, baked beans, potatoes, and corn on the cob. Her quintessentially French mother would have been horrified. Anna and their security detail, on the other hand, would be delighted.
She hung the brush back on its hook and looked up at the glass prow of the house looming over her. Its style and condition suggested that it had been built in the eighties, but the layout and attached bunkhouse had turned out to be ideal. Even more attractive was the two hundred acres of rolling grass crisscrossed with white fences. Sheshaded her eyes to examine distant tree-topped hills and then turned her attention to a somewhat less distant figure astride a horse.
Anna was having the time of her life. She went from stall to stall, corral to corral, seeking out her next steed, talking breathlessly with the staff who cared for them, and hanging on every word uttered by her riding instructor. Dinner table conversation rarely strayed from horse-related subjects, and she’d barely even mentioned the absence of Mitch or her friends. Of course, that was coming, but Claudia calculated she had another week before her daughter’s equestrian bubble burst. By then, the hope was that Mitch would be done with Syria and they could all go home.
He was supposed to have returned a week ago, after Damian Losa’s betrayal, but there had been some kind of delay. Irene Kennedy had assured her that he was fine, but that the first attempt at extraction had failed. Was it the truth? Or just one of the many lies that slid so gracefully from the tongue of the longtime CIA director? Much more credible was the idea that he’d found something that interested him there. And based on Kennedy’s sudden involvement, it was something that went well beyond Damian Losa.
So here she and her daughter were, imprisoned in a castle designed to keep them beyond Losa’s extremely long reach. But also locked out of what was happening—completely in the dark and unable to use her own considerable skills to help. It was a torment that had been made significantly worse when Scott Coleman and the rest of SEAL Demolition and Salvage’s operators had disappeared. Over the past few years running the company’s logistics, she’d come to think of them very much as her men. Her responsibility. If anything went wrong, there would be nothing she could do about it. And while Irene Kennedy was the best in the world at what she did, ceding control was painful and terrifying.
“How is everything?”
“Fantastic,” one of the men seated at the picnic table said. Theother three nodded enthusiastically, but with mouths too full to otherwise respond. Her protection detail ate in shifts, with half of the team always deployed. Two men were currently roving the perimeter with dogs, one was inside monitoring the state-of-the-art surveillance system, and another was with Anna. Claudia could see her piloting a horse around a corral chosen for its lack of jumps or obstacles. What they didn’t need to deal with was a trip to the emergency room.
Her daughter was outside of shouting distance, so Claudia started across the expansive lawn to convince her to take a break. She’d barely made it halfway to the fence line when her phone began to ring. Hoping it was an update from Kennedy—or even Mitch himself—she snatched it from her pocket. It turned out to be neither. Instead, the initials DL pulsed on the otherwise blank screen.
She stared down at it, initially unwilling to answer, but knowing she had no choice. Finally, she tossed her hair aside and eased the phone to her ear as though it might explode. Unlikely, because it had been provided by the Agency and was configured to make it look like she was at home in Virginia. But you never knew.
“Hello, Mr. Losa.”
“Please call me Damian,” he said smoothly. “How are you, Claudia?”
“I’m well. And you?”
“The same. But I’m afraid I haven’t heard from Mitch in some time. My understanding is that he left Syria. Is he with you? And if so, may I speak with him?”
“He’s not with me. I thought he was still in Syria working for you.”
It was a game of cat and mouse to see who would reveal more. Unfortunately, Damian Losa was typically the cat in such exchanges. In all exchanges, really.
“I tried to get him out, but he seemed to change his mind at the last minute.”
“Did you give him a reason to change his mind?”
Losa was unusual for a criminal in that he tended to be fairlystraightforward in his dealings. He wanted everyone to be clear on why he was killing them, their family, and everyone they’d ever met.
“I sent him there to negotiate, but he kept avoiding the job.”
“Maybe he thought you were looking less for a negotiator than for a canary for your coal mine.”
“You’re alive because of the information I provided him. He agreed to my terms and one of them was that I get to define the job.”
“Having lived with Mitch for some time, I can tell you that he creates his own definitions.”
Losa fell silent and Claudia fixated on her daughter. In theory, they were safe, but it was hard to have an adversarial conversation with Damian Losa without wondering if someone was lining up a set of crosshairs.
“This call appears to be connecting from your home in Virginia,” he said finally. “But you’re not there.”
“No.”
“Because of me?”
“Yes.”
