“Hello?” he heard a familiar voice call. “Is anyone here?”
Azarov came out of the hallway just as a young woman with a cooler in her hands took a hesitant step into his living room. She was an American surf instructor who provided home management services for some of the wealthier foreign owners.
“How are you, Cara?”
She jumped at the sound of his voice, but managed to keep from dropping the cooler. “Oh, hi, Grisha. I’m fine, thanks. What about you? What happened to your face?”
“A car accident. The window shattered.”
“Oh, man. I guess you should consider yourself lucky that nothing hit you in the eye, huh?”
“Very lucky.”
Cara Hansen was in many ways the complete opposite of the woman Azarov had spent the last two years living with. She was just as beautiful, but in a natural, perpetually disheveled way that contrasted with Olga’s icy perfection. She always had a smile on her face, and seemed to think neither of the past nor the future. While Olga had everything and appreciated nothing, Cara had very little and loved all of it.
Azarov had known her in a peripheral way for years, but paid no attention to her. He’d never looked into her background or had a conversation with her that didn’t involve some problem with his house or meaningless small talk about waves or the weather. He couldn’t. If Krupin knew how he felt about this twenty-nine-year-old Californian expat, it would have been her, and not Olga, bleeding into his mattress.
Azarov pointed to the cooler. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. They told me you needed a bunch of ice. Party or broken fridge?”
“The latter.”
“I could take a look at it.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It’s not problem,” she said, pushing past him into the kitchen. She put the cooler on the island and opened the refrigerator, crouching down to get a closer look.
He watched with calculated indifference as she poked her head inside.
“Seems fine. The light’s on and it feels cold.”
“It comes and goes.”
“Well, I wouldn’t eat any of this stuff, then,” she said, standing and turning toward him.
He made sure not to look at the way her shirt clung to her or the tantalizing strip of skin between the bottom of it and the top of her shorts.
“That’s good advice, Cara. Thank you.”
“Where’s Olga?”
“Russia.”
“Cool trip. When’s she coming back?”
“Probably never.”
“Oh,” she said, suddenly looking a bit uneasy. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
She thumbed toward the door. “You want the rest of the ice I brought? I feel like they told me way too much.”
“Sure. Just in case.”
He followed her out and she brushed a hand along his truck. “This thing must be faster than it looks. I could see you kicking up dust all the way from town.”
“Really? Interesting. It’s something I’ve never given thought to.”
Cara cocked her head inquisitively, but then just grabbed another cooler from the back of her Suzuki. He pulled out the last one and followed her back to the house.
She put the cooler down on the floor next to the dishwasher but didn’t make a move to leave.
“Thank you,” he said, not sure why she was just standing there. Did she know something? That Olga hadn’t left? Had she noticed someone lurking around the house? He assumed that Krupin had sent a lone female to kill Olga. Juan couldn’t be blamed for overlooking the presence of an unaccompanied eastern European woman on the local beaches.
“Hey, you know, since you’re… I mean, since your food’s probably bad, I’m getting together with some friends tonight at Patrón’s. You should come down and get a bite to eat. Maybe have a drink. You seem like you could use a few.”
“Thank you for the invitation, Cara, but I’ve been traveling for the last thirty hours and I think I’m just going to go to bed.”
“Yeah, I understand. Maybe some other time.”
“Maybe.”
She finally turned to leave and he watched her go, waiting until the sound of her car faded before he carried one of the coolers to the bathroom and emptied it into the tub. Krupin thought of everything.
Another ten minutes work and Olga was on ice. She’d keep until he figured out how to dispose of the body and mattress without running the risk of piquing anyone’s interest.
After cleaning the bedroom, he wanted nothing more than to lie in his hammock and drain a good bottle of bourbon. Instead, he stripped off his bloody clothes and put on a pair of running shorts. There were only two hours of daylight left, so he grabbed a headlamp from the shelf next to his running shoes.
Mitch Rapp was coming. Not today and probably not tomorrow. But soon.
CHAPTER 25
HIGHWAY 81
VIRGINIA
THERE were two more hours until sunrise and the dead-straight road was empty of taillights. Rapp was pushing Craig Bailer’s modified Corvette hard, but it seemed to be handling the stress with ease. The stereo had been replaced with controls for a fire suppression system mounted to the roll cage, so the only thing audible was the roar of the V8 and the slight whistle of aftermarket turbochargers. Joe Maslick’s bulky frame was crammed into a passenger seat that Bailer had jury-rigged specifically for this trip. Typically, he hadn’t said a word since they’d left.
The radar detector sounded, prompting Rapp to glance down at the vehicle’s speedometer. One hundred sixty miles per hour. In the rearview mirror he saw a police cruiser’s lights go on, already distant enough to be just a pinpoint. A moment later, they went dark again. He’d called in a number of favors and cleared the path to Walter Reed, where Scott Coleman was on life support. The Vette’s plate number had been given to Maryland and Virginia police, with instructions that under no circumstances was it to be pulled over.
Rapp tried to concentrate on the missing fissile material and how it tied back to Pakistan, but found it impossible. Scott Coleman had been at his side for almost his entire career. The former SEAL was patriotic, unwaveringly loyal, and courageous. But he was more than that. He was a man who somehow had never allowed himself to be sucked into the darkness that constantly swirled around him.
The death of Rapp’s mentor Stan Hurley was still a fresh wound but in many ways a different one. Hurley had been, first and foremost, a killer. A man filled with rage at the injustices of the world and consumed with visiting misery on the people who caused them. He’d died the way he wanted to-the way he had to: full of bullet holes, with his enemy bleeding from a fatal wound that he’d inflicted. For some reason, it wasn’t the future Rapp had seen for Coleman. More than any of them, he deserved something better.
He considered calling Kennedy for an update but immediately abandoned the idea. If Coleman was dead, Rapp wasn’t ready to hear the news. The thought of spending the next two hours crawling along at seventy miles an hour was for some reason unacceptable. At least now there was urgency. A goal to push for. Even if it turned out to be an illusion.
He felt a tap on his shoulder and glanced over to see Maslick pointing to the fuel gauge. Even at normal speeds, Bailer’s Vette wasn’t exactly economical. Being driven like this, it was going through gas like there was a hole in the tank.
“Five more miles on the right!” Maslick shouted over the roar of the engine. “The GPS is showing a station less than a quarter mile off the highway. We should be able to get in and out in under four minutes.”
• • •
The end of the whitewashed hallway had been cordoned off and was empty except for a lone man in a dark suit. One of Irene Kennedy’s security detail.
“Is he still alive?” Rapp said, skirting the barriers that had been set up.