“So we get proactive.”
“Would you mind telling me how?”
“I’m working on it. Do you know where they’ve taken them?”
“The second floor’s best I can tell you. That’s the private residence, but there aren’t any cameras up there, so I don’t have eyes.”
Deuce thought for a moment. “You can loop the feeds on the cameras you’re hooked into, right? Replace them with a static image?”
“I can, but these people are trained and that will only fool them for so long.”
“I just need it long enough for you to clear me a path.”
“A path?”
“To get me down this hill and inside that house without being seen.”
“That might work for the guards manning surveillance, but what about the ones standing post? You start shooting, you’ll be announcing your intentions to the entire estate.”
“Not if I use Cooper’s tranq gun.”
“You must be joking.”
“Hey, it worked on the delivery guy, didn’t it?”
“I like you, mate, but you’re certifiable.”
“You won’t get an argument from me. Now start making those loops.”
It’s called a clusterfuck.
A military term for an operation that’s so fouled up that it’s nearly impossible to repair. The irony being that the culprits are usually the personnel involved, making bad decisions at all the wrong times.
Alex knew there was nobody to blame for this particular clusterfuck but her. She had let emotion get the better of her, causing her to make the wrong moves from the very beginning, starting with her decision to sell the house in Key Largo.
The guards put cuffs on her, Cooper, and Favreau, then marched them upstairs and separated them.
They took Alex into an unoccupied bedroom and sat her in a chair. One of the men waited with her until the door opened and Eric Hopcroft stepped inside.
He told the man to get out, and waited until they were alone before sitting on the edge of the bed.
He said, “Look at you, Allie Cat. All grown up.”
“Don’t you call me that.”
“Would you prefer Ms. Barnes?”
She said nothing.
“You know, it’s only by chance that I saw you on the monitor in the security office. They were running a facial scan and I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. So I checked out the name you had given the hostess and what do I find? Some cheap travel website you supposedly work for.”
“Maybe I do.”
He pulled her Kahr P380 out his pocket and showed it to her. “I suppose this is a fringe benefit? We found one exactly like it on your boyfriend.”
She said nothing.
“And then there’s the question of Frederic Favreau. I have a hard time believing you’re in any kind of relationship with him. The man’s a toad, and look at you. You’ve grown into quite a beautiful young woman.”
“He hired us to protect him,” she said.
“Oh?”
“He told us he had a business transaction, but didn’t trust the people involved. I can see why.”
Hopcroft smiled. “Nice try, but why the ruse with the website? That makes no sense. And judging by the look on Favreau’s face in the hallway, he had no idea who you really are or what you’re up to.” He paused. “Who are you working for, Alex?”
She said nothing.
“Mr. Gray?”
She had heard the name before. From Thomas Gérard. The man he’d said had initiated this operation and requested her involvement.
She hesitated only slightly. “Never heard of him.”
“Maybe you know him by his real name. Richard Munro. He’s got a very cushy job there in Washington, working for the Department of Homeland Security.” He leaned forward and whispered, “I don’t think they know he’s a duplicitous, backstabbing bastard. Then again, maybe they do.”
She said nothing.
“Munro is an old friend of your father’s and mine. We were all at the Company together.”
“The CIA?”
Hopcroft nodded.
Alex wasn’t buying it. “My father was never CIA.”
“Really? Think back to your childhood, Alex. All the trips he took, and the little knickknacks and toys he brought you and Danny from other countries. Every one of those countries was a political hotspot, and there was your father, right in the thick of it.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t expect you to,” he said. “I don’t expect you to believe a word I say. But I have a feeling that Munro or somebody has filled your head with lies. Because I know you didn’t come here to help Frederick Favreau.” He paused. “You came here to kill me.”
She said nothing but her eyes must have given her away.
He smiled. “What did they tell you about me?”
“Not ‘they.’ My father.”
His eyebrows raised. “You’ve been in touch with Frank?”
“He’s been in touch with me,” she said. “And you’re right, I don’t believe a word you say. But I believe him. And he says you killed my mother.”
Hopcroft studied her, then closed his eyes, lowered his head, and said nothing for a long moment. Then he sat upright again, set the P380 on the mattress, and slipped a hand into his pocket.
He brought out a square gold coin. A Bahamian fifteen-cent piece.
“You remember when you were about eleven years old and I showed you a little vanishing trick called the French drop?”
She remembered, vaguely, but said nothing.
He demonstrated by holding the coin between the index finger and thumb of his left hand, then closed his right fingers over the coin and carried it away.
When he opened his hand again, the coin was gone.
He showed her his left hand and the coin was sitting on his palm.
“It’s an illusion,” he said. “A trick of the eye.”
“I’m afraid your tricks don’t impress me anymore.”
“No, but apparently Richard Munro’s do. He’s the master of the French drop and many other illusions. Like the illusion that your father is a traitor. That’s one of his finest maneuvers. And now he seems to have gone to great lengths to convince you of something else that isn’t true.” He paused. “Frank didn’t tell you I killed Mitra, because he knows better. He knows I would never have hurt her or allowed any kind of harm to come to her. Not if I could help it.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I was in love with her.”
CHAPTER 36
“You’re full of crap,” Alex said. “You didn’t love her. That’s just another one of your tricks.”
Hopcroft shook his head. “There’s so much you don’t know about our past, Alex. Things we could never talk about.”
“You mean like my mother’s first marriage?”
He stiffened. “You know about that?”
“I’ve seen the video,” she said. “And you’re in it.”
“Did Munro show it to you?”
“I told you, I don’t know this Munro person. The video came to me anonymously. Talk about shattered illusions. I feel as if I was lied to my entire childhood.”
Hopcroft lowered his head again. “I’m so sorry about that. But they were all necessary lies.”
“Necessary? Why?”
He hesitated. “That’s something your father needs to tell you.”
“Fuck you,” she said. “You sit there and pretend to have sympathy for me, but you can’t even tell me the truth? Who’s the man my mother was marrying? Where is he now?”
“It’s not my place to say.”
“Of course not. Why would you even want to? You’re consorting with a known terrorist. A guy who’s wanted in six different countries.”
“Maybe that’s another illusion.”
She balked. “Which part?”