She had to admit she had no idea where Jake could be, but she also knew that this was the only tie she had to him. He might have left some clue behind.
Getting out of the car, she made sure she had easy access to her gun under her long leather coat. Then she stepped quietly toward Jake’s place, her eyes shifting from cars lining the street to bushes alongside buildings, her ears concentrating on any noise out of the ordinary. Having been to Jake’s apartment a number of times, she had one advantage. A key. Jake had given it to her in case of emergency years ago. She hoped he hadn’t changed the locks since then. That would take her longer to get inside.
Moving up to the second floor, her steps as quiet as possible, she hesitated in front of his door, which was still crisscrossed with yellow Polizei crime tape.
She considered drawing her gun but instead simply took out the key and opened the door. Lights from the street gave her an obscured view of the main room. She stepped through the tape and closed and locked the door behind her. It smelled like death. Dried blood.
Before turning on the light, she walked to the front room and closed the Rolladens completely, darkening the room except for a few lights on the computer router and a digital clock on an end table. The only sound was from the refrigerator and the soft hum of Jake’s computer.
She clicked on a small table lamp and sat down at the computer desk. If Jake didn’t want her to get into his computer, she wouldn’t be able to no matter how long she sat there. She turned on the monitor, lighting the room more, and clicked a few passwords. Nothing.
Getting up, she wandered around the apartment, going down the hall to Jake’s bedroom. She’d been there before with Jake, but only a couple of times when they had been intimate. Moments of weakness after their divorce. Other times either she or he had been with someone else. Yet, she couldn’t help thinking about those times they’d been together, from the early days while working together in the CIA, hanging out in Mediterranean hotels undercover, in more ways than one. Together again in this apartment while she still worked for the Agency and Jake was a private security consultant. Then came Anna.
In the bedroom now, she clicked on a lamp and glanced at the bed, smiling at how good they’d been together. There was no denying that. And that had never been a problem with them. Their problem had been the constant separation, their jobs. Excuses, she thought, a tear streaking her right cheek, which she wiped away with the back of her hand.
She sat onto the bed and felt the fine cotton comforter.
A slight creak. Toni rose, pulled her gun, and hurried behind the bedroom door.
As the door swung in, Toni clicked back the hammer, pointed the gun at a dark figure, and said, “You move and you die.”
The man stopped.
“What brings the Agency to Innsbruck,” the man said, a hint of recognition in his deep voice.
“Franz Martini?” Toni said. She lowered her gun and de-cocked it. The two of them had met many times while Toni was the station chief in Vienna, and even before that when he was still the kriminal hauptkommisar for Tirol.
They embraced and then walked to the living room together. Toni took a seat on Jake’s bullet-ridden leather sofa, while Franz rummaged through the refrigerator.
“A beer?” Franz asked her.
“Sure.”
Franz opened two beers and brought one to Toni before taking a seat on a chair across from her.
She took down a long drink of beer, her eyes concentrating on Franz. He looked terrible. Near death. “How are you, Franz?”
He laughed. “What you mean to say is, ‘Why aren’t you dead yet.’”
Toni wasn’t sure what to say. “I heard you were on medical leave.” Before Franz could say anything, she added, “I just heard this morning about Anna and Jake getting shot. I’m sorry. I know how close you two were.”
He lowered his head somewhat, as if the weight of his skull was too much for his neck to hold up any more. “It was difficult. The two of them were good together.”
Toni nodded. Regardless of how much sleep she’d gotten on the jet, she was still feeling the effects of the flight. She said, “Any idea where to find Jake?”
“No. He wouldn’t tell me where he was going. And he wouldn’t take me with him, either. I think he thought I was losing a step or two.”
She gazed at his sad eyes unsure again what to say to him. He was dying right there in front of her.
When she didn’t say anything, Franz said, “I tried my best to keep Austrian Polizei from tracking down Jake, or from sending a notice to Interpol. My replacement here has a much different idea about Jake than I.”
“Nobody can replace you, Franz,” she said emphatically, a smile formed at the side of her lips.
He laughed from the gut and pointed at Toni. “Very smooth, young lady. Kind also.”
Toni sipped her beer and then said, “You have a theory as to why someone put a contract out on Jake?”
After finishing his beer, Franz went to the refrigerator and returned with two more beers, handing one to Toni. “Who knows what Jake has gotten himself into this time. He can rub some people the wrong way.” He finished with a shrug.
She laughed. “Yeah, he can.” He’d pissed her off more than she’d like to admit. “But what do you think is the root reason? Ideology, revenge, or something else?”
“A million Euros? That sounds personal to me. If it were a State sponsor they would have simply sent a few agents to kill him. And that list could be long. Now, they could be outsourcing the deed to make it look personal and to direct attention away from them.”
She’d considered all of the options on the flight while she pretended to rest. “Good point. So far we have Turkish Kurds, Bulgarians and Serbs. But with the open market now…” She shook her head. “A million Euros will bring out all kinds of bad guys. You could even have Americans getting in on the action.”
“Exactly. That’s why Jake decided to take off.”
Toni scanned the room, her eyes stopping on the blood-stained spot near the front door. Well, the blood had been removed with bleach, but that had lightened the hardwood floor. Her gaze returned to Franz. “He waited here for someone to come for him,” she said. “He wanted to keep one alive to interrogate. But one got away. And the other he killed too good on the floor there.” She poked her finger into a bullet hole in the sofa.
Franz nodded and drank some more beer.
Toni’s mind wound around and settled on a thought. “He did the same thing at that gasthaus by St. Anton. But that time he got away with one of the men.”
“Yes.” Franz dropped his head again and then forced it up with a drink of his beer. “We found the second man. Another Serb.”
“What’s he saying?”
“He’s dead.” He collected his words. “It appears that he was tortured before being shot. Well, he was shot, tortured and then shot again.”
“Jake?”
“We have to assume. I could have kept our Polizei under control until we found this man. Self defense is one thing, but…”
“The best defense is a good offense,” she assured him. And she’d like to know what Jake found out from the Serb. “You know Jake. He did what he had to do.”
He raised his hand in protest. “Hey, I’m on your side, Toni. You think I don’t want him finding who killed Anna? I’ve been looking for the past two months and can’t seem to get one clue. Interpol hasn’t cooperated with me either.”
Toni wondered about that. And why had she not been notified about Jake getting shot? Something wasn’t right here and she’d find out what that was. She finished her first beer and started into the second one, sucking down half of it. Now she squared her gaze at him and said, “You don’t have a target on you and neither do I. We can work together on this. Find Jake and find out who’s trying to kill him.”