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  The woman swiped a card through a machine, tucked it in a small, used envelope that said “Holiday Inn Express,” and went back to the script she’d memorized from years of repeating the same rhetoric.

  “We at the Holiday Inn Express want you to know that we have complimentary coffee, juices and breakfast items in the morning. Our complimentary breakfasts, which are free to our valuable customers, are available from 6 a.m. until 10 a.m. We are known for our cinnamon rolls. You will love them.”

  “I usually sleep until eleven.”

  “Then you will miss breakfast.”

  “You won’t hold it for me?”

  “We can’t do that, ma’am.”

  “Why?”

  “Policy.”

  “More likely, the proliferation of bacteria.”

  The woman blinked.

  “About the rolls,” Carmen said. “I’m allergic to cinnamon. Anything you can do about that?”

  “There’s fruit.”

  “No cinnamon-free rolls?”

  “Fruit.”

  “Oranges?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Grapefruit?”

  “I know there’s a carousel of cereal.”

  “A carousel?”

  “Four different kinds. You like fruit? We’ve got Fruit Loops.”

  “How’s the coffee?”

  “Hot.”

  “Does ‘hot’ mean ‘burnt’?”

  “We don’t burn our coffee.”

  “Can you guarantee that?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have an egg selection?”

  “All that’s hot is the coffee. And the toast.”

  “That sounds limited.”

  “It’s complimentary.”

  “At these prices, it isn’t.”

  “The Holiday Inn Express offers reasonable rates that help you stretch your dollar. Will this be on your credit card?”

  “Cash.” Carmen gave her the money, took the change and pocketed the card the woman swiped earlier.

  “That’s the key to your room.”

  “I gathered that.”

  “Fourth floor. Take a right at the elevator. Have a lovely stay.”

  “Will I see you at breakfast?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s on me. I’ve love to sit and talk.”

  “Have a lovely stay, ma’am.”

  “I can’t imagine I won’t.”

  She didn’t, not that that surprised her. If she thought last night that a walk in the city would help to clear her head because she couldn’t sleep, then what took place because of that walk made sleep impossible.

  Since at least the bath towels smelled of bleach, she covered the top of the bed with them before laying on top it. Spocatti encouraged her to think beyond Katzev and the syndicate. He wanted her to consider all of her hits before assuming it was them. She trusted him, so she thought it through.

  When she told the men last night to tell Katzev to fuck off, neither looked bewildered at the use of his name. They just fired back at her, which told her two things, neither of which provided a concrete answer. If they were well-trained, they wouldn’t have reacted at the mention of his name. Let her believe what she wanted to believe, especially if Katzev wasn’t involved. On the other hand, if Katzev was behind this, the same was true. Show no knowledge of his name, which they didn’t. Doing so would only tip her off.

  Is it Katzev?

  She didn’t know. Before she and Alex left for Bora Bora, they warned the syndicate that if they came after them for killing Laurent, they would send everything they knew about them to the press.

  Admittedly, that wasn’t much of a threat because the syndicate worked behind a cloak of privacy that was fairly airtight. Katzev and the syndicate knew that. Still, as with any threat—and if they were indeed behind this—they took it seriously, they tracked them down, they killed Alex and nearly her.

  With the syndicate, everything was handled over secure lines. Email addresses were constantly changed and associated with accounts in third-world countries. Whenever they paid her for a job, it was from a numbered Swiss bank account with no name attached to it.

  In the seven years she’d done jobs for them, she only ever saw Laurent twice. First, it was when he courted her to work for them and then it was at the end, when she helped to kill him. She’d never seen Katzev or any other members of the syndicate. With the exception of Katzev’s fake Russian accent on the other end of a phone, everyone associated with the syndicate was foreign to her.

  As much as she respected Spocatti, she knew in her gut that it was Katzev and the rest of the syndicate who were behind this. They had a direct reason to come after both her and Alex. They wanted their revenge for the loss of Laurent and they got it. At least partly.

  But how did they learn they were there? If Jake was legit and he was friends with Alex, it was possible that Alex told him where they were going and that Jake sold the information to the syndicate. It also would explain why he sold her out last night.

  Start at the beginning.

  Before they killed Laurent, why would the syndicate want her and Alex dead? Alex worked with them more often than she did. Did he stumble upon something he shouldn’t have? Something that incriminated the syndicate? Did they think he shared the information with her? It was possible, but how to find out? She knew Alex kept an apartment in the city, but the syndicate also knew that and at this point, she knew they already had gone through it and taken with them any incriminating evidence. If there was any.

  She checked the time. In an hour, she’d meet with Spocatti’s elderly, nameless contact. She needed to shower. She’d have to wear the same clothes, but so be it. Until this was resolved, going back to her apartment was out of the question. She needed to set up shop somewhere else, so it might as well be here.

  CHAPTER SE

  VEN

  The address he gave her was 118 East Sixty-First Street, which turned out to be a brick-and-limestone townhouse protected by a black iron gate connected to four limestone columns, on top of which were two original iron lamps.

  There was a large maple tree in front, which was a few leaves shy of being fully exposed to the waning days of fall, and a doorbell on one of the posts, which she pressed.

  She watched the first- and second-story windows for movement, but saw none. After a moment, there was an audible buzzing sound, she opened the gate and stepped down the stairs to the black front door, which opened as she approached it.

  Behind it was a middle-aged man with a patch over his eye. But not just any patch. Sewn into the front of it was a working watch, sapphire in color, with a ticking second hand, which caused her to pause before she could collect herself from the surprise of it. He had short graying hair and appeared as tall and as broad as the doorway itself. Clean shaven. Face devoid of emotion. She knew an ex-Marine when she saw one, and she was looking at one now.

  “Carmen Gragera?”

  She focused on his other eye, which was as blue as the watch’s sapphire background. “That’s me.”

  He moved to his right. “Step inside, please.”

  She did, he closed the door and she held out her arms for him in the sunlit entryway. “It’s in my jacket pocket,” she said as he patted her down. “After last night, I couldn’t be on the streets without it. I hope you understand.”

  “I don’t understand anything about what you do. But it isn’t my job to judge.”

  I think you just did.

  He took the Glock and continued his search. Even if Spocatti did send her here with his blessing, she felt nervous and naked without her gun. When he was satisfied she carried nothing else on her, he asked if he could take her coat.

  She slipped it off and handed it to him. When he took it from her, she noted that his hands were triple the size of hers. Alex was six-foot-two, but this man was much taller. Six-foot-eight? She looked around the wide, aged oak foyer and saw all the delicate antiques on the side tables and walls. On th
is floor, the ceilings were high. Probably twelve feet.

  She bet he was happy for the extra space.

  “This way,” he said, motioning in front of him. “Mr. Gelling is waiting for you in the library.”

  Gelling? The name meant nothing to her.

  “And your name?” she asked.

  “Mr. Gelling will decide if you need access to that information. Follow me, please.”

  Jesus.

  She followed him down a long hallway and past a beautifully designed living room that had the sort of furnishings that suggested either Gelling came from money or he knew exactly what to do with it when he earned it himself.

  On a round mahogany table in the center of the room was a Lalique Bacchantes vase. Just from the depth of its opalescence alone, Carmen knew it was an original made by Rene Lalique himself.

  The current revivals the company made were beautiful, but inferior. Some thought they looked like frosted glass. But this was the real thing from the late twenties, something she’d only ever seen in a museum. With its graceful series of nudes surrounding the vase, it was the epitome of the Art Nouveau movement she loved so much. She was a long way from her days as an art history major in Spain, but the bug hadn’t left her. A part of her wanted to go over and admire the vase. She wanted to touch it.

  But Big Ben was having none of that. There was no slowing him down. Soon, they were in the library and she faced Gelling, an ancient-looking man with a full head of white hair neatly combed back and an inquisitive face that brightened when he saw her. In his plush, battery-powered wheelchair, he buzzed quickly toward her.

  “Carmen Gragera,” he said in a voice that wasn’t as frail as it was when she spoke to him last night on the phone. “I’m so glad you came.”

  “Thank you for seeing me.”

  He stopped just short of her and looked up at her with clouded green eyes that reminded her of the sea. He reached out his hand and she shook it. Here is where she felt his frailty. His skin was soft and papery. His fingers, twisted from arthritis, were so slender, she knew she could snap them with a brisk shake. On the back of his hands were brown spots and purple bruises. It reminded her of her grandfather’s hands not long before he died.

  “My name is Gelling,” he said. “James Gelling. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve heard about you, you know?”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Vincent thinks a lot of you.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. It’s mutual. I’ve learned a lot from him.”

  “Take it all in, my dear. Take it all in. He’s the best. You’ve worked with him only once, correct? That Wall Street job?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Didn’t go as planned, I hear.”

  “Sometimes, it doesn’t.”

  He waved his crippled hand in the air. “So many things don’t. Look at me, for instance. Pretzels for fingers. Trapped in this wheelchair. A slave to its batteries, not to mention to my own body, which has betrayed me worse than my own children did.” He cocked his head at her. “All of them are dead, you know? I outlived them all. Every last one. Isn’t that unusual? And wonderful, given how they treated me. How old do you think I am?”

  She knew better than to stretch the truth with this man. She studied his face and gave it her best shot. “In your nineties?”

  “High or low end?”

  “Depends on how young you were when you had your children.”

  “I’m not saying.”

  “Then I’m thinking somewhere in the middle.”

  “So, I’ve done well,” he said. “The lotions worked. And you’ve fed my vanity, which doesn’t happen often enough. I’m one-hundred-and-three-years-old, Carmen. I could be gone during this very meeting, so you should prepare yourself for that. I could just slump over in my chair, shit my pants, and that’s it. Lights out. That’s what it’s like at my age. You never know when death will hit. Being this old is the most surreal experience. I go to sleep at night and think, ‘Well, that’s it. Surely, I’ve snuffed the final candle by now.’ Then I wake the next morning stunned to realize I have another shot to make a difference.”

  “How do you make a difference?” she asked.

  “In all sorts of ways. I believe one of them is the reason you’re here. Come, come. Over to those sofas behind me. Have a seat in one of them. If I’m going to help you, I want to get to know you better. I want to know about you.”

  She felt her guard go up. Carmen rarely spoke about her personal life. Since her early twenties, the only person she fully let in was Alex.

  He whizzed over in his chair, which whirred past her as if a gigantic bee had been let loose in the room. She sensed he enjoyed the speed. Got a little thrill from it. “Would you like something to drink? Iced tea? Coffee?”

  “I’d love an iced tea.”

  “Lemon? No lemon?”

  “Lemon.”

  “Sweetened? Unsweetened.”

  “Unsweetened.”

  “I figured as much. You’re trim.” He look up at her friend, Big Ben with the watch eyepatch, who was standing beside the sofa in which she sat, his massive forearms folded across the broad expanse of his equally massive chest. “An unsweetened ice tea with lemon for Carmen and the same for me, please. Don’t forget my straw. And stop looking so tense, Frank. Carmen is a friend of Vincent’s and thus she’s a friend of ours. We’re just going to chat for a bit before we get down to it.” He lowered his voice and spoke to Frank as if she wasn’t there. “I’m curious to know how she became an assassin.”

  When Frank left, Gelling looked at Carmen and said, “Did the watch render you useless for a moment?”

  “I’m not sure about useless. But I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Frank’s an eccentric.”

  “I’d finger him as former Marine.”

  “And you’d be correct. But the watch,” he whispered. “I think it gives him an edge. It catches people off guard. You wouldn’t believe the situations it’s helped him out of. He’s a beast of a man, of course, but when he appears, what people see first is the watch. They can’t help but stare at it. It’s actually very shrewd of him. It allows him that additional moment to act. You should try it?”

  “I prefer my Glock to a clock.”

  “Clever. So? Back to you. How did you fall into that line of work? You don’t look the type.”

  You haven’t seen me cut a man’s throat.

  “Mr. Gelling...,” she said.

  “I understand. You’re uncomfortable talking about how your past led to your present. Many of you are. But to help you, I need to know you. Not everything. But as a former psychiatrist, I’m naturally curious. How does one choose a career of delivering death? What happened in their lives to make such a decision—and then to master the craft? You don’t need to give me every gory detail, Carmen, but if you want me to help you find Katzev, which I can, I do expect you to play nice and tell me how you got to where you are now.”

  At first, she didn’t speak. It was unnatural for her to share such intimate information with a stranger. Even Vincent didn’t know anything about her personal life—he never asked, likely because she’d turn the tables and ask him how he got involved in the business. But looking at Gelling and his growing impatience, she knew she had no choice if he was going to help her. “My father was an assassin,” she said. “I learned from him.”

  “What a curious inheritance. When was this?”

  “When I graduated college.”

  “What did you study?”

  “Art history.”

  “Well, there’s a stretch. From Matisse to murder. That would be fun to read on a resume. Did you always know about your father’s line of work?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “What did you think he did for work?”

  “I was told that he worked as a corporate consultant. Turns out that was true, only when I found out what he was consulting them on, it wasn’t exactly as innocent as it sounded at the time.”r />
  “How did you find out?”

  “I was abducted.”

  She watched Gelling’s face light up again. He was enjoying the story. It didn’t matter to him that reliving that time in her life was painful for her. If Spocatti hadn’t sent her here, she’d leave.

  “By whom?” he asked.

  “Men my father were hired to kill. They caught wind of it—don’t ask me how, because I don’t know—and they came after me. I was working at the Met at the time. I used to walk part of the way home, especially in the fall, because for me, this is the best time of year to be in Manhattan. I was on Fifth. They pulled alongside me in a limousine, held a gun on me, told me to get inside and took me hostage. They warned my father that if he didn’t allow them to leave the States and go back to their country, where they stupidly thought they’d be safe, they would kill me. My father agreed. I was released. They got on a plane and went home. My father waited two months, hopped on a plane and killed them in Stockholm.”

  “It’s always Stockholm,” he said. “Or Berlin or Beirut. Or Moscow or Madrid, but never Brisbane. Never Canada. Never Maine. How those areas must feel slighted by assassins.”

  She just stared at him.

  “How did you feel when you knew who your father was?”

  “Betrayed.” She paused and thought back to that time. Now, Carmen was thirty-eight. She was twenty-three when she was abducted. Had it really been fifteen years since she first learned the truth of who her father was? She was surprised by how quickly the time had passed, and also by how much she had changed during that time. “But also relieved. He saved my life.”

  “But only after he put it in jeopardy.”

  “Indirectly, but you’re right.”

  Gelling was about to speak when Frank entered the room with the iced teas. The room’s bright sunlight reflected off the watch, making it appear like a sphere. Carmen wondered if it glowed in the dark.

  Frank stopped beside them. Gelling’s tea had a straw in it with an extendable tip. When the drinks were delivered, he shooed the man away.

  “During those two months, you and your father must have talked.”