This is all you get. Leave me alone.
More discussion, then Drummond got physical with Tomas and she knew it was all over.
All it would take was a minute press of her thumb, a hint of pressure, and this would all be over.
No more Drummond. She recognized she was full of righteous anger, a feeling she remembered well from when she was younger and less disciplined. She’d acted on emotion only once. This couldn’t be about rage. This was about survival.
She’d wanted it to be Lanighan to open the second box, to blow himself off the face of the earth, because it would mean he’d betrayed her.
She held the detonator in her hand and watched. No, she wouldn’t have to blow up the box, Drummond was going to open it and do the job himself.
She heard Mulvaney telling her once, twice, perhaps with the planning of every tough job: Redundancy is your friend, Kitsune.
She gritted her teeth at the thought of her mentor, pushed him from her mind. She needed to be clear for this. There would be time enough later to find what happened to Mulvaney.
She watched Drummond stiffen, and she knew he’d realized the bomb was there. She watched Caine drag Tomas from the building, and run across the street. And she watched Drummond slowly lower the lid, then slowly step away from the box. His life was in her hands.
She hadn’t wanted it to end like this. She swallowed, breathed deeply, forced herself to calm.
Do it.
You have to survive. There is too much at stake.
Do it do it do it!
The front door opened and Drummond was outside—Do it now.
Her thumb twitched, and it was over.
68
The car shook with the force of the explosion, but Kitsune put it in gear and drove away, counting on debris from the explosion and the bursting flames to cover her escape.
Two blocks from the explosion, on a quiet, unmarked street, she found a small gray Fiat, still running, the owner probably running into the house to get something. Perfect.
She abandoned the rental in the small driveway of a town house, threw her things to the Fiat, and was gone all in under a minute.
She forced herself to calm, to think, to figure out what she was going to do now. The sky was already darkening. She would be all right. She had two more clean identities in her bag, both prepared for her by Mulvaney, and there was no one better than him. Where was he? No, she couldn’t think about him just yet, too much to do.
She started west immediately. The border was only a few kilometers out of town, and she wanted to make it through before they’d been alerted about her.
Since all available personnel would rush to the scene, including the FedPol agent, Helmut would have enough time to secure the box and its contents. She’d better come through, Kitsune thought, since she was paying her a small fortune.
Lanighan had betrayed her, just as Mulvaney had warned he might. She hadn’t seen it coming, though. She thought back to the night in Paris with him two years before; she’d weighed, judged, and decided his desire for the Koh-i-Noor would keep him on the straight and narrow. He was a businessman. He knew how things worked. So what had changed? Why did he now consider her the enemy? Why had he believed she was betraying him?
A thief who would hand over the goods in person was a fool, hardly professional. He knew this. Give him the key, make sure her money was transferred, and everyone was happy. It should have worked seamlessly. Instead it was all unraveling.
Those precautions she’d set into place were going to save her now, not only from Lanighan but from the authorities, too.
She bit her lip hard enough to taste blood. It would have to suffice for the moment, until she could feel Lanighan’s blood on her hands.
She changed quickly, pulling on a new wig and pulling out the appropriate ID from the base of her backpack. She called Marie-Louise Helmut at the Bank Horim.
“Did you secure the package in the saf
e-deposit box?”
“Yes, madam. A fortuitous happenstance, there was an explosion nearby. Even the FedPol agent went to deal with the emergency. You will not be coming back to the bank, I presume?”