The Doomsday Key (Sigma Force 6)

Monk took his wife’s hand. “Slow down, hon. Take a breath.”

The suggestion only made her angrier, but she kept her grip on his hand. “Another murder. Another body marked with the cross and circle.”

“Where?”

“Rome,” Kat said. “The Vatican.”

She didn’t have to explain more.

7:30 A.M.

Rome, Italy

“Let’s all just stay calm,” Seichan said, keeping her pistol steady as a rock.

Behind Gray, Kowalski dropped both bags and raised his hands. His voice soured. “I hate traveling with you, Gray. I really do.”

Gray ignored him and faced the former Guild assassin…that is, if she was former. “Seichan, what are you doing?”

His words encompassed multiple questions. What was she doing in Rome? Why was she holding Rachel hostage? What was she doing pointing a gun at him? How could she even be here?

The satellite feed from her implant had her placed in Venice. Painter would have called Gray immediately if she had moved from there to here.

She ignored his question and asked one of her own. “Are you armed?” She nodded to encompass Kowalski.

“No.”

Seichan eyed Gray, as if weighing the truth of his words. And it was the truth. They had traveled by commercial airline and had no time to acquire weapons.

Seichan finally shrugged, pocketed her pistol, and entered the room. She moved with a leonine grace, all legs and hidden strength. Gray didn’t doubt she could have her pistol back out in the blink of an eye.

“Then we can all talk like friends,” she said mockingly and tossed Gray a tiny key. It plainly fit Rachel’s handcuff.

He caught the key, stepped over to the bed, and leaned down to unlock the cuff.

“Are you okay?” he whispered in Rachel’s ear as he worked the key, his cheek near hers. The nape of her neck smelled familiar, stirring old feelings, warming embers that Gray thought had long gone cold. As he straightened, he noted that she’d let her hair grow out longer, past her shoulders. She had also thinned down, making her high cheekbones more prominent, increasing her resemblance to a young Audrey Hepburn.

Freed, she rubbed her wrist. Her voice was hard with fury and brisk with embarrassment. “I’m fine. In fact, you might want to hear what she has to say.” Her voice lowered. “But be careful. She’s drawn tight as a bowstring.”

Gray turned to face Seichan. She strolled to the window, staring out across the rooftops of Rome. The curve of the Coliseum stood against the horizon.

“Where do you want to start, Pierce?” She didn’t bother to glance at him. “Not expecting me in Rome?”

She dropped a hand to her lower left side. It wasn’t done casually, but accusingly. The tracker had been implanted during abdominal surgery last year. Just in that spot.

She confirmed what Gray feared. “It was suspicious enough that I escaped so easily from Bangkok. But when there was no hard pursuit, I knew something was wrong.” She turned and cocked an eyebrow at Gray. “A Guild agent escapes custody, but there is no more than a cursory search?”

“You found the implant.”

“I’ll give you all credit. It was difficult to find. Even a full-body MRI in Saint Petersburg failed to reveal it. Five months ago, I had a doctor perform exploratory surgery, starting with where you all operated on me.”

Here was the flaw in Painter’s original plan. They’d underestimated the level of paranoia in their target.

“The surgery took three hours,” she continued with a growing edge to her voice. “I watched it all in a mirror. They found the implant buried in my healed wound—a wound I sustained saving your life, Pierce.”

Anger hardened her face, but he didn’t fail to note a slight wounding in her eyes.

“So you removed our tracker.” Gray pictured the crooked path on the surveillance monitor. “But you still kept it with you.”

“I found it useful. It allowed me to hide in plain sight. I could park the tracker somewhere for a while, then move off on my own.”

“Like you did in Venice.”

She shrugged.

“The city where the curator you murdered lived. Where his family still lives.”

Gray let the accusation hang. Seichan shook her head very slightly and glanced away. He had a difficult time reading the play of emotions that flickered past.

“The girl had a cat,” she said more quietly. “An orange tabby with a studded collar.”

Gray knew the girl must be the curator’s daughter. So Seichan had indeed gone to check on the family, moved in close enough to observe the simple routine of their lives, a family shattered by the death of a husband and a father. She must have planted her tracker on the cat’s collar. It was a smart move. The cat’s wandering through the neighborhood streets and rooftops would make the tracker seem active. It was no wonder the agents on the ground could find no trace of her in the Venetian neighborhood. With the hounds following the false trail, the real cat had escaped.

Gray wanted more answers from this woman. One question was foremost in his mind, a conversation they’d never completed. “What about your claim that you’re a double—”

Seichan glanced sharply back at him. Her expression didn’t change, but her eyes turned rock hard, warning him to back off. He had been about to question her assertion that she was a mole planted in the Guild, a double agent put there by Western forces, but plainly this was a conversation she didn’t want in public. Or maybe he misread her expression. Maybe the bitterness in those eyes merely scoffed at his gullibility. He remembered her last words in Bangkok.

Trust me, Gray. If only a little.

Staring at her now, he let the question drop.

For now.

“Then why are you here in Rome? Why meet like this?” Gray gestured toward Rachel.

“Because I need a bargaining chip.”

“Something to leverage against me?” Gray glanced at Rachel.

“No. Something to offer the Guild. After events in Cambodia, suspicions have run high concerning my loyalty. As well as I can tell, the Guild has been sniffing around the recent bombing at Saint Peter’s. Something has piqued their interest. Then I heard that Monsignor Verona was involved in this incident—”

“Incident?” Rachel burst out. “He’s in a coma.”

Seichan ignored her. “So I came here. I believed I could benefit from this situation. If I could acquire some key piece of information about this bombing, I could buy my way back into the full trust of the Guild echelon.”