The Last Minute (52 page)

She blinked back slowly from the chloroformed unconsciousness. Her nose ached and her lips were thick where he’d hit her.
She could see, on the van floor, splinters from the boxes where she and Bertrand had loaded in the dead guards she and Sam
had killed when they got the best lead on Anna Tremaine and Daniel. She should have swept it more thoroughly.

Why are you in New York?
Sam had asked her when he’d come to The Last Minute after leaving Las Vegas, and she answered, with a smile:
shoes
. He thought she was being Mila, joking, parrying his question. But what Sam had not quite learned was that she spoke the
truth more often than not.

She had indeed gotten shoes in New York. Custom-made boots. She eased the back of her heels closer to her hands. On the left
boot she maneuvered her fingertips into place and gave the heel a slight twist and push all at once, like on a medicine bottle.
The right heel popped off. Embedded in it was a handcuff key. A universal key, especially made for her by a master locksmith
who had once been the KGB’s finest lock designer. She freed the key from the heel with a finger flick, and then repositioned
herself gently, trying to ease the key into the lock.

‘I can hear you, you know,’ the man driving the van said. ‘Nice sleep?’

‘I had bad dreams.’

‘Baby, you’re about to have much worse. But then your dreams will end.’

‘You have a poetic soul.’

‘I have received many compliments in my life but that is a first. Thank you, Mila.’

‘What is your name?’

‘Oh, I should keep some secrets. I’m just a nobody.’

‘I have seen your face on a camera. A picture I think Sam will send to the CIA.’

Silence.

‘Ah. You do not like that,’ Mila said. ‘You are a nobody they will know, yes?’

‘My name is Braun.’ He said it with pride. ‘I want you to know who’s beaten you after others have failed.’

‘Well, Mr Braun, I will pay you more than a million dollars to let me go.’

‘Tempting. But this isn’t about money. It’s about cleaning house. Setting a mistake to right. I understand that’s how you
got your start, setting a mistake to right.’

‘It’s hard to be the star of your own legend.’

‘I find your confidence in the face of death charming. I like you. If Mr Zviman wasn’t so specific about getting you alive
and in a state to be tortured, I might give you a mercy bullet.’ His voice sounded almost merry. ‘Out of respect.’

‘I am curious … ’

‘Why would you be, when you’re about to die? I wouldn’t bother learning new facts. I would be reflecting on all the old choices
that brought me here. We have a duty to learn more from our mistakes. I mean, you’re one of my mistakes, and I’m learning
from you. I would have liked to have dinner with you, Mila. Talked to you. You fascinate me. Both you and Zviman.’

He wasn’t talking about her but she wanted him to keep talking. He would be less likely to notice anything she did.

‘I am not sure how I am your mistake,’ Mila said. The
handcuff pick slid home. Now, if it would work. It better. She had paid very good money for it.

‘You. Zviman. Two sides of the same coin, my dear. I mean, there’s an irony that I’m going to profit from my mistake. But
after all I am cleaning up the mess. I was retired. I had a place to live in Florida. I was going to focus on golf and fishing.
Mistakes shouldn’t come back to haunt you at that point in life. Mistakes should die first and then let you die.’

This Braun was a crazy man. The handcuff opened. She gave out a little sigh.

‘I do not know what you mean. I am not a coin.’

‘No, Mila, you’re a jewel. But you are worth a great number of coins. Retirement doesn’t go as far as it used to.’ He gave
a sigh. ‘Now I can retire in peace, knowing my past mistakes are rectified. It should really help my golf game.’

She eased a wrist free. She was careful not to make a clicking sound.

Now the other heel. She loosened it and wedged in the heel was a small, sheathed knife. She flicked off the sheath and the
knife, forged from Japanese steel, rested in her hand. It was actually harder to cut the ropes around her feet than open the
cuffs; it required more movement to saw through the fibers.

‘Well, I find it odd that I am your mistake when I have never seen you before. Are you my long lost father, Mr Braun?’

‘Not biologically, but, yes, I am your father, in a manner of speaking.’

Okay, she thought, entirely crazy. ‘You cannot answer straight questions,’ she said. ‘You must have been CIA. You talk all
vaguely, just like Sam.’

‘Yes, he’s the problem, isn’t he? It all comes back to him.’

She felt the van slow, make a turn. They had been driving
north in a relatively straight stretch; she couldn’t see, but she assumed he had the GPS monitor up in the seat with him.

‘We’re here, Mila. Here where it all began,’ he said. ‘Where it was all born.’

He stopped the van.

‘Well, that’s not good,’ he said. ‘I better not be too late.’

And then he got out of the van and slammed the door.

Mila writhed, slashing at the ropes. She had maybe eight seconds before Braun opened the van’s rear door.

Not enough time.

‘Leonie.’ My glance kept flickering between the gun and the baby. ‘What are you doing?’

She wept, tears bright on her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t let you take him.’

‘That is Daniel. Where is your child?’

She glanced at Daniel. He cooed and moved against her, gently. As though he knew the smell of her skin, the swell of her breast.

I shook my head. ‘No. No.’

‘He’s mine. I’m all he’s ever had, all he’s ever known,’ she said. ‘He’s not yours any more. His name is Daniel Taylor Jones.
I sometimes call him Dat. Like in a peek-a-boo game, I go who, then I go dat, and he laughs.’ Fresh tears, but her mouth curled
into a twist of resolve.

‘He is my son,’ I said and she steadied the gun. ‘Okay, okay,’ I said. I raised my hands. ‘Leonie. We can talk about this.’

‘No. No talk. I am leaving. With
my
son.’

‘The child in the picture you showed me … ’

‘That was my first child. My daughter. I had to leave … Ray Brewster when I got pregnant. I didn’t want him to be the father.
He wouldn’t have let me be tied down with a child; in case I ever had to run with him. Children complicate everything. So
I went.’ She steadied her voice. ‘I would have liked … someone like you, Sam, I so don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to.
I will keep him safe in a way you can’t, not with the life you lead, the enemies you have. So move to the wall, and keep your
hands up, and let me leave.’

‘What happened to your daughter?’ As long as she was talking, she wasn’t shooting me or leaving.

‘She died. She died.’ And I thought the grief would make her body fold. ‘Meningitis. It takes them so fast. She … I had done
work for Anna. On the babies’ new identities. She gave me Daniel. She said … he could be mine. A replacement, but he’s not.
I loved Taylor just as she was, she was the greatest, Sam … oh, God … ’

‘I bet she was.’ My own face felt hot and heavy. ‘Leonie, please.’

‘ … but … but she gave me Daniel and I love him just as much … ’ her voice broke to a whisper. ‘And you are not going to take
him away from me.’

I could see how Zviman and Anna had planned this ending. I, the ex-CIA, killed Jack Ming, the one man CIA Special Projects
wanted more than anyone else. Then I died, at Leonie’s hand, when my defenses were down, when victory was in my
grasp. Leonie as a partner would ensure that I would not betray or move against Nine Suns, and, if I did, she had every reason
to kill me.

Leonie would have a bigger motive for wanting me dead than anyone in Nine Suns. I could take away the thing most precious
in the world to her.

‘Give me my son,’ I said. I opened my hands toward her.

‘He isn’t yours. I’m his mother. I’m the only mother he’s ever known. That … that … traitor you married, she gave him up,
she gave him up …
’

‘I never did,’ I said. ‘You know how hard I have fought to find him—’ And then I heard it.

‘You!’ she screamed, and the sympathy she seemed to feel for me turned instantly to venom. ‘I have fought a thousand times
harder … ’

I raised a finger to my lips. ‘I heard something. Downstairs. Someone’s here.’

She shook her head. ‘You’re trying to scare me or trick me … you want to go down there and get a weapon because I’ve got the
gun … ’

‘Leonie!’ I hissed. ‘
Someone is downstairs
.’

She shut up, my tone slicing through her fury. Listening.

I held out my hand for the gun. After a moment she stepped forward, hand shaking, and gave it to me.

‘Hide,’ I whispered. And she nodded, my son gurgling against her shirt. I looked at him for one second. His eyes met mine,
his little mouth parted and a spit bubble formed and burst like a flower given a five-second life. I have never wanted to
hold another human being so badly in my life.

Instead I checked the gun for the remaining clip and I eased onto the mezzanine.

But, to Mila’s surprise, Braun didn’t come around the van’s back door.

He walked away from the van. She could hear the soft hiss of his footsteps on the gravel.

Unloading his prisoner wasn’t a priority. Fine by her. She risked a glance out the front window. Braun stood by a BMW, looking
down at the ground.
Talking
to the ground.

It must be someone lying next to the car.

Then Braun shook his head and he walked into the grand house, a gun in his hand.

She sliced through the remaining ropes, kicked them away. Her hand went to her watch. The garrote’s wire was inside, just
as when she had used it against Anna’s men in New York. She palmed the heel of her boot, with the miniature Japanese knife.
The blade protruded between her ring and middle finger. Two small weapons. She hoped they would be enough.

She let herself out of the van through the driver’s door and dropped to the ground. She looked under the van to see if she
could spot who was lying by the BMW. She saw legs, but they were upright now. Gray pants, nice shoes.

She heard a trunk open. She peered around the van.

The blond mohawk. Yaakov Zviman. He looked up toward the house and she saw a rising bruise on the side of his face. Sam hit
him, she thought.

Zviman hoisted an ax out of the BMW. He took two steps toward the house.

Then he stopped.

She ducked back around the van, cursing the gravel. It made a whispery noise that was unavoidable. She froze.

He couldn’t resist. Surely Braun had told Zviman his prize was in the van and he, instead of going inside to help Braun, he
was coming here to gloat. To make sure it was her.

Because it would only take a second, he must have thought, and he was a weak man. And she knew he thought it would strike
blind terror into her heart to see his face, her being bound and helpless. And it would have. She knew what kind of revenge
he would take on her for her maiming of him. The cruelty of it would be all but unimaginable.

‘Oh, baby,’ he called to the closed rear door of the van. ‘I don’t have the hours it will take to do you properly, not right
now, but in a few minutes. I’m going to slice you up good in front of your friends and if you scream I cut a piece off them.
Then I’m going to kill them in front of you—’ and he swung open the van door and it was empty. Just the sliced ropes and the
unlocked cuffs. She could hear his suck of surprised breath.

Let him be scared for one second, she thought.

She rounded the van’s back door and she aimed a hard punch at the side of his neck with the blade extending from her fist.
She wanted an artery. She missed as he jerked back but the knife scored north of his jaw, a hard puncture into cheek. The
blood welled up; she aimed again at his eye.

He ducked, she missed, and, grunting with pain, he swung the ax. But he was off balance and no muscle behind the swing, and
the edge bounced off the van’s door, four inches from her head. He nearly dropped the ax.

She swung her fist again, looking to slice his throat, but he kicked her midsection. She stumbled back and now he had both
hands on the ax, and momentum and balance. Her blade was a sting, his ax a missile.

‘Oh, bitch, dream come true,’ he said. ‘I’ve waited for this. I’ve so waited to feel you die.’

‘Really?’ she panted. He had a rage, she remembered. Make it work for her. ‘Does the thought of hurting me make you hard?
I mean, what’s left of it?’

He swung the ax, viciously, in an arcing trace. He missed her by inches. Then swung it back, the blunt edge catching her hand
when she made the mistake of a panicked slash. The heel blade flew out into the gravel.

‘I don’t even know what I’ll do first to you,’ he said. ‘I made a list once. It ran to three pages.’

‘Go get your list, raggedy man. I’ll wait.’

At her words he stopped swinging wildly at her. His grin was inhuman, the stuff of a leering boogeyman. He steadied the ax,
and they did a little dance on the gravel, back and forth. She badly wanted to run. But her shoes were awkward without the
heels and he could throw the ax into her back. Better to keep her face to him.

This went on for thirty long seconds. He wouldn’t quite commit. She realized, even as he choked with rage and spite, that
he was afraid of her.

‘Wow, raggedy man. Wielding an ax against an unarmed woman. And still you won’t fight.’

He snarled and chopped at her. Missed. She’d had an idea and she circled back toward the van. He stepped in too close and
she got a grip on the handle, trying to pry it from his fist. He shoved her against the side of the van, and powered a mighty
blow.

The ax slammed into the steel side of the van, perforating the
metal. It missed her head only because she fell, her heelless boots slipping and skidding out on the gravel.

He grunted as he tried to pry the ax out. It was stuck.