It was a tall, heavily built man in a tailored dark suit. He had a jagged scar running down his left cheek, and his eyes were completely devoid of emotion. In his right hand, fitted with a matte-black silencer, was a handgun pointed directly at my chest.
He didn’t look surprised to see me. In fact, he smiled—a cold, dead grimace.
“Well, well,” the man said, his voice a low, gravelly baritone with a distinct European accent. “Andrew told me you were clever, Mrs. Vance. But he didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to come back to the graveyard.”
My breath hitched. “Who are you?”
“The man who supposedly killed you in Nice three days ago,” he replied, taking a slow step into the room, raising the gun level with my eyes. “And now, I have to do the job properly. But before I put a bullet in you, someone wants to say goodbye.”
He reached into his pocket with his left hand, pulled out a phone, and hit speakerphone. A familiar, soft, calculating voice echoed through the quiet study.
“Is it done, Julian?” Eleanor asked over the line.
“Not yet,” Julian replied, his eyes locked on mine. “She’s standing right here. She found the safe.”
There was a brief, chilling silence on the other end of the line. When Eleanor spoke again, her voice had lost all its soft maternal warmth. It was pure, unadulterated venom.
“How disappointing, Valerie. You should have taken the money and run. Julian, make sure she suffers. And when you’re finished, look behind the desk. There is someone else who thought they could betray us.”
Julian lowered the gun slightly, pointing it toward the heavy leather armchair in the corner of the room that faced away from me. With his foot, he kicked the chair, spinning it around.
My heart completely stopped.
Tied to the chair, a gag stuffed in her mouth, her eyes wide with absolute, paralyzed horror, was Maria. Her shirt was stained with blood, and a digital timer taped to her chest was rapidly counting down from two minutes.
“Now,” Julian said, shifting his aim back to my forehead, his finger tightening on the trigger. “Let’s see how fast a dead woman can run.”
