Vance sat on my other side, so the trip to Benscombe was pretty cozy. We didn’t talk beyond a polite offer of water on their side and an equally polite refusal on mine. I was thirsty, but the last thing I wanted was to have to pee. I knew Vance would never authorize a bathroom stop and you shouldn’t hold it too long at my age. That’s how you get UTIs.
So, I checked out. When I was a kid, I never counted sheep. Instead I silently recited the presidents in order. Then I moved on to English monarchs, elements of the periodic table by atomic weight, counting to a thousand in various languages. It doesn’t really matter what the mental task is—the point is to occupy your mind just enough to keep it from wandering off. This time I worked my way through a list of my kills, starting with the Bulgarian job out of Nice.
We turned off the main highway towards Benscombe. I looked around and stretched a little before turning to Martin.
“So, I’m guessing you were working with him the whole time?” I asked, jerking my head to Vance.
I could only see him in silhouette, but I could tell he was biting his lip.
“Not at first,” he said quietly.
“You prepared the dossier against us?” I made it a question, but I already knew the answer. I had seen everything I needed in Carapaz’s file, starting with Martin’s initials right at the start of the coded string of characters in the margin. MF—so appropriate, as it turned out.
“Yes. Naomi didn’t brief the board for the last meeting. I did. She had morning sickness and couldn’t travel,” he said, lowering his head.
I poked him in the sweater vest. “It was a shitty thing to do to us. Was it your idea or Vance’s?”
I turned and saw that Vance was watching us.
“Martin came to us,” he said. “With evidence that the four of you were taking payments to conduct hits on the side.”
“And you believed that bullshit?”
Vance shrugged and I turned to Martin.
“So you faked information that we were working freelance. Why?”
“Because the little shit thought he could outflank me,” Vance said, a smile in his voice. “He thought he could turn the board against the four of you and get us to issue a termination order. Then he would give you just enough information to come after us, using the four of you to take us out so he could take over the organization. I mean, exterminating the entire board would leave a hell of a power vacuum, wouldn’t it? You see, Billie, this was never about you. It was about Martin, thinking he could use you like his very own little puppet, jerking your strings to make you dance. You and the other three would remove the board and leave him in charge of everything.” Vance leaned over to speak to Martin directly. “But you underestimated me, didn’t you?”
Martin said nothing and Vance reached across me to give him a quick slap. A passing streetlamp threw a patch of light onto Martin’s face and I could see a line of dried blood beneath one ear. He had the look of a man who’d been roughed up a little and hadn’t enjoyed it one bit.
“And now you’ve gotten caught with your hand in the cookie jar,” I said to Martin. “What did you think, that you could move everybody around on the chessboard and when the smoke cleared, you’d be the last one standing?”
“Something like that,” he said, his jaw tight.
I looked at Vance. “So if we agree that Martin was playing us against each other, maybe we could come to terms.”
Vance shook his head. “No chance. This was too good of an opportunity to pass up.”
I nodded. “Of course it was. You’re happy we took out Carapaz and Paar. What’s the matter? Board getting too crowded and you’d like to run things alone?”
“Billie, the Museum started as a noble endeavor, but in the last few years, it’s gotten tired. And do you know why? Too many cooks. There has always been a Provenance department to identify targets, a board to vote on issuing termination orders—and that only once every quarter. It’s just so goddamned slow. That might have worked back when the Museum was founded, but it’s a whole new world now, and we’re still stuck in the dark ages. It’s time to modernize, to streamline, to overhaul and build it back up with the right leadership. The Museum has the potential to be a private army of the greatest assassins in the world.”
“Under your command,” I finished.
I saw the gleam of his teeth as he smiled in the darkness. “Somebody has to be in charge.”
I turned back to Martin. “Wow. You really got played.”
He choked back a laugh that might have been a sob. “You’re one to talk. The only reason we even found you is because you were stupid enough to send that text message.” His voice rose as he mimicked the words. “Thanks for all your help. Next time I see you, drinks are on me.”
I gave him my best outraged-old-lady look. “I didn’t tell you where we were.”
“You left your location services on,” Vance said, his voice scathing. “As soon as Martin traced your phone to Benscombe, I had a team en route to secure the others.”
The car braked to a stop. The driver stayed inside, but Vance, Martin, and I piled out with the other four. A guard was standing at the front door of the house and he stepped up to brief Vance.
“The property is secure. Three subjects in the kitchen.”
Three. I let out a breath in relief. Mary Alice, Natalie, and Helen. That meant Akiko and Minka were safe with Taverner. Whatever Vance had managed to do, he hadn’t gotten his hands on them.
I was herded into the house ahead of the others, and Martin was somewhere in the middle. I didn’t know what they planned to do with him, but I was sure it wouldn’t be pretty.
We moved down the hall and into the kitchen. Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie were seated at the table, the surface covered with a piece of flowered oilcloth. Two guards stood against the wall, weapons unholstered. Clean dishes were stacked in the drainer, but baking goods were arranged on the worktops, and somebody had left a candle burning on a saucer in the middle of the table. And coffee had been made at some point and not cleared away. A pot stood next to a sugar bowl and a few bottles of powdered creamer, but the mugs were empty.
I sniffed the air. “Bath and Body Works?”
“Marks and Spencer,” Mary Alice said. “They were having a sale.”
“It’s nice,” I told her. Somebody nudged my back with a gun and I joined them at the table. Vance took a chair also and we looked around at each other.
“So, shall I fill them in?” I turned to the others. “Correct me if I leave something out. Martin,” I said, pointing to where he stood, sniveling a little in his sweater vest, “started it all. He decided to take over the Museum. So he faked evidence that we’d been working against the board, which he presented to them, causing them to issue a termination order against us.” I looked up at him. “I guess you were thinking that once Vance was dead, you could just slip into his office and nobody would care?”
“There is an interim director clause,” Martin said quietly. “When I first came to work at the Museum, my job was digitizing the founding documents. I came across the section dealing with what would happen in the event of a succession crisis and I thought that was kind of useful information to keep handy.”
“A succession crisis?” Mary Alice raised her brows. “That sounds so official.”
Martin went on. “When a board member’s seat is unexpectedly vacated, their immediate subordinate is automatically advanced to interim board member in their place.”
Helen pursed her lips. “So if the whole board were terminated, then you and Naomi would take over? Only Naomi is out on sick leave, so that means you would have the entire control.”
“And it wouldn’t be too difficult to push out a pregnant woman working remotely,” Natalie finished. “Pretty misogynistic, if you ask me.”
“But instead,” I went on, “Vance clocked what he was up to and let him use us to take out Carapaz and Paar, leaving Vance free to revamp the Museum however he wanted.”
I leaned forward. “What was it, Vance? The money? Director’s salary not stretch as far these days?”
He shook his head. “I don’t usually hold grudges, Billie. I make an exception for you.”