She thought for a moment, then let out a long and sorrowful sigh, got to her feet, and pulled on her clothes. Logan lay in bed, his hard gaze fixed on her.
Belongings? She had none. Just her knives, a few bank notes and the passports she’d brought with her to Berlin with photos that resembled her appearance but attached to identities that were nothing more than a lie. Everything about her life was a miserable damn lie.
She pushed her hunting blade into the freshly stitched pocket of her new jacket, then took one last look at Logan. A man she could have loved, perhaps? No, she wasn’t capable of such a thing. And he certainly wasn’t.
They would meet again, though. She was positive of that.
Logan was, after all, still a target. But he wasn’t the only target. He could wait. Next time they met, though, one of them would likely die. But not tonight.
Without either of them saying another word, the Red Cobra turned and headed for the door.
CHAPTER 47
Present day
Ryker hadn’t seen the Red Cobra for eight years. Two weeks after leaving their hotel room in Berlin in the middle of the night, she’d ambushed and murdered Gazinsky and his wife at a remote beach hut in northern Germany. Ryker and the JIA had been trying to smuggle the Gazinskys out of the country. They never did find out what they needed from the oligarch.
The Red Cobra had ended up in a fight on a cliff top with Ryker. Or Carl Logan as he had been back then. She’d had a gun to his head, but she hadn’t taken the shot. She’d hesitated.
He hadn’t.
The last Ryker saw of her was her body falling out of view over the edge of the cliff as the bullets from his gun tore into her. She’d been presumed dead by many. Ryker had always thought differently.
She certainly wasn’t dead. Not yet.
The one saving grace when the Red Cobra attacked Ryker at Walker’s house was that the noise from Ryker – first in slamming the assassin into the shelves, and secondly his screams as the pepper spray bore into his eyes – was enough to alert Green and the armed policemen. Their responsiveness and strength in numbers were probably the only things that night that saved Walker – whom Ryker could only assume the Red Cobra had come to the house to kill.
Thankfully, the brief training that Ryker had given to the others before he’d gone to sleep had paid off. Walker, locked in the sitting room with an armed officer and Munroe, had quickly been shielded as the others searched the house and grounds for the Red Cobra.
They found nothing.
The effects of the pepper spray diminished within minutes. After an hour, the swelling in Ryker’s face had reduced enough to allow him to see again. By the time dawn came a few hours later, the pain had almost subsided.
Ryker sat on a stool at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, drinking strong coffee and eating a ham and cheese sandwich. Munroe was there too, nursing his umpteenth black coffee of the morning.
‘I don’t know what else you expect us to do now,’ Munroe said. ‘We have to get Walker moved.’
‘Yeah,’ Ryker said.
The previous night he’d been against the idea. He thought he could contain the problem, but the fact was he no longer wanted to sit around and wait for an attack. He wanted to be on the front foot. And the more he thought about it, the more he realised he didn’t care for Walker. Ryker’s job wasn't to protect him; plenty of others could do that. Ryker wanted to get to the bottom of why Kim Walker had been killed, and why the Red Cobra was on a mission of revenge in Andalusia.
‘Who can we trust?’ Munroe asked.
‘I have no idea,’ Ryker answered.
‘There must be someone.’
Ryker thought. There was Winter of course. But did the JIA commander care enough about Walker to spend the time and effort in protecting him? Ryker decided no was the likely answer.
‘It’s not my call,’ Ryker said. ‘Green is the one you need to be speaking to about protection. He can work with the Spanish police, the English too if needed, to make sure Walker is okay.’
‘But you said we can’t trust the local police?’
‘You can’t. But I know one thing: the Red Cobra is on her own. That’s how she works. She’s not with the Georgians. I’m sure the mob has paid off everyone they can around here, policemen included, but they all need to band together now. The Red Cobra’s a threat to them all.’
Green came into the room. He looked confused.
‘News?’ Ryker asked.
‘We know how she left.’ Green moved over to the breakfast bar and pouring himself a cup of coffee. ‘There’s no physical sign of her path but the CCTV we put up shows her exiting over the back.’
‘It’s just trees and rocks that direction?’ Munroe asked.
‘Yeah. Quite a scramble in the dark to get back to civilisation from there.’
‘She used the distraction to escape,’ Ryker said. ‘When the alarm was raised, everyone’s attention focused in the wrong place.’
Green shrugged. ‘She knew what she was doing. That exit route was planned.’
Ryker felt foolish that it had been so easy for her.
‘But how did she get in?’ Munroe asked. ‘Not just onto the grounds but into the house?’
‘Good question,’ Green said. ‘We have no idea how she got past us. Between eyes and the cameras, we had every angle covered.
‘No you didn’t,’ Ryker said.
‘Yes we did. We went through it all together last night.’
‘There was one angle we didn’t think of.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘She didn’t sneak into the house in the middle of the night. She was already in here.’ Ryker felt a chill run down his spine at his own words. He guessed from the shocked looks on the faces of Munroe and Green that they were feeling the same.
Ryker got to his feet. Munroe followed suit.
‘The hallway was covered,’ Ryker said. ‘Green was there.’
‘Yeah,’ Green said. ‘She didn’t come past me to get into the library. No way.’
‘And you were there the whole time?’ Ryker asked.
‘Yeah,’ Green said. ‘I mean, I went to the toilet for thirty seconds but that was it. I left the door open. I had my eyes on the hall the whole time.’
‘And the stairs?’
Green didn’t answer. Ryker fought hard not to roll his eyes. It was a mistake by Green but the policeman could hardly have expected the Red Cobra to be sneaking by in those few seconds when no one else on the grounds had once suggested there was a problem.
‘She was already upstairs?’ Munroe said, shocked. ‘But for how long?’
Ryker turned and walked out of the room, heading back through the hall then up the twisting staircase to the first floor. Green sheepishly followed, Munroe a step behind and looking bewildered.
‘We locked every room down,’ Green said, apparently still not ready to believe Ryker’s words. ‘We placed seals over the doors. Nothing’s been disturbed up here. I checked it all already.’
‘Except she knew what you were doing,’ Ryker said. ‘She probably watched and listened to you doing it. And it’s not too hard to replace a seal if you know it’s there.’