Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO NEVER LEFT
Celia followed Stellan through a part of the house she had not seen before.
Past the library.
Past a locked service door.
Down a narrow staircase where the marble and paintings disappeared and the mansion became what it actually was underneath.
Stone.
Concrete.
Steel.
“No one mentioned an underground level,” Celia said.
“No one needed to.”
“Your hospitality brochure needs work.”
Stellan did not answer.
Archer walked ten feet behind them.
Two guards stood beside a reinforced door at the end of the corridor.
One opened it.
The room beyond was not a prison.
That was Celia’s first thought.
Her second was that somebody had gone to considerable effort to make sure it did not feel like one.
There was a sofa.
Bookshelves.
A small kitchen.
Two windows placed high in the wall.
A laptop sat on a wooden table beside stacks of handwritten notes.
And a woman in gray sweatpants stood in the middle of the room holding a coffee mug.
She looked about thirty.
Dark blond hair cut to her chin.
Thin face.
Sharp blue eyes.
She looked at Celia.
Then at Stellan.
“You hired another one.”
Celia stared.
“You’re the seventh interpreter.”
The woman took a sip of coffee.
“Technically, I’m the eighth if you count the man who lasted forty-three minutes and never made it onto the agency paperwork.”
Celia looked at Stellan.
He ignored her.
“My name is Mara Ellis,” the woman said.
“That isn’t the name the agency gave me.”
“No.”
“The agency said your name was Nadia Crane.”
“It was easier if Grekov believed Nadia Crane disappeared.”
Celia’s eyes narrowed.
“Easier for whom?”
Mara’s expression changed.
“For me.”
She set down the coffee.
“Three weeks ago, I heard something I wasn’t supposed to hear.”
“During a negotiation?”
“After one.”
Mara glanced at Archer.
“A Grekov lieutenant made a call from the east balcony. He thought nobody was nearby. He discussed payments to someone inside this house.”
Celia slowly turned toward Stellan.
“You have a mole.”
“Yes.”
“And instead of telling your staff, you pretended an interpreter vanished?”
“If the mole knew Mara had survived, the mole would change behavior.”
Celia looked back at Mara.
“Survived what?”
Mara lifted the left side of her sweater.
A healing scar crossed beneath her ribs.
Celia stopped breathing.
“He tried to kill you?”
Mara’s face remained flat.
“Someone tried.”
Archer said quietly, “She was found in the lower garden after midnight.”
“Who found her?”
“Mr. Varo.”
Celia looked at Stellan.
He did not elaborate.
Mara did.
“He carried me two hundred yards because the ambulance couldn’t get through the locked inner gate fast enough.”
Stellan’s jaw shifted.
“This is not relevant.”
“It’s extremely relevant to the popular theory that you murdered me.”
Celia almost smiled.
Almost.
Mara moved toward the table.
“A bullet missed anything important. Stellan decided the safest thing was to let everyone outside the inner circle believe I had disappeared.”
“Why stay here?”
“Because the person who shot me believed I died.”
Mara opened a folder.
“And because I recognized two words from that phone call.”
She slid a page toward Celia.
Celia read them.
Krasny Bereg.
Red Shore.
Her throat tightened.
“That could mean anything.”
“It’s the name of a shipping company,” Mara said.
“I know.”
Stellan looked at Celia.
“You do?”
“My mother worked for them.”
The room changed.
Mara’s gaze sharpened.
“When?”
Celia shook her head.
“I don’t know. Before I was born, apparently.”
Stellan took the paper.
“What did they move?”
Mara answered.
“Officially? Agricultural machinery, industrial metal, marine equipment.”
“And unofficially?”
Mara looked toward Celia.
“I don’t know.”
Celia heard the unspoken answer.
Nothing good.
She suddenly felt cold.
“My mother translated paperwork.”
“Maybe,” Stellan said.
Celia turned on him.
“Careful.”
There was something in her voice that made Archer look over.
Stellan did not move.
“I’m not accusing your mother.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to say paperwork can contain information people kill to control.”
Celia looked away.
That was worse because it was reasonable.
Mara pulled another file from the table.
“The person I overheard said Krasny Bereg twice. Then he said a name.”
“What name?”
Mara paused.
“Rowe.”
Celia went completely still.
“My name?”
“I didn’t know that three weeks ago.”
Stellan’s eyes were fixed on her.
Celia looked at the papers scattered across the table.
A photograph sat between two documents.
She reached for it.
Stellan said, “Celia.”
Too late.
She picked it up.
The photograph was old.
At least twenty-five years.
Four people stood on a dock beside shipping containers beneath a gray Russian sky.
One was Viktor Grekov.
Much younger.
One was a man Celia did not recognize.
One was a thin young woman in a winter coat.
Celia knew her immediately.
Her mother.
She lowered the photograph.
“No.”
Mara said nothing.
Celia turned it over.
A date had been written on the back.
Twenty-seven years earlier.
Two years before Celia was born.
“Where did you get this?”
“From a document Grekov’s interpreter accidentally included in a negotiation packet,” Mara said.
“Accidentally?”
“I thought so at first.”
Celia looked at the fourth person.
A tall American-looking man with sandy hair.
Something about his face bothered her.
She stared longer.
The jaw.
The shape of the eyes.
Her stomach turned.
“That’s my father.”
Nobody spoke.
Celia had not seen him in twelve years.
But she remembered that face younger.
Smiling beside a Christmas tree.
Sitting behind the wheel of a pickup.
Angry in doorways.
Apologizing afterward.
Her parents had told her they met in Alaska.
The picture in her hand proved that was a lie.
“My parents knew Grekov before I was born.”
Stellan nodded once.
“It appears so.”
Celia dropped the photograph on the table.
“I need answers.”
“Yes.”
“From my mother.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re going to let me leave.”
“No.”
She stared at him.
“Stellan.”
It was the first time she had used his first name.
Everybody noticed.
His eyes changed.
Not softer.
More alert.
“Grekov spoke your mother’s birthplace in front of eight armed men,” he said. “Then someone left a note outside your bedroom about a woman the world thinks is missing. Someone inside this compound knows you are connected.”
“Which means my mother could be in danger.”
“Which is exactly why I sent people to her before bringing you down here.”
Celia froze.
“You what?”
“Protection.”
“You sent armed strangers to my mother’s apartment without asking me?”
“They haven’t approached her. They’re watching the building.”
“That is not better.”
“She has dialysis tomorrow morning.”
Celia’s anger disappeared.
“How do you know that?”
“You left the schedule in your briefing folder.”
She thought about the printed papers on the passenger seat of her Honda.
The stupid pink dialysis calendar her mother insisted on using.
Stellan had noticed.
Of course he had.
“Get her out,” Celia said.
“I intend to.”
“Not to some mysterious basement.”
Mara lifted her coffee.
“It grows on you.”
Celia ignored her.
“I want my mother brought somewhere she chooses. With medical care. She needs dialysis.”
Stellan looked at Archer.
“Arrange it.”
Archer nodded.
Celia stared at him.
“That easily?”
“No.”
“What?”
“It isn’t easy.”
Stellan stepped closer.
“It is necessary.”
For one strange second, Celia saw something beneath the ruthless stillness.
Not kindness exactly.
Recognition.
He knew what it was to have one vulnerable person capable of destroying every rational decision you thought you could make.
Then a loud crack sounded somewhere above them.
Everyone froze.
A second later, the lights went out.
Darkness swallowed the underground room.
Archer’s voice came sharply from behind her.
“Down.”
Stellan’s hand closed around Celia’s arm and pulled her behind the stone wall beside the doorway.
Emergency lights flickered red.
Then came another sound.
Not thunder.
Gunfire.
Mara dropped flat behind the sofa.
A guard shouted into his radio.
No answer.
The system had gone dead.
Stellan looked toward Archer.
“Inside?”
Archer nodded grimly.
“Has to be.”
Celia’s heart slammed against her ribs.
May you like
The mole had stopped hiding.
And whoever he was, he had chosen tonight to finish what he started.
