“Never think I take it, or your father’s faith in my ability to protect such perfection, for granted. It’s an honor. To know one’s purpose in life…it settles the soul, and focuses the mind. You are my purpose, Miss Pris, and I pledge unconditional devotion to you in all things. Whatever you require, you need only to ask. Anything and everything I have is yours.”
Still blind to the mayhem in the market square, Otto steered the sedan past the growing crowd. They would leave Czechoslovakia and head back to Austria. Stay in the flat Otto had secured in Vienna. She would rest and try not to think about her sobering new profession, while Otto began detailing the next hit.
“You were meticulously precise, Miss Pris. Not too anxious. That’s the key. Perfection can’t be rushed. An artist is what you are. The way you—”
“Otto…please.”
“That old Brit’s cerebrum was mush before his knees hit the—”
“Trust me, I know the power behind a SS109.”
“Trust you? Of course, Miss Pris. With my life. And you know you can trust me with yours. I would die for you.” He glanced at her, his eyes full of emotion.
She knew it was true. Otto would die for her because he loved her. Ja, it was in the eyes, and she had always been good at reading the eyes. Yes, love, she saw it there now, and each time she caught him staring. And she saw something else, too—hope that one day she would return that love.
But she wouldn’t ever feel that way about him. Otto was like the brother she’d never had. He was thirty, eleven years older than she was.
She closed her eyes, and rested her head on the seat. Rubbed her forehead.
“If your headache is still bothering you, there’s a bottle of pills in the glove compartment. And water there, between the seats.”
“Thank you. Can we talk about something else?”
“You’re right. Let’s forget about Bromly. He’s history. Number two awaits us in Italy, in three weeks. An American by the name of Walrich. And like Bromly, his self-serving activities have marked him for death. Then we’re off to Poland, followed by Germany and Vancouver after that. Once we’ve finished with the first ten on the list we will take a break to let the trail grow cold. Be thinking where you want to go.” He turned and smiled at her. “I vote for someplace warm. We’ll call it a vacation.”
Prisca didn’t say anything. She wasn’t going to Poland with him after Italy. But she would let him make the flight plans and all the arrangements. Otto wouldn’t understand or appreciate what she’d been contemplating for weeks. After all, he was loyal to her father’s wishes. He bore the title of controller now. A detail man who had one primary goal—to stay on schedule and to make sure she performed perfectly.
Let Otto think she was content with the schedule that had been laid out. But things had changed since the kill-file had been composed. Tragedy had struck her life, and at the moment Otto’s focus was not hers.
Bromly may have deserved to die, but she knew of two men who deserved it more. She wasn’t abandoning her father’s instructions, or his all-important mission, just altering the line-up. Those on the list would still die, she had made a promise, and she, too, was loyal. But what difference could it make if someone lived a few weeks longer and someone else died a few weeks sooner? What would it matter if she hit number twelve and twenty-one ahead of schedule? In the end justice would still be served.
Only Otto wouldn’t understand, or agree to altering the line-up. He would remind her of their promise to each other, and to her father.
True, they were bound together by tragedy and circumstance. Her mother had died on Glass Mountain, and Otto’s father Jakob had sacrificed his life as well.
Prisca hugged herself, feeling the chill of loneliness wrap its cold fingers around her. Her life had been ripped apart—her family destroyed. She had a right to alter the schedule. She had a right to seek justice for what had been taken from her.
The revenge she sought might not be sweet, but it was necessary. Not for peace of mind—there would never again be room for solace in her heart—but she needed the finality in order to move forward.
The only sure thing in her life was the legacy her father had left behind. She was her father’s daughter, the daughter of Holic Reznik, and she would not fail him.
Practice makes perfect, he had always told her. She had taken the words to heart that day at Groffen when she’d raised her rifle and drilled the paper target with supreme accuracy. It had proven to her father that she’d been listening, demonstrated what dedication and patience could accomplish.
And it had confirmed that she was her father’s daughter in every way that was important.
“To you, Mother, I promise eternal love, and to you, Father, undying loyalty.” Prisca felt her heart constrict, felt the pain bone-deep. “And to those who took both of you from me, I promise death.”
Chapter 1
A failed mission. There had been so few of those at Onyxx that it was hard to swallow. But what else could you call it when the kill-file that had been recovered was a fraud—a fake that had led to an agent’s death, and started the killing?
What they had tried to prevent had begun. And there would be more to come. There were close to a hundred names marked for death in the infamous kill-file.
Merrick entered his office in a sour mood. He’d just faced his superiors upstairs and conceded that mistakes had been made. He had been forced to explain that somehow Holic Reznik had switched the file, and what they had recovered was a rearranged version of the master copy. A useless list that was meant to mock and torture. To twist the knife a little deeper.
Holic was a master game player. Somehow he’d managed to hand off the original to a class-act assassin who was as loyal as he was talented. Someone Holic trusted—Merrick had seen the twinkle in the devil’s eyes when Holic had spoken of his replacement. He had seen the supreme elation that the killing had begun, and that he had outsmarted them.
They were left with a useless file with dates and names out of sequence, with a nameless assassin on the loose willing to do whatever Holic asked of him.
Holic was under lock and key, but the smell of death was still ripe in the air. He was laughing at them from his cell, and it made Merrick want to strangle the bastard.
“Damn you, Holic,” Merrick muttered as he stood at the window in his Washington office. He was tempted to open his bottom drawer and pour himself a drink. He needed one, but he’d been considering joining AA. The booze had become too important, a daily necessity. Hell, he’d been slamming shots a dozen times a day for fifteen years, and it was finally catching up with him.
The truth was he hadn’t dealt with Johanna’s death. The guilt was still eating him from the inside out, and he preferred living with his pain. He deserved no better. Certainly not solace, or to be freed from his guilt. Johanna was gone, and he was the reason her life had been cut short.
Merrick slipped behind his desk and opened the report he’d received on the dead British Intelligence agent. Alton Bromly had been thirty-six, single and a veteran with a number of successful missions to his credit.
He scanned the data on how and where he’d been killed. It had all the signs of Holic’s signature assassinations—one shot, right temple. Ammunition type, a Nato-standard SS109.
“Amazing,” Merrick muttered. If he didn’t know it was a physical impossibility for Holic to make the hit, he would say that their cell guest at Clume was a magician. But Holic was no magician.
He’d been locked up behind bars for three months.
So who had pulled the trigger on Bromly? Who the hell was Holic’s sharpshooter replacement?
A loud rap sounded at the door, and Merrick closed the file. “Come in.”
Pierce