To Catch a Cook: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (22 page)

Paavo’s blood froze at the sound of a cry, a woman’s cry. It echoed through the walls, the tunnels, the myriad chambers of the battlements. Where was she? What was happening to her?

“Drop your gun, Bond,” the voice said.

“No!” He searched the darkness in vain, then pressed the gun to Angie’s head. “Leave here or I’ll kill her.”

A woman stepped out of the shadows. She was tall and thin, dressed in a black flak jacket, black slacks, and boots. She ripped the black cap from her short, gray-streaked hair. As she moved closer, in the moonlight, Angie could see her cold, green eyes; stern, narrow face; and the large automatic pistol she pointed at Bond.

Bond spoke, not in recognition, but a curse. “You!” He gulped air, tightening his grip on Angie, causing her to press closer to him. “I suspected it was you who ran over the Russian, and shot the other one when he was trying to put the bomb in the bitch’s car. Even you who stopped Partridge’s hired sniper from killing the cop.”

The woman’s smile was wolflike. “Nice fireworks, weren’t they?”

Bond backed up, clutching Angie in front of him like a shield.

The woman followed, her footsteps soundless. “All these years of waiting. Of needing to know the truth. Why you killed Mika. Why! And all because of Partridge. You see, Mika didn’t know about the cameo, what it signified. But you, after you shot Sam, you must have recognized Mika from my surveillance photos.”

Bond chuckled viciously. “So you finally put it all together, Cecily.”

Cecily
. Angie’s heart thudded. Paavo’s mother. The resemblance came as a jolt, but once she saw it, she wondered how she had missed it before. She could blame the disguises, she thought with a twinge of the same hysteria she knew Bond was feeling. Colored contact lens, wigs, clothes, padding, all clever disguises, so clever she never recognized that Irene Billot and the nun—the nun who watched over Aulis and kept him safe from this killer—were the same woman, were this woman. But the resemblance that Angie should have caught went beyond disguises. They were there in the height and breadth of the brow, in the firm set of the mouth, even the quiet, pantherlike way she and her son moved.

Bitterness and hatred filled Cecily’s eyes. “It was all a setup from the meeting in the theater. Mika was terrified on the phone. I told you that, didn’t I? He’d seen Sam die in the drive to the hospital, but he thought you were part of the mob. He never knew that you were my boss. You sent us to the safe house to be killed by your Russian goons.”

“It’s too bad they missed you and your brats. We found the kids, by the way. About two years after
you disappeared. Using the name Smith! How prosaic. But I admit, you had me fooled. When you didn’t deign to show up at your own daughter’s funeral, even I figured you were dead. Such a good mother!”

There were no tears, only an icy, brittle hardness and implacability in her. “I knew there were others involved besides you. But nothing I did in the past ever told me who or why. Not until this time. Not until I followed Paavo and his woman, followed the clues to Partridge. He was your weak link. And you killed him.” She trained her gun on Bond. “And now I’m going to kill you.”

Both Angie and Bond spoke at the same time.

“Drop the gun, Cecily, or I’ll kill the little bitch!” Bond yelled.

“No! Wait!” Angie cried. “We can prove he’s guilty.”

Paavo recognized Angie’s voice, and felt a relief so profound that tears came to his eyes. He heard Bond’s voice. And another voice. A woman’s. Eerily familiar.

“I don’t play games, Cecily,” Bond shouted. “Drop it now or I’ll put a bullet in your son’s girlfriend.”

“No!” Angie was frantic, trying to wriggle free, but Bond’s lock hold on her arm and neck only tightened.

Cecily didn’t flinch, and the bitter realization that the woman didn’t care hit Angie with a paralyzing force. Suddenly she was more afraid of Cecily than Bond. Bond needed her, but Cecily…

“Listen,” she cried. “We’ve got Jessica’s ticket stubs! That has to mean something or why is he so desperate to get them from me? With them, along with whatever we find in Partridge’s records—and
we’ve found Sawyer, too; he knows a lot about all this—together we’ll be able to convict Bond. He’ll go to jail. He’ll pay!”

Cecily didn’t even look at her, but kept malignant eyes boring into Bond. Her voice was inexorable as death. “I didn’t come back to put him in jail. I needed to know why he killed Mika. The whole truth, everyone who took part. I waited for the truth so I could kill him.”

A rush filled Angie’s ears. Cecily was going to shoot. She was going to kill Bond, and he, in turn, would fire.

“Put down the gun…Mother.” Paavo stepped out of the shadows.

“Paavo!” Angie struggled harder, but Bond’s hold cut off her air and nearly tore her arm from its socket.
No
, she wanted to cry, straining to breathe. She saw Paavo’s gun trained on his mother.
Not this way, please God
, she whispered.

“Yes, Cecily, do as your son says,” echoed Bond. “Do it or I swear I’ll kill her.”

Cecily didn’t avert her eyes. “Stay back, Paavo. Don’t get in my way.”

Paavo stared at the woman in front of him, at the gun she pointed at Bond.

She was quite different from the photos he’d seen, not only in age, but much harder, much more world-weary. He had always wondered what color her eyes were. Now she was close enough that he could see they were a light grayish-green color, and that her once-auburn hair was almost completely gray. But the shape of her face was the same as in the photos, as was her nose, her mouth. He should have noticed them earlier, even with the wimple. He should have realized why the sound of her voice in the hospital had such a strange effect on him. He should have known immediately—rather than
merely suspected much later on—who the nun really was.

This woman was alien and familiar at once to him. He saw traces of himself in her, and memories washed over him, overwhelmed him with a child’s joy, a grown man’s sorrow, and a cop’s futility.

All these weeks of confusion, anger, and longing, epitomized in this one moment. And this was all there ever was.

“Don’t do it, Cecily,” he said again. Not Mother, but Cecily now—actress, fugitive, killer. The grief that pierced him was sharper than any knife.

Cecily’s face, her voice, were terrible. “I betrayed Mika! I loved him more than life, but I gave him to this bastard, and I never knew why.”

Angie couldn’t stop her tears. “No, you didn’t! You couldn’t have known. You didn’t know he was working with Partridge. It wasn’t your fault.” She wept for the family broken apart by one man’s heinous mistake and another’s callous indifference, for the innocent lives lost, for the lies and deceit.

Bond sneered. “How touching! So you didn’t come back for your precious son, Cecily. How does that make you feel, Inspector? I hate to break up this reunion, but Miss Amalfi and I are going to walk out of here now. If anyone makes a move, I’ll kill her.”

“You aren’t leaving, Bond!” Cecily said. “Do you really think I can miss at this range? I’ve learned a lot these past years. I’ve worked in ‘security’—I’ve learned how to kill. And you taught me all about being ruthless.”

Angie saw the unyielding determination in Cecily’s eyes and knew she would do as she said. Kill Bond. And she, too, would die. She didn’t want the last sight of her life to be the barrel of a gun, and cast her gaze on Paavo, giving him all the love she
felt. In her peripheral vision she saw Cecily’s arm adjust to a firing position. She held her breath.

“No!” Paavo said with a passion that shook his voice. “Don’t you do it! You, Aulis, Jessica, this gutless bastard—all of you deprived me of my parents a long time ago. Don’t you take Angie from me, too! Don’t you make me live alone for the rest of my life, regretting every minute of every day what happened here. Regretting the trust I gave. I can’t, I won’t live without her!”

Something flickered across Cecily’s face, but Angie’s eyes were too filled with tears to see clearly.

A loud report shattered the night.

Angie felt the gun barrel knock hard against her temple, felt shock waves blast through her body. She fell to her knees, her eyes squeezed tight. Not until she heard a thud and metallic clatter did she open them again.

Her gaze flew to Paavo. He stood staring at her, pale as death, without moving, without breathing. Then, when their eyes met, he was suddenly holding her, lifting, moving her away from the open area, his arms wonderfully tight about her, his heart pounding so hard his body shook from it. In a darkly shadowed area, he had her curl up as he hunched low over her, shielding her with his body. Gun raised, he peered into the darkness.

Cecily’s gun was also raised, but toward the foliage beyond the battlement, her eyes searching it as she crouched and stepped slowly backwards toward them.

Angie didn’t understand what had happened. She lifted her head and found Bond. Shock pulsated through her at the open, unseeing eyes, at the blood-soaked mass where the entire side of his head had been blown away.

“Hold your fire. We aren’t after you,” a heavy
voice called out. A man came up the stairwell and walked toward them, four others behind him.

As he neared, Angie saw it was the old man she had once met in a restaurant, the flirtatious Nick.

“What’s he doing here?” she whispered to Paavo, sitting up.

“You know him?” Paavo asked.

“Nikolai,” Cecily said. She stepped forward. Gun in hand, Paavo moved to her side, keeping Angie tucked behind him. She grabbed the back of his jacket just to have something secure—Paavo—to hold on to.

“We meet again, Cecily,” Nikolai said. He glanced at Angie peeking around Paavo’s shoulder. “And my
devuchka
, hello to you. My men saw Tucker Bond get into your car. They followed and called me, but unfortunately, lost you for a while in this infernal complex. I’m sorry.”

Angie was stunned. Even more so when she saw, moving to his side, Stavrogin, holding a rifle. Her fingers gripped Paavo’s jacket even tighter.

“Who are you?” Paavo asked.

“You probably know me as Koba,” the Russian replied.

Cecily placed her hand atop Paavo’s gun and pressed downward. Paavo lowered his arm. Angie realized why. Their weapons were of no use to confront this man. Koba—Nikolai—had a small army to protect him.

“I thought you were a better man than to work with a piece of shit like Tucker Bond,” Cecily said to Nikolai, her chin jutting arrogantly.

He gave a loud laugh. “Perhaps now, older and hopefully wiser, I am.” Then his eyes turned sorrowful. “We were all so young then, my Cilochka. Some terrible things happened. We made a mistake with the Finns, with your husband. I’m sorry for that.”

She continued to glare at him with disgust.

“It was because of the Soviets,” he continued. “How I hated them! After they imprisoned our people, we couldn’t think straight. When Bond told us where to find Mika, we went and killed him.”

“I knew it,” she whispered.

“I didn’t learn until later, after other things happened, how we had been deceived. Bond was a whore. He’d work with anyone he could use—the Soviet government, the
mafiya
, Partridge. And for us, it was helpful to have an FBI insider on our payroll.”

“Yet you killed him?” Cecily couldn’t hide her confusion.

“He was out of control and needed to be stopped. We couldn’t afford Bond standing trial.” Nikolai shrugged. “Such is life.”

Cecily drew herself up tall. “So it is.” She faced him squarely. “I suspect you want to shoot me, too, now. It doesn’t matter, Nikolai. I’ve lived too long, anyway. But you said you regret what happened in the past. I have a way to ease that regret—let my son and his friend go. They aren’t a part of this.”

He turned the thin slits of his eyes toward Paavo and Angie.

“Just me, that’s enough,” Cecily said.

“Don’t,” Paavo said to her softly. She refused to look at him. All her attention was on Nikolai, her expression uncompromising.

“Let them go,” she said.

“Your son is very stubborn, Cecily. I had Stavrogin warn him to back off, but he wouldn’t listen. And he’s a cop.” Nikolai gazed at Paavo, then a long moment at Angie. “All right. He can go—and the young lady, too.”

Cecily shut her eyes, but only for an instant.

Nikolai looked from mother to son. Then his gaze
met Cecily’s and his expression hardened. “We will not meet again, Mrs. Turunen. The scorecard is even between us. I think I’ve grown far too old and fat and sentimental for all this. I will let you go as well, even though you know too much about my operation, and you’ve killed too many of my men. It’s true Bond sent them after your son and his friend, but some of my associates do not take kindly to having our men…intercepted, shall we say?” He smiled at Cecily’s silence, one professional to another. “Exactly. I will hold them off for forty-eight hours. Enough time, I’m sure, for you to disappear again. And my present to Miss Amalfi for the fright we caused her today.”

With that, he turned and left.

In the distance came the sound of police sirens.

Cecily faced Paavo then, without a word. Her large green eyes seemed to soften, and he knew he’d never forget the way she looked at him at that moment. He understood that too much had happened, too much death and murder, and she had no choice but to leave now, just as she had so many years ago.

Emotions so strong, so unexpected and turbulent, filled him. She had walked out on him when he was a boy, and hadn’t been there all the times he had felt sad and lonely and needed her so much it seemed the center of his being was nothing but a huge, empty hole. She had grown old without him, just as he had lost his youth without her, but now he understood why she’d done it, and that made all the difference.

A moment passed, and then she straightened her spine and raised her chin. He saw that she kept herself under even tighter rein than he, that she had learned the hard way to be self-contained, and that if she was to survive, she had to continue to be
stronger and tougher and more alone than he could imagine. Her look said everything and his heart filled with feelings long denied, filled until he thought it would burst. She nodded—once—then turned and walked away.