Page 109 of The Big Fix

“And to prove your loyalty, you had to kill him.”

Slow nod.

“He knew he was done, so he told you to do it.”

“Don’t presume to imagine how it happened,” she snarled at me, her mask starting to slip. She was all fury and pain and vengeful wrath under her veneer of calm.

“Okay,” I said, understanding right then that I would never be safe from this woman. Not me, not Owen, not ever. She would have her pound of flesh because it was personal.

“I proved my worth to the group. That was all that mattered since my love was dead.”

“Why me?” I had to know.

“Ronan was dead, his wife was dead, but you, Colonel, the one who helped engineer his change of heart, who threw him a lifeline, who planned to deliver him to the embassy the following day, you were still alive.”

“He told you all that?” I blurted out.

She nodded.

How stupid could the man be? Years of training out the window because Ronan thought she was a victim as much as he was.

“You blame me,” I said flatly, “but in the end, like you said, he didn’t want to betray his country. And turning himself in was the only way he could make sure his family was safe.”

Ignoring me, she continued, “But his wife was dead, and even though you were gone, nowhere to be found, there was still one person I could strike at—the child, whom I’d had the foresight to grab despite my husband’s objections. So I sold the boy to the Macau sex trade, thought nothing more of it. But my happiness in knowing that Ronan’s son would be defiled was short-lived. When you tore through the city to find the boy, you gave me the instrument of my revenge. And while it was impossible to strike at you in the US or Europe, I knew if I was patient, if I waited, if I planned, I could get to you through Ronan’s son.”

We lapsed into silence then, each taking the measure of the other.

“So,” she said, uncrossing and recrossing her legs, leaning a bit forward. “Did you arrive here this evening prepared to die?”

“No,” I said flatly. “I came to kill you.”

She laughed. “How like a man to assume that since I’m a woman, you can dispatch me so easily.”

“No. Not at all. I didn’t even know who you were, as you recall.”

I watched her startle over the reminder.

“My plan when I came here was to kill whoever tried to kill Owen, and now that I know you’re the one who sold Owen to the sex trade, I know you’ll never stop.”

“No, I won’t.”

“But if I kill you, nothing changes. I don’t see how that fixes anything.”

She hated me, yes, but she was also confused at the moment. “There’s nothing to fix, Colonel. The damage was done a lifetime ago. What could you possibly hope to accomplish?”

“The dismantling of everything you’ve built on the blood of others. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do until right this second. But you dying is too easy. You have to help put a lot of people behind bars.”

“You’re deluded,” she replied, her voice almost shrill, thrumming with anger.

“You killed a CIA agent and his wife, and you kidnapped their son—twice. You have to pay for that.”

At which point the agents Darius had promised me rushed through Ming Gray’s front door.

She had a gun shoved down between the couch cushion and the arm, but she went for it too late. The agents had her restrained in seconds.

“We’re all older,” I told her as she was handcuffed. “None of us are as fast or as deadly as we once were.”

She started screaming then, threatening me with everything she could think of.