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 Fourtier entered. Like Sly and Bjorn and the other agents under Merrick’s command, Pierce had earned the Onyxx tag of rat fighter. On Merrick’s quest to find the toughest men alive for his special-ops team, he’d ventured to New Orleans to an underground club where knife-fighting had become a high-stakes game. Where only the best and the toughest survived. It was there that he’d first seen Pierce Fourtier. The man had given new meaning to the saying “splitting hairs.”
“You wanted to see me.”
“Come in and have a seat, Pierce. The killing has started. An agent was hit yesterday.”
“An agent on the list?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“In the Czech Republic. The market square at Brno. Alton Bromly, nine years at British Intelligence. Know him?”
“No. How do we know it wasn’t random?”
“It was a signature shot. One shot, right temple. Holic’s caliber. The point of entry wasn’t off even by a millimeter.”
Pierce relaxed in the chair in front of Merrick’s desk. He was dressed in a brown T-shirt, jeans and a pair of alligator-leather Western boots. He had an unmistakable Southern accent, wore his black hair ultra-short, and his bayou-bred heritage on his sleeve.
The Acadian was six-one, went two-twenty, and had lazy brown eyes that rarely expressed a fraction of what he was thinking. Those eyes had given him the nickname the Sleeper due to the unruffled dead calm that surrounded him in the midst of a crisis.
It was rumored that the Sleeper was the son of a voodoo priest in Louisiana. But no one knew for sure. Pierce’s past was as mysterious as the little town of Le Mystère which he called home.
“So what you’re saying is Holic Reznik handed the kill-file to an associate before we captured him in Austria?”
“In Bjorn’s report he says Holic doesn’t believe in the buddy system. No partners. Holic doesn’t trust anyone. But it looks like he’s trusting someone.”
“He’d have to if he wants to get the job done. He’s at Clume, and unless he’s got an inside contact to get him out of there, he’s not going anywhere.”
“This confirms that the file we recovered is a rearranged version of the master. The bitch is, we have the names sanctioned for assassination, but we don’t have the correct dates, or the locations we need to stop it.”
“So Bromly was on the rearranged kill-file we have.”
“Yes. But not number one.”
“Holic must have anticipated capture,” Pierce concluded.
“I can’t believe he would allow that. Besides, in the report Bjorn filed, he states Holic had plenty of time to run.”
“That’s true. He did. So the question is, why didn’t he?”
“He had transportation out of the country, and yet he stayed on Glass Mountain until you and Bjorn got there.”
“He believed his wife betrayed him. He hates Bjorn,” Pierce pointed out. “Health-wise, he was a mess, but he’s not used to losing.”
“What are you saying? His pride kept him there? That doesn’t make sense. Why not just disappear to an island and plot revenge and enjoy his fat bank account while he recovered?”
Pierce shrugged. “He’s a complicated bastard. His wife’s betrayal could have colored his judgment. He’s human after all. We did trick him. He never expected two more agents riding to the rescue. Bjorn’s impersonation plan worked. Holic never suspected that it wasn’t Bjorn and Nadja on the helicopter. He was fooled completely, all the way to the end. He might be locked up at Clume, but I don’t doubt he’s been busy inventing a new game.”
“You don’t believe he allowed us to corner him on that mountain?”
“No. I think he was outsmarted. But that doesn’t mean he’s ready to surrender even from behind bars.”
“And the fake kill-file?”
“Holic leaves nothing to chance. His spotless record proves that. Maybe a simple precautionary measure just in case.”
Merrick felt a chill race up his spine. They were dealing with a madman. Holic was secured behind bars, but the kill-file was still out there in the hands of someone just as talented as the master.
He watched as his agent rubbed his shoulder, and it reminded him that Pierce was slow to recover from one of the bullets he’d taken on Glass Mountain three months ago.
“How’s the shoulder doing?”
“It still gives me a little trouble now and then. But I’m good. Have you talked to Bjorn about Holic? Does he know the file he and Nadja recovered was a fake?”
“Not yet. When he hears he’ll be back here on the next flight.”
“And you don’t want that?”
“Nadja’s pregnant. Right now she needs him more than I do.”
“You getting soft, Merrick? A year ago you would have hauled his ass back here no matter what.”
Merrick cleared his throat, not liking the way Pierce was eyeing him. “There’s more. I’ve spoken to Polax from EURO-Quest. He claims the Quest agent
