Vince Flynn - Order to Kill

The quality of road was bad enough to make it impassable for cars available from standard rental agencies. Again, this was accomplished with significant forethought. As obvious as Russian assassins would be in this quiet surf haven, ones piloting unusual four-wheel drives might as well simply announce their presence personally to Juan.

He pressed the accelerator a bit harder, increasing his speed to over a hundred kilometers an hour. The sound of the engine became deafening-something the people who built the truck had refused to correct, insisting that they worked tirelessly to give it just the right growl. When he approached a small bridge, he slammed on the oversize brakes and diverted right, plummeting down the bank and hitting the stream below hard enough to send water arcing over the roof.

The massive shock absorbers barely cycled through half their travel and the snorkel kept the motor running smoothly during the crossing. When he came to the top of the opposite bank, the truck lofted a good meter in the air. He hated bridges. Too exposed. But Olga insisted on them and he had to admit they could be quite useful during the rainy season.

Azarov accelerated further, reaching a speed that would make it difficult for even a topnotch sniper to track him from the jungle. Difficult, but not impossible. He wondered sometimes if it would have been safer to live in a city. He owned high-rise flats in both New York and London, cities with countless security cameras, twenty-four-hour crowds, and sophisticated police forces. But he hadn’t set foot in either for years. He needed this place. The remoteness. The silence. The distance from the reality he’d become trapped in.

When the house came into view, he began to slow. It was a massive stucco-and-glass structure, open in a way that, if he skidded to a stop, the dust would drift through the living area. In light of that, he continued to ease back on the throttle. What he didn’t need was for his reunion with Olga to begin with her screaming at him for an hour in Russian.

Her car was parked in the driveway but she didn’t come out to greet him. Normally, he would have slipped his weapon in his waistband instead of keeping it in hand, but the depth of the silence bothered him. Even the insects that sang in the surrounding jungle seemed unusually subdued.

“Olga?”

No answer. It was possible that she was up at the gym, but unlikely. She tended to maintain her spectacular figure through youth and starvation more than exercise.

Azarov had designed the house to allow him to efficiently clear the rooms while making it impractical for anyone to get behind him. He worked his way through it quickly, finding nothing unusual until he reached the master bedroom.

Olga was sitting on the bed wearing a yellow bikini he remembered her paying over a thousand euros for in Paris. She was held upright by her arms, spread wide and secured to the headboard with wire. Her chin was resting on her chest, causing her blond hair to hang down enough to hide her face, but not enough to hide the long gash across her throat.

Blood from the wound had dried across her breasts but was still wet where it had soaked into the mattress. He slid his gun into the back of his pants and stood motionless in the doorway, staring down at her.

Olga Smolin had been a gift for a particularly difficult job he’d completed in Ukraine. A runway model from Tomsk, she’d been beautiful, reasonably good in bed, and a passably competent administrator of his household affairs. On a more basic level, she had been a deeply unhappy young woman. She didn’t like the remoteness of Costa Rica, but even in the world’s great cities, she seemed to feel nothing was good enough. It made taking pleasure in the simple things impossible for her.

Or maybe she just felt trapped. Like he did.

Azarov freed her and covered her body with a bloodstained sheet. Though she wasn’t a woman he would have chosen, he would miss her. But that was the point, wasn’t it? Krupin once again demonstrated his skill. Azarov had been punished in a way that was extremely visceral but not sufficient to start a war between them.

He heard the crunch of gravel out front but didn’t reach for his gun. His punishment had been meted out. There was nothing more to fear.

“Hello?” he heard a familiar voice call. “Is anyone here?”

Azarov came out of the hallway just as a young woman with a cooler in her hands took a hesitant step into his living room. She was an American surf instructor who provided home management services for some of the wealthier foreign owners.

“How are you, Cara?”

She jumped at the sound of his voice, but managed to keep from dropping the cooler. “Oh, hi, Grisha. I’m fine, thanks. What about you? What happened to your face?”

“A car accident. The window shattered.”

“Oh, man. I guess you should consider yourself lucky that nothing hit you in the eye, huh?”

“Very lucky.”

Cara Hansen was in many ways the complete opposite of the woman Azarov had spent the last two years living with. She was just as beautiful, but in a natural, perpetually disheveled way that contrasted with Olga’s icy perfection. She always had a smile on her face, and seemed to think neither of the past nor the future. While Olga had everything and appreciated nothing, Cara had very little and loved all of it.

Azarov had known her in a peripheral way for years, but paid no attention to her. He’d never looked into her background or had a conversation with her that didn’t involve some problem with his house or meaningless small talk about waves or the weather. He couldn’t. If Krupin knew how he felt about this twenty-nine-year-old Californian expat, it would have been her, and not Olga, bleeding into his mattress.

Azarov pointed to the cooler. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. They told me you needed a bunch of ice. Party or broken fridge?”

“The latter.”

“I could take a look at it.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“It’s not problem,” she said, pushing past him into the kitchen. She put the cooler on the island and opened the refrigerator, crouching down to get a closer look.

He watched with calculated indifference as she poked her head inside.

“Seems fine. The light’s on and it feels cold.”

“It comes and goes.”

“Well, I wouldn’t eat any of this stuff, then,” she said, standing and turning toward him.

He made sure not to look at the way her shirt clung to her or the tantalizing strip of skin between the bottom of it and the top of her shorts.

“That’s good advice, Cara. Thank you.”

“Where’s Olga?”

“Russia.”

“Cool trip. When’s she coming back?”

“Probably never.”

“Oh,” she said, suddenly looking a bit uneasy. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

She thumbed toward the door. “You want the rest of the ice I brought? I feel like they told me way too much.”

“Sure. Just in case.”

He followed her out and she brushed a hand along his truck. “This thing must be faster than it looks. I could see you kicking up dust all the way from town.”

“Really? Interesting. It’s something I’ve never given thought to.”

Cara cocked her head inquisitively, but then just grabbed another cooler from the back of her Suzuki. He pulled out the last one and followed her back to the house.

She put the cooler down on the floor next to the dishwasher but didn’t make a move to leave.

“Thank you,” he said, not sure why she was just standing there. Did she know something? That Olga hadn’t left? Had she noticed someone lurking around the house? He assumed that Krupin had sent a lone female to kill Olga. Juan couldn’t be blamed for overlooking the presence of an unaccompanied eastern European woman on the local beaches.