The Last Minute Read Free

tomorrow. How will I know them?’
    ‘She’s very petite, dark-haired. He’s about six foot, wiry, dark blond hair, green eyes. Nice looking couple.’
    ‘Tell them to get a table, preferably in the back. Order me a martini, three olives, and leave it at the table with a seat
     for me. I don’t like the look of anything in the bar, I skip the meeting, and no baby.’
    ‘I’ll tell them.’
    ‘Very well,’ Anna said. ‘Bye.’
    He hung up the phone and dropped it to the floor. Shivering under the wire, waiting for me to kill him.
    Mila knelt to meet his gaze. ‘You’re not going to die. You’re going to talk. You’re going to tell me everything you know about
     Novem Soles.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Novem Soles, also called Nine Suns.’
    ‘What? I don’t know what you mean.’
    ‘I mean the criminal ring that Anna works for.’
    ‘I only know Anna. She’s self-employed.’
    I pushed up the sleeves on his shirt. There was no marking tattoo, a fiery nine transformed into a blazing sun. Novem Soles’s
     mark of ownership; I’d seen it on too many arms back in Amsterdam. I checked the arms of the two muscles. One had a tattoo,
     but it was the Chinese symbol for luck. Hadn’t worked.
    ‘She’s not working for herself,’ I said. ‘She works for an incredibly dangerous group of people. They were plotting a mass
     assassination a month ago. You screw them over, you die.’
    Mr Bell’s lip trembled. He was trying to find his bravery but failing.
    ‘You see them?’ Mila pointed at the bodies.
    He nodded.
    ‘You’re not going to be like them unless you make trouble. You’re going to be locked up in a room and wait until we’vetaken care of Anna. And you tell my people all you know about Anna Tremaine and her operation,’ Mila said. ‘Everything. And
     then you’re going to go back and live with your family and you’re going to stay the hell out of illegal activities.’
    He nodded.
    ‘Call your wife. Tell her you need to go out of town for a few days. Then call your office.’
    He nodded, eager, hopeful he would live.
    When he was done, he handed her back the phone. She took a pair of handcuffs off one of the dead men and cuffed Bell. I almost
     saw him shiver in relief. If she was cuffing him, she wasn’t killing him.
    I had the information I needed, finally. I was going to find my son.

2
Cable Beach, the Bahamas
    It was a breaking of the rules, punishable by death. His project; his failure. His only shield was that he controlled access
     to many secrets that made their work and their profits possible. He smoothed out the thin strip of blond hair that bisected
     his scalp, a low-cut mohawk, and tugged at the jacket of his Armani suit. He stood on the porch of the large house and waited
     for the other eight to arrive in the darkening evening.
    Rain slashed the beach, wind whipped the waves. Thunder thrummed the sky and the world appeared to have been smeared with
     gray paint. Alongside the sodden beach ran an equallysodden road, with a sign marking that it had been closed for repairs. Over the course of two hours, eight cars came down the
     rain-smeared asphalt and went around the wind-buffeted sign without the slightest hesitation. Each of the Lincoln Navigators,
     with its windows tinted against prying eyes, had been hired out from a local company that usually specialized in transporting
     film actors and rock stars around the island.
    The passengers in each car, in this case, were not famous, and each liked their anonymity.
    The house nestled in a private cove. The drivers helped their passengers inside. Each had packed light and carried a single
     bag. The drivers – all former military, now security for hire, from a variety of English-speaking nations – then took up stations
     around the house, to ensure that no one approached via boat, or car, or plane. Shortly after the last passenger arrived, the
     sky began to break, the clouds parting as if a curtain was rising on a stage, the early