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“If Kyrkos is still in country,” he said, “we’re gonna need gear.” He turned the wheel and pushed forward. “Good gear.”

Randall perked up immediately. “Now you’re talking sense.”

Marcus pulled through into a small courtyard, rolling past a dozen or so aluminum doors. He pulled up to a storage locker near the far end, got out, and pressed his thumb against the isometric keypad of a very sophisticated-looking lock. Randall helped him roll the door open, and together they pulled out a trio of large, navy-blue duffel bags that looked heavy as hell.

“Not here,” Marcus advised, as Randall went to unzip one. “Later.”

We loaded up and got back on the road. Piraeus was extremely pretty. As one of Greece’s older cities it was architecturally rich in history, but there were parts of the town that had a distinct, modern flair.

A phone near my left leg buzzed. Marcus pulled it out and checked it, looking a little confused.

“It’s Holden,” he announced. “He’s staying the night in Athens. Says he’ll meet up with us tomorrow.”

He slipped the phone back into his pocket and continued driving. The expression on his handsome face was utterly blank. He could be thinking of a thousand different things… or he could be thinking of absolutely nothing.

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

Randall leaned back into his seat a little further and yawned.

“We relax for a little,” he said, closing his eyes.

Twenty-Five

ANDREA

We got coffee first. Good coffee. The kind of coffee that leaves you floating in an almost post-coital trance, although maybe not the coitus I’d been receiving lately.

After that came breakfast, followed almost immediately by lunch. None of us had realized how hungry we really were, or how long it had been since we’d had an actual meal. It was nice for once, not to be running on empty. Not to be running, period, considering the last forty-eight hours of our lives.

I learned more about Randall, and Holden, and their post-military life. They’d stayed close after their service. Even rented the same apartments, while Holden consulted for the Navy and Randall did contract work. Eventually they’d gathered enough intelligence to know where Kyrkos was, and that wasn’t easy. They’d acted on it together, without hesitation.

As for Marcus, I still knew very little about him. Somehow I planned to change all that. He’d been a Ranger, but from the way he talked about it, it seemed like a very long time ago. Since then he’d taken ‘other jobs’. Jobs he wouldn’t specify. Jobs that kept bringing me back to what Randall said at the gym..

So you’re an assassin.

He didn’t act like an assassin. Then again, what did an assassin act like? Between jobs, between contracts… wouldn’t the best assassin look and act just like everybody else?

And then there was me. The would-be assassin. The wanna-be killer who’d either botched our chances on Rhodes or who’d somehow tipped Kyrkos off so that he never entered that bedchamber.

There were too many possibilities. My head spun with them. I cleared a good deal of them out while we walked the circular main harbor, past chapels and churches, over cobbled streets more than two thousand years old. We stuck to the crowds and did our best to blend in. Never took the same road twice, and always looked over our shoulders.

As it grew dark we drove the city some more, keeping a sharp eye out for trouble. Luckily, there was no sign of whoever had been following us in the SUV. It could’ve been Indigo, or it could’ve been someone working directly for Kyrkos. Either way, we seemed to be in the clear, at least for now.

Eventually Marcus swung into the valet area of an impressive, ten-story hotel. It was a luxurious-looking building, with a sharply-dressed staff that moved with crisp efficiency. They opened our doors, took our keys, and a few minutes later we were walking over the vast marble floor of an arching, impressive lobby.

“Think this is smart?” asked Randall, spinning around to look in every direction.

“What, picking a 5-star?”

The SEAL nodded. “If Holden were here, he’d tell us we need to ‘lay low’. Then he’d check us into the dirtiest shitbox possible.”

“Fuck that,” I chimed in.

Marcus reinforced my sentiment with a nod. “We’d stand out in a small place,” he said. “Better to have crowds. The bigger the better.”

“Hey man,” Randall chuckled. “You don’t have to convince me. You’re talking to a guy who’s been sleeping on a mattress in the middle of a boxing ring.”

Marcus left us in a little seated area before heading off to the main desk. Randall and I took one look at each other, grinned like schoolkids, then headed straight to the hotel bar.