Page 9 of Denied Access

CHAPTER 4

FORa long moment, Rapp tracked the man’s progress in silence, attempting to reconcile what he saw with what he’d expected to see. Though she’d become an initiate into the world of shadows, Greta’s pathway to that community ran through him. Yes, her grandfather had done some clandestine money-laundering on Hurley’s behalf back when the banker had lived in East Germany, but Carl Ohlmeyer was not a spy.

Neither was Greta.

Rapp had therefore assumed that the surveillance team was targeting him.

Erroneously assumed.

The man confidently striding across the courtyard was locked on to Greta’s table. He threaded through the gaggle of skateboarders without missing a step, moving unerringly toward the Swiss beauty like an arrow fired from a hunter’s bow. With calm, deliberate motions that belied his thundering heart, Rapp withdrew a flip phone from his pocket and thumbed the speed dial.

A two-tone beep indicated the call had gone through.

Greta reached for her purse.

“Allo?”

“Inside the museum. Now.”

Greta might not have been trained as a clandestine operative, but she’d begun to behave like one. Grabbing her purse, the Swiss beauty pocketed the phone, tossed a handful of pesetas onto the table, and made for the museum’s beckoning door.

Rapp lived in a world bound by distances and angles.

An existence in which the difference between a successful hit and one in which his body acquired another bit of puckered flesh came down to inches and degrees. Though the cold metal of his Beretta’s frame still pressed comfortingly against the small of his back, Rapp knew the pistol was not the solution to this problem.

Not yet, anyway.

Greta moved toward the museum’s door with quick, distance-eating strides, but her pursuer was also determined.

It was going to be close.

Then it wasn’t.

One moment Greta was just feet from the door. The next, the redheaded skateboarder tried another ollie. What was meant to be a hop onto the smooth wall that fenced the museum’s entrance off from the courtyard became a pile of tangled limbs and curses. Once again, the skateboard shot from beneath the woman’s feet like a wheeled missile. Rather than following the board’s trajectory, the woman tumbled to the cobblestones directly in Greta’s path.

The Swiss beauty stopped.

Her pursuer did not.

Rapp felt more than saw the equations governing angles and distance change. Greta was not going to make it. Time for plan B. Turning from the window to the wall, Rapp saw salvation in the form of a red metal square with the wordFUEGOstenciled in white block letters across the top.

Rapp smashed his elbow into the safety glass.

Then he pulled the fire alarm with his knuckle.

An electronic Klaxon sounded accompanied by flashing strobes. The handful of art aficionados sharing the second floor with him froze as if unable to reconcile the blaring alarm with the tranquil environment they’d been enjoying just moments before.

Not Rapp.

He was already in motion.

Rapp bounded down the staircase, taking two steps at a time. Sprinting past the welcome desk and the much more animated employee, Rapp shot from the front doors like a pinball launched by a spring. The fire alarm’s Klaxon echoed across the courtyard, and the skaters had largely paused their antics and were gesturing at the lights flashing from the building’s exterior.

The crowd of diners and streams of meandering pedestrians were similarly frozen. Several café patrons had gotten to their feet but remained tethered to their tables as if unsure whether to stay or go. The man hunting Greta did not suffer from the same indecisiveness. As everyone else remained poised on the brink of motion, he closed the remaining distance to the Swiss beauty and snared her elbow.

Greta was no wilting flower.

Wrenching her shoulder, she tried to rip her arm away from the man’s grasp. Against a slighter opponent, the maneuver might have worked. The man gripping her elbow was not slight. Heavy shoulders bunched beneath his dress shirt, and though the man was shorter than the statuesque Swiss woman, he more than made up for his lack of height with muscle. Slipping forward with an agility that seemed out of place for his thick, blocky build, the man kept hold of Greta as she stumbled backward.