Secret Weapon

3. Emmy

3

EMMY

“I love the chunky yarn.” Bradley hugged a ball of it to his chest. “But how do you knit with it? Do you need giant needles?”

“We keep those, or you can knit using your arms,” the blonde behind the counter told him. Her name badge said Darla, her kaftan said crime against fashion. “I’m running a class at four o’clock tomorrow if you’re interested in learning?”

Bradley turned to me, pleading with his eyes.

“No can do, ace. We were meant to leave an hour ago.”

“Okay, okay. Give me five more minutes to pick out colours, and I’ll have to find a tutorial on the internet.” He beamed at Darla. “Do you know how to use Zoom?”

She gave him a horrified look, and her assistant snorted. Paulo, according to his own diamanté-embellished name badge, but I was starting to think of him as Bradley’s brother from another mother.

“Last time Darla used Zoom, she turned on the cat filter and then she couldn’t turn it off again. I’ve been slowly dragging her into the twenty-first century ever since I started working here, but if you have to plug it in, then it’s best that she delegates the task to me. Apart from the glue gun. She’s excellent with the glue gun.”

Darla picked up the glue gun, aimed it at the dude’s head, pulled an imaginary trigger, and giggled.

“He’s so right. Give me a scrapbook and a pair of scissors any day.”

“But we do have a selection of tutorials on our YouTube channel, filmed by moi. I’m sure we can find the time to make one for arm-knitting.”

Give me strength.

What was I doing in a craft store, you ask? Apart from trying to leave as fast as possible?

Good question.

Bradley, my darling assistant, had spent the past week in Eugene with Felipe, an old friend of his who’d recently opened a clothing boutique. And when the time came to leave, Bradley had decided to hitch a ride back to Virginia on my jet. Which ordinarily wouldn’t have been a problem because we could have driven straight to the airport and been somewhere over Iowa by now. But then Alex, my personal trainer, decided he wanted to fly back with us too, and since he’d lost a bet and been forced to sign up for a half-marathon in Portland, that meant hanging around in Oregon until he’d finished. And then Bradley had heard about the craft store from the masseuse earlier, and now my house was gonna be filled with giant yarn and feathers and glitter and f**k knew what else.

At least, Bradley claimed that he’d only heard about the craft store this morning. Now that I considered matters, he’d been awfully insistent that we all stay in Baldwin’s Shore for an extra night instead of checking in to one of the many five-star hotels in Portland, and I had a sneaking suspicion that if I asked Mack to check his internet search history, the Craft Cabin would be lurking on the list.

Come to think of it, the Portland half-marathon had been Bradley’s idea too. Originally, Alex had signed up to race in Florida last November, but that event had been called off due to a hurricane, and I might have forgotten about the whole dumb wager if Bradley hadn’t announced last week that he’d secured a last-minute entry for the Portland half.

Had he really made Alex run thirteen miles just to engineer himself an extra shopping trip?

Honestly, I wouldn’t have put it past him.

Dammit all to hell.

I should’ve stayed in the hotel spa like Bradley suggested, but somebody had to do damage control, and Hallie was too busy browsing model ships in the gift section. How had it come to this? I was a world-class assassin, I ran the special operations team at a global security firm, and today, I was losing an argument in the hick version of Aladdin’s cave.

“Do you really need a giant blanket?”

“No, but I want a giant blanket. Don’t worry; I’ll knit one for you as well.”

“I definitely don’t need a giant blanket.”

“Of course you do—you married Gulliver. And I’ll make one for Alex too because that’s only fair.” Huh? Alex might only have been an inch shorter than my husband at six feet six, but he wasn’t an arts-and-crafts kind of guy. Fairness didn’t come into it. But Bradley had already turned back to Paulo. “So what I need is enough yarn to make, say, five blankets, plus matching cushions.”

Five? Who were the other two for?

The bell above the door tinkled, and it was an actual bell. A tiny brass thing suspended from the ceiling on a piece of blue string. Low-tech. Darla had probably hung it up there herself. Ana slunk inside, head down as she checked her phone. Judging by the smile on her face, she’d received a message from either her boyfriend or her daughter. Tabby was four now, almost five, and texted faster than I did. Plus she’d mastered emojis and GIFs. The little psycho sent me pictures of pineapple-covered pizza every other morning, and Ana thought it was hilarious.

But today, the smile slipped off her face, and as quickly as she’d walked into the store, she left. What the hell? I turned to see what she’d been looking at, but there was only Darla, and she was showing Bradley a hot-pink ball of yarn the size of a small child. He did realise we were flying in a Learjet and not an Airbus 380, right?

I followed Ana outside. Bradley wouldn’t be finished in five minutes, anyway. No chance. At first, I thought she’d done a disappearing act, but when she saw me, she materialised from the shadows beneath a spreading evergreen.

“You okay? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Maybe I did.”

“What the f**k are you talking about?”

Ana moved off down the street, fast but not hurried, watching our reflections in windows as we passed. Nobody was following.

“Ana?”

She didn’t stop until she reached a small park nestled between a café and a dental practice. Actually, “park” was being generous. It was nothing more than a scrubby patch of grass with half a dozen picnic tables and a yellow-and-blue swing set. A flock of birds was pecking at the ground at the far end, but apart from that, it was deserted. Main Street in Baldwin’s Shore was hardly a hive of activity. Ana took a seat at the nearest table, but rather than swinging her legs over the bench, she sat sideways, in case she needed to get up in a hurry. I mirrored her pose on the opposite side. If Ana was worried, then I was worried.

“Sis?”

“I don’t… Where do I start?”

“At the beginning?”

“The beginning… I hate thinking about the beginning.” She sucked in a breath. Surreptitiously checked her gun and forced herself to relax. Her shoulders dropped, but if she clenched her jaw much harder, we’d have to pay that dental practice a visit. “In the beginning, I was twelve years old.”

“Twelve? You’re talking about your time in Russia?”

Ana had grown up there, first in Vladivostok and then in Siberia, the pawn of a madman who’d trained her to do his bidding. He’d stolen her childhood, part of her soul, and almost her life as well. But she’d won her freedom, and now she never spoke about that chapter of her existence.

“Yes. Siberia. When General Zacharov chose me for his program, and I became Seven of Ten.” Ana’s voice dropped until it was barely audible. “Ten little soldiers, torn into our component parts and rebuilt in his image. Ten little drones, taught to act without question. We were all broken in our own ways. One, Two, and Eight didn’t make it through training. Two lost his head, quite literally.”

Ana choked out a laugh, but she looked shaken.

Ana never looked shaken.

“I’m so sorry you had to go through that hell. But you made it out. It’s in the past.”

“Is it? Is it? Seven of us survived. Two girls, five boys. I was the youngest.”

“Why are you telling me this? I mean, I’ll always listen if you want to talk, but why now?”

“Because that woman in there, the one talking to Bradley?”

“Darla?”

Ana doubled over, her laughter turning hysterical. “Darla? Darla? That’s what she’s calling herself?”

“In the flowery muumuu?”

“Darla?” Ana said again. “I guess it works. Da, in the muumuu. She’s lost her f*****g mind.”

I was beginning to think she wasn’t the only one.

“Ana, you’re not making any sense.”

“That’s Nine. Darla is Nine. Gavno. She’s wearing f*****g flowers.”

Had I stepped into an alternative universe? Darla wasn’t Ana Mark II. No way. She knew more about embroidery floss than Bradley did, and more importantly, she didn’t feel like an assassin. Ana and I both knew it wasn’t possible to retire, not completely. Sure, we could pretend to be a suburban mom and a billionaire’s trophy wife, but long term, keeping up the charade was exhausting. It wasn’t who we truly were. And there were always tiny tells that would give us away—a reaction that was a little too fast, a gaze that was a little too probing. Granted, I hadn’t spent much time with Darla, but she didn’t give off those vibes.

“Are you sure?”

“Darya Volkova is a chameleon. Call it a gift.”

“Maybe Darla just looks similar? And it’s been, what, five years since you saw Nine?”

“Six, but we shared a room for three years in the beginning. It’s her.”

Ana didn’t have to add “trust me.” We both knew that was a given. And was it really so far-fetched? Ana had escaped to America, and she’d played at being a waitress and a secretary before we teamed up. Was it possible that Darla—Darya, whatever—genuinely liked crafts? That was the part of this story that I found hardest to believe. What was the point of cutting things out and sticking them into scrapbooks? I just didn’t get it.

“Okay, let’s assume you’re right and Nine’s decided to swap her Glock for a glue gun. What are we going to do about it?”

“Nothing. We’re going to do nothing. You need to get Bradley and I’ll get the car and then we can all get the hell out of here.”

“You don’t want to speak to her? For old time’s sake?”

“No!”

“Okaaaay. Maybe she wouldn’t even recognise you.”

“She would. Darya has a freakish memory, especially when it comes to faces. She only needs to see somebody once and she’ll never forget them. And at breakfast, Bradley said the craft shop has been open for two years. When did we take out Zacharov? Just over two years ago. If Darya’s been here in Baldwin’s Shore for any longer, she might not know he died. She’s hiding; she has to be. And if she sees me coming, she’s going to shoot first and then run. I know that because if our positions were reversed, it’s exactly what I’d do. This is a battle we don’t need to fight. She’s made her bed—let her lie in it.”

I was hella curious, but logically, I knew Ana was right. Let sleeping dogs lie. Why wake Cerberus if we didn’t have to? And to be fair, Darla-Darya was probably pretty cosy in her bed with seventeen throw pillows and a crocheted comforter.

“I’ll get Bradley.”

Or not. The scream that cut through the air sent a chill up my spine that had me reaching for my gun. Ana mirrored me.

Animal or human? If I had to put money on it, I’d say the latter, and it hadn’t been a playful scream or a hey-you-surprised-me scream. Was somebody in trouble?

I lifted my chin towards the forest two hundred yards away, and Ana gave a weighty sigh. But then she nodded. We’d spent our whole lives training so that in situations like this one, we didn’t have to turn away.

And once again, we headed into the unknown together.