Page 2 of Belgian Betrayal

After the sun finally set, a light appeared in a tall upstairs window, making the curtained window glow softly.

Atkins checked with Catya every ten minutes after the sun set, eager to get in, get it done and get out.

Not so Catya. She preferred to wait until after most people settled in for the night, traffic slowed to a trickle and the target went to bed. A sleeping victim was much easier to subdue than one wide awake and ready to defend themself.

“What are we waiting for?” Atkins asked for the sixth time.

“The right moment,” Catya responded, standing in the shadows between two buildings directly across from the townhouse.

“We’re wasting time,” Atkins grumbled into the headset. “Someone will see us lurking around and blow our cover.”

A few minutes later, the light in the second-floor window blinked out. No other light came on anywhere else in the home.

“I’m going in now,” she said. “Hold your position outside the back door of the townhouse until you hear from me.”

The MI6 agent didn’t respond.

Catya didn’t ask for his assurance that he’d stay put. She was already halfway across the street, moving into the shadows beneath the tree. For the past few hours, she’d studied the townhouse, gauging the best entry point, concluding that the best way would be through one of the downstairs windows, half-hidden by shrubbery.

Once she’d pushed through the bush, she tried lifting the window first.

It didn’t budge.

Catya quickly shrugged out of her leather jacket, wrapped it around her arm, checked over her shoulder for anyone passing on the deserted street and then slammed her arm into the window, knocking through the glass. After sweeping the leather across the jagged pieces remaining, knocking them out onto the ground, she pulled the jacket back on and then hiked her ass up over the windowsill.

A scream stabbed through the silence, the sound coming from upstairs, followed by footsteps thundering down a staircase.

Catya swung her legs through the window and dropped to the floor, pulling her Baretta from the shoulder holster tucked against her ribs. She stood in a sitting room with a closed door between her and whoever was coming down from above.

She ran toward the door and pulled it open enough to see a shadowy figure, too tall and broad-shouldered to be a woman, disappear down a hallway and out what appeared to be the rear door.

“Someone headed your way,” Catya said softly into her mic. Instead of following the shadowy figure, she headed up the stairs, her gut clenching tighter with each step.

When she reached the landing, a door stood open to what could only be the room facing the front of the townhouse, the room that had a light shining from it minutes before.

Catya eased up to the open door and peered around the doorframe into the room, shrouded in darkness. There was a weak glow from the streetlight on the outside corner, the only light penetrating the curtain.

A moan sounded from the far side of the room, coming from the floor on the other side of a bed.

Holding the Baretta in front of her, Catya crossed the room and rounded the end of the bed.

A woman lay sprawled on the floor, her pale nightgown sporting a sizeable dark stain across her chest. She moaned and raised a hand toward Catya.

“Help me,” she said in faint Italian, her voice barely above a whisper.

Thankfully, Catya was almost as fluent in Italian as in English and her native Russian. She took the woman’s hand in her free one and crouched beside her while keeping her gun pointed toward the door. “Gia Rosolino?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice gurgling as blood dribbled from the side of her mouth. “He...took...it.”

“Took what?”

“I’m sorry... Didn’t know... Father...bad man...” Gia coughed. More blood trickled out of the corner of her mouth. “Bigger...than...him...” She closed her eyes and lay still.

Catya thought she’d slipped away and started to release her hand to feel for a pulse.

Gia’s fingers tightened around hers with surprising strength, her eyes wide. “Get the disk back... Take it...to someone...you trust... Stop them...” Gia’s fingers loosened. Her hand fell to her side, and her eyes closed. “Before more...people...die...”

Catya felt for a pulse at the base of the preschool teacher’s throat. When she didn’t find one, she straightened and spoke into her mic. “Atkins, did you stop him?”