The Final Twist, Jeffery Deaver [philippa perry book TXT] 📗

“You making that assumption?”

“Call it that.”

After a pause Russell said, “I agree.”

“So. We’ll have to go through everything—”

Just then a persistent beep came from Russell’s phone.

Instantly he was on his feet. His hand was near his weapon. “Have a sensor, front door. Somebody’s picking the lock.”

Shaw drew his Glock and crept to the closest window. “Droon, plus an entry team, five, six. Long guns too. How’d they make us?”

His brother shook his head.

Shaw saw one of the attackers standing at the open tailgate of an SUV. The men looked up and down the street. He then pulled something from the vehicle, turned and eyed the front of the safe house. He squinted directly toward Shaw. Then raised to his shoulder what looked like a large shotgun with a blunt object protruding from the muzzle. He pulled the trigger.

“Grenade!” Shaw shouted.

The brothers dove to the floor.

42

Irena Braxton, wearing a staid gray suit, stood with her arms crossed over her chest, surveying the interior of the safe house, as if she were waiting for her grown son and daughter-in-law and the brood of grandchildren to arrive for Sunday supper.

Other BlackBridge workers—a lean, unsmiling blond woman in a black tac outfit and a solidly built Latino—were tossing the living and dining rooms. Tossing. That was the technical term for searching a home or office, though there was in fact nothing sloppy about the process. They were meticulous and careful and breaking or destroying nothing. Drawers were opened, cabinets, the refrigerator and freezer, the microwave, the closets, the spaces under cushions, under couches, under chairs.

Another man from the team was examining the empty BlackBridge courier bag. He was the one who’d fired the grenade launcher. He had set down the weapon but like the others—aside from Braxton—he wore a sidearm, another expensive SIG Sauer.

One of the ops, a tall brunette woman, was in the living room. Hands on hips, she called, “Nothing. The Sanction’s not here.”

“What?” Braxton snapped, turning on her. “Is your search finished? How can you say it’s not here if you’re not finished?”

“Yes, ma’am. The case was empty, I assumed they took it with them.”

“Oh, they didn’t hide it here maybe? Do you think that’s a possibility?”

The woman scurried back to work.

The others kept quiet and continued their tasks.

Ebbitt Droon came down from upstairs. “Didn’t get out that way. Windows locked from the inside. Clothes, ammunition. Nothing helpful.”

This scene was unfolding on Russell’s laptop, four split screens. And remotely. The brothers were a block away—in the coffee shop where Shaw had first seen the man with the thigh-length coat, stocking cap and the A’s backpack, the texting customer who had turned out to be his brother.

The grenade had not been a deadly fragmentation model, just a large flash-bang to stun and deafen, similar to the one Russell had used as an alarm on the door to the secure room in the cellar. The projectile had been fired accurately. But what the BlackBridge assault team didn’t know—nor did Russell or Colter Shaw—was that in fitting out the safe house years ago Ashton had installed bullet-deflecting windows. The grenade would have hit the plexiglass at about four hundred feet per second, slow enough so that the device merely bounced off. This bought the brothers a little time, since the tables were turned and the device flashed and banged outside.

Upon learning they were under attack, the Shaw brothers knew they weren’t in any position to engage four heavily armed tac ops. They chose to escape. Shaw shoveled the contents of the courier bag into his backpack, as Russell grabbed their computers.

“Basement,” Russell said, at the same time as Shaw said, “Cellar.”

So his brother had seen the coal bin too. Shaw had recognized right away that it was fake; the house wasn’t more than fifty years old. No urban dwelling of that age had ever used coal for heat.

Ever the survivalist, weren’t you, Ashton?

As they heard footsteps above them, they’d pulled the bin away and slipped into the four-foot-wide tunnel, then pulled the bin back in place behind them.

Never use a safe house that doesn’t have a trapdoor . . .

A moment later they’d heard: “Cellar clear” and the thud of footsteps up the stairs.

The brothers had continued through the tunnel for about thirty feet and come to another wooden panel. They’d muscled it aside and, guns ready, stepped into the basement of the Soviet-bloc apartment building across the alley from the safe house. The large, mold-scented room was empty. They left via the service entrance and five minutes later were in the coffee shop, more unwanted food and drink at hand, just any other customers, watching Braxton, Droon and the others.

When Russell had returned to the safe house with the news about the text ordering the hit on the SP family, he’d brought with him surveillance equipment. The four cameras, fitted with sensitive microphones, were in household objects—lamps, a clock, a picture frame. They were wireless but transmitted on the same frequency as Russell’s internet router in the closet in the front hall—so anyone scanning the house for surveillance, as Droon had done, would see only the server transmissions, not the spy cams.

Shaw said he was impressed, and Russell said his group had some people who came up with “clever ideas.”

On the computer screen it was easy to see that Braxton was growing angrier. “We had eyes on them. They were here. How’d they get out?”

“Back window?” one of the male operatives said.

“And then why weren’t any of you in the back?”

No one had an answer for that, and the searching continued.

“Look,” Shaw said.

He was referring to Droon, who was only marginally interested in the cassette player. He punched a button, listened to a few seconds of a tune, then fast-forwarded and did the same several more times. He shut the unit off, shrugged toward Braxton and continued searching the room, leaving the device on the table.

Shaw continued, “They’d have to have audio engineers too,