CHAPTER 1
AUSTRIA
Snowflakes whirled in the halo of light outside the train’s window, all but obscuring the dark countryside.
Snow.
In October.
An obscenity as far as Darius Kincaid was concerned. Last he checked, back home in San Diego it was a sunny eighty-three degrees, a more civilized temperature for this time of year.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like snow. It just had its place.
And October was not it.
He checked his watch. Twelve forty-two a.m. They’d be stopping in Innsbruck in about fifteen minutes. After that, the Nightjet train wouldn’t halt again for another two and a half hours, giving Kincaid some time to relax.
He headed through the sleeper car and turned into the alcove for cabins 14 and 16, then took the short set of steps down to the cabins’ doors. He rapped lightly on number 14 and pushed open the unlatched door.
Edgar Clarke, his colleague on this mission, lay on the only bed, hands resting on his chest, eyes closed.
“Wake up,” Kincaid whispered.
“I am awake,” Clarke replied without moving.
“We’re almost to Innsbruck.”
Clarke sat up and looked at his watch. “Right on time.”
Kincaid stepped over to cabin 16 to check on their package. Unlike the other cabin, this one was locked. Using the conductor key he’d obtained prior to mission start, he unlocked it and eased it open far enough to peek inside. Like the last time he’d checked, the lights were off, and deep, steady breaths came from the dark lump on the bed.
Earlier that evening, in a library conference room at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, Kincaid and Clarke had taken charge of Thomas Brunner from an older man named Stefan Ferber, the mission’s client.
Misty Blake, head of the Office—the agency coordinating the job—had warned Kincaid the client would be there and would probably be on edge.
“First timer,” she’d said.
Great, Kincaid had thought. He much preferred working with people who’d used services similar to his in the past. First timers were…unpredictable. The less of that in Kincaid’s line of work, the better.
Sure enough, Ferber had been jittery, eyes shifting side to side, and hands unable to remain still for more than a second. “He needs to be there on time,” the older man said.
“He will be,” Kincaid answered in German, his voice calm and reassuring.
“You must take extra care.”
Kincaid had smiled and told Ferber they would. What he really wanted to say was “That’s why you hired us,” but he kept that to himself.
Kincaid was a professional courier. His area of expertise: escorting individuals in need of protection. He was equal parts bodyguard and logistics expert. Clarke, it turned out, made a living as a generalist, fitting into jobs wherever a competent body was needed. This was the first time they had ever worked together. Misty had been the one who paired them.
They had twenty-four hours to deliver Brunner to an office building in Hamburg, Germany. Normally that would be enough to get there and back again, with time between legs to get a good night’s sleep. And by air, it would take only an hour and a half to get there.
But Kincaid had been told no one could know Brunner was even making the trip, let alone what route he would be taking. Using a direct route was out of the question. They would be taking a longer, less obvious, and lower-risk path to Germany that no one would know about other than Kincaid, Clarke, and Misty.
As for why Brunner needed an escort in the first place, Kincaid had no idea, nor did he care. Brunner was the cargo; that was all the information he needed.
After leaving the library, he and Clarke had escorted Brunner to an apartment building a half kilometer north of the university.
Outside the entrance, the cargo had paused and said, “What are we doing here? Where’s your car?”
“Just go inside,” Clarke said.
Brunner’s brow furrowed, and he shook his head. “No. We-we’re supposed to be going to—”
“Quiet,” Kincaid snapped.
Brunner jumped at the sharpness of Kincaid’s tone.
“Don’t ever say anything about a destination. Understand?” Kincaid pulled the door open and stepped inside the building. “Move it.”
Warily, Brunner entered.
They took the stairs to a second-floor apartment, and once they were inside, Kincaid looked at his watch and said in a calmer voice, “Make yourself comfortable. We’ve got about an hour to kill.”
“An hour until what?”
“Until we leave.”
Brunner’s gaze switched back and forth between his two bodyguards. “I do not understand. Why are we wasting time here? We should be on the way to—” He stopped himself. “We should be on the way.”
“We are on the way, Herr Brunner,” Clarke said. “Now, sit down.”
“Is that an order?”
“Of course not,” Kincaid said. “It’s a suggestion. If you prefer to stand for an hour, that’s your choice.”
Brunner walked over to the sofa, but then turned back. “I would really like to know how you are going to get me…there.”
“And you will. Soon enough.”
“I don’t understand why you can’t just tell me. It’s not like I can share the information with anyone.”
Kincaid had taken Brunner’s phone at the library, removed its SIM card and battery, and put the parts in a lead-lined film bag, to be returned to the cargo upon arrival at their destination.
“I’m not telling you because you don’t need to know. If you’re not happy with that, you’re free to leave.” Kincaid motioned to the door. “If, on the other hand, you stay, I will expect you to accept there are some things we will keep from you, and that you will do everything we tell you to do.” He locked eyes with Brunner. “What’s it to be?”
“I-I-I never said I was going anywhere.”
“Good.”
They left the apartment fifty-five minutes later and took side streets to the Zurich Hauptbahnhof, Zurich’s main train station.
“Graz?” Brunner said when he saw the digital sign above the platform, denoting the train’s destination. “That’s not even in the right di—”
“Don’t,” Kincaid whispered. “Remember what I told you.”
They boarded the train and made their way to cabin 16 in silence.
As soon as Brunner was in his tiny room, he said, “Austria is not Germany!”
Kincaid grimaced at him from the doorway, his XL body almost filling the opening. “I’m well aware of that.”
“Then why are we—”
Kincaid narrowed his eyes.
“Right,” Brunner said. “No questions.”
Kincaid held the man’s gaze for another couple of seconds before he said, “Get some sleep. We’ll wake you in plenty of time before our stop.”
Brunner snorted. “How do you expect me to sleep? I’m too wound up.”
“I could get you a beer if you think that would help.”
A brief pause. “Two would be better.”
The beers had done the trick, and now, almost two hours later, Brunner was still sound asleep.
Kincaid stepped over to the cabin’s window and pulled the edge of the curtain back. A smattering of buildings had begun to litter the countryside, signaling the nearing city.
He shut the door and turned to find Clarke standing just inside cabin 14.
Without a word, the two men headed up the steps to the main corridor. There, they stopped in front of the alcove, and played the parts of two normal passengers stretching their legs.
In theory, none of the new passengers boarding in Innsbruck would need to enter via this sleeper car, as all its cabins and those of the other two sleeper cars between this one and the front of the train were occupied. But people didn’t always operate in a logical manner, hence the need to guard the entrance to Brunner’s cabin.
Kincaid watched through the windows as more and more buildings appeared, marking the train’s official arrival in Innsbruck. At first, other than a car here and there, the streets were empty, but the number increased as the train neared the station. Not by a lot, but enough to lead Kincaid to believe there would soon be at least a couple dozen people joining them onboard.
His hunch proved correct, as his hunches often did. As the NightJet pulled along the platform, Kincaid saw approximately thirty people waiting. The moment the train stopped, the new passengers moved toward the doors.
Kincaid monitored the car’s entrance to his left, toward the back of the train where things would be busiest, while Clarke did the same to the right.
A young family of three climbed into the next car down, the child passed out on the father’s shoulder. They were followed by an older man, and then two middle-aged women who appeared to be traveling together. None of these passengers entered the sleeper car, nor did any give Kincaid the sense he needed to worry about them.
“Company,” Clarke whispered.
Kincaid casually swung his gaze toward the front of the train.
A woman and a man, in their late twenties or early thirties, had entered the corridor, each wearing a backpack.
“See, I told you,” the man said in German. “We are farther down.”
The woman frowned but remained silent.
Nothing in the demeanor of either of them set off any alarms, though Kincaid did note the walking stick strapped to the man’s backpack. A meter and a half long, it had a curved top, like a shepherd’s crook, and was covered with carvings that gave it more of an art-piece feel than that of something used to climb hills. In the right hands, it could be a dangerous weapon.
As the couple neared, the woman said in German, “Pardon us.”
Kincaid and Clarke pushed themselves tight against the wall.
While the woman easily slipped past Clarke, maneuvering around Kincaid was not so simple. He was larger than Clarke, six foot three and well muscled, and was wearing a protective vest under his shirt that bulked him up even more. So it wasn’t surprising that, as the woman squeezed by him, her backpack bumped against his chest.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, then, after looking up at him, repeated the apology in English.
He flashed her a smile. “Don’t worry about it,” he replied in flawless German.
This received a surprised look from both the woman and the man. Apparently, they hadn’t met a lot of people of African descent who spoke their language. On one hand, Kincaid took some satisfaction at upsetting their worldview a bit. On the other, their reactions could’ve implied they’d thought that language skill was beyond his abilities, and that pissed him off.
After the couple exited at the other end, no other new passengers appeared, and within a few minutes, the train began moving again.
“Walk-through?” Clarke said.
Kincaid nodded. “I’ll do it. You keep an eye on our friend.”
With a smile and a shrug, Clarke said, “Hey, you want to pass up a chance to relax, that’s fine by me,” then descended the steps to cabin 14.
“It’s not nap time,” Kincaid called after him. “Stay alert.”
“No shit, dude. I got this. Don’t worry.”
Clarke may have been a little looser than Kincaid would have liked in a mission partner, but Kincaid had worked with far less competent agents, so while he grimaced at the back of Clarke’s head, he said nothing more.
He checked his watch and set an alarm for twenty minutes. That should give the new passengers enough time to settle in and get comfortable. And hopefully, if anyone had boarded intending to interfere with Brunner’s trip, the person’s guard will have slipped a little by then, too.
Kincaid watched out the window as the city fell away again, replaced by countryside and mountains of western Austria. The snow was still falling, though lighter than before, as if the storm was just reaching this area. Maybe they’d get ahead of it and he could pretend, for a little while, that winter was still two months away.
When his watch alarm began thumping his wrist, he turned it off and headed toward the back of the train.
The next car was also a sleeper. As he moved down the empty corridor, he listened at every alcove for unusual noises, but the only thing he heard was the clacking of the tracks.
After that, he came to the first of the seating-only cars. Like the sleepers, the corridor passed along the side, not down the center. The difference here was that instead of cabins with seats that converted into beds, there were glassed-in compartments with two rows of seats facing each other, like a booth at a restaurant.
Most of the people in these compartments were asleep or at least giving it a try. Occasionally, he’d spot someone reading or looking at a phone or staring out the window.
So far, no one had registered as a problem.
Onward he went, car by car until he reached the end of the train. Not once did he get the sense there was anyone onboard he needed to worry about. Either the circuitous mission route to Hamburg had gone undiscovered, or the client had overestimated the danger to the cargo.
Kincaid had a feeling it was the latter. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time he’d done a job where his services weren’t really needed. Not that he was complaining. He and Clarke were making good money for this run. And as important as his fee was the fact he was working for the Office again.
Several years earlier, Peter, the late head of the Office during its first iteration, had given Kincaid his break in the business. He hadn’t even realized the Office was back in operation, so he’d been both surprised and pleased when Misty called him about this job. Hopefully it would translate into even more work.
He turned and headed back toward the front of the train, giving the passengers a second look as he did. Right before he reached his sleeper car, he paused.
The young couple who had squeezed past him and Clarke in Innsbruck.
He hadn’t seen them on either pass.
There were several empty seats, so it was possible they had been using the toilets, getting ready to sleep, when he went by the first time. But they needed to be accounted for. He’d alert Clarke to be on the lookout in case the couple was indeed a problem, then would go back to find them.
He entered his car and hurried to the alcove for cabins 14 and 16. When he swung around the corner to go down the steps, he jerked to a stop.
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