The risks be damned.
They found a pebbled drive that led past a brick gate. A dense canopy of arching trees blocked the blackened sky. He felt a familiar stir of excitement at the unknown. A washed-out yellow glow came from somewhere in the distance, flickering through the trees like a candle in the breeze. A dwelling of some sort.
“The intel on this place,” Luke whispered, “is that there are no guards. No cameras. No alarms. Salazar keeps a low profile.”
“Trusting soul.”
“I’m told Mormons are that way.”
“But they’re not foolish.”
He was still bothered by the Danites. Those two men in Højbro Plads had been real. Were more threats like that lurking in the darkness that surrounded them? Possible. He still believed this a trap. Hopefully, Kirk’s reinforcements were still chasing that cell phone on the bus.
They cleared the woods, and he spotted three structures in the dark. A small brick house, two stories with a gabled roof, along with a pair of smaller cottages. Two lights burned in the larger house, both just above ground level, in what was surely a cellar.
They hustled around to the rear, staying in the shadows, and found a short set of steps that dropped down in the ground. Luke descended and Malone was surprised to see that the door at the bottom opened.
Luke stared at him.
Way too easy.
They both readied their guns.
Inside was a dimly lit cellar that stretched the house’s entire length. Brick archways provided support to the upper floors. Lots of nooks and crannies raised alarms. Equipment and tools lay about, surely used to maintain the estate.
Over there, Luke mouthed, pointing.
His gaze followed.
Built into one of the archways near a corner were iron bars. Inside, propped against the wall, lay a man with a bullet hole in the forehead, his face beaten into a mottled pattern of blood and bruises. They approached and saw a bucket of water and a ladle just outside the bars to one side. The light was dimmer here, no windows nearby, the cell’s floor as hard and dry as a desert. The iron door was locked. No key in sight.
Luke squatted and stared at his comrade. “I knew him. We worked together once. He’s got a family.”
Malone’s gut ached, too. He ran his tongue along the inside of his mouth and swallowed hard, then knelt beside the water bucket with the ladle. “You realize Salazar wanted you to find this. I’m sure we would have had company the moment we did.”
Luke stood. “I get it. He thinks we’re stupid. Now I’m going to kill the son of a bitch.”
“That would accomplish a whole bunch.”
“You have a better idea?”
He shrugged. “This is your show, not mine. I’m just here for a limited engagement, which seems to be over.”
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that long enough, Malone, you might start believing it.”
“You might have an open-field run now. Those guys are surely still chasing that bus. But there could be more of them around.”
Luke shook his head. “Salazar only has five on the payroll. Three are dead. The other two were there in the square.”
“Aren’t you a wealth of information? Would have been nice if you’d shared that before now.”
He knew Luke was ready to be rid of him. He’d never liked partners, either, especially difficult ones. And he was ready to be gone. There was still the matter of the Copenhagen police, though, but Stephanie could deal with them.
“I have a job to do,” Luke said. “You can wait at the car.”
He blocked any retreat and said, “Quit bullshitting me. What did Stephanie brief you on in the car?”
“Look, old man, I don’t have time to explain. Get out of my way and go back to your bookshop. Let the A-team handle this one.”
He caught the anger and understood. Losing a man affected everyone.
“I told Stephanie I’d see this through. So that’s what I’m going to do. Whether you like it or not. I assume you want to take a look at the main house, in that study Kirk so conveniently mentioned?”
“It’s my job. I don’t have a choice.”
They left the cellar and traipsed west through the woods, paralleling the sea, the pound of surf clear in the distance. The lit mansion that awaited them was an excellent example of Dutch Baroque. Three stories, three wings, hip roof. The exterior was sheathed with the trademark thin red brick—Dutch clinkers, Malone had learned to call them. He counted thirty windows facing their way, only a handful lit, and all on the ground floor.
“Nobody’s home,” Luke said.
“How do you know that?”
“The man’s out for the evening.”
Surely more of what Stephanie had told him on the phone.