“Just a few days. I’m sending Connor English to you. He has a team. Our best men. He’s been preparing them for the last two weeks. They’ll fly out tonight and be with you tomorrow. And then you can take the fight to her.”

“Fine,” he sighed.

“Don’t fuck this up, Duffy. She’s more dangerous when she’s in the shadows. You’ve flushed her out. Stay alive long enough for English to get to you. Then it’s your turn to have some fun.”

Beatrix waited. Duffy was in the building for thirty minutes, and when he stepped outside again, he was wearing a dark and troubled frown. He got back into his Land Rover and drove away, following a route that took him farther to the north.

Beatrix settled a few car lengths behind him and took the smartphone from her pocket. She had already preprogrammed the number for the tracker, and she texted it. The unit texted back almost at once with its latitude and longitude, its speed and a link to a Google map. She opened the link and, after a moment, saw the tracker’s position illuminated by a blue dot and her own by a red dot.

Everything was working as it should.

She stowed the phone in her pocket and settled in behind him.

She followed for twenty minutes. Duffy turned off the freeway and into an upscale residential neighbourhood. The farther he drove, the better the surrounding neighbourhoods became. The damage had been repaired, the roads resurfaced and the houses on either side of the street were newer and in bigger plots. The gardens were well irrigated, with lush green lawns and healthy palm trees despite the furnace-like sun that scorched down from above. Oil money, she thought. It was obvious.

He slowed and paused at the entrance to a gated compound.

Beatrix slowed, too, as much as she dared, and carried out a spot assessment.

The compound was surrounded by a ten-foot-high stone wall topped with razor wire. There were CCTV cameras spaced at regular intervals around the perimeter. The thick iron gate slid open and closed on a grooved track that was cut into the asphalt. The gate was guarded by two armed men.

She drove another twenty seconds up the road, turned, and then turned back. She studied the guards. They looked like soldiers. Each toted a Heckler & Koch MP-5. As she passed them, she noticed the Manage Risk logo on the sleeves of their black uniforms.

She shifted up to second and accelerated gently away. It would be difficult to get to Duffy at home.

She had another way.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Five