Wilkes watched Dubois leave the room. The girl listened until his footsteps receded down the stairs, then crept from the bed and grabbed a hardcover book from the almost-empty bookcase. She propped the book against the door and went back to bed. If Dubois returned and found the door shut tight, he’d know she was suspicious and back off to try something else. If she left the door cracked open, he’d assume she’d bought his story and try again…only to knock over the book and alert her.

Wilkes allowed it was clever enough, but the agent was an idiot—easy to fool.

He pulled back from the probe eyepiece and swiveled his neck, working out the kinks. Then he stood, as much as he could stand in the low-roofed attic, and stretched his legs. Getting too old for this…but it wouldn’t be much longer now.

As he moved, pain shot through his side. The wounds from Jack’s bullets. One had been little more than a graze, the other going straight through muscle. Neither critical. He’d get them checked out soon enough, but in the meantime, they were slowing him down, something he didn’t need. If not for those wounds, he wouldn’t even be here—he’d have taken the girl down in that alley yesterday. Jack’s fault. But he’d pay for it soon enough.

He looked across the room at the small attic dormer window and resisted the urge to slide over and look out. He knew he wouldn’t see Jack. But he was out there, watching the house, making sure their girl stayed safe.

For the hundredth time in the last few hours, he wished it was Jack down there instead of the girl. Not only could he have paid him back for that fiasco in Vegas, but killing Jack would stick it to Evelyn in the only place that cold bitch would ever feel it. But, if he couldn’t kill Jack, then perhaps, as revenge went, this wasn’t such a poor substitute.

He’d seen the way Jack had looked at the girl in the opera house. At the time he’d chalked it up to good acting, but now he preferred to believe otherwise. Jack didn’t take partners. Wouldn’t even work with him when Evelyn had suggested it. But now that had changed, and he wasn’t just working alongside someone, but taking her everywhere, keeping her close, trusting her to watch his back. And that someone was an attractive younger woman. That was significant. It had to be. And if it was, then killing this girl just might hurt Jack more than any bullet.

Kill the girl. Hurt Jack. Maybe even sting Evelyn a little, robbing her of a new prize pupil at an age when she wasn’t likely to see many more.