43

MILA HURRIED FROM THE EMPTY OFFICE space and ran down the narrow staircase. Howell was close; if he interfered in the sting, all was lost. The top three floors were offices; the ground floor housed a small Internet café, popular with students and college-age tourists. She reached the bottom foyer; to her right was Café Sprong. Right now the Internet café held a half-dozen surprised kids, hands lifted off their keyboards. Three men in suits stood inside, two holding guns. An older man—she recognized him from the Company files as Howell—was saying, “Just everyone stay calm, we’re working with the Dutch police.” He was hurrying from laptop to laptop, clicking on the keyboards. Searching.

They’d found her and Sam.

The one closest to the door grabbed at her arm. He was a big man, blond, Scandinavian-looking, with apple-florid cheeks.

Mila fought down the overwhelming urge to throw him through the neon-coffee-cup window. “Excuse me,” she said in a low, hard growl.

He didn’t raise the gun but he pulled her inside. “This is police business. Do not be alarmed, we are seeking a criminal. Were you accessing the café’s Internet connection?” he said to her in slightly mangled Dutch. She shrugged like she didn’t understand.

“Is this a joke?” she said in English, braving a smile. “Or a movie?”

“Do you have a laptop? Or a smartphone?” he asked in English. “Were you on the web?”

“No.” She only had a small purse. The wireless kit she’d used to talk with Sam was taped to the small of her back, under her suit jacket. Her gun lay strapped to her ankle. He looked inside her purse, found her smartphone. He tapped her browser. She waited.

The big man put the phone back in her purse. “Thank you. Police business. Please don’t try to leave.” So she didn’t.

But if they were looking for her—shouldn’t they have just rushed to the roof? Perhaps not. Maybe they knew she was here but not who she was. She stayed put, but every muscle was singing. Howell didn’t have a weapon out. She decided how she would fight; the order in which she would kill them. The big blond, and then the dark-haired man, then Howell. The decision put her mind at rest and she watched Howell like everyone else.

The barista argued in Polish-accented Dutch with the armed men that they couldn’t just come in here and do this, and the men ignored him. Howell stepped away from a frightened girl to a back table where a young Chinese student sat. The boy’s hands quivered above the keys and Mila thought: He looks quite guilty.

She watched Howell turn the laptop away from the Chinese boy, study it, tap on the keys. Mila could see a terminal window appear on the screen. A spill of data, white letters on a black screen.

Howell closed the laptop, gestured with one hand toward the gunmen. The big blond hurried forward, frisked the boy roughly, nodded an all-clear.

“Outside,” said Howell in English.

“You’re not cops!” the barista shouted. Too much caffeinated courage, Mila thought.

Howell glanced at Mila as he walked past; she knew she should drop her stare. Everyone else, cowed by the guns, had. She couldn’t. She just couldn’t. She didn’t glare. She just looked at him.

He met her stare for a moment; if she had known they’d seen her on a security tape feed from the port, dressed in leather and wearing giant sunglasses, she would have killed them all where they stood. But Howell, intent on his prize, didn’t linger on her face. He followed the man and the Chinese boy outside without a backward glance.

The other man—thick-necked, with dark hair—lowered his gun and said in perfect Dutch, “Our apologies. You may return to your work. That man has been conducting serious cybercrime attacks using the café’s server. We apologize for frightening you all, but we didn’t want him erasing his data before we could stop him.”

The barista started to argue again, saying, “We didn’t know, you can’t just come in here like that waving guns, you could have shot us.”

The thick-necked man kept a broad smile in place. “Our apologies again.” He turned and hurried out as the café broke into rapid-fire talk, the barista yelling at the man’s back, reaching for the phone, vowing to call the police.

Mila stepped out after the muscle. He broke into a full run, hurrying after Howell and the blond. He caught up. Howell carried the boy’s laptop.

Mila looked across the canal toward the café where Sam sat with Nic.

Gone. Both men gone. Choice: follow the Company thugs or try to find Sam. The Chinese boy might be a link back to the scarred man’s group, and she wanted to see what the Company people did. She followed Howell and the others, keeping back a discreet distance.

She dug her earpiece from her purse, slipped it back into place and hurried toward her car.