Ice Cold Kill Read Online Free Page B

like the rest of Asher’s team. Everyone would do his job. Admirably. Asher Sahar had many skills but chief among them was the ability to pick the best people and to inspire them to greatness. One of his secrets was demanding near perfection and total dedication from his people, then praising them when they achieved it. The combination tended to inspire true loyalty.
    Asher adjusted his round, wire-rimmed eyeglasses, then hit his own speed dial on the disposable, prepaid phone. The message was being routed eastward like a rock skipped across a pond: from Denver to Brooklyn, Brooklyn to Tel Aviv.
    The line was picked up after one ring, despite the time difference. He spoke in Hebrew. “It’s time to alert the CIA. Set it up.”
    The man who answered responded in English. “You are sure about the names?”
    “Yes.” Asher spoke only slightly louder than a whisper. “Belhadj is—hold on.”
    His other cell phone, his regular one, danced a little jig on the cheap bedside table in the motel room. Asher noted the readout, turned his attention back to the burner phone. “Sorry. Belhadj knows more than he should. We need to distract him.”
    “And the Gibron woman?”
    Asher paused. “We have our orders. Her as well.”
    “Very good.”
    The line went dead.
    Asher set down the burner and picked up his regular phone. He punched in a nine-digit security code and a text popped up on the screen.
    YOUR PARENTS HEADING TO LONDON.
    Asher smiled at the text and deleted it. Good for them, he thought.
    He stood up from the saggy bed and walked to the cheap bathroom with its peeling tile floor and mottled gray-black shower grout. He peed, carefully washing his hands with the pump bottle of antibacterial soap he had picked up at the store. He stood a moment, his knuckles resting on the bathroom counter to either side of the sink, staring at his own reflection in the mirror.
    I look tired, he observed with a clinical neutrality. It wasn’t a complaint, it was an observation. I look forty. When the hell had he started looking forty? He remembered his adopted parents at forty— they were my age! —hosting barbecues and laughing about kosher dogs and his adopted mom joking, “Should I serve dessert or wait for the barrage?” and his adopted siblings snickering and elbowing one another.
    He remembered the siblings’ funerals. He remembered the barrages.
    Asher turned his head twenty degrees to the left, twenty degrees to the right. Hair beginning to gray over each ear. Face thin, his cheeks hollow. The old, comma-shaped red scar on his throat—a decade and a half old—was still the first thing that caught his eye. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.
    He wondered if getting Daria Gibron involved in the next stage of things was downright brilliant or downright stupid. Or a little of both. It didn’t matter much. The woman who had issued the order had been specific. She wasn’t just his superior. She was among the most noble, heroic, and brilliant people Asher had ever known. And it was an honor to follow her.
    Even where Daria was concerned.
    Costa Rica
    Daria Gibron rose out of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of the Nicoya Peninsula. The water was deliciously warm and azure blue, the sun sparkling on the waves. She shoved her goggles and snorkel up into her slicked-back hair and reached for the lower rungs of the Belle Australis ’s ladder.
    She stripped off her flippers and quickly climbed the ladder to the burnished wooden aft deck of the seventy-meter megayacht, salt water cascading down her long, nut-brown legs. She wore a black, front-zip wet suit vest and bikini bottom. She was aware that two of the Jamaican crew were watching her and smiling. She didn’t mind in the slightest.
    Daria didn’t enjoy much about her work as a translator, but every now and then an assignment surpassed her expectations. This was one of those jobs. Daria had been asked to be an interpreter for a set of negotiations taking place on board