The door closed behind them.
Not long after, the jet taxied to the runaway and roared into the sky over the Las Vegas mountains.
“You want me to sweet-talk one of the ground crew and see if they know the flight plan?” Abbey asked.
Jason shook his head. “Gabriel told me that he and Miss Shirley were heading to a meeting of the tech cabal in Nassau. Scott told me they meet on some private island down there.”
“You’re going to go there, too, aren’t you?” Abbey asked.
“Yes.” Then he added, “Just me.”
Abbey bit her lip, but she didn’t protest.
“I’ll charter a jet and go after them,” Jason said, “but there’s something I need to check out first.”
Bourne took the Land Rover out of the airport. He retraced the route that the Volvos had taken to the unmarked warehouse a mile away. The parking lot was deserted. He found the loading dock where the convoy had brought out their cargo, and he stopped the Land Rover just outside the door.
He and Abbey both got out. Jason retrieved a crowbar from the back of the truck, and then he went to the loading dock door and used two metal pins from inside his wallet to manipulate the tumblers on the lock. It took him a couple of minutes, and when the lock clicked open, he bent down and threw the door up on its metal rails.
They cautiously entered the dark storage area, which was almost completely filled with wooden crates that matched what had been loaded on the jet. They were all labeled with the names of French wineries. Jason glanced toward the ceiling and saw a series of red lights go on as their motion activated the security cameras. “We don’t have much time before we get a lot of company in here,” he said.
“What are you looking for?” Abbey asked.
Bourne didn’t answer. He went to the nearest crate, which had an ink stamp on the outside for Sarcennes Blanc de Blancs champagne. He wedged the forked blade of the crowbar into the top seam of the crate and pushed hard to loosen the nails on the upper panel. Then he pushed the crate open and shined his flashlight inside.
There was no champagne in the crate.
Instead, he saw military rifles nestled in dense foam, plus magazines and boxes of ammunition.
“Shit,” Abbey murmured. She stepped back and assessed the quantity of crates stacked against the wall. “Medusa has enough firepower here to start a war.”
“I think that’s the plan,” Bourne said.
THIRTY-SEVEN
THE jet that would ferry Bourne out of Las Vegas was almost ready to go.
He’d called in a favor from a CEO whose son had been kidnapped in Guatemala a few years earlier and then rescued in a Treadstone mission that Jason had led. The man was happy to arrange a private flight from McCarran to Nassau, no questions asked.
“Take the Land Rover,” he told Abbey. “I put twenty thousand dollars in cash in your bag. Drive home. Go back to Quebec City and The Fort. Forget about Medusa, and forget about me.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Abbey replied. “You need to call me when this is done.”
“If we stay in touch, you’re at risk. If anyone thinks they can get to me through you, they’ll come after you.”
“I don’t care. You need to let me know you’re safe.”
He nodded. “I will if I can.”
“Call me. Because if you don’t, I’m going to assume you’re dead.”
“I’ll call you.”
Abbey shook her head in frustration. “I suppose there’s no point in telling you to walk away from this. You don’t owe anything to the people who hired you. They betrayed you; they tried to have you killed. Let someone else go after Medusa. Not you.”
“I’m not doing this for the tech cabal. It’s not about them. If I don’t stop Medusa, I’ll spend the rest of my life running. Always looking over my shoulder. And after what we’ve found here, this is personal to me, too.”
“Because of Nova,” Abbey concluded.
“Yes. Medusa killed her. Miss Shirley killed her. I can’t let that stand.”
Abbey came up to him in the McCarran parking lot. He was aware of how achingly pretty she was. Her big eyes were wide and serious. Her bangs hung in messy spikes across her eyes. Having her close to him reminded him of how it felt to have her body in his arms. “You do have a choice, you know. Nova wouldn’t want you to die for her. If she really loved you, she’d want you