was on her knees, her hands laced together on top of her black hair.
A Treadstone agent stood behind her.
He held two guns, both with suppressors. One was aimed across the apartment at Bourne. The other was jammed into the back of Abbey’s head.
TWENTY-FOUR
“BENOIT,” Jason said. “It’s been a long time.”
“Hello, Bourne.”
“The woman’s not part of this. It’s me you want. Let her walk away, and as soon as she’s free, I’ll lower my weapon. You can take me out. Quick. Clean. I’m a man of my word, you know that.”
“Jason, no!” Abbey shouted from the floor.
Benoit’s arms were rock-solid. No flutter or hesitation. His dark eyes were unblinking. “Unfortunately, my orders are for both of you.”
“So lie to Nash. Tell him Abbey wasn’t here.”
“I wish that was possible, but I’m a man of my word, too.”
Bourne nodded. “That’s true.”
Jason knew this man well. They’d been in the field together many times. They’d saved each other’s lives more than once. He’d met Benoit when the man was still a French agent, and the two of them had gathered intelligence on a terror cell from a stone farmhouse in the rural countryside outside Lyon. The stakeout had been blown by the barking of a stray dog, and Bourne had found himself in the midst of a midnight firefight while Benoit was half a mile away conducting night-vision surveillance. Rushing back in the middle of the assault, Benoit could have chosen to stay out of it, rather than intervene to rescue an operative from a different country. Instead, Benoit saved Bourne and took gunshots in the arm, hip, and leg that nearly killed him.
That was the first time they’d been together.
The last time he’d seen Benoit was under very different circumstances.
Benoit was the agent who’d carried away the body of Nova from the killing ground in Las Vegas. The sixty-seventh victim, never acknowledged.
Shoot him!
A lust for revenge screamed in Bourne’s head. All he could see was Nova draped over Benoit’s shoulder, her eyes closed, blood on her face, her long hair swinging as this man took her away. Ever since that moment, he’d wanted the opportunity to come face-to-face with Benoit again, and now here he was.
If Bourne pulled the trigger, all three of them would die in an eruption of gunfire. Jason wouldn’t miss; neither would Benoit. But Bourne knew that he and Abbey were going to die anyway.
Another woman in his life had been sentenced to death.
“Kill me if you want,” Benoit said, reading the look on Jason’s face. “That won’t change anything.”
“I should kill you. You deserve to die.”
“We’re all going to hell for the lives we’ve led, Bourne.”
“Maybe so, but not Nova. She was out. She wasn’t a threat to anyone. But Nash and the director couldn’t let her go. So you murdered her.”
“I didn’t shoot Nova. Charles Hackman did that.”
“Does it matter? Hackman was Treadstone, wasn’t he? Isn’t that why the word came down to whitewash his past? You couldn’t let the public find out that the worst mass shooter in history was actually one of our own intelligence assets.”
“Hackman was never Treadstone,” Benoit snapped. “He was Medusa. Like you, Cain! All those people died because you put your lover in the firing line. Nash thinks you ordered the hit yourself. Is that true? Did you want her dead? Were you afraid she suspected who you really were?”
“You’re a liar! What’s going on, Benoit? Are you taping this? Does Director Shaw want a recording he can play to the congressional oversight committee? You were there. You were in Las Vegas. Am I supposed to believe that’s a coincidence? You just happened to be in the crowd when Nova was shot? Nash just happened to be waiting outside the hotel where the shooter was holed up?”
Benoit shook his head. “I admire the act, but you’re smarter than that, Bourne. You know exactly why Nash and I were in Las Vegas.”
“Really? Tell me.”
“We were watching you.”
Bourne felt the words like a blow to his chest. “What?”
“That’s right. Look, we all knew Treadstone was dying. The director was tucked away in some basement office, and our budgets were bleeding away. That meant we had a lot of agents out there who were prime targets for recruitment by Medusa. We didn’t know who to trust and who was a traitor. We still don’t. But let’s just say your psychological history made Nash doubt you. I didn’t want to believe it, and neither did Nova. But Nash didn’t think we could take any