More Than a Mission - Caridad Pineiro [3]
“Mitch’s name is not on the list.”
Concern flashed across Lucia’s face a moment before she said, “MI6 can’t connect Mitch to the Sparrow.”
“Well, they’re wrong. I know what Mitch said to me.” He sat on the edge of the desk and crossed his arms.
Lucia laid a hand on his forearm as if to comfort him. “Maybe Mitch was trying to tell you something else about her.”
He thought about it, but what kinds of things did a dying man think important enough to say? In his book, first was the name of his killer. “The Sparrow did it. End of discussion.”
Seeing that he had gotten his defenses up, Lucia said nothing else, but instead began entering another set of dates onto the list. A number of the dates and locations matched those for the Sparrow’s kills. “What are you doing now?”
“More than you are, clearly,” she teased, but then added, “Whoever spilled the beans to Corbett about Elizabeth being the Sparrow wasn’t completely sure. So I did a search to see where she might have gone. Contests, expos, vacations and…”
Fingers tapping away on the computer keys, she finished her entries. Beside a number of the dates that had already been there courtesy of MI6, there were now four entries for Chef Elizabeth Moore that matched.
“Seems like we have a pretty good candidate for the Sparrow,” he said.
“It appears that way. There’s just too much coincidence, including this weekend here.” Lucia motioned to one entry on her list. “She was at a cooking expo in the town next to the prince’s estate. He was found dead that weekend.”
“Poisoned, which seems to be a favorite method for our assassin.” Which could be why MI6 hadn’t listed Mitch, although some of the Sparrow’s other kills had been the plain old get-up-close-and-kill-them type. Which made him wonder just what motivated her. Sticking a knife in someone…Seeing that look of surprise fade to a lifeless stare…
He knew it well, having had to kill more than once on his assignments as an army Ranger. It wasn’t easy even if you told yourself that you had to do it. That it was either you and your men, or the man whose life you had just taken. But that look never left you. Not even when you slept.
Like the final expression on Mitch’s face. One of surprise and possibly even regret. For months after Mitch’s death, that image had chased him through his nightmares.
“Aidan?” Lucia asked, apparently sensing that she had lost him.
“I’m going to review the Elizabeth Moore file. Do you think you could give me a copy of that when you’re done? And can you add Mitch to the list and see if she was in Rome then?”
“You got it.”
He went to his room, slipped out the earpiece and placed it on a mahogany desk that held an assortment of other electronic gadgets he had designed. Grabbing the file on Elizabeth Moore once more, he plopped down onto the bed and began to review the facts.
Elizabeth was an only child whose parents had been local merchants. When she was fourteen, her parents had been found murdered in their fish shop. The murder had never been solved. The file hinted at possible involvement by members of the Royal Family’s ministers to quash parts of the investigation.
He paused, wondering if that was what had set the Sparrow on the path she had chosen? He was still lucky enough to have his parents and couldn’t imagine what it might have been like to lose them at such a young age, especially to an act of violence, and then find justice denied.
The photo of the Sparrow stared at him from the left side of the file. No hint of the wide and engaging smile he had seen earlier today. The photo had apparently been taken in Prague when an MI6 operative on another mission had noticed her standing in a square. The serious-looking young woman had fit the description of the Sparrow that MI6 had gleaned over years of investigations. With the renowned assassin suspected of being in town, the operative had decided to take the picture just in case.
It might not even be her, he thought. There must be millions of women who matched the general description—five foot six, brown hair, brown eyes and a