Chapter 98 The Night They Came

Chapter 98 The Night They Came
Elena's Pov

Gio did not answer the first call.
Luca tried again immediately. Still nothing. He put the phone down and looked at me and the look said everything.
"How long do we have," I said.
"If the cameras went down thirty-seven minutes ago, they have had thirty-seven minutes to position," he said. 
"The approach from the road takes four minutes on foot. The hillside approach takes twelve."
"They are already in position," I said.
"Yes," he said. "Get away from the windows."
We moved to the interior of the house. The hallway between the kitchen and the sitting room, no glass. 
No exterior wall on either side. Luca had his phone in one hand and had picked up the firearm from the locked box in the bedroom without my seeing him do it. 
He moved through the house with the efficiency of someone who had trained for exactly this kind of situation for a long time.
"Can you reach Gio another way," I said.
"I am trying the perimeter guard," he said. "Stand behind me."
"I will not stand behind you," I said.
"Elena," he said.
"I am not standing behind you," I said. "Tell me what to do that is useful."
He looked at me for one second. "The kitchen drawer on the left side," he said. "Bottom. There is a second firearm. You know how to use it."
I went to the kitchen, staying below the window line, and found the drawer and the firearm. I checked it the way I had been trained to check it and came back to the hallway.
The first sound came from the eastern side of the house. Not loud. A footstep on stone that was slightly wrong. The sound of someone who was being careful but was not perfect.
Luca put his hand on my arm and positioned me on the left side of the hallway with my back to the wall and himself on the right.
"When I move, you stay," he said.
"If you need me, I move," I said.
He did not argue with that. He looked at the door.
The front door handle moved.
It was locked. The handle moved again. Then a different sound from the back of the house. The kitchen window. Someone assessing the replacement glass.
"Two points of entry," I said quietly.
"Minimum," he said.
He moved to the front door and took a position beside it. I kept the hallway.
The kitchen window broke with a specific sound that was different from random breaking. Someone who knew what they were doing.
A figure came through. I saw the shape of them before they saw me and I did not hesitate because hesitation was what got people killed in the rooms where Iris had trained me.
The figure went down.
Luca had moved at the sound of the window and the front door opened and there were two of them. He dealt with the first one in a way that was fast and did not require description. The second one moved into the hallway toward me and I dealt with that.
The house went quiet.
Four minutes, maybe five.
Luca came back to the hallway. He was unhurt. He looked at me and I showed him I was unhurt and we both stood in the quiet house and listened for anything further.
Nothing came.
"Two at the front," he said.
"One through the kitchen," I said. "There was a second who moved to the hallway."
"Four total," he said.
"Are there more outside," I said.
"I do not know yet," he said. "Stay inside."
He did not tell me to stay inside when he went to check. He took that back and accepted that I was coming.
We went through the house together and the garden and the approach roads. The four were all of them.
Gio arrived twenty-two minutes later with three additional security. He had been unreachable because someone had jammed the local cellular signal on a tight frequency for the duration of the operation. 
Professional equipment, the jamming had ended when the last of the four went down, which was either automatic or someone had been monitoring.
"They knew Gio would be unreachable," I said.
"Yes," Luca said. "This was planned around our specific security setup."
"Someone told them the setup," I said.
"Yes," he said.
Gio began the process of securing the premises and dealing with what needed to be dealt with. He was efficient and did not require direction on any of it.
The fourth figure was the one who had come through the kitchen window. He had been dealt with but not immediately. 
He was still present and still had a window in which he understood what was happening.
Luca crouched beside him.
"Who sent you," Luca said.
The figure looked at him. His breathing was the specific kind that did not have much time in it.
"The network," he said. "Valentina's people."
"Who coordinated the operation," Luca said.
The figure looked at the ceiling. Then, with something that was almost a smile.
"Mateo sends his regards," he said.
He did not say anything after that.
The house was quiet.
Luca stood up and did not move for a long moment. His back was to me and I did not say anything because some things needed a moment before they could be spoken around.
Then he turned.
His face was the controlled version. The expensive one. The one that cost him more than the open ones.
"I have to make calls," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"Are you all right," he said.
"Yes," I said. "Are you."
"No," he said. "Not about this particular thing."
"I know," I said.
He made the calls.
I sat at the kitchen table with the replacement window that the glazier had installed and the north bed lavender visible through it in the dark and the house around us that was supposed to be the ordinary life and had tonight been the other kind.
I pressed my palm flat on the table and sat with it until Luca came back.
"Sienna is coming," he said.
"Yes," I said. "She would be."
He sat across from me. He put his hands flat on the table. He looked at them.
"Mateo," he said.
"We do not know what it means yet," I said. "Those were the man's last words under extreme circumstances. There are reasons someone says something like that which are not all the same reason."
"Such as," he said.
"He was sent to deliver that message specifically," I said. "Valentina's network wanted you to hear that name. Or he made it up because he knew it would hurt you most. Or Mateo is actually involved and this is exactly what it sounds like."
"Those possibilities are not equally weighted," Luca said.
"No," I said. "They are not."
"The most likely is the last one," he said.
"Yes," I said. "It is."
He held his hands flat on the table and looked at the garden through the broken window and sat with something that I did not try to take from him because it was his and it needed to be held properly.
"Whatever it is," I said. "You find out before you decide anything."
"Yes," he said.
"And I am here," I said. "Whatever comes next."
He looked at me.
"I know," he said. "That is the thing that has held tonight."
Sienna arrived forty minutes after the call. She came with Gio's second team and a woman I had not met before who turned out to be a forensic specialist Sienna kept on retainer for exactly these situations.
The house became organized quickly. Sienna ran it the way she ran everything, which was without visible effort.
I made coffee because it was the useful thing I could do that was not in anyone's way. Luca was in the sitting room with Sienna reviewing the approach vectors and the jamming equipment signature that Gio's team had recovered from the hillside.
At some point Sienna came and stood in the kitchen doorway.
"How are you," she said.
"Fine," I said. "Better than the alternative."
"Yes," she said.
"What do you think about Mateo," I said.
She was quiet for a moment. "I think the name was placed deliberately," she said. "Whether he placed it himself or someone placed it through him is the question."
"Which do you think," I said.
"I think Mateo is not organized enough to run an operation of this precision," she said. "The jamming equipment. The camera disable. The four-point approach. That requires resources he does not have independently."
"But he may have provided information to someone who does," I said.
"Yes," she said. "That is the version I find most likely."
"The city two hundred kilometers south," I said. "The contact he went to see."
"Yes," she said.
I poured coffee and handed her a cup and she took it and we stood in the kitchen that had a broken window and a replacement window and a garden outside that was waiting to be planted properly and was not aware of any of what had happened in the past hour.
"He is going to go to Mateo," I said.
"Yes," Sienna said.
"Is that the right call," I said.
"It is the call he has to make," Sienna said. "Whether it is right depends on what Mateo says."