Free The Accident by Chris Pavone

drive.”
    Hayden checks his ammunition clip, and screws on a sound suppressor. Kate does the same with her weapon.
    “We’re going to rob this guy?” she asks.
    Hayden laughs, and slips the weapon into the patch pocket of his herringbone sport jacket. “No, Dear. I’m going to rob this guy. You’re going to wait on the street, in case something happens. When I exit the building, I’ll give you the laptop. I’ll get on my bicycle. You’ll drive.” Hayden places a bud in his ear. “To leave Denmark, don’t take the ferry to Germany; go over the mainland.”
    She nods her understanding: avoid chokepoints.
    “Take your bag to the car now.” He connects the wire to his phone. “Then wait across the street, and watch.”
    They both look around the apartment, checking for stray items. There’s nothing.
    T he stairs are worn and creaky, the banister wobbly. Hayden takes the stairs slowly, deliberately, aware of his gathering nerves, careful not to slip and fall, pointlessly.
    For the entirety of his adult life, Hayden has chosen to be anAmerican abroad, meddling in the affairs of foreign governments. He bears culpability for the decision to live this type of life. If this gets him killed, he will not be a victim; you’re not a victim if you bring it on yourself. Hayden believes in self-determination, and self-responsibility.
    He will not blame the person who eventually kills him, in a situation like this. But he always hopes it doesn’t happen today.
    Hayden waits for a few small cars and a large flotilla of bicycles to pass, then walks across the street with a measured pace, trying to keep himself calm, or at least calm-looking. In front of the building next door, a cigarette-smoking man tosses his butt into the gutter, turns away, and steps through the glass door, which is covered in lace-trimmed curtains.
    Hayden pushes open the apartment building’s big wooden door, steps into the tiled vestibule, and confronts a modern glass-and-aluminum door, next to a panel of buttons beside name labels, half of them blank. He considers buzzing randomly until someone admits him, then decides against it. This door looks flimsy enough, and a couple of whacks with the pistol ought to disable the lock, or shatter the glass.
    But first he tries pulling on the handle, and sure enough the thing simply opens. Oh, Scandinavia. How trusting.
    He climbs another set of rickety wooden stairs, turns on the landing, approaches the door. He takes a deep breath, removes the weapon from his pocket, and uses the butt to knock.
    Nothing.
    He waits five seconds, ten. He bangs again. Then calls out, “FedEx!”
    “Jeg kommer!” comes the answer. He can hear the scraping of chair legs against the wood floor, then footsteps, then the click as the lock disengages—
    Hayden throws his shoulder and all his weight against the door and explodes into the room while grabbing Jens Grundtvig by the shirtand raising the pistol and placing the muzzle directly on the man’s forehead.
    “Shhhh , ” Hayden hisses. He kicks the door closed. “You are very close to dying right now.”
    Grundtvig’s eyes are popping out of his head; he’s stumbling backward, losing his balance, but Hayden is holding him up by the shirtfront.
    “But I don’t want to kill you. What I want is to know what you’re doing.”
    The man opens his mouth, but no sound emerges.
    “Excuse me?” Hayden asks.
    “Please do not kill me.”
    They have moved all the way into the room, to the desk. “Sit down,” Hayden orders.
    The man collapses into his chair, panting.
    “Now tell me: what are you doing here?”
    “Research. I am doing research.”
    “For whom?”
    “I do not know.”
    “Who is paying you?”
    “I do not know his name. Or her name. I do not know. I am paid every week. Kroner are deposited into my account.”
    “You are researching Charlie Wolfe? His companies?”
    “Yes. That is all. Research.”
    “And what do you do with your information? Do you send it