The Price of Valor

by Susan May Warren

  Logan opened a door and Ham stepped inside. A bank of screens lined the walls. “Over here.”

  Leaning over a tech was Ruby Jane Marshall. She wore a black dress, heels, her dark hair held back with a clip. She looked over her shoulder and stood up straight.

  “Hey, Ham.”

  “Hey. What’s going on?”

  “We’ve had eyes on your wife all night, and . . . suddenly, she’s gone off the grid.”

  “What?”

  “She’s here—see you two talking?”

  The tech had stilled the screen and he saw himself kissing Signe before leaving. More of a profile view, probably taken from one of the dozens of cameras around the room.

  “Now watch.”

  As he walked away, Signe turned to face the dance floor.

  A waiter walked up to her and delivered a plate to her. He walked away before she could stop him.

  “What’s on the—”

  “Just wait.”

  She picked up a piece of paper. Opened it. He couldn’t read it from this angle, but by the look on her face, something wasn’t right.

  Then she looked around, as if for him, and disappeared into the crowd.

  “We picked her up leaving the hall, then again ducking into a bathroom.”

  “Please tell me you don’t have cameras in the bathroom.”

  “No, of course not. But we just dispatched a team there, and she’s not there.”

  “Maybe she went back to the table.”

  “Ham,” Logan said quietly. “Your wife has been receiving payments from her husband’s account for the past five months.”

  Ham stared at Logan. “I’m her husband.”

  “Right. So, from the terrorist Pavel Tsarnaev.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Maybe. But someone has access to his account. And has been depositing money into Signe’s account.”

  “That proves nothing—”

  “And then there’s this,” Ruby Jane said. She handed him a list of websites. “These are all the places she’s visited, using your computer, since you were given the inaugural invitation. Coffee shops, hotels, and most specifically, schematics of the Patriot Hotel.”

  “How do you know it was her?”

  Ruby Jane raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying you downloaded blueprints of the basement of the Patriot Hotel?”

  Ham looked at the lists, pages and pages. “Is this a satellite photo?”

  “Yes. We’re not sure how she got in, but she’s been watching the small island of Lipari, north of Sicily, Italy.”

  “What’s on that island?”

  “The estate of Pavel Tsarnaev.”

  Ham handed RJ back the documents. “What are you saying?”

  “Just hear me, Ham. What if Signe is playing a long game, with Tsarnaev?”

  “To do what?”

  She raised a shoulder. “She’s providentially here, at an inaugural ball. How many people get invites to that?”

  “Because she’s my wife!”

  Ruby Jane said nothing.

  “Seriously. You think she’s a terrorist. What—that she’s here to kill White.” His shook his head. “This is rich, coming from you. You were accused of assassinating a Russian general.”

  “Ham—” she started, but he put up a hand.

  “What about Jackson?”

  Ruby Jane looked at Logan, then back to Ham. “We’ve been running with that theory for a long time. But we just can’t find the connection. Nothing to corroborate Signe’s story, except for our own circumstantial evidence. We have nothing except Signe’s word—”

  “Which is true!” He didn’t mean to raise his voice and schooled it. “She’s not lying. I’d know.”

  “Ham. She embedded with a terrorist for a decade. She’s a master at lying,” Logan said quietly.

  “No.”

  “Signe and Tsarnaev faked his death, then used you to get into the country. And now to get to the inaugural ball. She was with a terrorist organization, Ham. You can’t actually believe that she held out that long. That she wasn’t turned.”

  He stared at Logan and Ruby Jane. “No. She wouldn’t do this. She . . .” He held up his hand. “Let me find her.”

  “We’re already looking for her.”

  “Please—let me find her!”

  Ruby Jane took a breath, shot a look at Logan.

  “You find her, you detain her. Okay?” Logan said.

  “You tell your men not to scare her.”

  Ruby Jane looked at the guard by the door. “Let him go.”

  Ham headed back into the ballroom, his heart banging. Onstage, he heard his sister begin to announce the song Glo had written for her mother, Vice President Reba Jackson.

  Moments were starting to click together. Like every time he entered the office, Signe shut down her search. But what about the bank ledger from Tsarnaev? Was she checking on her deposits, lying to him about her so-called research?

  He was a stupid fool.

  Or not, because he simply couldn’t wrap his mind around the rest. The true night terrors, attributed to Tsarnaev. And Aggie’s fear too. That hadn’t been pretend.

  So maybe she was being coerced.

  Or maybe she’d simply gone to the restroom—

  “Boss!”

  Ham nearly rounded on Jake when he grabbed his arm. “We got a problem.”

  “Another one?”

  Jake frowned. “Uh, I don’t know. But Orion says he saw Martin in the crowd, and he freaked out and took off after him.”

  “Martin?”

  “The rogue CIA guy who nearly killed them in Italy—”

  “Right. Yes.” And if Martin was one of the good guys, of course he’d been here to stop Signe.

  But Martin had tried to kill Orion. “Help him get Martin. Detain him. I’m trying to find Signe.”

  “I saw her talking with Scarlett earlier.”

  “You did? Where?”

  Jake looked around. “Maybe back by the band? Ford was with them, talking with his brother, I think.”

  Yeah, those Marshalls were everywhere.

  Jake took off in the direction Orion had gone.

  Ham headed toward the stage.

  Please, Signe, where are you?

  Just when Signe thought it was safe to stop looking over her shoulder, to move on, to believe what Ham said to her—that they could start over, that he loved her, that Tsarnaev was dead—her past showed up to mock her.

  She’d stared at the picture the waiter had dropped in front of her, and her world imploded.

  Ruslan.

  It was a recent picture, his hair falling over his dark brown eyes, a smattering of freckles over his nose. He wore a hoodie under his jean jacket and stood like a tourist in front of the White House, decorated for Christmas.

  What?

  She turned the picture over and read the script on the back, in Chechen.

  1102. Now.

  She couldn’t move, her stomach turning over.

  No. It couldn’t be. She’d spent hours watching Pavel’s estate in Italy, sure he’d hide there if he’d survived. Nothing. No movement at all.

  She’d actually started to believe Ham.

  Breathe.

  But Ruslan . . . She tucked the picture into her dress and got up, looked around for Ham, then headed out of the room.

  But not before she spotted Scarlett. She walked right up to her and nodded.

  And Scarlett, bless her, delivered to her exactly the package she needed, the one that she’d asked her about in the bathroom at the coffee shop.

  Signe ducked into a nearby bathroom, stared in the mirror, and blew out a breath—tucking herself back into the persona that could save her, and exited quickly.

  A waiter walked by, probably from the nearby prep kitchen. She kept her head down, found an elevator, and punched the button. Got on and rode it up to the eleventh floor.

  She spotted the security officer standing outside a door, tracked the numbers, and yes.
The Roosevelt Suite.

  The officer stopped her, but a voice behind her said, “Let her pass.”

  She glanced over her shoulder and spotted the waiter. He had followed her up the elevator and now came up behind her. Dark hair, a scar over his eye.

  Oh . . . no—

  “Walk,” Martin said. He nodded to the officer, who let them pass.

  Think, Signe.

  She knocked on the door and someone opened it.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  “Come in,” Vice President Jackson said. She wore a white, beaded dress and her reddish-blonde hair up in a neat coif, and looked absolutely regal. “Nice to see you again, Signe.”

  Signe couldn’t move.

  Jackson raised a manicured eyebrow. “Do you need assistance?”

  Yes. Maybe. But Signe found herself and walked into the room. It was ornate, with blue carpet and rich red draperies, a white brocade sofa, and an adjoining door to another room. Two uniformed officers stood near the sliding glass door to the balcony.

  Jackson opened the other door. “Please.”

  “I don’t understand what I’m doing here—”

  And then she did. Because standing with his back to her, staring out the window, was the man she knew—really, she knew—was alive.

  She should have listened to herself, her gut instincts.

  “And you thought you could kill me.”

  She refused to shake. To allow Tsarnaev to know what his voice did to her.

  Then he turned. His face had been scarred, bright red patches of skin crisscrossed over one side of his puckered face. And his hands, too, bore red patchwork.

  Burns.

  In fact, if she hadn’t heard his voice, she might not recognize him.

  Maybe that’s how he’d gotten into the building, his face unrecognizable to anyone looking.

  Then again, he was standing here with the vice president, so . . .

  “How did you find me?”

  “Please. You tried to get it burned off, but I told you that you’d always belong to me.”

  Burned—what? “The tattoo?”

  “The microwave tracker we had inserted while he was marking you.”

  She could be ill. No wonder they found her all over Europe.

  “Besides, even with that, I knew you’d return to him,” Pavel said, his accent nearly gone. Another charade. “I knew as soon as I saw that video on your phone.”

  That video . . . oh. The one she’d downloaded from YouTube after seeing it play on CNN.

  A video of Hamilton Jones on a subway, months ago, taking down an attacker.

  Precise, calm, the man had put the subway attacker in a sleeper hold, brought him to the ground, and put a foot on him. He’d saved what looked like a college kid, but more importantly . . . she’d found him.

  And that day knew she had a way to save their daughter.

  She met Pavel’s obsidian eyes. “Ham has nothing to do with this.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, he has everything to do with this. It’s because of Ham that you’re here to help us.”

  “Help . . .”

  “Listen, we understand the game,” Pavel said. He wore a suit, his body leaner, probably from time in a hospital. “We understand why you took the list, why you tried to return it. We were counting on it, actually.” He came over to her. “But I feel I owe you an apology.”

  She frowned, but refused to step away from him, despite the way her body tensed at just his smell.

  Maybe she had changed, because she didn’t have a chance of compartmentalizing how she felt about him. “Yes, you do, you filthy pig.”

  His eyes darkened. “Really.”

  She braced herself, this time ready to fight back.

  “Pavel. She needs to return to the ball unmarked,” Jackson said.

  The sentence so confused her that Signe didn’t notice Pavel slipping a bracelet around her wrist and snapping it shut.

  “Hey!”

  It was pretty, a thick ring of diamonds secured in white gold. “What’s this?”

  “A gift.” Then Pavel leaned in and kissed her cheek.

  She pushed him away. “Get off me!”

  He chuckled but didn’t move. Touched her cheek. “You know you will always belong to me.”

  “No, no I won’t—”

  “Yes, you will. Because you know that you don’t deserve better. You would have never surrendered to me in the first place if you didn’t believe that you deserved it.”

  “You raped me.”

  “Did I, though?” He raised an eyebrow and ran the back of his knuckles down her face.

  She refused to flinch. “What is this?” She held up her arm. “I don’t want it.” She turned it to find the clasp but couldn’t unlatch it.

  “It’s locked. And now that it’s active, if you try to remove it, it will detonate.”

  She stilled. “What?”

  Jackson just smiled at her. “I have to go make my appearance. I’m afraid this is the last time we’ll see each other, darling. Thank you for your service.” She winked and headed out the door.

  “Wait—what?” She headed after her, but Pavel grabbed her arm.

  She swung around and sent her fist into his face.

  He jerked back, let her go.

  “You—” And the epithet that followed was in Chechen, but she understood it clearly. He looked like he might come at her, so she stepped behind a table.

  “I’m not your wife. I never was. And I’m not going back into that ballroom to let you kill people.”

  “Then he dies.” He pulled out his cell phone.

  A live stream. Ruslan, playing a computer game in a hotel room. The Washington Monument gleamed through the window behind him.

  “You wouldn’t. He’s your son too.”

  “He’s the son of an American spy, a witch and an infidel. Of course I would kill him.”

  His words turned her cold.

  “But I won’t stop there. If you don’t return, he’s next.”

  He scrolled to a picture of Ham, dressed in his tux, talking with a woman, clearly taken tonight.

  “I’m so glad you didn’t let me kill him. He’s been ever so useful.”

  She looked at Pavel. “You planted the NOC list, knowing I’d find it, knowing I’d get it home.”

  “Knowing you’d be declared a hero of your beloved country. And find your way back to your true love, Hamilton Jones, a known associate of presidential candidate Isaac White.” He said it with a smile.

  She went cold. “You used my marriage to Ham to get me to the Inaugural Ball. To . . . what. Blow up a party?”

  “Oh sweetheart, think. Not any party.”

  The party with the president. “He’s not due here for an hour, maybe more.”

  “If you think you can leave before he gets here, that bracelet will detonate around any metal detectors. Or, any time I want it to.” He held up his cell phone. “There’s a GPS attached, so I’ll know if you leave the hotel. No, you’ll stick around until White arrives and then . . .” He lifted a shoulder. “Boom.”

  She fought the rise of her breaths, a hyperventilation. No, no, calm down . . . “I’ll inform Secret Service.”

  “They already think you’re a terrorist, sweetheart. They won’t listen to you.”

  She frowned.

  “I filled your bank account with enough evidence to land you in a black site for the rest of your life. You’ll wish for execution. Trust me, this is the better way.”

  Clearly a bank account she’d never seen before. “I’ll pull the fire alarm.”

  He lifted a shoulder. “Boom.”

  “I’ll get on a table and shout it—”

  “The bracelet is like a cell phone. It’s Bluetooth connected and it has a speaker. I can hear everything you’re saying. You tell anyone . . . and well—”

  Yeah, she knew. Boom.

  She pressed her hands on the table. “What about Ruslan?”

  “It’s simple. You
do this, and he lives. You don’t and, well, we already know what kind of mother you are. The kind who sacrifices her children for her own agenda.”

  She stared at him, his words a stone in her heart.

  He took a step toward her, but she jerked back.

  He held up his hand. “I always told you that you were special to me. Now you know why.”

  No, no—

  “You wanted to be important, honey? You will be. You’re going to assassinate the president of the United States.”

  He held up the cell phone and walked out of the room.

  She just tried to breathe.

  Ham. She might have to stay, but Ham didn’t. Ham and his team could leave. And maybe she could figure out a way to evacuate the building.

  Before, well, boom.

  She looked at the jewelry on her wrist, the way it sparkled.

  Fake, probably, just like her entire life.

  She walked out of the room, but the Secret Service was gone.

  Fine. Okay. Breathe.

  Because yes, she’d seen this coming. She hadn’t been a spy for ten years without learning a few things.

  She just had to find Ham.

  And figure out a way to keep him safe.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  HAVE YOU SEEN SIGNE?”

  Ham found Scarlett staring at her cell phone. She looked up at Ham. “What?”

  “Signe, have you seen her?”

  She nodded. “She went upstairs—I think she’s on the eleventh floor—”

  That’s all he heard before he took off out of the hall. Scarlett might have called after him, but he didn’t have time.

  He had to find Signe before the Secret Service did. Before they arrested her, before they did exactly what he feared—took her away to a undisclosed location and she spent years trying to untangle herself.

  Behind him, in the hall, Jackson was coming on stage with her entourage.

  The relative quiet of the hallway shook him for a moment, just Secret Service agents milling around.

  Eleventh floor.

  He slammed his thumb into the button. C’mon!

  The elevator opened and he got in, banged the eleventh-floor button.

  Glued his gaze to the numbers as it rose.

  When it opened, he wasn’t sure where to turn.

  Then, like a miracle, he spotted her. She came out of a room, stood at the door, as if catching her breath. “Signe!”