Black List: HOT Heroes for Hire: Mercenaries: A Black’s Bandits Novel

by Lynn Raye Harris

  “Staying there won’t do you any good,” he shouted above the rotors. “They’ll just toss you out when they reach altitude again.”

  She put her hand in his. There was a spark of feeling that zapped into him as he clamped down on her hand and pulled her from the craft. Then he hustled her toward the stairway that had been rolled up to the door of the 737. At the top, Colton Duchaine waited. Relief pulsed through Jace at the sight of his BDI brother. Of course Ian would have sent others, but they’d be on the plane now and out of sight. Ian was prepared for anything, including a battle if that’s what it took to get Calypso away.

  She stumbled halfway up the steep stairs. Jace caught her before she went down. Maybe he should let her fall, but he wasn’t wired that way. She might be a brutal assassin, but that didn’t mean he had to be brutal in return. Unless she forced it somehow.

  The wind whipped her hair into her face and she dragged it away as he held her steady. Then she jerked free of his grip and continued the climb. Once they were through the aircraft door, he guided her toward the seats. The aircraft wasn’t standard. It belonged to BDI and was far more plush than a commercial jet. The seats were club-style, comfortable, with entertainment centers and the ability to lie flat for long journeys.

  “Pick one,” he told her. “Then buckle in and kick off your shoes.”

  Because they needed to make sure those heels didn’t conceal weapons or poison. She turned and he saw the tears streaking her cheeks for the first time. But she didn’t look terrified. She looked angry. Precisely what he would expect from Calypso.

  “Where are you taking me? I’m an American citizen. I demand to be taken to the embassy.”

  “You aren’t in a position to demand anything. Sit, take off your shoes. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

  Her jaw worked, eyes flashing hot. And then she flung herself into a seat and tugged the belt into place, kicking off the shoes as she did so. “You’ll pay for this,” she gritted between her teeth.

  “I don’t expect so, but you’re free to think I will if it helps.”

  He picked up the shoes and started to walk away, but she reached for him, tugged on the sleeve of his tuxedo jacket. He’d already loosened the tie and collar, but he hadn’t removed the jacket yet. He gazed down at her with mild annoyance. And interest, damn him. Such pretty green eyes. Her top lip had a little dip in it and her bottom lip was full. Kissable.

  Just what he needed to be thinking about a deadly assassin.

  “I’m not who you think I am. I’m Dr. Madeline Cole—Maddy to friends. I work for Barrington’s of New York. I was appraising Mr. Sokolov’s art collection for insurance purposes. Call them and they’ll tell you.”

  The words tumbled from her. He frowned as he considered them. She seemed so sincere. But she was an expert so of course she’d memorized the story until it was second nature.

  It was an interesting cover. He’d pass the information to Ian. It was bullshit, probably, like so many of his personas. It would take time to dig through the layers of deception, but Ian would get it done.

  “We will, I assure you.”

  “My passport—my computer with all my work, everything—it’s in Mr. Sokolov’s house. I was there for the next few days, working on the collection. I went up to my room to get batteries for my camera, and that’s when I heard the shots and screaming.” Her chin quivered and he knew she was fighting to hold in her tears. Or maybe it was anger considering the look she aimed at him just then. “When I came out, you attacked me.”

  “You tried to run.”

  “What would you do if somebody was heading straight for you and looked like he planned to kill you?” She folded her arms and thrust out her pointy little chin. “When I finally get out of here, I’m going to sue you for everything you have.”

  Jace couldn’t help but laugh. “Sue away, sweetheart.” He switched into English to see her reaction. “Dr. Cole, is it? Where were you born? Where did you grow up?”

  She frowned for a second. Thinking? “My father was in the military. I was born at Landstuhl military hospital in Germany, but when he was assigned to the Pentagon, we lived in Virginia and Maryland for most of my childhood. Now I live in Annapolis. My grandmother is in a memory care facility there. The Oaks.”

  The plane began to move. Colt walked into the cabin. “We’re cleared. Be airborne in a few.”

  Jace took a seat across from Calypso and began to examine her shoes while Colt sat across the aisle from them.

  “Shoe fetish?” she asked in an acid tone.

  Colt snickered. Jace didn’t react. He tugged on the heels, checked for any separation, and when he was satisfied they weren’t hiding a weapon, he tossed them at her feet.

  “Nope, not in the least.”

  She didn’t move to put them back on, wriggling her toes instead. They were nice toes with pink polish and a silver toe ring on the second toe of her left foot.

  Colt was watching those toes too. Then he lifted his head and watched her. Jace didn’t blame him. First, she was pretty. And second, Calypso was a legend in their line of work. A stone-cold killer who would eliminate anyone for a price. She’d slipped through so many dragnets that there was speculation she wasn’t real. That her work was actually done by a group of paid mercenaries.

  But here she was. And she didn’t look all that dangerous after all. Probably what made her so effective.

  “Please tell me where we’re going.”

  He didn’t see any reason not to. Her reaction might give more away than she intended. “Washington. There are people who wish to talk to you.”

  She frowned, her sculpted brows drawing low over her smooth forehead. Creating anger lines.

  Interesting.

  “Well, good. Because I wish to talk to them too. This is bullshit. You can’t kidnap American citizens and do whatever you want with them. We have laws about that.”

  Jace leaned back against the seat as they left the taxiway and hit the airstrip. The jet picked up speed quickly. “If you’re who you say you are, you’ll be free to go.” The wheels left the ground and the pilots aimed the jet sharply upward. He’d been expecting it. But Calypso’s face blanched.

  It wasn’t the kind of takeoff commercial airplanes did, even though they could, and it was startling for anyone who’d never experienced it. He’d been through it many times, on more exfiltrations than he cared to remember. He would have expected her to be familiar with it as an covert operative. Clearly, she was not.

  “Standard procedure,” he told her. “Nothing to worry about.”

  She licked her lips. “I don’t even have my passport. It’s in my purse, which you can see I don’t have. How are you possibly taking me to the States?”

  “You don’t need it where we’re going.”

  She didn’t say anything else. When the plane leveled out and Colt gave him a look, Jace took a pair of cuffs from the storage drawer nearby. Calypso looked up as the metal snapped open, her eyes widening as he reached for her arm. She jerked it away.

  “What the hell?”

  “We’ve got to make a phone call, sweetheart. No way am I leaving you loose while we go into the back.”

  Panic flared in those pretty eyes of hers. “You can’t mean to chain me. Where would I go? Look around you, jerk face. We’re thirty-thousand feet in the air.”

  Jerk face? He would have laughed if this wasn’t so serious. “Where would you go? Aircraft door? Cockpit?”

  “I’m not an idiot.”

  He wrenched her arm free and snapped on the cuff. Then he fastened the other end to the ring on the seat that was made for such a thing. She paled, and he tried not to feel guilty about it.

  “Neither am I,” he growled.

  “Dr. Madeline Cole is an art historian and appraiser. She works for Barrington’s of New York, and she was sent to St. Petersburg two days ago in order to catalog Sokolov’s artwork for insurance purposes. She flew out of BWI.”

  Jace sat in the command cent
er located on the aircraft and studied a side by side comparison of the real Madeline Cole and the photos of Calypso they’d obtained. Colt lounged in the chair beside him while Ian talked to them on the satellite phone.

  “They look alike,” Jace said. Not twins, but similar facial features and body type. The woman handcuffed into her seat in the main cabin could be Madeline Cole. Or she could have gone to extraordinary lengths to look like her. It was his experience that people involved in international espionage would do whatever it took. His own parents, for instance.

  Him.

  “They do. Our facial recognition software says the woman you caught and the woman in the photo is the same person. But it’s not perfect, especially when the photos of Calypso aren’t as crisp as we’d like them to be. And we didn’t know about the existence of Madeline Cole when the comparison was run.”

  “We know for sure that Madeline Cole isn’t also Calypso?”

  “The timelines don’t match for other jobs. They aren’t the same person.”

  “So you’re telling me I might have grabbed an art historian?” Fuck. And he’d forcibly handcuffed her to her seat. Not to mention shot at her.

  Jesus.

  “Maybe. I think it likely Calypso and the Gemini Syndicate orchestrated the whole thing as a way to gain access to Sokolov’s compound. We have to consider that she might have killed the historian and assumed her identity.”

  “We’ll need to take DNA.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if she’s really Madeline Cole? What then? She could be in danger from the real Calypso.” They couldn’t ignore that fact. If she was really Dr. Cole, then Calypso and her handlers had gone to extraordinary lengths to use her. Because that resemblance wasn’t a coincidence.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, Sokolov is safe and I’ve been in touch with his security. They swept the compound and found 7.62 NATO shell casings in Dr. Cole’s room. But the weapon was fired from the room next door—that’s where the gunpowder signature was heaviest. The door between the two rooms was open.”

  Jace frowned. “No rifle?”

  “Not there.”

  That didn’t mean much. A sniper rifle would be worth money on the black market. One of Sokolov’s employees—or a temporary staff member brought in for the party—could have lifted the thing before security searched for it. It wouldn’t be all that unusual. On the other hand, somebody could have been there to sweep up after Calypso. Give her a chance to get away.

  “We’ll need to check her clothing for powder residue.”

  “Got everything waiting. Just get her here and we’ll find out who she is.”

  “Who did she kill? I saw two men go down.”

  “A colonel in the Russian army named Fyodor Isaev, and Muscovite businessman Pavel Popov. Popov was an arms manufacturer. Isaev was an intel officer.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah. We’re still working on the connections. It’s possible one of those was her target all along. Or both.”

  “Want me to ask her?” He didn’t know why he said that since he was beginning to believe he hadn’t captured her after all.

  “Let’s wait until we get confirmation on her identity.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  They ended the communication and Colt met his gaze. “It’d be really good for us if that’s Calypso out there. Because the idea she’s still at large isn’t a pleasant one.”

  Jace frowned. “Yeah, I know. But if she is, then Dr. Cole is probably dead.”

  And that wasn’t an idea he liked. He didn’t know Madeline Cole, but she didn’t deserve to be murdered so that Calypso could assume her identity and kill a target. He’d done a lot of dirty shit in his day, but he drew the line at innocent people dying for no reason.

  Colt sighed. “There is that. Guess we’ll find out when we get her back to HQ.”

  Jace tapped the edge of the table. He really wanted to have captured the mysterious Calypso. It would be a major coup if he had. Not to mention it could throw the Gemini Syndicate off their game as they worried about whether or not she would talk.

  But he wanted Madeline Cole alive even more. Because he knew what it was like to be dragged into something he hadn’t chosen and have it affect the course of his life in ways he’d never be able to change. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right, and he didn’t wish it on anyone.

  Still, he’d done this job long enough to know that innocent people got killed sometimes. And there was nothing he could do about it once it happened. He fished the handcuff key from his pocket and stood. Time to unleash his prisoner.

  Chapter Five

  Maddy dozed. Her sleep was still screwed the hell up and now she had stress to add to the mix. She saw blue eyes in her dreams, a bearded stranger who held her down and called her Calypso. What the hell?

  She awoke with a start, blinking into the darkened interior of the cabin. The lights had been turned down and the shades were pulled closed. It took her a moment to realize she wasn’t alone. He sat across from her, watching her. The man from her dream. The real-life James Bond who’d kidnapped her and taken her on an adventure she still couldn’t wrap her head around. He leaned forward and unlocked the handcuffs, snicking the side open that held her wrist. She tugged it free and rubbed her skin even though he hadn’t fastened them too tight. Still, he’d fastened them—and she’d never been trapped like that before.

  His gaze dropped to where she rubbed her wrist for the briefest of moments. If he felt guilty, he darn sure didn’t show it. “Tell me, Dr. Cole, how did you learn Russian?”

  Her heart skipped. Did he believe her? She was hopeful—but then she realized that, no, he probably did not. He was trying to trip her up. Except he couldn’t because she wasn’t who he thought she was. She was herself. “College. Well, high school and college. My dad was a Russian linguist in the Air Force for a while, then he was a government civilian. S.A.L.T. inspections, that kind of thing. He encouraged it, and I wanted to be like him so I took courses. He’d already taught me a few words and phrases so I had a leg up, I guess. It came naturally to me.”

  Way to tell him everything, Maddy. Could she have babbled a touch less? Probably. But she was nervous and she had an unfortunate tendency to talk too much in that case.

  “You have an American accent.”

  “Because I am American?” There was no small touch of sarcasm in her voice. Maybe she shouldn’t antagonize him, but she couldn’t help it. She was upset and scared and this whole situation was outrageous.

  “It’s not bad, just noticeable.”

  “That’s not a crime, Mr. Whoever You Are. Don’t you think you could tell me your name now? We’re in a plane, thirty-thousand feet in the air, and I don’t know who you people are.” She glanced at her surroundings. Whoever they were, this wasn’t Delta Airlines. This was the kind of private jet that people with money owned. There were two flight attendants, and they kept disappearing into the back of the aircraft where this man and his friend had gone once the plane reached altitude. Presumably, there were more people back there and the flight attendants were busy serving them.

  “You can call me Andrei.”

  “Andrei. You’re Russian?”

  He shrugged. “Something like that.”

  “Then why are we going to the States? And who is Calypso?”

  “Either you know who she is or you don’t. And if you really don’t, then you don’t need to know.”

  Maddy threw her hands in the air. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. What is this? A James Bond movie? Mission Impossible? I’m an art appraiser. My specialty is Russian art of the thirteenth through seventeenth centuries. Particularly icons, of which Mr. Sokolov has an impressive collection.”

  “So you only appraise Russian art?”

  “No, I’m capable of evaluating other art, though I sometimes need to consult with a specialist. That’s why I work for Barrington’s. We specialize. I have a whole company of
experts to consult if I’m unsure about a piece.”

  “So you were there to appraise Mr. Sokolov’s artwork. How long have you known you were going on this job?”

  Maddy frowned. She wasn’t sure why he needed to know, but she didn’t see any harm in telling him. The more details she revealed about her life, the more he had to realize she was telling the truth. Who would make this stuff up? Maddy Cole was kind of boring, really. Her job was often interesting to people, but it wasn’t as exciting as they thought. And her personal life wasn’t exciting at all.

  “I got the assignment a few days ago.”

  He looked thoughtful. “A few days. How many?”

  She thought back. Her days were running together. “I think it was six days. Maybe a week.”

  “You don’t know for sure?”

  “If I had my purse and my cell phone, I’d know. It’s in my calendar. Life is busy, Mr. Bond. Days can rush by in a blur sometimes.”

  He seemed to accept that. Or at least he didn’t ask again. “Did you know Mr. Sokolov was having a birthday party?”

  “Not until today, no. Why would I?”

  “When did you arrive?” He ignored her question.

  She’d expected he would. It made her want to ignore his, but considering he had the upper hand here, she was in no position to do so. “I landed in St. Petersburg on Thursday and stayed the night there. Friday afternoon, a car came for me. When I got to Mr. Sokolov’s, I went to work.”

  “Tell me again how you ended up on the second floor of his house where the shots were fired from.”

  Maddy blinked. “They were fired from the second floor? I-I thought they were fireworks. It was loud, but…”

  “They were fired from the room beside yours. The one with the connecting door that was open.”

  “It wasn’t open,” she blurted. “I tried it.”

  He lifted an eyebrow.

  Maddy’s gut twisted. “Look, I was in Mr. Sokolov’s office when the party started. He has a very large collection of icons, and I stayed there until I went to get batteries. I need to take pictures of every piece, and my batteries were dying. The spares were in my suitcase. So I went up to get them—and that’s when I thought I heard fireworks. When people started to scream, I tried that door because the maid had been in there to turn down the room and I thought she might know what was happening. But the door didn’t work and I ran into the hall.”