Strangers When We Meet

by Merline Lovelace

  She remembered now. Getting out of the taxi. Shivering in the cold that knifed across the open highway. Huddling in the entrance to the ladies’ room, her heart hammering, until the car drove up and someone reached across to open the passenger door.

  It had swung in the wind, that open door. The interior was dark, so dark Lara could see nothing as she forced herself to walk to the car. She remembered sliding into the seat, turning her head toward the shadowy figure beside her and…

  And pain. One lancing jolt in the side of her neck. She remembered nothing else.

  Her blood felt as cold as the wind as she studied the one who watched her like a hawk. She didn’t recognize him, couldn’t remember ever seeing him before. He looked like any other man. Not short, not particularly tall. His face was handsome in a rugged sort of way, his leather jacket and designer jeans expensive.

  “You…are…Barlow?”

  “Yes. And you are the stubborn woman who wouldn’t let sleeping ghosts lie.”

  “Wh…? Where…?”

  She sounded just like him! A hoarse croak. A rusty wheeze. She slicked her tongue across her lips and tried again.

  “Where have you brought me?”

  Carefully, she turned her head. They were in a kitchen, she saw. An old kitchen, with windows of broken glass and walls with peeling strips of faded paper. There was a table, chairs. One had toppled on its side, missing a leg. She was taped into another. The light… She searched for the source. The light came from a powerful electric lantern set a few feet away. It kept her pinned in a vicious beam as Barlow replied to her question with a careless shrug.

  “I believe the locals call this the old Miller place. I stumbled on it when I was up here hunting a few years ago.”

  Only now did Lara realize they spoke in Russian. His accent was pure Moscow, as fluid and idiomatic as hers. Was he Russian? One of the many moles sent to America over the years?

  “Are you FSB?” she croaked.

  Laughter broke from him, as rough and harsh as his voice. “A secret agent? Hardly. The job doesn’t pay well enough.”

  A rustle from the shadows behind him told her they weren’t alone, but Lara’s entire being was focused on the one who mocked her with his smile.

  “I have friends in the FSB, however. Well-placed friends who enjoy the rubles I pay them to look the other way on certain of my business dealings.”

  “Did you…?” Her breath hitched. Her heart pounded. After so many years, so many tears, she had to know. “Did you set the fire six years ago?”

  “I did. Most regrettably, I assure you.”

  Her fingers curled into claws as she struggled against tape binding her wrists to the chair arms.

  “Why?” she whispered.

  “It was the only way I could think of at the time to dispose of the woman’s body without implicating myself in her death.”

  “Elena.” Hate boiled up in Lara’s veins. “Her name was Elena. You killed her?”

  “Not intentionally. Things just got a little out of hand that night. Even my friends in the FSB couldn’t cover up something like that.”

  The reply was like a wire brush gouging her skin, drawing blood with each word.

  “You bastard! You killed so many because of one?”

  “I told you, things got out of hand. And the fire department took so long to respond. As they will tonight. This place is so far out in the country, you see.”

  Lara went still, absolutely still, as Barlow shot back his cuff and checked his watch.

  “It won’t happen for some hours yet, Larissa Petrovna. I have to drive back to my plant in Denver. The night shift will verify that I was miles away when this fire broke out and you so tragically perished.”

  He was so smug, so sure of himself. She would have killed him with her bare hands at that moment had she been able to break free of the tape.

  “They’ll come and interrogate me, of course. They won’t be able to tie me to anything, but they’ll try. The OSI, who have already asked so many questions. The CIA. Your friend, Major Hamilton. How did you intend to explain the fact that you slept with him, I wonder?”

  She answered with a curse that drew a shrug from her tormentor.

  “Ah, well, you won’t have to explain anything now, will you?”

  He extracted something from his pocket. A tube of some sort. Lara guessed what it was even before he squeezed out a drop of gel that glistened in the bright light of the lantern.

  “Such a useful tool, this new compound. It burns cleanly and leaves no trace.”

  He smoothed the gel onto the wall beside him, then reached into his pocket again for what looked like a spool of thread and a knife—the same small, serrated kitchen knife Lara had brought with her.

  He didn’t look her way as he cut a short length of thread. No, not thread. Wire. After inserting one end into the plastic, he attached the other to a cylinder of some sort. Then he extracted a cell phone and pressed its keys.

  The small beeps thundered in silence. One. Two. A third. The wire puffed and spit sparks. Barlow blew them out and cut a longer length to replace the short one. When he was done, he tucked his implements in his pocket and turned to her for a last time.

  “If you’re lucky, Larissa Petrovna, the smoke will reach you before the flames.”

  “Katya…”

  She hated to ask anything of this monster, loathed the plea in her voice, but she would cry, beg, sell her soul to the devil himself to save her baby.

  “My daughter…”

  “I won’t have her harmed. Once you’re dead, there’s no need.”

  He left then, taking the light with him. Lara heard him say something to whomever waited for him. An engine turned over. Tires crunched on dirt. Then she was alone in the dark and the wind and the cold.

  Chapter 11

  The Huey responded like the tried-and-true workhorse it was. Swooping through the night sky, it skimmed across wide-open stretches while Dodge and the flight engineer scanned the roads below.

  Night-vision goggles turned the darkness into green, shimmering light. The staticky hum of the radio buzzed in his ears as flight ops relayed updates from the highway patrol, county and local police units, and the Warren command post.

  Dodge kept OMEGA in the loop, as well. Blade confirmed that neither Barlow’s wife nor his personal assistant knew his present whereabouts.

  “But he told his wife that he planned a late-night visit to E-Systems’ main production facility. Said he wants to talk to crew doing the tooling up for production of a new gyroscope.”

  “Covering his ass,” Dodge snarled.

  “Sounds like.”

  “How long is that particular crew on the line?”

  “Plant manager says they go off shift at three a.m.”

  Dodge checked his watch. “It’s almost two now. He can’t be more than seventy, eighty miles out of Denver if he’s going to hit the plant by three.”

  To make that kind of speed, he had to be traveling a main artery. That meant either I-25 or 287. The highway patrol was covering the interstate.

  Playing the odds, Dodge keyed his mike. “Get us over 287, Digger, and lay on some speed.”

  Lara had fought against the constricting tape for what felt like hours, shivering convulsively, hating, fearing, weeping in frustration when she couldn’t move her arms or legs. All she succeeded in doing was tipping the chair she was tied to onto its side and slamming into the dirt-strewn floor with a thud.

  Dazed and panting, she lay with her cheek pressed to the grimy floorboards. She wasn’t sure now why she’d struggled so hard to free herself. Pure instinct, she supposed.

  But…

  If she died here, her daughter would be safe. Katya knew nothing. She was no threat to Barlow or his friends at the FSB.

  Lara almost gave up then. Almost let the memories of Katya as a baby, as a toddler, as a giggling little girl, comfort her last hours. If a gust of cold hadn’t swept through a hole where the floorboards had ro
tted, she might have abandoned all further attempts to free herself.

  Like a bucket of icy water, the blast of cold air revived both her determination and her will to live. She had no guarantee Barlow would stick to his word. And if she died here, Katya would have lost both father and mother to the same murderous bastard.

  Jaw locked, Lara contorted as much as the constricting bonds would allow. If a nail protruded from just one of those rotten boards… If she could squirm sideways, like the crab…

  Dodge peered through the night-vision goggles at the green glow spearing an empty stretch of 287. Traffic was light this time of night. So light, this was only the fifth or sixth set of headlights they’d swooped in on.

  He leaned forward, straining to see, as Digger angled the collective. The Huey’s blades changed pitch another few degrees. The nose tipped. The aircraft picked up speed.

  Slowly, the distant spear resolved into two parallel beams. The night goggles amplified the heat put out by the engine to a hot green flash and gave shape to the vehicle itself.

  “We got us a possible,” Dodge said grimly.

  “Hang on. I’m going in for a closer look.”

  Digger took them down to three hundred feet, two hundred, one. The Huey buzzed after the speeding car like a giant mosquito chasing its prey. When they got within a hundred yards, the flight engineer trained the chopper’s onboard searchlight on the vehicle.

  Dodge didn’t need night-vision goggles now. He could see the shape of the vehicle clearly. Could see, as well, the startled face that turned up to stare at the hovering helicopter. While Digger divided his concentration between the instruments, the area ahead and the speeding vehicle, Dodge radioed flight ops.

  “Rotor One, this is Rotor Eleven.”

  “Go ahead, Rotor Eleven.”

  “We’ve spotted a dark-colored sedan traveling south on 287, approximately six miles south of Bellvue. Please advise if there are any state or local law-enforcement personnel in the immediate area.”

  He was back with the answer in less than a minute. “Negative, Rotor Eleven. The sheriff advises his closest cruiser is ten miles north of your present position. He’s directing the cruiser to turn around.”

  “Roger, Rotor One. We’ll stay with this….”

  He broke off, his eyes narrowing as the passenger-side window lowered. A half second later a small burst of green flowered bright. Two more followed in quick succession.

  “He’s firing on us!” Instinctively, Digger jinked the stick and swung away. “The son of a bitch is firing on us!”

  Dodge had his Beretta out of its holster in the next breath. “Bring her around, Digger.”

  “Jesus, Hamilton.”

  “Bring her around.”

  Swearing a blue streak, Digger tipped into a sharp bank and zoomed back toward the sedan.

  “Steady…” Dodge ordered softly. “Steady…”

  Whoever was at the window took aim again. The muzzle flashed bright green at the same instant Dodge fired. Although they presented a far larger target, previous generations of the Huey had taken heavier fire in every conflict since Vietnam. This one proved every bit as resilient.

  A hole blossomed in the canopy just inches above Digger’s head, but Dodge’s shot inflicted considerably more damage. The Taurus’s window shattered. The passenger was flung backward, across the seat. He must have slammed into the driver because the vehicle fishtailed wildly and spun around, once, twice. It was still spinning when Digger banked again and brought the Huey around.

  Dodge was out of the cockpit before the skids touched. He raced for the vehicle just as the driver’s door sprang open and a man leaped out. In the bright glare of the searchlight Dodge saw him crouch into a two-fisted shooter’s stance.

  “Barlow! Don’t be a…”

  He got off one shot before Dodge dropped him. He slammed against the car’s hood and hung there for a second or two before sinking slowly to his knees.

  Dodge reached him as he hit dirt and twisted the automatic from his grasp. The bastard wasn’t dead, but then Dodge hadn’t aimed to kill. A quick pat-down produced nothing more lethal than a cell phone. He tossed it aside and yanked open the Taurus’s side door.

  The passenger’s body was sprawled grotesquely across the front console. There was no one in the backseat. Dodge reached down to pop the trunk lid. It lifted to reveal a dark, empty compartment.

  Murder in his heart, he strode back to the man stretched out in the dirt. Barlow had crawled a few feet to retrieve his phone. His bloodied fingers fumbled at the keys.

  Dodge’s lips pulled back. “Calling your lawyer, you piece of crap? You’re gonna need a good one.”

  Barlow stabbed the keys frantically. Disgusted, Dodge swung a boot and kicked the phone out of his hands. It sailed off into the darkness, the LCD panel a firefly of light, and Dodge went down on one knee.

  “Where’s Lara?”

  Barlow gave his phone a last glance and angled his head around. Dodge could swear he saw a flicker of triumph in his eyes before they went cold.

  “I don’t know who the hell you’re talking about, Major, but I do know this. You’re the one who’s going to need a good lawyer.”

  “Think so?”

  “I know so.” Grimacing, he pushed himself up on an elbow. “You swoop down out of the dark like that, send us off the road. We—my partner and I—had no idea who you were or what you wanted. We had to defend ourselves.”

  Dodge answered that by aiming the Beretta at his uninjured shoulder.

  “Defend yourself against this. You got five seconds to tell me where Larissa Petrovna is. Then I pop your elbow. Five seconds after that, I go for a kneecap. If you’re still not talking, I blow off your balls.”

  He meant it. Every word. Barlow must have realized that, because he threw a frantic look at the helicopter.

  “Hey! Help me! This guy’s nuts!”

  “Four,” Dodge counted. “Three. Two…”

  Digger appeared at his side. “Yo, Hamilton!”

  “Keep out of my line of fire,” he warned. “This piece of slime is about to lose a few body parts.”

  “Don’t make me no never mind if you bore a hole the size of South Dakota in him. But we just intercepted a flash on one of the police nets. An abandoned farmhouse a few miles off I-40 just went up in flames.”

  “Where off I-40?”

  “Just south of the rest stop where we touched down earlier.”

  He hadn’t taken his eyes off Barlow. The man didn’t move so much as a muscle. He didn’t have to. Dodge put it together in that instant.

  The cell phone! He’d used it to signal another accomplice. Or trigger the fire.

  Rage consumed him, so swift and fierce his finger tightened on the trigger. He came closer in that moment to going rogue than he would have believed possible. Digger pulled him back from the brink.

  “I’ve radioed in our location. Police and medics are on the way. You leave Barlow with me and take the Huey.”

  Dodge swung into the pilot’s seat and strapped in, thanking God for the ability to compartmentalize. Fear that Lara was trapped in the blazing farmhouse ate at his insides like acid, but he moved that fear to one side of his mind and flew with the other.

  He could see the fire long before they reached it. Like a beacon of death, it lit up the night sky. He touched down in an open field some distance away and powered down the Huey before racing across the weed-filled field.

  Half a dozen assorted emergency vehicles had drawn into a half circle, their powerful spots aimed at the farmhouse. The roof had collapsed in on itself. Flames consumed the two remaining walls. Smoke rolled thick and black into the night sky.

  Dodge made straight for the helmeted firefighter standing beside the pumper, radio in hand as he directed operations.

  “Major Petrovna?”

  “What?”

  “The missing Russian woman? Have you found her?”

  The firefighter looked him up and down, taking in hi
s uniform and the name tag on his chest, before he answered.

  “We found her.”

  Dodge brought his shoulders back and braced for the worst.

  “Or more correctly, she found us.”

  He jerked his chin toward a highway patrol car parked at the perimeter of the scene. Dodge’s heart tripped when he spotted a smoke-blackened figure huddled in a blanket in the backseat.

  He didn’t stop to analyze the emotion that grabbed him by the throat and squeezed hard. Later he would realize it was a combination of relief and thanksgiving and a feeling that belonged between the lines of a poem. All he thought of at that moment, however, was getting his arms around her and never letting go.

  She hadn’t seen him arrive but did see him break through the ring of vehicles and charge in her direction. Flinging off the blanket, she scrambled out of the squad car and threw herself at him. Then the rigid, always-in-control ice maiden scared the hell out of him by bursting into loud, noisy sobs.

  “Lara. Sweetheart.” He crushed her against his chest, rocking her, soothing her, feeling as helpless as men always did around a sobbing woman. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

  He’d murmured the inanity before its reality hit him. Swearing, he grasped her upper arms.

  “You are okay, aren’t you?”

  He made a frantic search, didn’t spot any bandages. Nothing except soot and grime and a flood of tears.

  “Lara, speak to me. Tell me if he hurt you.”

  That got through to her. Those lake-blue eyes flashed fury beneath their watery sheen. She spit out a stream of Russian, caught herself and switched to English.

  “The pig. The filthy pig. He turns his Taser on me and ties me to a chair and leaves me to burn like my Yuri and Elena Dimitri. We must find him, Dodge, and when we do, I will rip out his throat.”

  “We’ve got him.”

  His fierce comment didn’t register. Probably because she’d gone from fury to stark terror in the space of a single heartbeat.

  “Katya!” She grabbed the front of his flight suit, dug her fingers in. “Barlow sends me a picture of Katya.”