by Cindy Dees
The others knelt down and pointed high-intensity flashlight beams at the fine dusting of beige covering the fabric. Isabella leaned back on her heels.
“So,” Vanessa said. “There was some sort of break-in, a big struggle, Emma Holt leaves barefoot via the window and Holt leaves the house and doesn’t come back. Where’s he been since this happened?”
“He skedaddled to Lake Placid,” Isabella answered grimly. “He insisted on tearing up the ice at the figure skating venue like a man possessed.”
Kat commented, “Okay, color me confused.”
That made two of them.
Isabella barely made it back to the Olympic village by 4:00 a.m. after the long drive back from Syracuse to take over the late shift watching Anya. While Misty, Aleesha and Karen were briefed on what the others had found at the Holt house, Isabella settled in beside the sleeping girl. Kat had volunteered to share the shift so they could take turns power napping. Both of them managed to get an hour of solid rest before Anya’s wake-up call at 7:00 a.m. Kat left to fetch breakfast while Isabella stayed with Anya.
The skater got up, showered, dressed, and then proceeded to spend an inordinate amount of time drying and styling her hair and putting on makeup. A suspicion blossomed in Isabella’s gut. After all, she had three little sisters. She called out casually through the partially open bathroom door, “Are you expecting to see Lazlo today?”
Anya emerged, looking beyond gorgeous. Her eyes sparkled and her skin fairly glowed with happiness. “We have practice ice together this morning.”
Isabella frowned. “If he rams into you again, I’m going to hurt him. Bad.”
Anya laughed. “He won’t. It was an accident. He’s apologized a hundred times.”
Her frown deepened. “I’m not joking, Anya. My job is to be your bodyguard. If he hits you again, I’m going to respond to it as a violent attack, and I’m required to neutralize him using whatever force is necessary.”
Anya’s smile dimmed. “You don’t have to be such a wet blanket.”
“Wet blanket’s my middle name. It’s my job to protect you.”
“Yeah, well, I never asked to have bodyguard,” the girl said resentfully.
Isabella understood. This girl had finally slipped out of her cage, and she didn’t want to land in another more constrictive one. “Sweetie, I don’t want to ruin your fun. Lord knows, you’ve earned it. I just want to keep you safe. You work with me, and I’ll do my level best to work with you. Okay?”
Anya nodded.
Isabella said lightly, “That pink lip gloss you had on yesterday was awesome. Why don’t you go get some and we’ll be on our way. You can eat in the car. We don’t want you to miss a minute of your ice time this morning, eh?”
The girl smiled widely and whirled, disappearing into the bathroom.
When they arrived at the ice complex, Isabella and Kat had to all but sit on Anya to get her to wait for a security check before she leaped out of the bulletproof car. Ah, the exuberance of first love. Isabella shook her head as she all but broke into a jog to keep up with the girl as they headed for the skating rink.
Anya threw on her skates, stretched at the speed of light, and hastily declared her knee fine. Thankfully, Anya’s coach played bad cop this time and forced the girl to spend several more minutes carefully warming up the sore joint and working out the kinks before she took to the ice.
Isabella spotted Lazlo the second they stepped into the arena. He was the surly guy dressed in black waiting off to one side. The big clock on the hockey scoreboard clicked over to the top of the hour, and a stream of colorfully dressed skaters stepped onto the ice. As a group, they commenced stroking around the rink like speed skaters, getting blood flowing to the heavy thigh muscles endemic to their sport. Anya looked disappointed that Lazlo hadn’t waited for her. Poor kid.
As the session progressed, two things became clear. One, Anya’s knee was not up to full speed and she was skating in considerable pain. Two, Lazlo was completely ignoring Anya. That was strange. The two of them had all but dripped syrup together night before last. And now he was freezing her out? What was up with that? He could just be a colossal jerk. But that felt too simple. She glanced over at the boy’s longtime coach, an American named Peter something. Surely he wouldn’t have any strong moral objection to Lazlo seeing Anya.
Several hundred spectators watched the session. Isabella overheard a coach telling a skater that the judges came to the practice sessions to learn the skaters’ programs before the competition. Apparently, there were a few hecklers here today, too. Every time Anya did a spiral—lifting one of her legs high in the air and sailing across the ice like a flying bird—shouts came out of the crowd in Arabic, calling her lewd and other unrepeatable insults. How Anya was ignoring the catcalls, Isabella didn’t know. Hopefully, her concentration was such that she honestly wasn’t hearing any of it.
About halfway through the session, Anya and the other skaters lined up along one side of the rink to take turns running through their programs. Isabella was already moving in that direction, to inject herself between the crowd and her charge, when something flew out of the stands and hit Anya in the back of the head.
As she took off running, everything went into high focus. The object that hit Anya was melon-sized and brown. It didn’t drop the girl. Anya flinched, and grabbed the back of her head. The American skater beside Anya had the presence of mind to yank her down below the level of the waist-high boards. A quick glance up at the crowd didn’t reveal anyone with an arm extended or trying to flee the scene.
Isabella reached Anya, leaping over the boards and onto the ice. “You all right?” she bit out.
“Yes. It wasn’t hard.”
Isabella already had her eye on the projectile. It looked like a paper lunch sack was split open with a brown substance visible inside. She approached it cautiously, and scowled when she recognized the contents by the stench rising from the bag. But she didn’t let down her guard. It was fully possible for some sort of device to be concealed within what smelled like dog poop.
She keyed her microphone. “Ops, Torres here. Someone just lobbed a paper sack of doggie doo-doo at Anya. Do you want me to treat the bag as a dangerous object and get the bomb squad over here, or do you want me to pick it up and move it?”
Dex snorted in disgust. “Is it ticking?”
“Negative on the ticking poop,” she replied dryly.
“Let’s get a dog over there to have a look at it.”
Isabella retorted, “What, so he can mark it?”
Dex laughed. “No, a bomb dog. Let’s not send in a full squad. That would make too much of a fuss. Mamba, are you up on freq?”
Aleesha piped up immediately, “Mamba here. Whatchya need?”
“You’re EOD, right?”
“I’m trained in explosive ordinance disposal, not doggie doo-doo.”
“Go have a look at that bag. Adder, the guys here say rink four is empty. Send the skaters and coaches over there to finish the practice session. I’ll notify the rink security guys not to let the crowd follow the skaters next door.”
Isabella felt patently stupid clearing a skating rink for a stink bomb, but there was no help for it. They had to do what they had to do. “Not to further complicate this scenario, but if we’re going to treat this as a threat, should we bring in a biohazard team?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Dex muttered. A heavy sigh in her ear. “Yeah, that’s a good thought. I’ll make the call. Just get everyone out of there before the guys in the space suits come to look at the Fido Surprise. We’ll never live it down otherwise.”
It was easy enough to clear the skaters from the ice. As soon as they were apprised as to the contents of the bag, they were more than happy to adjourn to another rink. Security guards took care of the spectators, and in a little under ten minutes, the cavernous stadium was empty except for Isabella, Aleesha and the offending bag. The rest of the Medusas were next door, keeping an eye on Anya.
/> Isabella watched her teammate kneel beside the bag with a handheld X-ray machine, examining the bag without touching it. To lighten Mamba’s irritation, Isabella asked gravely, “Can you tell what kind of dog it came from, Doctor?”
“Yeah,” Aleesha muttered. “A big one who ate Mexican for supper last night. This stuff reeks.” Aleesha sat back. “There’s nothing in that bag but crap.”
Isabella looked up as two men, each carrying a bulky metal box, arrived. “You fellas the biohazard guys?”
They nodded.
“Did you hear what we’ve got?”
“Yup. The dog shit of doom. Let’s have a look at it.”
Isabella watched intently as the two men went to work. It turned out the big boxes were elaborate chemical detection machines. While one guy waved what looked like a vacuumcleaner hose in the air around the bag, the second guy prepared sterile paper swabs and wiped down the outside of the bag. He placed the specimen in a little drawer in the side of his box.
The first guy announced, “No airborne biohazards were detected. Other than that stench. Sheesh. Wouldn’t want to meet the dog who did that.”
But then Isabella noticed the second guy frowning at his monitor. “What’s up?” she asked.
The guy spoke quietly. “I got a hit.”
All of them froze, staring down at the paper bag.
“Talk to me,” Isabella said.
He glanced around the huge arena and spoke in a hushed voice that only carried a few feet. “This paper bag has been in contact with a nerve agent. A really freaking nasty one. Military grade. Supersecret. Even its name is classified.”
Isabella stared. “You’ve got to be kidding. Run the test again.”
They all waited in tense silence while the guy reswabbed the bag and redid the test. Sure enough, the machine emitted a quiet beep. The two biohazard men traded grim looks.
“It’s a trace hit, but it’s definitely a hit. Whoever handled this bag has probably recently handled the chemical. Uh, we need to secure this bag. We’ve got to take it back to the lab and run some more tests.”
Isabella nodded in minor shock. A nerve agent? Whoever’d lobbed that bag at Anya was obviously part of something much bigger and much more dangerous than merely scaring a girl away from skating in the Olympics.
She keyed her microphone grimly. “Dex? We have a little problem.”
Chapter 7
Isabella spent the rest of the day making classified reports to various officials and agencies about the incident at the ice-skating rink. On top of getting a short night’s sleep last night, she missed lunch, too. By suppertime, she needed a shower, a decent meal, and a few hours’ rest before she went on duty guarding Anya. She’d just stepped out of her shower and thrown on jeans and a sweater when she heard a knock on her apartment door. She called through the closed panel, “Who’s there?”
“Dex and dinner.”
She opened the door. “Dinner you say?” she asked without bothering to say hello.
“Yeah. I realized I never let you eat lunch today what with all the paperwork I piled on.” He added wryly, “And I figured I’d better come bearing a bribe if I expected you to let me in.”
“That all depends on how good a bribe it is,” she retorted.
“Amazing Japanese takeout from a little place I found a couple weeks ago.”
“Sold.” She stepped back and waved him in.
He walked inside the tiny space and looked around, inhaling the scent the same way she’d done at his apartment. She took a sniff herself. The roses dying on the kitchen table mixed with laundry soap and her ridiculously expensive coconut oil shampoo and conditioner. At least it didn’t smell like dirty socks or rotten fish.
“Mind sitting on the floor?” he asked.
“What’s wrong with the table?” Besides the dead rose petals lying all over it.
He shrugged. “It feels funny to sit at a western table when I eat Japanese. Old habits die hard, I guess.”
“Have you lived in Japan?” she asked. To her knowledge, no American soldiers were actually stationed there, so he’d have been a civilian when he lived there.
“Let’s just say I’ve spent a fair bit of time in country.”
Meaning he’d done Special Forces work there and she shouldn’t ask any more questions. Got it. She knelt on one side of the coffee table while Dex did the same on the other side. Her mouth watered as he pulled out trapezoidal white cardboard boxes. Out of the bag emerged black, square, ceramic plates and pretty, painted chopsticks.
“Wow. Classy. I usually do paper plates and bamboo chopsticks.”
“Only the best for a Thorpe,” he quipped lightly.
She gazed speculatively at him. That had sounded suspiciously like bitterness.
But then he distracted her by opening the boxes and letting out clouds of delectable steam as he announced the dishes. “Teriayaki chicken skewers, veggie tempura, garlic shrimp, and Kobe beef.”
She looked up at him gravely. “You’d better get all you want to eat now, because once I get started on all this, I’m going to eat everything that’s left.”
He grinned at her. “Thank God. A woman with a real appetite. I get so sick of women who only eat rabbit food.”
“Yeah, but you don’t gripe about their supermodel stick figures.”
He waved a chicken skewer at her. “Not me. I like my women to have some substance. I don’t want to worry about breaking them.”
Breaking them? The boy enjoyed vigorous sex, then, did he? Whoa, girlfriend. Brain back on track, here. This was the man she worked for. “You men all say that. And then you take home the skinny blondes.” Like elegant Misty. Not dark, round Isabella.
He leaned back, nibbling on a cluster of julienned carrots covered in fried tempura batter. “Actually, I don’t generally take women home.”
Her eyebrows shot up. Well, wasn’t he just Mr. Chatty tonight? “Don’t you like girls?” she asked sympathetically. “You must really suffer, cooped up with all those good-looking guys. Does your team know?”
He coughed hard a couple times before he managed to choke out, “Jeez, Isabella. Don’t say things like that when a guy’s got food in his mouth. I like girls just fine.”
Hey, he’d used her first name. A breakthrough! She grinned. “Glad to hear it. May I quote you on that?”
He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t say I like working beside them. I’m not supposed to worry all the time about looking out for my teammates. But I would with women in the field.”
“You’d get over that soon enough,” she commented, waving a chicken skewer at him. “As soon as you realized we’re competent at our jobs, you’d relax. But in the meantime,” she said lightly, “I really enjoy making guys like you miserable. It makes all the hard work to get into the Special Forces feel so worthwhile.”
“Glad I can be a source of motivation for you.”
Isabella leaned forward, abruptly serious. “Actually, you are.”
He blinked, taken aback. “How’s that?”
“Teams like yours give the Medusas a goal. Without your success to emulate, I don’t know that I, or any of the Medusas, would’ve gotten where we are today. Lots of the guys think we want to be better than the men. But that’s not true at all.”
She took a bite of the succulent Kobe beef and savored the way it practically melted in her mouth. Then she waved her chopsticks at him to emphasize her words. “It’s not a battle of the sexes. We’re all American soldiers, working together to protect our country. There are times when having women in the field can be a benefit, and we simply want to be those women.”
He stared at her in genuine surprise as she continued, “All I’ve ever wanted was to be good enough not to impede the men we work with, and to be able to do what I have to, when I have to, to get the mission done. And believe me, not impeding you guys is no easy feat. Sometimes I think the male Delta teams are superhuman.”
“The way I hear it, you ladies are pretty buff, you
rselves.”
“Maybe the others,” she answered candidly. “I’m the brainiac of the outfit. I’m probably the weakest link, physically.”
He helped himself to another chicken skewer. “You can always work out and get stronger. It’s pretty hard to get smarter, though.”
He had a point. “Speaking of intelligence, my overdeveloped brain is wondering if there’s more to this visit than sharing life histories?”
His demeanor changed in an instant. Gone was the relaxed, good-looking guy chowing down tempura, and in his place was a Delta team leader, tough, alert and macho enough to set her teeth on edge. She liked the other guy a lot better.
“We need to talk about what’s going on with Anya.”
“Not much, other than her crush on Lazlo and an urge to go play. If you mean what’s going on around her—that’s another story.”
“Do you see any pattern to the threats?”
She leaned back against the sofa, thinking hard before she answered. In the back of her mind, she’d been turning over that very question for most of the afternoon. “Clearly, a Muslim fundamentalist group is mad enough about her skating to take action to stop her. To date there’ve been several small attempts to intimidate her—the guys following her, the collision with the Petrovich kid, and today’s incident. What concerns me is that they might actually be efforts to probe the security around her.”
“To find weak points?” Dex asked.
She nodded. “And to identify possible points of attack.”
“Have they found any?”
“Oh, yeah,” she replied grimly. “That ice rink is huge. There’s no way I can cover her there without being armed myself and having a couple snipers in the rafters. I think it’s by far the likeliest place to stage an attack on her.”
“Where will it come from?”
“I don’t know. The metal detectors and other security devices on the Hamilton Arena are pretty good. I’m awfully worried by the presence of the nerve agent on that bag, though. Is there any way the IOC could set up a chemical detection station as part of the security apparatus at the rink?”
