The Medusa Game

by Cindy Dees

  “Where does this go?” Vanessa asked.

  Tanner grunted. “It’s a network under the campus. Connects all the major buildings. We can search it, but if he got out through here, he could be anywhere by now. He could’ve come up into any building on campus and just walked outside.”

  Damn. They’d missed him.

  Vanessa peered into the dark, weighing the value of searching the tunnels. “Would you be willing to search the tunnels with your men while we pursue a different approach up above?”

  Tanner nodded. “We can do that. We know our way around down here better than you ladies would. Every now and then students break in to these tunnels to play around. We end up having to chase them out.”

  Vanessa nodded tersely. “Let us know what you find. We’re heading for Holt’s house.”

  The women retraced their steps upstairs and outside. They piled into their cars and headed to Holt’s darkened bungalow, which was only a few blocks from the main campus.

  The neighborhood was asleep, dark and quiet. They practically walked down the sidewalk to the Holt house. Isabella, Vanessa, and Aleesha took the back, while Karen, Kat and Misty approached the front porch and windows. They would position themselves near the corners of the house to cover anyone trying to sneak away. The women around back would enter the house and apprehend Holt or force him to the front of the house if he was hiding inside.

  Emma Holt’s car was still parked in the garage. It looked pretty much as it had before, but something wasn’t quite right. Isabella reached back into her photographic memory to find the inconsistency. Nothing clicked. She headed for her assigned position. Vanessa would go in the bedroom window. Isabella would take the window to the left of the back door that led into a laundry room. Aleesha would go in through the back door.

  It was an easy matter to jimmy the simple rotating window lock. She flashed a thumbs-up at her teammates and got one back from Vanessa.

  And while they were waiting for Aleesha to open the door with her lock picks, it hit her. The license plate on Emma Holt’s car was different than the last time she’d seen it. Holt must have switched out his plates for hers. Trying to throw off the police, was he? The guy just kept looking guiltier and guiltier.

  Lazlo dialed the phone number his father had slipped to him in the bar. There had been a time along with the phone number—0100. At least he hoped that’s what the digits were. If it was a time, it was done in the European fashion and not the American style. If he was wrong, he was about to wake up the whole house and piss off Ilya. He could always pretend to be a wrong number.

  The phone was answered right away. “Hello?” his father’s voice murmured.

  “Papa?”

  “Son. How are you doing?”

  “Good. I made it to the short program round on the competition. I’m in eighth place.”

  “Your mother will be thrilled.”

  An awkward silence fell. They both spoke at once and then went silent again. Finally Lazlo said, “Papa, there’s something I have to tell you. I don’t want to be a terrorist. I know you sent me to America to establish a cover so I could help you, but I can’t do it. I have no training. I’m…I’m not even Chechnyan. I’m…American! This is my home now—”

  His father interrupted gently. “It’s all right. Those days are over. We have our independent homeland. I just hope you’re not angry at us for sending you here when it turned out to be for nothing. I never did like the idea of using you as a sleeper terrorist in the U.S. Thank God Russia finally relented and we didn’t have to take extreme measures to involve the Americans in our cause.”

  “It wasn’t for nothing,” Lazlo said quickly. “I got an education. And I became a world-class skater. Look. I want you and Mama and Ileena and Hekmat to come to America. Permanently. This is so much better a place to live. The hospitals are good, women can go to college, they have five hundred television channels—”

  “I’ve got to go. I hear something.”

  He called out, “Think about it, Papa—” and then the phone went dead.

  Aleesha nodded her readiness. Wow. Under a minute for a knob lock and a dead bolt. She was getting really good at breaking and entering. As the team’s surgeon and owner of the most sensitive and nimble fingers of them all, she’d been designated the Medusas’ trap and lock expert. She’d taken the job to heart. She sat around all the time with padlocks and the like, picking them for fun.

  Vanessa breathed across the Medusas’ operating channel, “Go.” Not only did it signal Isabella and Aleesha to go in, but it gave a heads-up to the women out front to be extra sharp.

  Isabella pushed open the window, chinned herself up to the sill and flopped through the opening onto the washing machine. The metal flexed and gave a loud pop. She flinched and rolled off it, crouching low. Cat smell. Not bad, but noticeable. She looked around. Yup. Litter box in the corner.

  She opened the cupboards fast. Nobody hiding in them. A quick look in the narrow broom closet—clear—and she spun out into the kitchen. Aleesha gave her an all-clear signal. Together they advanced into the dining room. Still nothing. Aleesha headed for the living room, and Isabella turned down the hall toward the bathroom and two bedrooms. A flash of movement startled her. Someone had just disappeared into the spare bedroom.

  She ran forward on the balls of her feet and stopped beside the door, listening hard. Nothing. No sounds of movement, not even sounds of breathing. Deep silence enveloped the house. She spun into the room low and fast, her weapon in front of her. A desk piled high with papers stood against one wall, a daybed was on the second wall, also piled high with books, folders and a haphazard stack of towels. A closet took up most of the third wall. The wall to her left was bare.

  Using her foot, Isabella shoved open the closet door. No movement. She squatted down and used a flashlight to look along the floor behind the crowded hanging clothes. No feet. Nonetheless, she pushed the outdated clothes aside and peered down the back wall. Definitely nobody in here.

  A movement by the window brought her flying out of the closet, slamming the hallway door shut before the target could get out of the room. She spun to face the threat. No one was there. She frowned. She’d definitely seen something move!

  Then a cat jumped down off the desk and rubbed against her ankle, mewing.

  “Hey, kitty,” she murmured. “Where’s your daddy?”

  Vanessa’s voice came over the radio. “Report, Adder.”

  Isabella grinned. “I used my ruthless combat techniques and found the cat.”

  “Lovely. The master bedroom is clear. Mamba?”

  “All clear out here. Nobody’s home. Except the cat, of course.”

  Isabella opened the door and the cat trotted out into the hallway and headed for the kitchen. She followed his vertical tail and frowned as he headed for a full bowl of dry cat food. The water dish beside it was full, too. Over her radio, she transmitted, “Who’s feeding the cat?”

  Vanessa replied, “Call the neighbors in the morning. See if anyone’s doing it.”

  Isabella looked down. “It’s a big bowl of food. I’d guess it’s enough for a couple weeks. Is the toilet seat up?”

  Vanessa replied, “Affirmative.”

  “I bet Holt was here tonight. Probably fed the cat. He must have changed the litter box, too, because the laundry room would reek if the cat had been alone for nearly a week, and I wasn’t overpowered by the cat smell.”

  Vanessa said, “Mamba, bring your evidence kit in here. I found something.”

  Isabella and Aleesha joined their boss, who shined her flashlight on the floorboards in the corner of the bedroom. Isabella stared for a moment, and then picked out what Vanessa had. Several tiny drops of darker brown on the light brown wood. In a splatter pattern.

  “Blood,” Isabella breathed.

  Aleesha pulled out a digital camera and took several pictures before carefully collecting the droplets. Isabella and the others spent the next half hour crawling around on their han
ds and knees, fine-tooth combing the room for evidence. If they were lucky, some of the couple dozen drops of blood would belong to whoever had attacked or kidnapped Emma Holt.

  They went through Holt’s computer files, the stacks of papers on his desk—ungraded lab reports from several classes of students, scientific journals and household bills, none of which sent up any red flags.

  Then Karen startled them all by announcing in a whisper, “We’ve got company. Two targets. Moving in stealthily.”

  “Police?” Vanessa asked.

  “Not from the looks of them.”

  Vanessa ordered, “Everyone out the back. Move!”

  Just because they were racing pell-mell for the door didn’t mean they were loud or disorganized. Oh, no. Jack had trained them well. Kat stayed inside to throw the dead bolt and then slipped out through the laundry room window. A tug on the string she’d rigged, and she relocked the window as well. Another sharp tug to release the slip knot and they were clear. Vanessa hand-signaled the women to spread out and move around to the front of the house to surround the targets.

  The Medusas moved silent and slow, easing into position around what looked like two young men. One of the youths tried to climb on a rose trellis to reach a side window, but the flimsy wood collapsed with a loud clatter. A light went on next door. The young men ducked behind the Holt house, with the Medusas shadowing them every step of the way. If the women were to stand up and say, “Boo” to the intruders, Isabella was confident the men would wet themselves, so close did the Medusas get to them.

  A police siren wailed in the distance and got louder rapidly. Ah, fudge. Nosy Mrs. Tannager must have called the police. The youths took off running, and Vanessa waved the Medusas off. They, too, faded into the night. As soon as the team was clear of the Holt house, they ran to their cars and pulled away. They missed the police by mere seconds. But it was enough. They’d gotten away.

  Tired and disappointed, Isabella sat in the backseat while they drove back to Syracuse University and the helicopter. She slept the whole flight back to Lake Placid and was groggy when the bird landed. They stumbled into the ops center at nearly six o’clock in the morning.

  Why wasn’t she surprised to see Dex there, waiting for them. A light brown shadow roughed his jaw. “Well?” he said.

  “We missed him,” Isabella reported. “And we scared the hell out of his cat.”

  Dex’s right eyebrow shot up but he made no comment.

  Vanessa said, “We’ve got a pile of forensic evidence that will need to be looked at ASAP. This bag contains samples from his lab and probably ought to go to our biohazard buddies. This bag appears to be blood from Holt’s bedroom. It’ll need DNA analysis.”

  “Blood?” He cursed under his breath. “I’ll get the paperwork going.” To one of the men nearby, he said, “I’ll need you to run these samples over to Albany.”

  Dex turned back to the Medusas. “Go get some sleep. You all look like hell. You can sign the requisition for the helicopter later. I’ll hold off Schmidt until then.”

  Isabella sighed in relief. The last thing she needed right now was to wade through a bunch of bureaucratic crap. “Anya has practice ice at noon. I’ll go over there and pick up the watch at eleven o’clock if one of your guys can cover her until then. That’ll give me a few hours for a nap.”

  Dex nodded. “My team’s on it.”

  She smiled her gratitude. With an experienced Delta team guarding Anya, Isabella wouldn’t worry about the girl’s safety. Wearily, she headed for her apartment. The early morning traffic was surprisingly heavy. Mostly tourists making their way to the venues for the day’s events. Because of security, parking and entrance into venues was a time-consuming process. Spectators were told to arrive two hours prior to an event. Finally, she turned into the apartment complex. She parked her car—a shoebox on wheels provided by the OSG—grabbed her pack, and headed for home.

  She unlocked the door and let herself in just as dawn broke outside. Lord, she was tired. Her cell phone rang, and she dug it out of her jacket pocket, praying it was one of her team members calling to wish her sweet dreams. “Hello?” she said.

  “This is Dex. Anya’s missing.”

  Chapter 13

  A cattle prod couldn’t have jolted her more forcefully to full consciousness. “Missing?” she exclaimed. “How the hell did that happen?”

  “You’d better come down here,” Dex said grimly.

  Isabella was enough of a professional not to storm into the ops center demanding to know what idiot took his eyes off Anya long enough for her to disappear. But it was damned hard to control the impulse. Minutes after she arrived, Dex called for a meeting. He wasted no time in getting down to business.

  “Here’s what happened,” he said without prologue. “Sleepy was standing watch in Anya’s room.”

  She recalled hearing the guy’d gotten his handle by being able to stay awake and alert for seventy-two hours at a time. He had some weird metabolic condition that allowed him to need practically no sleep at all.

  Dex glanced at his notes. “She woke up at approximately 6:00 a.m., went into the bathroom, and got dressed. She came out and stated her intention to work out in the gym and then get some breakfast.”

  Anya never got up early to work out. She had to be dragged out of bed every morning and was prone to rolling over and going back to sleep if a person wasn’t persistent with her.

  “Anticipating being in public with her for a couple hours,” Dex continued, “Sleepy told the subject he’d like to use the restroom.”

  Eating, sleeping, and taking care of bodily functions were the bane of bodyguards. You had to squeeze in life’s necessities when and where you could.

  “When Sleepy stepped out of the bathroom, Anya was gone.”

  “How long were you in there?” Isabella asked the soldier.

  He looked acutely uncomfortable, but answered forth-rightly, “About three minutes. I heard nothing. Nobody forced entry or made any appreciable noise.”

  Anya took off! Ran away, the little twerp!

  Dex picked up the narrative. “Sleepy stepped into the hallway and saw no sign of her. He radioed ops and then headed for the athletes’ gym. When she wasn’t there, he headed for the cafeteria. We alerted all the camera operators to look for her, but nobody spotted her. That’s when I called you, Adder.”

  So Anya had had eight, maybe ten minutes to get a head start before any serious search began. Plenty of time to be out of the village and on the streets of Lake Placid.

  “While everyone was coming over here, I notified the IOC security team…”

  Ouch. That had to have been an unpleasant call for him to make.

  “…and I called the Lake Placid Police and state police. Given that there’s no sign of foul play and we believe she simply walked out of her room, the FBI won’t get involved until she’s been missing for twenty-four hours. The question is, where did she go? What are your thoughts on this, Adder?”

  Everyone turned to look at her. Fortunately, in her prior job as an intel analyst, she’d experienced life-and-death decisions hanging on her judgments. She took a deep breath. Thought about her next words carefully, and then said, “I don’t think the question is where. I think it’s with whom.”

  “And your guess at who she’s with?” Dex asked grimly.

  Yup, he was thinking the same thing she was. She voiced their mutual thought aloud. “My best guess is that she’s with Lazlo Petrovich.”

  Groans went up from just about everyone. If Isabella was right, Anya had walked into the arms of an active terrorist cell with connections to the most conservative and extreme Muslim movements in the world. Great. Just great.

  Dex nodded. “I agree with you. Next question. Where would he take her?”

  Isabella reasoned aloud. “First of all, for those of you who aren’t aware of it, Lazlo and Anya have crushes on each other. Big ones. They see themselves as star-crossed lovers who fate and us big, bad adults with politic
al agendas are keeping apart.”

  Rolled eyes all around.

  “Yeah, it’s sappy, I know. But it’s a powerful motivator. I don’t think Lazlo tricked her into going with him so his family and friends could harm her. My assessment is that this is an innocent case of running off and playing hooky. But, we can’t proceed only on that assumption. I think we have to assume the worst and hope for the best.”

  Dex studied her intently. “Keep talking.”

  She frowned. “Surely they know I’ll freak out, with the rest of you right behind me. They know that we’ll go looking for them and that we’ll turn Lake Placid upside down in the search. Seems to me they’ll either go somewhere very private or they’ll go somewhere else. Anya did express a desire to ‘see New York.’ It’s not impossible that they will leave the local area altogether.”

  Dex frowned. “Does Lazlo have a car?”

  “No,” Vanessa said, “but his thug buddies, Gorabchek and company, do. Lazlo might borrow wheels from them.”

  Dex said, “We need to get people over to the Petrovich house and see if Anya’s there. If not, is there a car missing? Viper, will a couple of your troops take care of it? You’re more familiar with the layout of that place than the rest of us.”

  Vanessa nodded briskly. “Done.”

  Dex continued, “Hobo, call the car rental agencies in the area and see if Lazlo or Anya have rented a vehicle. Sleepy, Bungee and Jabba, I need you to canvas the other modes of transportation that leave town. Meanwhile, let’s get someone over to the village to verify that Lazlo’s gone.”

  As everyone stood up to get going on their assigned tasks, Isabella heard him mutter under his breath, “Christ, what a mess.” She shared his sentiment entirely.

  As the others cleared the room, she stayed behind to speak to Dex. He looked up from his notes, his eyes hard.