Dead Reckoning

by C. J. Snyder

  Her trembling was worse. She shook her head, trying to clear it of the images of the dead agents. Peter. Peter was all that mattered. Only Peter was Blade and Ice was right. Blade would have killed Ice. Blade was nothing more than one more dead agent. “How do you know my name?” Everything inside fought to contain the uncertainty, the fear that she’d taken a wrong turn and was now hopelessly lost.

  “A bartender in Mexico remembered the two of you. Said Blade called you Maria.” Her eyes narrowed. She ignored Ghost, even though she wanted to reach for his hand, use his strength to control the quaking ground where she now stood. He’d taken out his flashing communicator. “What else?”

  “You were going to quit. Both of you. I already had, but with a mole taking out the team–“ ”But why? Why Peter? Why frame him?”

  “We’ll never know.”

  “I have a theory.” Kat sat straight, tension radiating out from her like sunbeams. Mykael glanced at her reluctantly. “What?”

  “You were happy together,” she whispered. “Viper couldn’t stand that. I think he may have tolerated it if you’d allowed Peter to stay, but he didn’t want to lose another agent to happily ever after. He was already losing Max.”

  “But you’re saying he killed these three. He lost seven all together.”

  “By his own choosing.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “It’s power. With Viper every move he made was about power. Always about power. The power to choose who got to be happy--never anyone close to him. The power to choose who lived. Who died. Always power.”

  “Why would he kill his own team?” Kat opened her mouth, but Ghost interrupted. “Mykael.” The gentle tone of his voice should not have sent chills up her back, but there they were. Dread scurried over her like the tickle of fleeing insects, replacing the anger. Gun still trained on Max, she glanced to her left.

  “What time was Magnum supposed to check in?”

  She could feel the blood drain from her cheeks and was helpless to stop it. “Two.” “With you?”

  “Tron. He said Tron was more familiar with the details.” Her voice was barely a whisper now.

  Ghost gave a single nod and held out his phone to her. “We may have a situation.” Eyes still fixed on his, she waited while he unmuted the communicator and pressed it into her hand. “Yes,” she murmured. “Maria Ylena Katarina Angelica Elyria Lucano?”

  Mykael closed her eyes. Oh God, please, she prayed. “Yes.”

  “I have your brother. I would rather have you.” A soft cry of protest escaped her lips before she clamped them shut, along with her eyes. Ghost’s warm hand slid over her icy cold one and she let him take her gun. She also didn’t move when he wrapped his arms around her, enclosing her in a safe cocoon of warmth as the rest of her world crumbled to dust.

  “I’m listening.”

  “So you’re interested?”

  “Yes.”

  “Be at his restaurant in four hours.”

  “Four,” she whispered, knowing only that there was no way to make the deadline. “I can’t.” “Sorry to hear that.”

  “Wait!” Her fingers clawed into Ghost’s arm.

  “I’m here.”

  “Which restaurant?”

  “San Diego South. There won’t be another chance. Come alone. No back-up. No surveillance.” She heard a faintly familiar chuckle. “No kidding.” Her knees gave out then, and Ghost simply sat with her, cradling her in his lap. Sean. They had Sean. She was fairly certain Carlos Caldera had been the caller.

  Ghost pried her fingers from the phone. The action didn’t really register. His lack of questions did, but not until he’d pressed two buttons and held the phone to his ear, listening to a replay of the entire conversation.

  “No,” she whispered, but it was too late. Ghost caught her hand when she tried to take the phone back, lacing his fingers with hers. His eyes locked on hers, hard and cold, completely at odds with the gentle touch of his hand around hers. He didn’t look away until he’d heard it all. Heard the threat. Heard the proof she’d lied to him.

  “Going to need your plane,” he said to Max, who nodded. Kat handed her husband a telephone, worried gaze traveling between Mykael and Ghost. “Where are you going?”

  Mykael kept her lips firmly sealed. Where they were going was no business of– “We need to know how much fuel you’ll need.”

  “San Diego,” Ghost offered, already punching in more numbers on his communicator. “I’ll have Tron meet us there. He’s in the area.”

  Mykael shoved away from Ghost and stood. “I have to go alone.”

  Ghost’s glance was coolly assessing. “Know how to fly, angel?” He smiled at her frown. “Didn’t think so. Let’s go.”

  *** Mykael forced herself to release the armrests as Ghost expertly shot the small jet into the air a scant twenty minutes later. He hadn’t spoken to her at all since they’d left the Crayton house. She could hope to blame it on preoccupation, but she knew better. He finished a radio communication and shot her a cool glance.

  And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, for your in-flight amusement: The Interrogation. What could she say? She’d lied. He knew it. She’d pumped him for information about Ice. He knew that too. And why. There really wasn’t anything to say. She avoided his eyes, watching as their tiny jet parted thin clouds in a single blink.

  He surprised her when he reached behind the seat and extracted a bottle of water. “Here. Drink this and then rest. You’re going to need it.”

  Nothing but the truth, but oh, the man was exasperating. She forgot she didn’t want to look at him. “That’s it?”

  His gaze moved between the windshield and the millions of gauges and lights on the control panel. “What else is there?”

  “No grilling? No debriefing?”

  “What for?” Now his voice took on an edge similar to hers. “More lies? I figure you needed some time to come up with them.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with you.” He smiled, but it wasn’t really a smile and didn’t get anywhere near his eyes. “Right. Which is why I’m flying the woman I want to sleep with down to rescue one of my agents who just happens to be her brother. Her dead brother. The one whose death got her involved with me. Unless, of course, you’ve got more than one brother.”

  “I am not going to sleep with you.” As a comeback, it stunk.

  He nailed her with an angry glance. “Yeah, Maria-Ylena-Katerina-Angelica-Elyria-LucanoMykael-for-short, you are.” Exasperating? The man was far beyond exasperating. How did he remember all her names? He’d only heard the message once. From his anger it was obvious he hadn’t known before, at least not about Sean.

  Think, Mykael! You can do this. But she couldn’t. Worry for Sean had her distracted, nauseated and furious. In the past twenty four hours she’d narrowed one goal to a single target, found Ice, failed to kill him, sent her baby brother into extreme danger, maybe death, and now she wanted nothing more than to climb into Mule and head for the hacienda. But Mule was gone too. Mykael opened her bottle of water, took a long drink and closed her eyes. No way she could rest, but she could at least get herself settled and her thoughts organized.

  Ghost watched the emotions playing across Mykael’s face with twin feelings of amazement and despair. Her current transparency was fascinating, but it meant her guard was down. Agents with their guard down got dead. And she wasn’t even an agent.. “Mykael?” Her eyes opened, revealing pain so horrific it nearly took his breath away. “I’m sorry, angel. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

  For an instant, astonishment flooded her features, and then a new kind of horror just before her beautiful emerald eyes flooded. A stream of whispered foreign curses followed as she yanked her seatbelt off and disappeared into the small head behind them. In all his years, he’d only seen one other woman who could react with myriads of emotions at once. His little sister Cassidy had some competition.

  She was gone fifteen minutes. Ghost used the time to check wind speeds
which were slowing them down, arrival time and pull up a map from the airport to the restaurant. They had ten minutes to spare. Tron had run voice analysis which revealed a seventy percent chance the caller was Carlos Caldera. The call had come from a phone that allowed public use in a crowded bar in San Diego. Prints were likely to be negligible, given the high use of the phone. Caldera was smart. They had to be smarter. But if Decoy couldn’t pull it together. . .

  She reappeared just as he was about to switch on autopilot and go get her. One glance told him what he needed to know. Mykael had gone into the restroom. Decoy came out. Even Cassidy wasn’t that good. His sister would’ve taken at least forty-five minutes. Greg squelched a powerful urge to whistle. Decoy was gorgeous, in a low cut top meant to cause one hell of a distraction. Her no-doubt well-schemed outfit assured a thousand percent success. He had a hard time getting his gaze up to her eyes. He shifted in his seat, well aware he was no longer in control of the situation.

  “You approve?” She settled into the seat next to him and a faint scent–a spicy, musky sort of concoction guaranteed to send a man over the edge–completed the allure of way-too-sexy willing woman.

  “Hell, no!” He couldn’t stop the outburst. She wasn’t dressed for him and that fact ate him alive. “Cover up a little.” The growl was pure male.

  She gave him a coolly superior smile.

  Greg decided to keep his eyes on the windshield. It was the only way he could stay coherent. “Who knows your names?” “Sean.”

  “Who else?”

  “You. Caldera–if it was Caldera.”

  “Tron said seventy percent voice match. Any chance Sean gave them the information?” “Voluntarily? No.”

  “Any other way Caldera could have that info?”

  “No.”

  “Shit.”

  “Exactly.” Her agreement, her voice–everything about her was detached. Perfectly detached. If he wasn’t careful, she’d leave him in the dust. “What’s your plan?”

  “To go get my brother. He’s probably in Mexico.”

  “I’ve got Cole on that aspect.”

  “Who’s Cole?”

  “My brother. DEA with Special Forces training, but he’s on leave. He was injured during a jump near Caldera’s holdings.” His plan to keep his gaze away from her crashed and burned. The woman was, well, beautiful didn’t cut it. There weren’t words.

  Decoy’s eyebrows twitched. “What was he doing there?”

  “Sorry, angel, that’s need to know.”

  She digested that for a moment. “But he told you?”

  “He got clearance first.”

  “Damn it, Ghost, I need to know!” The flash of anger made her eyes huge. He faced forward again. It was the only way to keep from touching her. He doubted she’d allow that. “Actually, Senator Caruthers’s orders were to keep you out of this all together.” He rushed on to prevent another outburst. “I told him that wasn’t possible. I did promise him you weren’t going in alone.”

  “Do you usually make promises you can’t keep?”

  “Never.”

  Mykael watched the tic in Ghost’s cheek keep time with the clock on the dash. The set of his jaw told her marching in and letting them take her wasn’t an option. Of course he wouldn’t understand, but all that mattered now was Sean. All that had ever mattered was Sean. A solitary cry echoed through her empty soul. Her brother could well be dead. He had, at the very least been tortured because there was no other way for them to know her names. She doubted even her grandparents or Tia Selena remembered all of them.

  “They can’t kill Sean.”

  “Okay.” He didn’t try to hide the fact that he’d decided to humor her. Mykael let him get away with the patronization. She wasn’t finished. “They’ll lose their laundering op. Sean told me it’s more than three thousand a day. Per restaurant. That’s a lot of cash. Why would he give up his cozy relationship with Sean and his restaurants? That foreign guy—Azisi. He’s gotta be involved in this somehow.”

  Ghost nodded, eyes narrowed, but still firmly focused straight ahead. She wished he’d look at her, but at least he wasn’t so skeptical. “Makes sense. What makes you think Ibrajim’s in on it?”

  What indeed? “Leverage? I don’t know. What does Black Fire have to do with it? It’s got to be something to do with that Azisi person.”

  Expecting him to refute her, she was surprised when his mouth tightened into a grim line. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  *** The restaurant was as crowded as she remembered, the colors as bright. From the corner of her eye, she located Ghost at the bar, he’d entered before her. She allowed the hostess to seat her next to a noisy group of revelers. Ten p.m., on the dot. She owed Ghost for that. And, she admitted grudgingly, Ice, for letting them use his jet. Nevertheless, her original task wasn’t completed, just postponed. None of the debt she’d accumulated today amounted to the one she owed to Peter.

  “Can you hear me?” Ghost’s voice resonated out of her tiny earpiece, cool and far too reassuring to her troubled soul. She lowered her menu enough for him to see her and gave a nonchalant nod. A pretty young girl sashayed up to the table, clothed in a white peasant top and a bright yellow skirt, the female uniform of Sean Juan’s. She stood close to Mykael and slightly behind, pointing over her shoulder at the menu, ostensibly to offer advice. “You his sister, honey?”

  Mykael’s heart thudded into double-time. She reached into the bag in her lap, wanting to be prepared, even though she knew she’d never use the gun. Not until Sean was safe. “I am.” “Good. Be right back.”

  An employee? She must be, Mykael decided when she planted herself at the service area of the bar. The woman gave not the slightest sign that anything was amiss.

  “Contact?” Greg wondered. Mykael wondered too. The young waitress laughed at something the busy bartender said, then placed a frosty margarita glass on her tray. “Maybe.” The microphone was strapped to her thin bra, not ideal for him to hear any conversations she might have. Unfortunately, it was the only non-conspicuous spot on her body.

  The waitress stopped to take a drink order at a table two back from the bar. Mykael quickly scanned the room again. Nothing unusual and no one taking any special notice of her that she could see. For just a moment she met Ghost’s eyes in the mirror behind the bar. Not for anything would she ever tell him how much it meant that he was there, the amount of strength she drew just from his presence. She could kill a Caldera without blinking, but now that Sean was involved….

  Her waitress arrived at her table with a smile. “Drink up.”

  “I didn’t–“

  ”Compliments of the gentleman at the bar.” Who? She saw no one. Ghost didn’t move–he hadn’t heard. She heard him whisper to Tron, who was outside and also listening, telling him to adjust the volume.

  Mykael started to her feet, surprised when the waitress laid a hand on her shoulder, restraining her instantaneous desire to bolt to the bar. The young woman lowered her head close to Mykael’s, close enough for her to see what she had masked before: a cold determination equal to Mykael’s own.

  “Sit, honey. Drink. Then your dinner guest will join you.”

  “Don’t touch it.” Ghost had apparently heard the woman’s instructions this time.

  The waitress straightened, her smile back in place as she gestured to the frothy contents of the glass. “Taste it and tell me what you think.”

  Mykael reached for the glass.

  “Decoy, do not drink. That’s an order.” She wanted to smile, would have if her heart wasn’t in her throat over worry for Sean. The man did love to give her orders. “Oh.” The waitress/accomplice wasn’t finished. “This is the note Sean left for you.” She fished an envelope out of a pocket hidden somewhere in her voluminous skirt. Mykael glanced at the waitress’ empty smile. The instructions, sadly, were clear: she’d receive the note after she’d had a drink. Her name was scrawled on the outside in handwriting very clearly Sean’s. A note for a poisoned drink. Not the t
rade she’d come for.

  “The note first,” she demanded, cutting off an immediate reply by scooting her chair back a fraction of an inch. “Then you get to live.” “They will kill him.”

  “Not before I kill you.” She let her see the gun in her lap. “Your choice. Honey.”

  Her smile now a sullen frown, the waitress tossed the note to the table with a shrug. “I warned you.”

  Her hand shook just the slightest bit as she grabbed up the envelope. Was the woman right? Had she just killed her brother? “Thanks for the good word, sis. Guess I’ll see you in Virginia.” She read the words aloud, enunciating carefully, betting the note wouldn’t be around for further testing. Greg joined the rowdy, inebriated group at the next table. Raucous laughter erupted. She didn’t have much time if she wanted to make the next move.

  “How about you and I go outside?” She didn’t give the waitress time to think. Mykael grabbed the margarita and poured it over her left breast. It might not annihilate Tron’s technology, but the moisture should at least muffle it a bit. Ignoring Ghost, who was about to pick a fight, push someone into her table and spill the drink he’d ordered her not to consume, she arranged her bag over her gun and got to her feet. “Let’s go find your boss.”

  The summer breeze chilled her very wet self as they exited the building, mingling the stench of tequila with a salty tang from the ocean. Mykael gestured toward the parking lot and the van where Tron waited, hopefully trying to figure out what happened to make her microphone malfunction. “Where’s my brother?”

  Just ahead of her, the waitress shrugged, then stepped off the sidewalk to glare at her. “You read the note. Virginia, I guess.” “And Caldera?”

  “Who’s Caldera?”

  Her voice sounded far away, as if muffled by fog. A second chill shook Mykael, this one seeming to waft through her body. Numbness, heavy as sandbags, settled over her limbs. “Move!” she ordered, but the waitress simply slipped the gun from Mykael’s frozen fingers.