“I will.”
After the pilot departed, Claire went to the ladies’ room to scrub the blood off her hands and make a quick change, then she called in an update on Luis’s condition to OMEGA. Rigger, in turn, fed her the information he’d dug up on Dawson through his contacts in Interpol and British intelligence.
“He served in the British army during the first Gulf War, went mercenary in the second. That’s where he hooked up with his pal Porter. The two of them hired out as personal bodyguards for a top-level Iraqi, but word on the street is they used an attack on their client to form their own private death squad.”
“Bastards,” Claire muttered, remembering the sadistic enjoyment Dawson had taken in taunting her.
“And then some,” Rigger agreed. “They reportedly made a bundle in Iraq, then dropped off the radar screen three years ago. Interpol’s tracking at least five unsolved murders they think these two had a hand in.”
“What about links to the White House?”
“All we have so far are airport surveillance tapes that confirm Porter and Dawson did, in fact, fly into Prague in March, and your report that they rooted around in the parish records at Sedlec, where Stacy Andrews’s great-grandfather emigrated from.”
It was a tenuous connection at best, but Rigger promised to keep digging. He also promised to relay the update on Luis’s condition to the Cartozan Embassy in D.C.
Claire knew the embassy would notify both Luis’s brother and the president of Cartoza, as well as that country’s ambassador to the Czech Republic. So she wasn’t surprised when Luis’s counterpart made a personal visit to the ICU to check on his fellow countryman. While there, he put his entire staff at her disposal should she or Luis need anything.
“Anything at all,” he reiterated, pressing her hand between both of his own.
With his full head of gray hair and regal bearing, Diego Delgado exuded the same charm and sophistication that characterized Luis. And, as he confided to Claire, he’d once served as the colonel’s superior officer.
“He is like a panther, that one. Even in darkest jungles, he moves with such speed and confidence. Has he told you of the multinational raid he led against the Norte del Valle cartel in Colombia?”
“No, he hasn’t.”
“Then I shall.”
The telling lasted for some time. Claire suspected the ambassador omitted the more gory details but was grateful to him for helping pass the hour between allowed visits to Luis’s bedside.
He accompanied her into the ICU for the next ten-minute visit. The sight of Luis hooked up to so many tubes and machines left Claire tight-chested and the ambassador looking grave. He departed soon afterward, with a promise to return in the morning.
Two detectives from Prague’s homicide division showed up next. Claire spent another hour answering their questions, or trying to. She was between visits to the ICU when yet another visitor entered the waiting area. Father Milosec’s cassock swirled about his ankles as he hurried over.
“Cardinal Tuma sends me with his prayers and his hopes for the colonel’s swift recovery. My prayers join his.”
“Thank you.”
“How does he progress?”
“He lost a lot of blood.” Claire scrubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand. “All the nurses will say when I ask is that his condition is guarded. I’m beginning to think that’s the only English medical term they know.”
“I will inquire for you, yes?”
“Yes, please.”
He returned some moments later with a different spin on the same report. “They say it is in God’s hands.”
He spotted the small kitchenette tucked in a corner of the waiting room and poured cups of coffee for both of them before settling beside Claire on the soft-cushioned sofa.
“The police say this man who shoots the colonel also pushes over the statue of St. Benedict. Can you tell me why he does these things?”
Claire glanced around the waiting area. Only one other group was present, all huddled around their red-eyed and grieving grandfather. She doubted any of them could hear. Still, she lowered her voice.
“We don’t have hard proof, but we believe those attacks, and one that occurred back in the States, were intended to prevent me from discovering the cause of the nightmares President Andrews’s daughter has experienced.”
Shock rippled across the priest’s face. “But why?”
Most likely, she was now convinced, to force the popular president out of office. Andrews would resign in a heartbeat to protect his daughter’s health or safety. Claire kept that supposition to herself, however, and stuck to the facts.
“That’s the million-dollar question. All we know for sure at this point is the man I shot made a visit to the Sedlec bone ossuary in March and asked to see the same parish records you pulled up on the computer for me.”
The priest shook his head over the strangeness of it all. “What can we—Cardinal Tuma and I—do to help?”
She let out a sigh. “I don’t know at this point, except perhaps to keep the prayers flowing for Luis.”
“But of course. And for you, my daughter. And for you.”
She didn’t need prayer as much as Luis. That became ominously apparent as evening gave way to night, and night to the dark hours before dawn.
Father Milosec had offered to stay with her but she knew the frail Cardinal Tuma needed him, too. The priest left, promising to return in the morning, as had Ambassador Delgado. So it was just Claire and the family clustered around their stoop-shouldered, red-eyed grandfather all through the long night.
And the intensive care unit staff, of course. They were as sympathetic as they were efficient, but nothing could soften the sterile starkness of their unit. Monitors beeped with quiet relentlessness. Curtains rattled on their steel bearings between the units. Soft-soled shoes made squeaking noises on scrubbed tile floors. And each ten-minute visit to Luis’s bedside left Claire more frightened.
This was worse, so much worse, than what she’d experienced with Dave. That awful tragedy had happened a continent away. She’d been fed only bits of information during the scant few days her husband had been held hostage. Word of the bungled rescue attempt and Dave’s death had come like a slashing cut straight to her heart.
This time she was right there, leaning close to Luis during her visits to his bedside, threading her fingers through his, murmuring his name. He drifted in and out during those visits. Even during his “in” moments, he was so doped up she knew nothing really registered.
Only once did he seem to respond to the sound of her voice. His eyelids twitched and his fingers seemed to tighten in hers. She leaned closer, her heart thumping.
“I’m here, Luis. Can you hear me?”
Had she imagined that faint twitch? Praying she hadn’t, she murmured softly, “So much has happened the past few days. Flying statues. Visits to cardinals. Nightmares. Marriage proposals. With all that going on, I neglected to mention that I love you.”
Breath suspended, she waited for a response. Any kind of a response. None came.
“I know,” she whispered, forcing a smile into her voice. “It surprised me, too. All these weeks and months I’ve kept insisting we take things one step at a time. I didn’t realize my subconscious was already eight steps ahead of me.”
She raised his hand and took care to avoid the IV as she brushed her lips across it.
“You need to get well, my darling. We have a wedding to arrange.”
The minutes between visits ticked by with agonizing slowness. Claire downed cup after cup of coffee and made a tentative attempt to communicate with the family huddled on the other side of the waiting room. The psychologist in her responded to their pain, even while her own threatened to choke her.
The youngest grandchild had studied English in school. She responded to Claire’s overtures with a shy smile and soon had her siblings sharing stories about their babika. Their grandfather sat quietly all through the telling, his eyes
sad and resigned.
Just before dawn, Claire got wearily to her feet to pour yet another cup of coffee. It was mostly sludge now, but it would give her system the jolt she needed for the next trip into the ICU. She was adding a third packet of sugar to the syrupy liquid when Lightning strode into the waiting room. With him was the slender woman Claire counted among her dearest friends.
“Maggie!”
Maggie Sinclair Ridgeway was the last person she expected to see in Prague. The one-time operative and former director of OMEGA served on a slew of charitable organizations in addition to keeping busy with her own career and always-busy family. What she insisted on labeling “character” lines now fanned out at the corners of her brown eyes, but her hair was the same luminous brown and her smile still lit up any room she walked into.
Coffee sloshed over Claire’s hand as she tossed her cup into the wastebasket. When she rushed across the room, Maggie opened her arms and Claire fell into them. The woman who prided herself on maintaining strict control over her emotions—the psychologist who concealed every thought behind a calm mask—burst into noisy, racking sobs.
Maggie didn’t try to check them. Cradling Claire in her arms, she rocked back and forth.
She and Cyrene had worked a number of ops together and Maggie considered this woman more than a friend. She was the sister she never had. She knew what Claire had gone through after her husband was murdered and could only imagine the paralyzing fear that had to be gripping her now.
Stroking her friend’s silky blond hair, she murmured the empty promises everyone did during crises like this. “It’s all right. He’ll be all right.”
“He has to be.” Claire pulled back. Her tear-ravaged eyes were filled with despair. “I can’t lose him, Maggie.”
“I know.”
She should. She’d been the lure that brought Luis to Washington, but Claire was the one he’d fallen for. Along with everyone else in OMEGA, Maggie had watched Esteban’s determined pursuit over the years. She had to admit Claire had handled the sexy Latin American with a deft hand. Not an easy task, given the man’s occasional lapses into Stone Age thinking when it came to little things like “his woman” going out on dangerous undercover ops.
“I love him,” Claire sobbed. “More than I ever dreamed possible.”
“I know,” Maggie repeated, sending Lightning a glance over her friend’s head. “Everyone does.”
Claire drew back, blinking through her tears. “Wh…What?”
On cue, Lightning responded to Maggie’s silent signal. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know about the pool?”
The diversionary tactic worked. Sniffling, Claire looked from him to Maggie and back again.
“Pool?”
“Everyone was betting on when you’ll finally break down and agree to marry the poor guy. I think the pot’s well over three hundred now. I’ve got next month,” he added with a hopeful waggle of his brows. “The twentieth, to be exact. Think you can hold out until then?”
“Sorry.” Still sniffling, Claire eased into a smile. “Who had yesterday?”
“Damn! Diamond, I think.”
His hound-dog expression drew a watery chuckle from Claire and a huff from Maggie.
“Right.” She grinned at the sophisticated millionaire who’d offered to act as her pimp when he was a half-starved twelve-year-old pickpocket. “Like you need the three hundred, Jensen.”
Their banter gave Claire the time she needed to recover her composure. “I was just going in to see Luis when you showed up. Come with me.”
Maggie and Nick had both seen plenty of wounds and injuries during their years with OMEGA. She expected them to take the tubes and monitors in stride. Still, she tried to prepare them.
Nothing could prepare her, however, for the grim expression on the face of the doctor who exited the ICU just as they were about to enter.
He was young, in his middle thirties, and had come on duty an hour or so before Maggie and Lightning arrived. To Claire’s relief, he’d pulled a surgical rotation at Atlanta’s largest medical center and spoke English with the musical accent of a down-home, Southern Czech.
“Dr. Cantwell. I was just coming to look for you.”
Claire’s chest squeezed with pure, unadulterated terror. She groped for Maggie’s hand. Lightning slid an arm around her shoulders.
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Ambassador Esteban is awake and is now asking for you. I must say,” he added as Claire rushed past, “he’s what I would call a recalcitrant patient.”
He didn’t look recalcitrant, Claire thought, on a choking half sob. He looked pale and weak and stubborn as hell.
“There you are.” He followed his hoarse croak with a grunt of surprise. “And you, Maggie!”
“And Nick,” Claire said, rather unnecessarily, as the three of them crowded around his bed. “Here, suck on some of this chipped ice. It’ll ease your throat.”
While she held the plastic cup to his lips, his dark eyes darted from Nick to Maggie. His throat worked as he swallowed the melted ice chip with an obviously painful effort.
“It is good you have come,” he rasped. “I do not like—” grimacing, he swallowed again “—to leave Claire alone…until we know who hired…this Dawson.”
“We know,” Lightning replied.
Either Luis didn’t hear or he was still too doped up for the startling reply to fully register. Or, Claire realized as he fumbled for her hand, he had a more pressing matter on his mind.
“Tell me,” he demanded in that raw voice, “did you come to me? Did you say…what I have longed…to hear? Or was I…dreaming?”
Careful to avoid his IV line, she squeezed his hand gently. “You weren’t dreaming.”
Fierce satisfaction flared in his dark eyes. He looked so much like himself in that moment that the fear still clutching at the edges of Claire’s mind evaporated.
Keeping a firm grip on her hand, he turned his attention to Nick. “Now, tell us what it is you know.”
Chapter 12
Luis insisted he’d recovered enough to fly home a mere twenty-four hours later. Despite his doctor’s reservations, he departed the hospital with his ribs taped and a bottle of prescription painkillers in his pocket.
Nick smoothed their departure by arranging a hurried meeting with the Czech investigators who needed to take Luis’s statement. He also hired a licensed nurse to accompany them on the flight back to the States. Since this was done via the luxurious jet Nick chartered for his personal use, the flight home was both swift and uneventful.
Luis slept most of the way. The painkillers and steady engine whine kept him out until they were on final approach to Washington’s Reagan International.
“Luis.” Claire nudged him gently. “Wake up. We’re here.”
Grimacing at the tug on his ribs, he brought his seat upright for landing. “What time is it?”
“Fifteen-ten local,” Lightning replied with a glance at his sleek and very expensive watch.
Mere moments later, they taxied to a stop within sight of the stretch limo Nick had ordered. Once the customs officer who met the aircraft cleared them, Maggie had to separate from the rest of the group.
Not without regrets. Tucking a strand of warm brown hair behind her ear, she gave Luis a rueful grin. “Being in the field with you again brought back a few memories.”
“Ah. You are thinking, perhaps, of the time you came to my country and disguised yourself in the garb of a streetwalker?”
“Actually, I’m thinking of the giant iguana you sent home with me after that particular mission. Terence made Adam’s life miserable for years.”
“It’s no more than Ridgeway deserves for stealing you from me.”
The reply was as smooth as the way he raised her hand to his lips. Neither the extravagant compliment nor the cosmopolitan gesture fooled either of the women present. They knew who held the keys to his heart.
“Call me,” Maggie instructed Claire. “We’l
l down sour-apple martinis and talk wedding plans.”
Once in the limo, Claire didn’t bother to suggest they drop Luis off at either her place or the embassy residence to rest. First, he would flat-out refuse. Second, he had as much a stake in the events of the next hour or so as she did.
Her nerves tightened in grim anticipation as the limo left the airport and glided along the GW Parkway. The route took them by the Pentagon and across the 14th Street Bridge. The Jefferson Memorial gleamed in the bright May sunshine, its round dome and graceful columns silhouetted against the blue-green waters of the Tidal Basin. Once across the bridge, the limo driver eased through afternoon traffic.
Claire’s nerves tightened another notch when they passed the soaring obelisk of the Washington Monument and the White House came into view. Nick had radioed from out over the Atlantic to set up a meeting with President Andrews, his vice president and his chief of staff. The meeting, she knew, would have unprecedented ramifications.
When the limo pulled up at the first White House checkpoint, Claire had a startling sense of déjà vu. She and Nick had stopped at this same checkpoint a scant few weeks ago. It seemed more like years, given everything that had happened since. Her consults with Stacy Andrews. All the tests she and her colleagues had run on the teen. The attack outside Claire’s condo. The trip to Prague with its near-disastrous results.
Well, not all disastrous. She glanced at Luis’s handsome, determined face and felt the knot in her stomach ease a bit. Whatever came of this meeting, whatever drastic changes occurred because of it, one constant would remain. Her hand slid across the cloud-soft leather and slipped into his.
He slanted her a quick look and even quicker smile. “Soon it will be over,” he murmured as the driver pulled up at the second checkpoint. “Then we will make time for us.”
She kept that promise in mind while a security officer issued badges and escorted them to the West Wing. Claire had met with the president in the Oval Office once before. Still, she couldn’t fail to feel the history imbued in its walls and furnishings as the receptionist showed her, Luis and Nick in.
Seduced by the Operative Page 13
