Limbo Man

by Blair Bancroft

  He gasped as her fingers bit into his shoulders. Vee snatched her hands back. Had that sound been pleasure or pain? Who knew what was under that black tee? She bent down, got her fingers under the hem, and skinned it off over hands raised as docilely as a one-year-old on the changing table. Oh. My. God. It was a miracle he was able to walk. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” she murmured.

  “Scars not all new,” Sergei said. “Is worth the pain.”

  Vee blinked, took a deep breath. Earlier in the kitchen, he had helped her. She needed to return the favor. Starting with his neck, which seemed to have the fewest wounds, she massaged every part of his arms and upper back that didn’t have raw abrasions or recent stitches. Occasionally, he moaned. Each time, Vee hastily drew back. “Nyet, is good,” Sergei protested, and she would begin again, finally developing a rhythm, feeling his response . . . becoming one with a pliant gargoyle.

  Vee’s hands slowed. His head had fallen forward, eyes closed. Profound silence enveloped them. A silence out of time and space, as if they’d warped into a new universe. If only they could stay cocooned on the island . . . never have to go back . . . never face reality.

  Almost, she liked the guy. If she couldn’t be marooned on an island with Cade, Nick was an intriguing second choice. Vee sighed. Her fingers stilled. Too much contact. Too personal.

  Time to summon Vee Frost, federal cop.

  “Come on, big boy, time for bed.” Vee coaxed him off the chair, steered him to the bed. Pausing only long enough to turn back the covers on the opposite side of the bed from where she’d been sleeping, she tucked him in. Silently, she gazed at the bowling ball head, the top covered in soft brown fuzz, lower cheeks the same, sort of like a skinhead chia pet. Damn! The miserable man had no right to touch her soul, but he did. It must be the Russian in both of them.

  She had two choices—sleep in Nick’s bed or join him in hers. If she slept in the room next door, she was going to worry about him. If she didn’t, she was going to worry about waking up with him in the morning. More specifically, waking up with Sergei, whose bent for cherchez les femmes just might be enough to triumph over physical weakness.

  She needn’t have worried. When she woke, the other half of the double bed was empty. She heard water gurgling through the pipes to the bathroom down the hall, where Nick was obviously taking a shower. A pang of something Vee didn’t want to examine closely stabbed through her. It had to be relief, right? It couldn’t possibly be regret.

  As Nick followed the smell of frying bacon to the kitchen, movement caught his eye. Eyes narrowed, he paused at the window above the kitchen sink. “Company coming,” he snapped. “Not false alarm.”

  “Dammit, he was supposed to call first—”

  The disposable cell phone rang. Vee fished it out of the pocket of an apron almost as frilly as that lavender confection she wore to bed. Probably kept her Glock in there too. Women were very strange.

  “Yes?” she snapped, her crisp tone displaying her annoyance. Nonetheless, Nick could see tension ease away as the caller confirmed the approaching boat was friend, not foe.

  A backup minder? Nick wondered. Or was this the full cavalry charging to the rescue?

  “My father,” Vee told him as she ended the call. “He outranks all the agents you’ve dealt with to date. His name is James, but, fair warning, he’s known as Jack the Ripper and Jack the Giant Killer.”

  “Can I eat first?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Glaring, Vee slammed a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon onto the table, before dropping into a chair across from him, keeping her pout fixed on her mug of black coffee.

  Nick attacked his breakfast, but even with his mouth full, he couldn’t resist the obvious taunt. “Daddy makes you nervous?” he inquired sweetly. Oh, yeah. If dear old dad was that high up in Homeland Security, he’d probably had to sign off on pimping his daughter to a Russian arms dealer. No wonder tensions were high.

  “Go to hell.”

  But Vee’s heart wasn’t in it, Nick could tell. He could almost see the thoughts ticking in her head. Dad, docking. Securing lines to a couple of bollards. Walking up the path, climbing the porch steps. “Aren’t you going to meet him? Front door’s locked.”

  “Let him ring the bell.”

  “Vee, the guy’s come here to save your neck. Give him a break.”

  “This is Jack Frost we’re talking about. Believe me, it’s your neck he’s come to save. Family comes dead last. Pun intended. And, besides, he’s probably carrying a spare key in his pocket. That’s my father. Always prepared, as long it’s business.”

  Sure enough. Firm footsteps sounded on the hall’s wooden boards. Jack Frost, also following the smell of bacon to the kitchen.

  As their visitor paused in the doorway, Nick bounced to his feet, because anyone who sat and gawked at a man like Jack Frost found himself devoured, hair, skin, teeth, and bones by a serious predator. Nick had a flash of one of his Russian serf ancestors being dropped at the feet of the Tsar. Even Sergei felt a tremor of respect.

  Jack Frost topped Nick by at least an inch, a big-boned man with a handsome face honed by classic WASP arrogance. Generations of privileged wealth, the best schools, and the sure knowledge that he was born with the right to govern. To tell lesser mortals what to do. A man who lived by My country, right or wrong.

  Nick recognized the type. Somewhere, somehow he’d known a man like this. Larger than life. A man who could hold a room, a crowd, a country in the palm of his hand. A man who . . .

  It was important, vital that he remember this giant in his life. But the glimpse of a ghost faded, leaving him with the dynamic presence of Jack the Giant Killer. One thing was certain—Frosty was very well connected.

  And so, perhaps, was he.

  But he would never wave a daughter like a nice juicy steak in front of a gangster like Sergei. He’d really like to take a swing at the self-satisfied shmuck.

  Without so much as a “Good morning,” Frost spoke directly to Vee, who was still seated at the table, looking mulish. As if she knew she had to depend on Daddy, but wished he were anywhere but here. “Valentina, I need to speak with Tokarev alone. We’ll leave you here to finish your breakfast.”

  She shot to her feet. “Oh, no, you won’t. You’re not shutting me out.”

  Interesting, Nick thought, that Frost didn’t snap her head off. He could almost hear the VIP from Homeland Security counting to ten.

  “I will brief you both together, Valentina, but right now I have private business with Tokarev. You will wait here.” No need to add, “That’s an order.” Nobody who heard Frost’s tone could doubt it.

  Vee buried her flushed face behind her coffee mug, while Nick followed her father into the living room. The man from DHS waved him onto the sofa, but remained standing. “What are you still doing here?” he barked.

  “Sir?”

  “Why haven’t you snapped her neck, grabbed her cash and gun, and taken off?”

  A valid question, Nick conceded, but damn cold-blooded.

  “Okay,” Frost continued, “let’s put this another way. You and Vee were supposed to be surrounded by agents from the moment you left the hospital. The ride to the airport, the flight, the carefully chosen safe house. No way was she ever supposed to be alone with you. And yet within twenty minutes of leaving Bellvue, the two of you were on your own. And she’s been alone with you on this island for nearly twenty-four hours. Even half dead, you could have taken her any time. So why didn’t you? And don’t try to tell me you didn’t know about the cruiser in the boat house.”

  Good question. Why hadn’t he made a run for it? “Maybe,” Nick responded after careful consideration, “because I’m not quite as much of a bad guy as you think? Maybe because I believe I have a better chance of getting my memory back with Vee’s help than without. Maybe because I don’t want to be responsible for the death of thousands. Maybe I actually want to help.

  “And maybe,” he added softly, “I like Vee
far too much to consider running away from her, let alone snapping her neck.”

  Frost sank into a chair opposite the sofa, deflating like a hot air balloon with the gas turned off. “Who. Are. You?”

  “Now that’s the problem, isn’t it.” Nick grinned, thoroughly enjoying the older man’s discomfort.

  Frost took a deep breath, shook his head, then raised his voice to call his daughter. Although it took a full thirty seconds for Vee to appear, Nick suspected she’d been lurking in the hallway, listening to every word. Her father motioned her to a seat on the sofa next to Nick. “It seemed sensible to save your briefing for the safe house,” he said. “It never occurred to anyone that something could go wrong. I’m sorry about that. We’re still working on tracking down the leak. As for you, Vee”—he regarded his daughter with a mix of apology and pride—“you did well. You saved the day—”

  “The agents with us?”

  “They didn’t make it, but they did their jobs. Slowed pursuit.”

  Vee nodded, but her face had gone ashen. The deaths weren’t a surprise, but it wasn’t easy to accept that three men had sacrificed themselves so they could escape.

  Frost returned to his briefing. “This all goes back a long way. The two of you would have been little more than children. When the Soviet Union fell, there was chaos. Soviet armaments disappeared into the hands of the boldest and greediest. Military men who had defended their country through all its years of power suddenly ran scared, figuring they had to get theirs before somebody got them. You could call it a rush to grab the Old Soldiers’ Pension Fund.”

  Nick nodded. He knew this. It was all familiar.

  “Among the things that went missing,” Frost continued, “were ten old-style nuclear bombs. Old, but way more powerful than the ones that took out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over the years the CIA tracked down three of them. The other seven are still missing.”

  “Surely inactive,” Vee said, “or some terrorist nut case would have used them by now.”

  “The bombs require the isotope U-236 to set them off,” Frost explained. “That’s man-made, not found in nature. And even if you can create it, the rate of decay is rapid. The bombs lose their teeth, so to speak. But recently there’ve been rumors. Strong rumors. The Russian Mafia supposedly helped spirit the bombs away, and now it’s said they may have found a source for U-236.”

  “After all this time?” Vee asked.

  “Frost nodded. “Seven dirty nukes, each one capable of killing a hundred thousand people outright and contaminating an entire city.”

  “Govnó,” Nick breathed. He couldn’t be involved in this. Impossible. Every instinct said he wasn’t one of the bad guys. And yet . . .

  “And who more likely to know about the bombs than the Organizatsiya’s prime weapons smuggler, Sergei Tokarev?” Frost added, rubbing in the obvious.

  Nick decided he must play a good game of poker, or maybe his damaged face made excellent camouflage. His outer shell remained frozen, while his soul screamed No! Somehow he kept it together. “Sure explains how I got thrown off a bridge,” he drawled. “Maybe someone figured out I’d didn’t like the idea. Smuggling arms to a Third World country is a far cry from nuking New York.”

  “What the hell,” Frost muttered. “I just realized—aren’t you supposed to have an accent?”

  “Yup,” Nick agreed in his best cowboy imitation. “My language skills seem to be remarkably flexible.”

  Vee stepped in, summarizing what they’d discovered so far, neatly skimming the more personal details of his memory of Africa.

  “So it’s begun?” Frost said, his distinguished face actually showing some animation. “Your memory’s on its way back?”

  “Hopefully. I’m inclined to agree that Sergei is some kind of creation, but I’m not sure what that means. I do know, no matter what side I turn out to be on, nuking a city isn’t part of my agenda. I’ll do anything I can to stop it, but the more I struggle to remember, the more my mind balks. I just have to let it come to me.” And if his memories all came in the form of nightmares like last night, God help him.

  “So . . . do you want to stay here or keep moving?”

  Nick stifled a wince on Vee’s behalf. Frost was asking him for his opinion, by-passing his own agent. “This is a great place to hide, but I’m inclined to think fugitives should keep moving.”

  “Vee?”

  “I’d feel better if we weren’t perched out here like sitting ducks. It was the only place I could think of at the time, but more solid walls, more watchers up close and personal, sounds good to me.”

  Frost nodded. “I came on a boat borrowed from a friend at the yacht club a couple of miles from here. Not a place I can take you out unseen. I’ll need to make arrangements, probably a boat to outer Long Island tonight.”

  “You’re sure you weren’t followed?” Nick asked.

  “I’ve been in the business a long time. Believe me, I took every precaution.”

  With stakes this high, Nick didn’t doubt it. But he’d feel a lot better once they got off this hunk of New England granite.

  When the front door closed behind Deputy Chief Frost, Nick led the way back to the kitchen. The remains of his breakfast had gone cold. Silently, Vee picked up his plate and headed for the microwave.

  “I knew,” Nick said without inflection. “When he told us, I realized I already knew.”

  “ So this is about nukes.”

  “Afraid so.”

  The microwave beeped. Vee brought his plate back to the table, then reheated their coffees. But when she sat down, she steepled her fingers and simply gazed at the steaming liquid in her cup. Between bites of food, Nick watched her, wondering just what part of their convoluted situation was keeping her from hot coffee.

  “Every cop, from beat to Homeland Security,” Vee said at last, “joins up to protect and serve, but I have to admit this kind of responsibility is a bit more than I had in mind. If you can unravel this knot, no wonder they want to kill you.”

  Too early in the morning for the weight of the world. Particularly on such slim shoulders. His minder could use a touch of levity. “And look who’s my bodyguard.” He shouldn’t taunt her, but, hell, he had to get Frosty back up to fighting speed. “Listen to me, Valentina. The seven missing nukes are probably scattered all over the globe. It’s unlikely enough U-236 has surfaced for more than one trigger mechanism, so we’re talking one lousy nuke, not seven. And if I know where it is, or how to find it, I will remember, I promise you. I care, I really do. Together, we can do this.”

  Vee looked up, blue eyes to green. Peering into his soul. “Like Dad said, “Who the hell are you?”

  Chapter 8

  They were escorted on board the promised boat at just past two in the morning. The stars were beginning to fade by the time they took off from a small commuter airfield not far from Montauk Point, the eastern end of Long Island. For the first time since Vee left her New York hotel room to escort Nick to Teterboro airport, she was able to relax. In the enclosed space of the airplane, surrounded by Homeland Security agents—six of them dressed in black and bristling with weapons—she could let down her guard and get in some quality sleeptime.

  As casually as if they were an old married couple, Nick moved her elbow out of the way so he could raise the armrest that separated their seats. “Lower your seatback,” he whispered in her ear. “Rest on my shoulder. Is okay. Sergei be good boy.”

  “Sergei and good don’t belong in the same sentence,” Vee hissed, reaching for the armrest to snap it back in place. Nick blocked her with annoying ease. Vee’s gaze flashed to the two DHS agents seated on the opposite side of the aisle about six feet forward. They were both wearing suits and ties, marks of agents in charge, and riding with their backs to the pilot so they could keep an eye on the guest of honor. At the moment their sights were fixed on the byplay between Vee and Nick, the younger of the two men leaning forward as if on the verge of leaping to Vee’s rescue.

  W
ith her free left hand Vee waved the DHS agent off. Nick was hers. Nobody else was allowed to mess with him. Or with Sergei. And, besides, making nice with Nick was why she’d been snatched from her comfortable niche in Florida and dropped into a maelstrom twelve hundred miles away. She had a job to do. This was definitely not the moment to antagonize either one of her companion’s personalities. Ignoring the bullet-like stares being thrown their way, Vee lowered her seat to match Nick’s and rested her head on his shoulder. Shutting out the eagle-eyed agents by pulling her discount store ballcap down over her eyes, Vee snuggled into Nick’s shoulder and closed her eyes.

  His arm insinuated its way around her back, coming to rest rather higher than her waist, high enough to make her toes tingle, as well as a few parts in between. She had to admit it was a good shoulder, a broad, solid shoulder. She hadn’t felt this comfortable since just before the phone rang that fateful morning in Florida.

  She was cozying up to a high-ranking member of the Organizatsiya, and, frankly, she didn’t give a damn.

  She slept.

  Sergei came awake, instantly aware of his surroundings, a skill that had served him well for thirty-six years. One glance, and he knew he was royally screwed. A private Gulfstream filled with government types, most of them dressed in commando gear and armed for a small war. Ahead and to the left, two suits were positioned where they could look right at him. One was reading a paperback book. The other was working on his laptop.

  Surreptitiously, Sergei checked for handcuffs. Interesting. He was on a private plane with a bunch of Feds, and he wasn’t cuffed. In fact . . . his left arm was cramped from being some place it probably shouldn’t have been at all. Not that he didn’t appreciate what he could see of the blonde under the ballcap, but unless he was very much mistaken his fingers had just brushed something hard and metallic. A twitch of his hand, and he could spray the plane with bullets, probably take out the whole lot of them.

  The airplane. And himself along with it.