by Rachel Caine
She pressed a hand to her aching head and tried to think. According to her watch, it was just a little after six at night; the task force should have had their tactical response well underway by now, she thought. Katie stood, wincing at the ache in her muscles but most especially in her bruised and probably still cracked ribs, and tried some tentative stretches to avoid hobbling like an old woman in front of her peers.
When she opened the office door, she heard the shouting. That was deeply troubling. Shouting just did not happen, not in the FBI offices, and this sounded just one or two Marines short of a full-scale war.
She followed the uproar down the hall to the open door of a situation room, where Rachel Evans stood toe-to-toe with a burly senior agent—one who probably remembered the Hoover days—and was engaging in a full-volume frank exchange. Katie leaned against the wall, eyebrows raised, and folded her arms. She edged closer to one of the youngest field agents, who looked on with the fascination of the uninvolved.
“What’s going on?” she asked. He barely glanced at her, just enough to verify her badge was valid, and then riveted his gaze back on the main event.
“Evans is getting reamed,” he said. “Tactical assault just reported in. The gunboats fought back, major ordnance, and there were casualties.”
Oh God. “The girls?”
“No,” he said. “No girls onboard. There was some monkey business with the tracking system, they lost contact with the boats for about half an hour, but nobody thought there was anything to worry about because they were still on the projected course and speed when telemetry came back. Now they think there was a seaplane that landed, picked up the girls, and took off.”
“Took off for where?” Katie asked.
He shrugged. “Nobody’s saying. That’s why Evans is getting reamed. It was her operation.”
Katie honestly wanted to feel sorry for her, but the image of Evans sneering at Stefan stood in the way. What goes around…
She pushed away from the wall, yawned, and said, “Hey, is there coffee?”
The agent nodded next door. Katie strolled that direction, looked back, and found that nobody was watching her. Why would they be? She wasn’t a suspect; at worst, she was a screw-up who’d be thrown out of the FBI for conduct unbecoming, and they had other things to worry about, namely the mess that had just landed on the FBI’s doorstep.
She picked up a disposable cup of coffee and kept walking, took the elevator downstairs, and calmly left the building.
The Los Angeles evening was cool and dry, and she sipped coffee while she walked a block to where a cabbie sat behind the wheel, reading his paper.
“Where to, lady?” he asked and looked at her in the rearview mirror. If he found anything odd about her—her generally ragged appearance, the bruises, the still-fresh cuts on her cheek—he shrugged it off.
She gave him the address of Stefan’s family hacienda.
Stefan was lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling and trying not to think too much about anything, when his mother delivered him a gin and tonic and words of advice. “You should get cleaned up,” she said and planted a kiss on his forehead. “You look like hell, peanut.” His mother had come home just after he’d been retrieved from the debacle at the port; she’d arrived in a rush, clearly knowing there was something wrong even if she hadn’t foreseen the specifics. That was one thing about his childhood that had been maddening: Mom always knew. Good, bad, indifferent, Mom always knew about his day before he did.
“In a while,” he said. He accepted the G and T—she made great G and T—and sipped it while his mother perched in an armchair a few feet away. She’d changed from her pantsuit to a multicolored silk caftan, very Sunset Boulevard with her turban. He sometimes thought she dressed like that just to play up the stereotypes.
“You’ll want to do it now,” his mom said, inspecting the front page of the evening newspaper. She tsk-tsked over the state of the city section, then turned toward the national news. That rated two separate clucks of her tongue.
“Why?” He sipped. Fire and ice, the perfect combination. Stefan didn’t often imbibe—alcohol interfered with reflexes, and reflexes were his life’s blood—but today seemed like it deserved to be an exception.
“Because your friend is coming,” his mother said calmly, and raised her perfectly shaped eyebrows at the look on his face. “Yes. That one.”
“Mom, she’s at the FBI field office. She’s not—”
“You called, yes?”
“I’m not even sure she heard me. We had a bad connection.”
“The two of you? No such thing.” His mother dismissed the subject and went back to her newspaper, crossing her legs and dangling a jeweled slipper from one red-nailed big toe. “Do you want me to tell you what I see?”
“No!” Stefan sat up, sucked down the rest of the gin and tonic, and stood up. He was already heading for the stairs, unbuttoning his shirt, when he heard his mother’s chuckle. She loved doing that to him, he knew. And he fell for it, every single time. She wouldn’t have told him anything. He wasn’t absolutely sure that she actually knew.
But just the possibility of it was enough to get him moving, as she’d no doubt planned.
Stefan always kept a few things at home in the closet of the room he’d once shared with Angelo—shirts, pants, a couple of battered pairs of shoes that had seen their best days, even for a street-addicted wanderer. He stripped completely, had a two-minute shower—his specialty, which had always made him a favorite in a house of people who seemed to take hours to wash their hands—and slipped into an ancient pair of blue jeans, comfortably threadbare, with a gray T-shirt. He left his feet bare, thinking, I’m not going anywhere. He had no doubt that Katie would categorically refuse to be seen anywhere with him. He couldn’t blame her, not really. She had a reputation and a career to protect.
He was leaning on the bathroom counter, staring at his bloodshot eyes in the mirror and wondering what to say to her when the doorbell rang downstairs. A sigh worked its way up from deep inside him. As always, Mom was right.
Stefan took his time coming downstairs, and stopped four steps into his descent because he could see Katie standing in the entry hall. She looked…different. No longer exhausted, no longer beaten, the way she’d seemed at the warehouse.
Most importantly, no longer angry.
She was talking with Dad, and smiling at him—not just the strained, polite smile she’d shown before, but something real.
And then, as if she’d felt his eyes on her, she looked up, and the smile was for him.
“Careful,” Stefan said. “I might think you still like me.”
“Come here,” Katie said and held out her hand. He padded down the steps, never taking his gaze from hers, and came right into her space, close enough to feel her warmth. Their fingers tangled together, warm and sweet, and he leaned forward to place a kiss just so, at the sensitive juncture of her ear and her neck.
“I thought you hated me,” he murmured.
“I do,” she murmured back, but there was a catch in her voice, a breathless thrill that roused something dangerous inside him. “But you called me, remember?”
“Oh, get a room,” Stefan’s dad said, but he was smiling, and his eyes were kind. “I was just telling Katie that you’ve been resting most of the day, but there was this vision—”
“Dad. I can tell it myself.” Stefan sighed. His dad held up his hands in surrender and went into the kitchen. Mom had already gone there, but then she always knew the right move. Part of her gift.
Which left him, and Katie. Up close, she looked worn and tired, and badly in need of a shower; he thought she was the most lovely thing he’d ever seen, and thought about telling her so.
Instead, he told her about his vision.
“Teal reached out,” he said, settling Katie on the sofa and fetching her the extra gin and tonic his mother had conveniently mixed and left on the counter. “I think that last time we were in contact, she learned some
thing about how and when to send information. She definitely wasn’t overwhelming this time, and she communicated a lot in a very short burst. She isn’t on the ship anymore. I don’t know how that happened, but—”
“Seaplane,” Katie said. “But more significantly, somebody with access took down the surveillance long enough for the plane to land, board the girls and take off without being detected. And that means somebody at high levels inside of the FBI, or another government organization with access. That’s why I came, Stefan. The game’s rigged. The FBI isn’t going to find these kids because key people have been bought, or suborned in some way, and there’s no way I can prove it in a court of law. Even if I could, it wouldn’t help get Teal and Lena back safely. God, I hate this. Every time we get close, some other evil surprise pops out, and it’s worse than the last. Bad enough when they had somebody inside the Academy, but then the cops, and now the FBI…” Katie shook her head and scraped her hair back from her weary face. “There’s got to be a way.”
“Maybe there is,” Stefan said. “That’s why I called. I think from the level of control Teal had this last time that I can stay with her and still relay information to you, too. It’s a real breakthrough.”
Katie blinked, clearly surprised. “But—you’re sure? I don’t want you to risk—”
“I think Teal realized she was hurting me. She backed off the power, and we’ve got a clear lock now. It’s like a door, I can open it when I need to. If you want me to.” He searched her face, fascinated by the colors sparking in her eyes, the sweetness hiding in the corners of her smile. “Do you? Want me?”
“Yes,” she said. “I want.”
He’d drawn closer to her, somehow, although it hadn’t been a conscious decision, and now their lips were touching, a ghost kiss, teasing and torturous. “Want,” he repeated. “You mean, you want me for my information.”
“Yes,” Katie murmured, so quietly it was more of a tremor of her lips than a word. “Maybe not…exclusively for the information.”
He let himself off the leash, just a bit, and the kiss deepened and sweetened. Her lips felt ripe and damp under his, and he couldn’t believe that he’d ever thought about letting her walk away from him.
“Teal’s plane,” he said, and kissed his way down the side of her neck, paying special attention to every place that made her shiver. “It’s still in the air.”
“Meaning?” Her hands were in his hair now, combing through curls, and it felt so unbelievably good. She slid her palm around the back of his neck, that special, gentle caress he remembered from the car, when he’d been so lost and alone.
“Meaning that we have some time before she can tell us anything more. She’s looking at cloud cover.”
“Ah,” Katie breathed. “Cloud cover. Ah!” That last was more of a gasp, and he grinned against the soft skin of her neck and continued to explore. “Wait. Wait. Stefan—your parents—”
Oh, ouch. Cold water. He pulled back, remembering where he was…on Dad’s favorite couch, with Mom’s patented G and Ts frosting on the coffee table in front of them. Parents fifteen feet away, in the kitchen. Or maybe spying even closer.
“Upstairs,” he said.
Katie clung to some last shred of professional dignity. “Just until you get more intel about the plane,” she said. “Then I have to go.”
“I won’t stop you,” he said.
“Good,” she said, and gripped his hand tightly, pulling him to his feet. “Then let’s see what’s upstairs. If there’s a shower, I’m yours.”
Stefan brushed his lips by her ear. “You’re mine anyway, Katie.”
She smiled. “We’ll see.”
Katie was drifting off to sleep, cradling warm and clean and tingling against the smooth warm skin of Stefan’s bare chest. He stroked his fingers up and down her spine, and if she hadn’t believed he was a magician before, that light, constant caress convinced her. Only magic could possibly feel that good.
She was so closely tuned to him that when his fingers stuttered, hesitated and then resumed their rhythm, she opened her eyes and said, “Teal?”
Stefan nodded. “Her plane’s landing.” Silence. She sat up slowly, watching him, and got out of bed to put on her bra and panties. Stefan had ransacked the family’s storage to find some clothes left by—he said—a female cousin; Katie generously overflowed the bra, but the blue jeans were almost a perfect fit. One of Stefan’s silk shirts completed her change. She buttoned it quickly, watching him as he lay quietly, staring up at the ceiling. There was a difference now in the visions, no question about it; he was still drifting, but it was a controlled drift, not a tornado pulling him apart.
He blinked, put his arm behind his head, and focused on her. “You’re already dressed. Disappointing.”
“Where are they?”
“What are you going to do, Katie? Go off on your own? Alone?”
“That’s what I have to do,” she said. “Not as an FBI agent. As a private citizen. You tell me what you know, and I’ll take it from there.”
He looked thoughtful, and then he said, “No.”
She stopped in the act of tucking in his shirt. “What?”
“I said no,” he repeated and sat up. He began to dress while he talked. “You’re not going alone, Katie, and that’s not even up for discussion. You’ll need me along, and apart from that, you’re going to need to access FBI files for me, so I need you, too.”
She didn’t answer. He pulled on his jeans and T-shirt, retrieved a battered pair of running shoes and socks from beneath the bed.
“You’re not asking why,” he said.
“Because I’m afraid you’re going to say something that I’ll regret.” Don’t break my heart, Stefan. Not now, not after you made me feel so much.
He finished with his shoes and sat, hands dangling limply between his knees. Not looking at her. “They’re in Colombia,” he said. “I got a good look at some of the men who came to look the girls over. I can identify them for you, if the FBI has pictures. So you need to show me the files.”
She sank down on the bed beside him, trying to get a good look at his face. “Is she—are they all right?”
“Yes.” He sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands. “Every time I think they’re not, somebody backs off, or gets backed off. I think these girls are important. Too important to risk damaging. At least, somebody thinks so. That’s all that’s keeping them safe, Katie. If they find out differently…”
If they found out differently, he’d be trapped in Teal’s visions, unable to escape. Like before. Living a nightmare of an especially horrible kind.
She put the back of her hand against his beard-rough cheek. “Colombia,” she said. “I’d better check flights.”
This time, Stefan looked up. “You won’t have to,” he said. “Mom will let us borrow the plane.”
She frankly laughed in shock. “The plane? Stefan, we can’t take some Cessna to—”
“It’s a Learjet,” he said. “Gift from a grateful client. Not in our name, it’s leased through a blind corporation, so it can’t be traced back to the family. We only use it about twice a year, but it’s always available. Now, do you want to show me some photographs? Because Colombia’s a big country, and it’d be nice to know exactly where we were going before I tell the pilot.”
He wasn’t wrong, but there was no way she could waltz Stefan into the FBI field office and log on to the system; remote access was out of the question, too, considering just how angry her bosses were likely to be when this was over. Instead, Katie commandeered the broadband connection upstairs and logged into AA.gov, and sent a coded instant message to Allison Gracelyn. Allison was at her desk, as always; a few exchanges, and windows began opening on Katie’s desktop. The NSA, Allison’s playground, had access to just about anything it wanted, on any system that counted, including the FBI’s files. Katie pulled up the Colombian files, which were—of course—dominated by drug cartels. She began paging through photographs, working quickl
y, as Stefan pulled up a chair next to her. Nothing in the Cali cartel files sparked recognition from him. She moved on to the Medellin files, but again, nothing.
The instant she pulled up the first page of the Tumaco photographs, Stefan grabbed her arm. “Him,” he said and nodded at the man on the screen.
“Juan Mercado Tulio. You’re sure you saw him? Teal saw him?”
“Definitely.”
Mercado was middle-aged, fit, with the hard look and shallow, sharklike eyes necessary to his profession. Katie was only vaguely familiar with him, but she scanned his file quickly for the high points. “He’s one of the top three narcotic kingpins in Colombia,” she said. “His organization’s almost as ruthless and widespread as the Cali cartel, but more focused. He’s been implicated in a lot of deaths, including DEA agents, judges, prosecutors—you name it. She rubbed her forehead, thinking. “He’s the reason Timmons Kent was involved, and why Kent put his network and contacts at risk. What Mercado wants, he gets.”
“And he wants the girls. Why?”
“I honestly have no idea.”
“Because they’re like you?” Stefan asked. “Teal’s got one of the strongest psychic abilities I’ve ever seen. I don’t know about Lena, but these kids are exceptional, and somebody knows it. Somebody wants it.”
“Mercado? Doesn’t track. If he wants something, he just buys it. This feels like some kind of strong-arm pressure to me. Mercado had to step out into the limelight to bring this off, and that is not his style. I think someone else is pulling his strings.”
“Which means maybe the girls won’t be there for long,” Stefan said. “Maybe it’s just another way station…”
His eyes went blank again, this time for longer than before. When he came back, he bowed his head for a moment. His voice sounded unsteady.
“The other guy,” he said. “Keep looking. I want this guy’s name.”
Katie paged down through the file until Stefan made a sound—not an affirmation, more of a low, vicious growl. She looked at him in surprise, but he was staring at the screen. She hadn’t thought she’d ever seen that look on his face, but in that moment, she realized that Stefan Blackman, one of the gentlest men she’d ever met, was also capable of violence. Cold, calculated violence, and it was directed at Rudolpho Mercado Ruiz.
