Forged Risk

by Sidney Bristol

  “I see.” There was a decidedly deadly sound in those two words. “You are not pleased with those orders?”

  “No,” Kurt snapped. “Caleb died trying to get this girl. I want to make whoever killed him suffer.”

  “I’m not opposed to that. I’m also of a mind that it’s time to make our forger learn how to heel. He’s had free rein for far too long.”

  Kurt turned and looked at Bodhi and Ramon, watching him, waiting for good news.

  “There’s a plane outside the city. It can take you to Amsterdam, probably faster, but you have to hurry. I want you to find this girl and bring her to me. Do what you want with the people holding her, just make sure they’re dead at the end of it. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.” Kurt grinned.

  He liked these orders.

  WEDNESDAY. AMSTERDAM Airport. Amsterdam, Netherlands.

  Felecia ducked into the women’s restroom. She was more than a little surprised Kelsey wasn’t glued to her hip. Ever since they’d left the flat that morning the other woman had stuck by her, grumbling about the stupidity of men.

  In truth, Felecia had been glad for Kelsey’s company. The intensity from last night still reverberated in her bones.

  The knowing had come on her again. In his arms, surrounded by pleasure and safety, she’d known something good. Felecia’s mother had explained that the sense was a gift from God. Her grandmother thought it was a supernatural ability. Felecia preferred to think of them as good instincts. Only, what she felt and thought and knew around Evan was so jumbled.

  She couldn’t know their future.

  That was impossible.

  She needed a little space from Evan to catch her breath if nothing else. Not that she’d gotten much with him sitting directly behind her on the plane, but she’d been able to pretend.

  Kelsey was good company. She was easy to talk to, quick to laugh and didn’t mind long stretches of silence. Felecia enjoyed being around people. She’d been starved for companionship, but it was also overwhelming considering that most of her socialization began and ended with her father the last few years.

  What did Evan see in her? Why was he so determined to help her? Didn’t he know sticking his neck out for her like this was dangerous?

  Her insides warmed uncomfortably when she thought about him. She had these silly ideas that they’d actually have time after all this was over to get to know one another. They wouldn’t. He’d go back to her life and she’d have to figure things out for herself, but the dream was nice.

  She took a few moments to use the bathroom, grateful this seemed to be a quieter corner of the airport. Part of her hadn’t really believed they were going to Texas until they’d left Helsinki. She wasn’t sure what they’d find or what was waiting for them, but she doubted it would be good.

  Felecia exited the stall and set her tote on the counter. Kelsey had presented her with the bag saying every woman needed a carry all. Felecia had picked up a hardback book and some snacks to add to the change of clothes and toiletries she’d carted along with her.

  A woman crossed behind Felecia toward the sinks.

  Evan and the others were going to start looking for her soon.

  She caught the bright yellow of a cleaning cart out of the corner of her eye coming into the bathroom.

  It was time to return to reality.

  Felecia dried her hands.

  The woman on her left stepped in close and jabbed something sharp against her side. Felecia met the woman’s dark stare in the mirror.

  “Don’t move.” Threat wove through those two words.

  Felecia held up her hands. “I’m not.”

  “Secure her wrists,” a man said from the entrance to the bathroom.

  She glanced at a man wearing a janitor’s uniform standing next to the cleaning cart.

  Oh no.

  No, no, no.

  Felecia didn’t know who they worked for and it didn’t matter. She could not let them take her.

  The woman let go of her with one hand and reached back, presumably to get the restraints.

  The man glanced over his shoulder at the entry. There was no door. They couldn’t prevent anyone from walking in.

  Kelsey and the others were out there. If Felecia yelled, they’d hear her.

  She grabbed the tote purse and whirled away from the woman, hitting her would-be captor with the bag and knocking the knife away from her.

  “Help! Kelsey! Evan!” Felecia bellowed for all she was worth.

  She staggered back, into one of the stalls and kicked it shut.

  “Get her,” the man roared.

  “You’re going to regret that,” the woman snarled.

  Felecia grabbed the hardback book out of the bag and said a small apology to the author. Her bag fell forgotten on the tile floor as she straddled the toilet in an attempt to avoid the door.

  Sure enough, the door flew inward and smacked the wall so hard it left a dent before swinging shut again. The momentary glimpse showed both the woman and the man standing there. They couldn’t both come at Felecia in the stall, not with the floor to ceiling partitions.

  “Kelsey, help!” she yelled.

  “Shut up.” The woman shoved the door open, knife thrust forward.

  That was her first mistake.

  The woman didn’t hold the knife like someone who knew how to use it. The hilt was tight in her fist, the blade pointing at Felecia as if the sharp steel would do all the work simply held there. Felecia’s grandmother had taught her how to protect herself using a knife. As a child put out to beg, she’d often had to defend herself from other kids and adults.

  The woman thrust the knife forward.

  Felecia met the thrust with the hardback book, cringing as she felt the blade stab into the thick cover. She twisted and wrenched the book sideways, ripping the knife from the woman’s hand.

  The woman gaped at her in surprise, hands empty. Felecia used that moment of surprise. She struck out with the spine of the book, hitting the woman square between the eyes. The woman stumbled back into the man, one hand pressed to her face.

  Felecia grinned. She wasn’t that far removed from her street urchin days.

  The man shoved the woman aside.

  Her gaze locked with that of the man and her smile vanished. She took a step back into her stall and grasped the knife, wrenching it out of the book.

  “No one said you had to be unhurt, little girl.” The beefy man grinned at her. It was a menacing baring of teeth.

  Not her father’s people. At least that’s what Felecia’s gut said, and she had no illusions about what would happen to her now that she had Caleb’s blood on her hands.

  The man lunged forward, but she was faster. She used the book as a sort of shield, batting away his fist while slashing with the knife. Her thrill of victory was short lived. While she paid attention to his right hand, he grabbed her braid with his left. He yanked her forward out of the stall where the woman could get a hold on her left arm.

  Felecia slashed with her right hand, aiming for all the soft, fleshy parts of the man’s body she could reach.

  The balance was tipping. Desperation was winning. Blood made her grip on the knife slippery. It was only a matter of time until they overpowered her.

  Felecia sucked in one last breath. “Evan, help!”

  Something hard struck Felecia right in her kidney, driving all the air out of her lungs. Her vision blurred. The man grabbed her right wrist and wrenched the knife out of her grasp.

  They had her. She was overpowered and outnumbered. A moment of solitude was going to cost her everything.

  “Felecia!”

  Hope welled up in her at the sound of that voice.

  Kelsey.

  “Felecia?”

  Evan.

  “Get her.” The man shoved her at the woman and whirled toward the door.

  Felecia wasn’t going to just stand around and wait to be rescued. She rushed the woman, using the momentum to force her would-be
captor back against the napkin dispensary. The woman’s face creased in painful snarl. Felecia grabbed the book and wrenched it from the woman’s hand.

  Behind her she could hear the grunts and sick crunch of a fight being waged with the man. Felecia could more than handle one woman on her own.

  The woman swung her arm, her fist glancing off Felecia’s jaw. Felecia swung with the book again, using the spine as a weapon. Sharp points and right angles always made for good make-shift weapons. The woman’s eyes rolled up in her head and her legs gave way. She slumped on the floor, blood trickling down the side of her head.

  A hand grasped Felecia by the arm. She whirled, book up to face a wide eyed Kelsey.

  “Hey. Hey, it’s me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said over and over again.

  Felecia spared the downed man a glance.

  Evan met her gaze, his blue eyes hard as steel. Logan and the others were combing over the cleaning cart and the man’s pockets. Felecia glanced back at Kelsey, already digging into the woman’s clothes.

  “You okay?” Kelsey asked.

  “Fine. They just surprised me.” Felecia lifted the book and frowned at the blood on the spine and the ripped dust jacket. She slid that off, glad to see the book underneath had mostly been spared save for the gouge in the cover.

  “Now I see why you wanted the biggest book in the shop.” Kelsey snickered, but there was no humor in her eyes.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Logan snapped.

  Kelsey grabbed Felecia’s bag, dumped the contents of the woman’s pockets in it then looped her arm through Felecia’s and guided her out of the bathroom. The men closed ranks around them.

  Three signs barred the bathroom, proclaiming it closed.

  No wonder no one had wandered in.

  “Where were you all?” Felecia asked as they started moving at a fast pace down the terminal between the two.

  Kelsey groaned. “I thought you were with Evan. Evan thought you were with me. I’m in so much shit. Are you really okay?”

  “I’m fine.” The bruises would heal. What mattered was that Felecia wasn’t in that cleaning cart.

  Her dad wouldn’t have sent those people, would he?

  She just didn’t know anymore. If he knew where she was headed there was no doubt in her mind that he’d kill her.

  Why couldn’t he just let her go live her life the way she wanted? Why had it come to this?

  Logan opened the door to what looked like a supply closet and the others bustled in.

  Evan took her by the arm and marched her over to sit on an overturned bucket. He examined her face, her hands, his scowl deepening no matter how much she whispered that she was fine.

  Kelsey’s hissed words drew Felecia’s attention. The short woman thrust her finger against the big, buff guy’s chest all while he glared down at her.

  What had happened?

  Felecia glanced back at Evan, hoping he might be able to shed some light on this. He was staring at her knee, the muscle at the corner of his jaw twitching while he stroked her red knuckles gently.

  “This is bullshit,” Kelsey said loud enough for Felecia to hear her.

  “What’s going on?” Felecia asked, directing the question at Evan.

  He looked up at her, his face lined with worry.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” She pitched her voice loud enough for the others to hear.

  Evan didn’t glance over his shoulder. He just looked at her. “She deserves to know. She’s taking a risk for us. We should tell her.”

  “Tell me what?” Felecia pulled her hand from his, the hair on the back of her neck rising.

  Logan muttered curses.

  Evan laid his hand on her knee, not the least bit bothered that she wouldn’t let him hold her hand.

  “We work for an American Task Force. I won’t tell you who, just that a lot of people are in on this. And there’s a mole. Someone has been leaking our information, where we are, what we know, to the people we’re after. That has to be how they knew where to find us so quick.”

  Felecia wasn’t sure what she’d expected to hear, but that hadn’t been it. Oh, she’d known Evan and the others were government. It was written all over them. But the business about a mole was new. She didn’t quite know what to do with that.

  He kept speaking. “We thought we’d circumvented the mole this time, but things out of our control happened and now anything is possible. That’s why we’re traveling in short hops.”

  “I see,” she said.

  It did make sense. She’d wondered why they hadn’t gone from Helsinki to Texas. There’d been flights.

  “Did you recognize those people?” Logan asked.

  “No.” She laid her hand on the book across her thighs. “I guess I can’t confidently say one way or another if they work for my dad or the Horsemen, either. Not after what happened on the road.” For some reason she’d forgotten that.

  Evan had told her the attempt to recapture her on the highway might not have been intended to harm her, but then why had she picked splinters out of her arm?

  “What do we do now?” Kelsey asked.

  “Plan stays the same,” Logan said. “We lay low, take the next flight to London, then decide if we’re going to Texas or Mexico. We play this safe. No one gets hurt.”

  Felecia studied Evan’s face and all of the tense lines. She wasn’t sure any of them believed Logan’s words.

  15.

  Thursday. Amsterdam Airport. Amsterdam, Netherlands.

  Evan edged down the aisle, watching the numbers on the private cabins. He’d never truly understood the talk about how luxurious Emirates planes could be. But he got it now.

  Their team was split up between the two tiers of first class.

  First there was the private cabin which had two luxury leather recliners and a flat screen TV in the small space. Everyone else was in the other first class that also included leather plush seats in a weird configuration but without the privacy.

  Initially Logan had thought to put Kelsey and Felecia in the cabin in the hopes that girl talk might let something slip, but Evan had enough of being kept away from Felecia.

  It wasn’t obvious. In fact, Evan hadn’t realized what Logan was doing until they’d been about to board for their flight to Austin.

  Felecia glanced over her shoulder at him with a grin that lit her eyes. “This is us.”

  She ducked into a center cabin and he followed her.

  It was still a tight space. They couldn’t change the fact that they were on a plane. But whoever had engineered the space had made use of every inch of height and width they had.

  He was impressed.

  Felecia bounced in the seat and stared around her with wonder. He couldn’t help but smile. It was the simplest things sometimes that got this reaction out of her. Child-like enchantment. It wasn’t faked, and deep down he was glad that Obran hadn’t snuffed that out of her. He hoped she held onto that.

  Harper leaned in, eyes wide. “Wow. You’re going to have to let me have a turn in here.”

  “No.” Evan grasped the door handle and slid it shut.

  Felecia chuckled and her eyes seemed to dance with light. If only she didn’t have bruises coloring her pretty face.

  He wasn’t going to leave her side again, no matter what Logan said. She was stuck with him.

  “Want to give me your bag?” He held out his hand.

  He stowed both of their carry-ons, closed the other door and made sure the curtains were pulled tight. They could still hear other passengers moving past, but they were in their own little bubble now. Just the two of them.

  Evan lowered himself into the seat and took her hand in his. He was tired of not touching her, of her being just out of reach.

  The leather chair was so supple and soft it seemed to cradle him. It felt as if he were sitting on a cloud.

  “Damn,” he muttered.

  Felecia chuckled again and he didn’t even mind being the focus of her laughter.
/>
  “I could stay right here for a long time,” he muttered as he stroked her knuckles with his thumb.

  “We have—what? Fourteen hours to kill?”

  “Fifteen, I think.” His phone began to vibrate. Frowning he pulled it out and studied the display. The area code was DC, but he didn’t know the number. A knot of worry tightened in his gut as he tapped the answer button. “Hello?”

  “Oh thank goodness I got you,” Diha said in a rush.

  “Diha? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all,” she said cheerfully.

  “Why are you calling me?” He glanced at Felecia and gave her hand a quick squeeze.

  The smile and twinkle were gone. She looked at him now as if he were leading her to her death. Without thinking too much, he tapped the speaker button. Felecia was trusting them with her life, the least they could do was be honest about their situation with her.

  “You’re on speaker with Felecia and myself. Our cabin is as secure as can be.”

  “Oh. Well. Hi.”

  “Hello,” Felecia said softly.

  Diha forged ahead, her words coming so fast Felecia frowned, no doubt trying to keep up. “From what I can tell you are in the most secure area. I needed to let someone know I was able to do a little doctoring. Your names no longer appear on the flight manifest. I can’t do anything about your passports showing up, but honestly, if you-know-who has people there, well, you get the point.”

  “Diha, slow down, will you?”

  “Sorry, I’ve been fiddling with the espresso machine.”

  It was Evan’s turn to chuckle. “I can tell. Don’t worry about the passports. Felecia did a little magic on them.”

  Felecia’s grip on his hand tightened and she relaxed into her seat.

  “Did she?”

  “Nothing that can’t be undone,” Felecia said quickly.

  “It will pass inspection?” Diha didn’t sound certain.

  “Yes.” Felecia was full of certainty.

  “Well, okay. That will let me sleep a little easier. If I can sleep. Anyway, that’s it. I wanted to put your minds at ease before you took off,” Diha said.

  “You’re the best, Bond Girl.”

  “Oh, stop calling me that,” she wailed.