Twisted Genius

by Patricia Rice

  Who would grab Ana—and why? Without knowing the why, he had nothing. The old need to put his fist through the wall rose. This was the reason he didn’t get involved. He stifled his fury until he could reach a suitable punching bag.

  “I can’t imagine how anyone could have followed her. It’s nearly impossible on the Metro, and she didn’t take the car. Even I can’t track her phone. Maybe it was random?” Graham said that to reassure Nick but opened up his monitor on Nadia’s hospital room as he spoke. That and Scion were the only cases she was looking into right now.

  He could hear Nick rummaging in shopping bags. “She used our charge card. Not mine, the family one.”

  Graham’s gut knotted as he recognized the danger. “Does she keep track of charges using the computer?”

  “We’re talking Ana here. Do mice eat cheese? Why?” Nick demanded.

  “Russians hacked my servers a few days back. I blew up their tower, changed servers, and riddled them with malware, but they’re experts at grabbing credit card information. If they retrieved anything from the debris, that would be it.”

  Nick uttered a string of expletives in several languages. “If they could see the card online, they could see the charges as the stores registered them. Looking at the times on the receipts, she was shopping for several hours. But why would anyone care about Ana? She doesn’t have anything anyone needs.”

  Graham watched the monitor showing Nadia’s hospital room. A shapely young nurse was flirting with his security guard, pointing down the hall as if she needed something done.

  “Nadia,” he said curtly. “Ana has Nadia’s computer information. The Russian hackers may know it. Get over to the hospital now and grab anyone who enters that room.”

  He hung up before Nick could question or protest. Graham hit the intercom. “Mallard, keep the kid here and occupied when she gets in. I’m going out.”

  He shut off Mallard’s splutter and called the security guard at the hospital. “The Russians are on the move. Hold that nurse until I arrive.”

  Shoving three phones and two computer tablets into the pockets of his coat, he raced for the exit that would take him to the garage. He couldn’t call for a helicopter in this weather. The Phaeton was much too noticeable. Sam was delivering documents to the Justice Department. The motorcycle would have to do.

  The fat Russian avoided my boot crushing his instep, dodged my elbow to his jugular, and gave me no chance to yank his privates. He heaved me into a waiting limo—probably the same one Tony had used when he tried to blow up Nick.

  I’m not large. I am capable of flinging a man to the ground if I catch him by surprise, but nothing I tried with this big oaf worked. Wrapped up as I was in all this crappy fur, I was harmless as a bunny rabbit. I vowed never to go out without my leather jacket again.

  I took off my gloves, prepared to gouge out his eyes as he climbed in, but he took the front passenger seat, abandoning me in the empty back. The doors locked automatically as the limo started.

  He’d crushed my phone! I’d left the burner in my leather coat. I ran through a mental list of international curses as I took in my situation. The door was locked. The window between me and the front seat was closed. Apparently Fat Russian wasn’t a professional hitman because he’d left me my purse—or he was an overconfident asshat. I rummaged for possible weapons. In the front, the driver and his burly passenger murmured in Russian. The car pulled away from the curb.

  I could hear bits and pieces of words from behind the glass separating us as I located my Swiss Army knife and flipped open the screwdriver. Nadia was the word I understood best. It was hard to grasp complete sentences based on the few words I recognized.

  I am not a genius like my siblings. I’m just experienced in survival techniques. No one was pointing a gun at my head yet, so I figured I might as well try taking a car apart while they were underestimating me. I’d never owned a car and never had a chance to work on one, but screws are screws and machines are machines, and I could discombobulate both.

  The trick was to do it without the driver noticing.

  I huddled in my huge coat against the door, presumably looking out the window, and occasionally pounding the glass at the traffic stuck on the outer loop of the beltway. The front seat rightfully ignored me. No way was anyone in the other cars paying a bit of attention to my frantic pounding.

  But underneath the coat, I jimmied at the door handle. I couldn’t find screws, so I just figured on ripping the wretched thing out. What I’d do after that, I couldn’t say. I just liked creating opportunities.

  Just for fun, I took an old envelope from my purse and used magic marker to write HELP on it. It’s an old kid trick and probably no one would bother to actually call the cops, but I stuck it in a corner of the window where the driver couldn’t see it in his rearview. The snow didn’t strike me as that bad, but obviously the entire city had decided to go home early.

  I had no idea how these jerks had found me or why, but I knew how to prioritize. I’d shoot first and ask questions later.

  The wretched limo was built too well. We probably spent an hour of our endless drive stuck in traffic, and I’d barely pried one corner loose before we pulled off into a residential area of monster mansions. It was still afternoon, but the clouds made it dark and the wind-whipped snow kept me from seeing much. I didn’t think we’d gone far enough to reach Bethesda, but then, I’d never gone there from Arlington before.

  The car stopped at a wrought iron gate, where the driver punched in a security code.

  I tried the door handle. It didn’t give. I was still struggling with it when the car halted inside a massive garage with no other cars inside. The door handle didn’t budge even after I heard the door unlock and the driver came to drag me out. I’d jammed the lock on my side, and he had to go around and haul me, kicking and screaming, from the other side.

  Pity I hadn’t had time to jam both locks. I went for his eyes. He punched me, and I saw black.

  Graham clicked off his wireless headset as his cycle rumbled into the parking garage at the hospital, out of the snowy wind. His calls hadn’t produced any sign of Ana yet, but he’d put the wheels in motion. Police and his men were studying security cameras from the area where she’d made purchases. He was hoping for a license plate and swallowing bile with fear. Meanwhile, on the basis of only an educated hunch, he had others scouring the city for the Popovs.

  Needing action so he didn’t erupt, he’d taken on a job he knew he could handle.

  Driving up the garage ramp, he aimed for the skywalk. He knew this damned hospital too well. It hadn’t changed much in the ten years since he’d been incarcerated in the hellhole. He found a parking space half in a crosswalk. The other half was occupied by a MINI Cooper. Anger, fear, and rules didn’t work well together.

  Dashing through the gerbil run, he hit the corridor inside running, dodging wheelchairs and startled interns.

  Ten years ago, he had known terror well beyond the human capacity to handle. He’d given up on therapy for the PTSD after a year and put his energy into seeing that he need never suffer that horror of helplessness ever again—but here he was.

  Ana wasn’t his wife, but in ways, she was even closer. His wife had been a business partner. He’d almost lost his life trying to save her, and it had crippled him beyond measure. Ana—Ana with her taunts and rebellion and hidden sexiness had managed to get under his skin and become a visceral part of his gut. If anything happened to her, it would be like ripping out his liver. Or his heart, if one had to be sentimental. He wasn’t, but he wasn’t about to let some damned Russian destroy her. Or him. This time, he had a fighting chance.

  And yeah, he knew he had issues. Watching his wife blow up with the Pentagon had scarred him more than the fire he’d run into to save her. Life was a bitch. You either stood up and fought or laid down and died. He wasn’t ready to die yet, so if they were involved, the Popovs were damned well going down, preferably in flames.

  He ran up
the stairs rather than wait on the insanely slow elevators. He didn’t expect Nick or any of his friends to be here yet, but he did expect the security guard to have apprehended the nurse.

  He checked his messages as he ran, noting the ones with all the addresses his agents could find for the Popovs. Finding Ana by address would be searching for a needle in a snowstorm. They owned half the suburbs.

  Graham reached Nadia’s room. The security guard paced with a grim expression, his hand on a weapon he wasn’t supposed to have.

  “Security is holding her,” he told Graham. “One floor down. How did you know she was fake?”

  “Nurses on duty don’t have time to flirt,” Graham said, checking inside Nadia’s room to make certain all her monitors were clicking along. He didn’t mention gut fear had caused him to check the camera in the first place.

  Reassured that Nadia still slept, he stalked downstairs to the security office. The fake nurse was huddled in a chair, hugging herself. Security pointed at a hypodermic and a vial on their desk.

  “Mylaudanix,” the guard said curtly. “The nurses say it would have put Ms. Kaminsky into a sleep from which she would never return. No one would have thought to check her blood since they’re expecting her to die anyway.”

  “Why?” Graham demanded of the shivering female. He rummaged through the purse sitting on the desk and found her identification. Michelle Lee sounded even more fake than his alias.

  “I owe them,” she said with a pout. “You heard. She is to die anyway. It saves time and money this way. It was a good deed. She should not suffer.”

  Graham didn’t excel at accents but he’d guess eastern European from context. “Who do you owe and why?”

  “Our Uncle Popovs. They gave me and my brother jobs in the old country, and when it was no longer safe to stay, they brought us here. We are good at what we do, but we do not have security clearance here. We cannot get good jobs. They send small jobs our way so we can eat while we try to obtain green cards. I did nothing. This is America, land of the free. You must let me go,” she insisted.

  “What do you do?” Graham asked, already suspecting the answer.

  “We are computer engineers,” she said proudly. “We can write beautiful video games and fix your computer.”

  And write a virus that can hack any computer they accessed. They’d never have been brought over here otherwise.

  “Did you fix the malware I sent you?” he asked maliciously.

  She shot him a narrow-eyed look. “I run the computers at the phone company, but it closed down. I know nothing of malware.”

  He didn’t have time to argue with her. “Your uncles are killers. The comatose patient they sent you to kill has evidence proving it.” Graham made that up. They had no evidence against the Popovs anywhere. Yet. “She is the mother of two small children, and the doctors say she will wake any minute. You would have taken her from them. Attempted murder is a crime. You will be deported.”

  She looked genuinely horrified. She had dyed her hair blond, but her eyebrows were thick and dark and expressive. “That is not possible. Uncle Ivan is a good man. He just does not want Nadia to suffer.”

  So it was Ivan who had sent her here. Graham texted the man he’d left in charge of hunting Popovs.

  “He probably hired the driver who nearly killed her and her kids,” Graham said roughly. “Where can I find him? He’s about to hurt another young woman.”

  She shook her head vehemently. “You have wrong man. Our uncles would not hurt mosquito. They are businessmen who do much good at home. They provide jobs that put food on the table.”

  “Fine, then maybe I have the wrong men. Put me in touch with them and let’s find out. Give me your phone.” Graham held out his hand since there had been no phone in her purse.

  She shook her head. Trembling, she pulled a phone from her coat pocket and punched in a contact herself. “Uncle Ivan, I am in trouble.”

  Graham snatched the phone from her hand and put it on speaker while he texted one of his operatives to start triangulating the call.

  “You cannot do this one thing for me?” the male voice on the other end demanded angrily.

  “They caught me,” she said, nearly weeping. “Please tell them we meant no harm.”

  “Tell who?” he asked harshly. “Who is there?”

  “Ivan Popov?” Graham asked, setting the phone on the desk so the guard could hear.

  “Who asks?”

  “Thomas Alexander,” Graham lied. “Security for the hospital. We found Miss Lee with a vial of painkiller and a needle.”

  “I know nothing of this,” the voice on the other end said with a verbal shrug. “I am a busy man. I do not have time for this.”

  He hung up, and the culprit wept openly.

  The call was probably too brief to have been successfully tracked. Graham fought another urge to ram his fist through a wall, since he couldn’t punch a woman. He took the phone and sent the number to his team in hopes they could find another way of reaching it. He handed her phone to the guard and asked him to copy the numbers and text him with them. Whether the guard respected Graham’s expertise or simply followed orders well, he did as requested.

  “Uncle Ivan has quite possibly kidnapped or killed another young woman who knows too much,” Graham said harshly. “I mean to stop him, and if I have to do that by calling the cops to pick you up, I will. You can talk to me, or you can talk to them.”

  She kept shaking her head and wringing her hands and watching the guard copy all her contact numbers. “I know nothing. What can I say? I am computer engineer.”

  “Where does Ivan live?”

  She gestured helplessly. “How do I know? He calls me when he has a job.”

  “You claim to be a computer expert and you haven’t tried to track him down?”

  A brief flash of guilt crossed her face before she reached for her purse and a tissue. “Why would I do that?”

  Graham perched on the edge of the desk, hiding his impatience. “Oh, let me guess. Maybe to blackmail him after he had you hack heavily guarded servers, and he didn’t pay you what it was worth. Or after someone destroyed your computers with malware and you were out of a job. Or when you needed money to escape after your credit card theft was discovered. Shall I count the ways?”

  She pouted again and tried to look innocent. All Graham could think of was how Ana would have come after him with a big stick and left him pounded into a pulp if he’d annoyed her like this. Maybe he was perverse for knowing where he stood with her instead of falling for womanly wiles, but he’d take a good pounding any day to this pout.

  “We are not hackers,” she said indignantly. “We are not thieves. We are hard workers and do not blackmail the hand that feeds us.”

  “I’ve lost patience,” Graham told the guard. “While she lies, a woman is being held captive by Ivan or one of his fellows. Call the police. Let me know when she’s ready to talk.” He stood up.

  “No, no,” she cried. “We cannot go to police. They will send us home. They will kill us back there. You cannot do that. I did nothing!”

  Graham shrugged. “I’ll let the law determine that. Good day, Miss Lee.”

  “Wait, wait,” she cried as the guard sitting at the desk picked up his phone. “Ivan does not use computers. We cannot hack him. We know his phone numbers, that is all. He owns the phone company. They keep no records on his phones. There is nothing.”

  From what Graham had learned, that was probably closer to the truth. “But you hacked his phone, didn’t you?” He knew the mindset. After all, he did the same. One took every precaution available.

  She bit her full bottom lip and looked at her lap. “It is what we do,” she whispered. “It is necessary, to stay safe.”

  “You implanted a GPS device and know where he spends his time,” Graham said for her.

  “We met once or twice,” she admitted. “It was easy. He does not understand these things. We never meant to use it!”

 
“Give me the addresses,” Graham said curtly. Fortunately, she wasn’t using one of Rustel’s cheap burners. The old styles didn’t have internet connectivity. But a hacker would have the latest tech. He flipped through her cell, locating icons for cloud servers. He added one of his un-networked email addresses to her contact list and handed the phone back to her.

  He watched his email on his burner phone and saw the files drop into his box. Opening them, he scowled. Ivan had to sleep in a different bed every damned night.

  “Which one does he spend the most time at?” he demanded.

  “The one in Chevy Chase,” she said. “We have looked. It is a fortress.”

  Chapter 20

  I woke up in a bedroom designed by a movie director who owned a feather factory. Stacks of feather pillows padded with quilted shams, comforters three feet deep—I swear, even the ghastly velvet curtains had to have been stuffed. The red and gold motif was probably meant to be opulent.

  My furry boots had probably left snow and mud on the obscenely thick brown and red comforter, but it was impossible to tell in the near dark. Huddling in my faux fur coat, I sat up a little woozily and studied my surroundings.

  Had I time and patience, I would have found a sharp object and covered the shag carpet in feathers and batting out of sheer meanness. But after a thorough search, I realized they’d finally got smart enough to take my purse. It didn’t have a lot of tricks in it, but I missed my army knife.

  I climbed down off the high bed to check out the windows—a blanket of snow covered the wall surrounding this fortress, and it was still coming down. I didn’t see dogs or guards, but it was winter dark and the security lights didn’t illuminate all the shadows in the bushes. Monsters could be lurking anywhere.

  The room was so padded, I probably couldn’t hear a rock concert downstairs, but I listened, just in case I could detect someone outside the door. Not a sound.

  I still had no clue why anyone would want to kidnap me. I had nothing anyone wanted. And I was pretty certain they hadn’t had a good clue who I was when they took me or they would never have left me untied. I assumed now that they had my ID, they’d learn where I lived and would work from there.