The Defiant Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  God damn it. Nils felt his own eyes burn, felt sick to his stomach, felt the awful injustice of a dead ten-year-old lodge tightly in his chest and make it hard to breathe.

  He could feel Lieutenant Paoletti standing off to the side, giving both of them some space. But they didn’t have much time. The Kazbekistanis wouldn’t believe that Meg could hold her hostages and sit in the men’s room under siege without food or sleep forever.

  “I need you to be tough for just a little bit longer,” he told her. “Can you do that for me, Meg? We’ve got a lot of questions that only you can answer.”

  She was shaking, trembling, but she somehow managed to nod yes. She released her death grip on his neck and pulled back to look at him, wiping her eyes with one shaky hand.

  “They kidnapped Amy and my grandmother,” she said. “They said they were Kazbekistani Extremists, and that if I didn’t come here and abduct or kill the new ambassador—they didn’t really care which—they’d kill them. I’m so sorry, John, I didn’t know what else to do. They told me if I told anyone, if I asked for help, they’d know it and Amy and Eve would die.”

  Her eyes welled with tears again, but she wiped them fiercely away. “I didn’t know what to do,” she told him again. “But then I thought of you. I thought if anyone could get me out of this . . .”

  “You did the right thing,” he reassured her. “Calling me—asking for me—was the right thing.”

  She looked over to where Wolchonok was unlocking the hostages’ handcuffs, her voice suddenly sharp with fear. “What is he doing? He’s not just going to let them go, is he? If the Extremists don’t think that I’m still locked in here with them . . .”

  “It’s all right.” Lieutenant Paoletti approached. “We’ve got a tape loop running. On the surveillance monitors, both you and the hostages will look as if you’re sitting here, waiting. In truth, we’re going to be taking all of you out of here and over to a safe location. No one’s going to see you leave, no one’s going to know.”

  “The hostages have agreed to remain in isolation in one of our safe hotels until we can find more information as to the whereabouts of your daughter and grandmother,” Max Bhagat added.

  The two men sat down right there on the floor to talk to Meg. As they introduced themselves, Meg shifted away from Nils, out of his arms.

  That was typical of her—even at a time when no one would fault her for leaning on a friend. With her initial outburst over, she now had to stand alone.

  “Why don’t you tell us what happened, Meg,” Paoletti said, in that soft-spoken, easygoing manner he had of making everyone around him feel as comfortable as possible. “Start from the beginning and take your time.”

  Meg nodded. She held her hands in her lap, gripping her own fingers tightly—but even that wasn’t enough to hide the fact that she was still trembling.

  Maybe she stood alone because that was what she’d always done. Maybe it was the only thing she knew how to do.

  “I had to pick up some files for a translating project I’d been hired to do,” she started, “and Amy, my daughter, wanted to take Eve, my grandmother who’s visiting us from England, to the Smithsonian for her birthday.”

  Her voice trembled and she had to stop to clear her throat.

  Nils could understand what it was like to want to appear strong, so he wouldn’t take her hand unless she gave him some kind of sign that she wanted him to do that.

  But there was strength in numbers, too, and he didn’t want her to forget that from now on, she didn’t have to go through this alone.

  So he shifted closer to her, there as they sat on the tile of the Kazbekistani men’s room floor. Just a little bit. Just enough so that his knee touched her leg.

  And she didn’t shift away.

  It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  Sam was gathering up his gear, getting ready to move to another suite in the hotel that had just become available, when Alyssa Locke came in.

  Her partner, Jules Cassidy—the short, too-pretty guy with the bleached blond hair—was there with two other FBI agents, monitoring the tape loop WildCard had set up, making sure that any Kazbekistani officials could pop into the FBI surveillance room at the embassy at any time and see continuous images of Meg and her three hostages, still sitting in the men’s room.

  Even though they were all long gone.

  “What are you still doing here?” Alyssa greeted her partner with a warm smile.

  Sam didn’t even rate a cold nod.

  “I was just about to head home,” the little fucker said, “but my incredible ability to prognosticate told me you were about to arrive, so I decided to wait.”

  “Someone called and said I was on my way over,” Alyssa interpreted, giving him another kickass smile.

  No fucking fair.

  And talk about a complete waste. Teaming Alyssa Locke up with a guy who was gay? And Sam was flat-out sorry, but even if the FBI had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy similar to the U.S. military, when it came to Cassidy, there was no need to ask anything. There was absolutely no question as to which way his wind blew.

  Of course, maybe that was why he’d been teamed up with Alyssa Locke. No male agent would be comfortable letting Cassidy guard his ass—because they wouldn’t want the little fruit anywhere near their ass.

  Alyssa, however, seemed genuinely to like the man.

  “What news cometh from the front lines, oh goddess of information?” Cassidy asked.

  She flopped down next to him on the couch and Sam almost did a double take. Locke didn’t flop. And yet . . . She was sitting there, slouched back, as if she were as exhausted as he was. As if she, too, hadn’t slept since before she could remember.

  As if she were human.

  After the SEALs had pulled all three of the former hostages and Meg out of the K-stani men’s room, Locke had been part of the team that had spirited them out of the embassy and away to another location—a safe and very swanky hotel—across town.

  He moved closer so he could hear her conversation with Cassidy.

  “Meg Moore was questioned for hours, and her story held up,” Alyssa reported. “Oh, and you’ll like this, Jules. There was a security camera in the parking garage where she said the Extremist first contacted her. Everything happened exactly the way she described it, and we’ve got the guy on videotape. We’ve IDed him as a suspected K-stani terrorist. Nobody has a clue how he got into the U.S. He’s wanted for a number of violent crimes—including planting a bomb in a Kazabek school bus.”

  She rolled her head on the cushiony back of the couch to look at Cassidy as she continued. “Which was probably not something Meg Moore needed to hear. The man who’s connected with the kidnapping of her daughter is a wanted child killer.”

  “Shit,” Cassidy said.

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “She kind of lost it. Fortunately a doctor was on hand. He gave her something to help her sleep. As for our other guests—the ambassador and the other two Kazbekistanis are being very gracious about this. They’re cooperating fully.”

  “By letting the FBI house them in a hotel with room service provided by DC’s best French gourmet restaurant and all the pay-per-view they can watch?” Cassidy snorted. “After thinking I was going to die like a dog gunned down near the urinals in a men’s room, I’d be pretty happy with option B as well.”

  “They didn’t have to cooperate,” Alyssa told her partner.

  “How many times have you worked with Max Bhagat?” Cassidy asked.

  “This is the first. I mean, I knew who he was and—”

  “Ah.”

  “What does ah mean?” she asked.

  “It means, ‘Ah, you’ve never worked with Max before.’ ”

  She gave him a far friendlier version of her cold stare than Sam had ever received. “Which means . . . ?”

  “He’s a really good negotiator,” Cassidy said, “to the point that he’s completely able to manipulate nearly any situation to his favor. I’m bettin
g after five minutes with Max, neither the ambassador nor the other two hostages would have considered not cooperating. Because Max probably leaned heavily but oh-so-subtly on the concept that not cooperating would make them look as if they were connected to the Extremists who kidnapped sweet little Amy Moore. So there they go, whisked off to a safe hotel room where they can’t make any phone calls or communicate with anyone, where they’re locked in and placed under twenty-four-hour guard. But because Max is Max, they’re happy to be there and even though it’s probably going to take four days longer than anyone anticipated, they’re going to leave thanking him. Why don’t you sit down and take a load off?”

  It took Sam several seconds to realize Cassidy had aimed that last question at him.

  Alyssa turned her head to look up at him, but then looked quickly away.

  “Sorry,” Sam said. “I was just . . . you know . . .”

  “Eavesdropping?” Cassidy asked cheerfully. “It might’ve worked better if you’d actually tried to hide behind the couch.”

  Alyssa was still leaning back against the sofa cushions, but somehow she was no longer relaxed.

  “I wanted to know how Meg was doing,” Sam admitted.

  “She was extremely upset when the news came down about that terrorist’s prior with a school bus, but she’s sleeping now,” Alyssa reported, still not looking at him.

  Wasn’t this nice? They were able to have a civilized conversation, an exchange of information, without someone getting pissed off and needing to leave the room.

  “Where was Nils during this?” Sam asked.

  “He was in a meeting with Lieutenant Paoletti,” Alyssa told him. “I don’t know what about.”

  Sam did. “He was probably requesting leave, arguing that his relationship with Meg was making it impossible for him to concentrate on the things he’s supposed to be concentrating on. He’s such a Boy Scout.”

  Alyssa dared to glance up at him. “I thought you two were friends.”

  “We are,” Sam said. He smiled. “And he’s only a Boy Scout some of the time. The rest of the time, he’s the most devious son of a bitch I’ve ever met.”

  “Which, naturally, you see as a plus.”

  If he’d wanted to, he could’ve let that comment sting. Instead he rolled it off his back. He was too tired to fight. “Absolutely.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to sit down?”

  If it had been Alyssa asking that instead of Cassidy, Sam would’ve stuck his butt in a chair. But she wasn’t joining in, asking him to stay. In fact, she had her eyes closed now.

  “Nah, I’m on my way out of here. Wolchonok got me reassigned to a room that’s a little more private than Grand Central Station, and I’m planning to be unconscious in about five minutes, so . . .”

  He picked up his bag, glanced again at Alyssa. “See ya,” Sam said.

  “Later,” Cassidy replied.

  Alyssa didn’t say a word, didn’t give him even a dim smile, didn’t open her eyes.

  She wasn’t asleep, she was just waiting for him to leave.

  Frustration rose in a wave around him and Sam forgot about being too tired to fight. “Would it kill you,” he growled, “to pretend to be polite?”

  She opened one eye. “To a jerk like you? It might.”

  Every single retort that sprang to his lips was unprintable. He might’ve said something unspeakably rude anyway—she pissed him off that much—if the realization hadn’t suddenly hit him.

  She really hated him.

  She wasn’t kidding, it wasn’t even partially in fun.

  Alyssa Locke despised him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, because he was. Sorry that she felt that way about him, sorry that he’d been unable to resist pushing her buttons every single time they met, sorry for himself because unless hell froze, she wasn’t ever going to smile at him the way she smiled at Jules Cassidy.

  She opened both eyes and even sat up, but he didn’t wait around for her to fire another verbal missile at him. He took his bag and left.

  Eight

  IT WAS 0422.

  Normally Nils wouldn’t have found the fact that it was 0422 to be a problem. It wasn’t the first time he’d been up and out before dawn. But normally when he was up and functioning coherently at 0422, that usually meant he’d gone to sleep a little earlier than 0100.

  Yes, he’d gone to bed much too late after being awake for too many days in a row, and the call had come in to the hotel suite much too early, at 0405, waking both Nils and Sam Starrett from a deep sleep.

  It had not been a wrong number, as much as Nils had wished it to be.

  The FBI wanted to talk to him, pronto. In fact, they were sending a car.

  That car—a dark sedan, conspicuous for its lack of conspicuousness—had just dropped him across town at the safe hotel he’d helped bring Meg to just hours earlier.

  As Nils was escorted upstairs and into a conference room that held both FBI Team Leader Max Bhagat and Lieutenant Paoletti, he wished he’d taken the time between 0405 and 0407 to shave.

  The hotel suite was hopping for the early morning hour. Something was up. Or maybe—and the hair on the back of his neck stood up—something had gone very wrong.

  “What’s going on? Where’s Meg?” He looked to Lieutenant Paoletti for answers, but the CO just shook his head.

  “Where’s Meg is a very good question.” A bleary-eyed Bhagat motioned for Nils to sit down on the opposite side of the table. “We were hoping you’d be able to help us answer that.”

  Christ, the Extremists had grabbed her.

  Nils knew he shouldn’t have left her and gone back to his own hotel to sleep. He should have pushed his way into her room despite being told that she’d been given sleeping pills and was fast asleep. After what she’d been through, he should have insisted upon seeing her, insisted upon standing guard beside her bed.

  But as angry as he was at himself and at the FBI for letting this happen, he forced his voice to sound calm as he faced Bhagat. “No, sir, I’m afraid I can’t answer any questions. When did Meg’s abduction take place?”

  Bhagat exchanged a look with Lieutenant Paoletti.

  The lieutenant turned to Nils. “I told them you didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  Confusion mixed with frustration and just enough nausea from fear for Meg’s safety and lack of sleep to make him want to grab Paoletti—one of the nicest guys in the world—by the collar of his shirt and shake him hard.

  “With what?” he asked instead, his teeth only slightly clenched. “L.T., what the hell’s going on?”

  He had a million questions. What time was Meg reported missing? Were there signs of a struggle? Signs of bloodshed or—please, God, no—foul play? Were the FBI tracking her right now?

  “You’re right about there having been an abduction.” Bhagat rubbed his eyes. “But Meg wasn’t the abductee, Lieutenant Nilsson. She was the abductor.”

  Nils heard the words, but they didn’t make sense. And then they made too much sense.

  Paoletti was nodding. “She had a second side arm.”

  “Was there a reason you didn’t search her in the men’s room, Lieutenant?” Bhagat asked.

  She had a second side arm? Nils couldn’t believe it. But God, he hadn’t searched her in the men’s room.

  “No, sir,” he answered Bhagat. “She’d surrendered her weapon and . . .” And she’d been in his arms, crying her heart out. It had never even occurred to him that he might want to pat her down. He looked at Paoletti. “Are you sure about this, sir, because . . .”

  “According to the FBI guard, she held him at gunpoint, took his cuffs, his side arm, too, and locked him in a utility closet. Then she went in and took—”

  “The ambassador?” Even as he said the words, Nils didn’t believe it. And yet . . . He could still see that desperation in Meg’s eyes. “After the doctor gave her something to sleep? No way.”

  “The doctor gave her sleeping pills.” The
look in Paoletti’s eyes told Nils what his CO thought of that doctor. “He left her with a full prescription. It’s now assumed she didn’t actually take any.”

  “And it wasn’t the ambassador,” Bhagat informed Nils. “Meg Moore left the premises with another of her hostages—a diplomatic aide named Janko Tuzak. Does that name ring any bells, Lieutenant?”

  The FBI team leader still wasn’t convinced Nils didn’t know something. And at this point, with both Bhagat and Lieutenant Paoletti telling him that Meg had conned them all—particularly Nils . . .

  The thought that Meg had baldly lied to him, that she’d had a second handgun—probably hidden in her boot—was one Nils couldn’t quite wrap his brain around. He didn’t know something—Christ, he didn’t know anything. Including which way was up.

  But Bhagat had asked him a question.

  “Janko Tuzak.” Nils shook his head. “No, I don’t know him, sir, don’t know the name.”

  “Maybe you’ll know him by his real name—Osman Razeen.”

  Oh, fuck. “Are you telling me that Meg left here with a weapon and a hostage, and that hostage is Osman Razeen?” Nils looked at Lieutenant Paoletti and saw the truth echoed in his grim expression.

  Bhagat nodded. “I guess that name’s more familiar to you, huh?”

  Nils felt the earth listing a little bit more to the side. “Osman Razeen, the GIK terrorist leader . . . ?” It was a stupid question. What kind of answer did he expect? No, Osman Razeen the K-stani ice cream man.

  “The one and only,” Bhagat informed him, apparently used to dealing with idiots. “Wanted by the U.S., the Kazbekistani government, and, it seems now, the Extremists. Everyone wants a piece of him.”

  “Does Meg know who he is?” Nils asked, but as soon as the words left his mouth, he realized how stupid they were, too. He was batting a thousand here. Of course she knew.

  He couldn’t believe this. This was like some awful nightmare that just kept on getting worse and worse. “She told me the Extremists were targeting the new ambassador,” he informed Bhagat and Paoletti. She’d looked him in the eye, and told him. “She didn’t say anything about Tuzak or Razeen or . . .”