by Tara Janzen
Skeeter could add well enough to put two and two together and come up with twenty-eight reasons why the CIA would want the Blonde Czech Bimbo who was selling a nuclear warhead on the black market.
“The way I heard it,” she said, “Castano and the rest of the NRF were your responsibility, and your guys couldn't get the job done. So you called us in, and your screwups got our guy killed. You sent Creed and J.T. into an ambush.”
“Us, Ms. Bang? Are you running ops with SDF now? Is this something else I need to write up in my report?” Royce asked.
“Probably not,” another voice interjected, cutting the agent off.
Skeeter slanted her gaze toward the door. Finally.
She no sooner laid eyes on the man walking into the office than a soft flush of awareness washed into her cheeks—damn it.
That was one thing she had to get under control. This ridiculous crush she'd allowed herself to get on Dylan Hart had absolutely no future in it. Worse, she had a terrible suspicion that he knew, and that her ridiculous crush was the reason he'd been pretty much avoiding the SDF headquarters on Steele Street ever since last summer. He'd been coming in, doing his work, and leaving—usually in the dead of night. She hadn't seen him in weeks.
He looked tired—tired and beautiful, and at least as dangerous as Creed.
Royce knew it, too. She could tell by the way he stepped away from her. Dylan and the CIA went way back, and none of their history was good.
“Hart,” Royce said, acknowledging Dylan's arrival.
“Royce.” The barest hint of a smile curved Dylan's lips as he met the agent's gaze and walked on by. He stopped next to her, and Skeeter felt her blush deepen.
Damn it.
“What's this?” he asked, pulling the photographs out of her hand.
“Castano and Garcia,” she said.
He went through the pictures, slipping each one to the bottom of the stack after he'd seen it. He had silky dark hair and refined features, elegantly carved, but the underlying lines of his face were too hard for him to ever qualify as pretty. Dylan Hart, like all the SDF guys, had been one of the city's most notorious juvenile delinquents before he'd grown up and come into his own, and those years had left their mark inside and out.
“Where'd you get these?” he asked Royce, effortlessly achieving a perfectly bland tone of voice. He wasn't giving anything away, but Skeeter could tell he was furious. There was a stillness about Dylan when he was angry, and he was suddenly very still.
“We had a paid asset in Puerto Blanco. As for finding Castano and Garcia, your boys didn't do much to cover their tracks. Everyone north to the Colombian border knows what happened in the Cordillera mountains.”
Dylan nodded once, glanced at the top photo again, then lifted his gaze to meet Royce's. “I think that was the point.”
“They've gone rogue on you, Hart,” Royce said. “Chronopolous and Rivera both. You know it, and I know it. Hell, you can't even get Chronopolous to come home.”
“He's on temporary assignment with the DEA in Colombia, which I'm sure you know more about than I do,” Dylan said.
“Then what in the hell is he doing going in and out of Peru? He's been in Cuzco four times in the last three months.”
One of Dylan's eyebrows arched upward. “He won't like you following him.”
“My boys don't care what he likes or doesn't like. They want him out of their territory. All he has to do is show up in a town and everybody gets spooked. What is it you all call him? Chaos? Kid Chaos? Well, you've got it right, and I want him out of there. And I want Creed Rivera now. I want to know what he's working on.”
“And I'd like you to think twice before you ever show anything like these photographs to my personal secretary again.” Dylan lifted the pictures, his tone absolutely even, his message more than clear. To Skeeter's surprise, Tony Royce actually clenched his jaw.
“You're in way over your head, Hart—especially if you've got Dominika Starkova. The case is ours. We've been on it for months, and I don't care if it was General Grant or the secretary of defense himself who sicced you on her tail. I want SDF to back off. I've got signed orders from Director Alden himself that says she's ours.”
Well, the truth finally comes out, Skeeter thought. Things were definitely moving now. General Grant was the two-star who had created SDF nine years ago to conduct clandestine operations—a bone that stuck in everybody else's craw, especially the CIA's, especially since Alden had taken over.
“You had your chance in Eastern Europe,” Dylan said coldly, “and you lost her.”
To Skeeter's surprise, Royce let out a short laugh. “If you think you can hold onto her any better than we did, you're only fooling yourself,” the agent said. “She's smart, dangerously smart, and if Rivera has her, he needs to turn her over now—before this thing gets any more out of control.”
Dylan shifted his gaze to meet Skeeter's, and she shook her head.
“We don't know what he's got,” Dylan said, returning his attention to Royce. “But I can guarantee you, if Creed has her, she's not going anywhere.”
CODY'S solo flight through the old library's new construction lasted all of two seconds, but it felt like forever, and even after she landed on the floor and crumpled into a shivering heap, the spike in her adrenaline kept her emotions at full throttle.
He'd dropped her, the bastard, thrown her over the edge and dropped her, and her heart was never going to be the same. Her right cheek was pressed against the floor, her bound hands stretched out in front of her, clinging to the wood parquet.
“Are you okay?”
Damn! She jerked her head around and found him crouched over her. He must have landed like a cat. She hadn't heard a thing.
“N-no,” she managed to croak out. She wasn't okay. She was half frozen, and half scared out of her mind, and half sick, and handcuffed for crying out loud.
“Who in the h-hell are y-you?” she demanded. With Bruno and Reinhard momentarily out of the way, she felt pretty safe venting her anger and frustration out on wild boy. Discretion be damned. The guy had been manhandling her from the instant they'd met.
But she hadn't really been hurt, something she knew she wouldn't be able to say if she'd fallen into Reinhard's hands. One of the Germans would have done something to her, just to make a point, just to put her in her place.
“Creed Rivera,” he said, kneeling down and pulling her up to a sitting position. “Come on. Give me your hands.”
“R-Rivera?” Yeah, right, she thought, a blond-haired Chicano. No way did he look Hispanic, but she wouldn't forget the name, not if she lived to be a hundred, which was looking damned unlikely tonight. Trembling and shaking, the cold aching all the way down to her bones, all she could do was sit there and shiver—even when he pulled a big knife out of a sheath on his ankle.
“Cesar Raoul Eduardo Rivera,” he said, lifting the knife to her wrists.
She blanched, but didn't have the energy to pull away. If he'd wanted to kill her, he could have dropped her when they'd been on the ladder, or just now down into the old library. Or he could have shot her on the roof—or fed her to Edmund Braun. She still hadn't figured out what in the world he'd done to deck the beast, or how he'd done it so quickly. It was a wicked-looking knife, though, the blade long and gleaming in the low light, the tip sharpened on both edges, the handle wrapped in strips of leather. It looked like a knife that got used, a lot, for God only knew what.
“But everyone calls me Creed,” he continued, and with a single, deft move, he cut through her handcuffs.
“Who do you work f-for?”
He sheathed the knife and then took her hands in his. “The government,” he said.
His hands were warm around hers, and she was grateful, but he hadn't answered her question. She could think of at least half a dozen governments that might be after her, half a dozen governments that probably were after her, including her own, along with another half a dozen terrorist groups from rebels in Chechnya to
Islamic jihadists from all over the Middle East who wanted what she had.
“Which government?” she asked.
He glanced up again and met her gaze. The faint light of an exit sign above them cast just enough illumination to turn his eyes a fathomless shade of gray. “The United States government. Land of the free. Home of the brave. I get paid to track down people trying to sell dirty bombs on the black market.”
There wasn't an ounce of condemnation in his voice—just the facts, cool and damning all on their own. Still, she felt a sick little knot of tension tighten up in her stomach. Another shiver racked her body, and she wondered if she was ever going to feel warm again. The temperature in the old library was damn near balmy compared to outside, but she was still freezing.
“I'm not selling anything.” It was the god's truth.
“Is that why Reinhard Klein is trying to kill you? Because you won't sell him the bomb?” he asked. “Or did you jack the price up on him, thinking to cut yourself a bigger commission than Sergei had built in for you?”
The knot in her stomach grew even tighter. He'd called her Ms. Starkova, and he knew who Reinhard was, knew about Sergei and the warhead.
He knew a helluva lot—but his version was a twisted version of the truth.
“I don't know anybody named Sergei, and nobody's trying to kill me.” They wanted her alive.
“Tell yourself what you want, Cody, but when somebody shoots at me, I pretty much figure that means they want me dead.”
Cody. He'd used her name again, this time making it sound like he knew her, like they were friends and she should just spill her guts to him.
Not likely. She didn't care how American he looked, or how American he sounded, or who he said he worked for—she had to get away from him. Cordelia Kaplan, Dominika Starkova, or Creed Rivera—it was easy for a person to say they were anyone, to be anybody. All she really knew about him was that he was dangerous. If he'd wanted to, she didn't doubt for a second that he could have killed Edmund Braun with his bare hands.
“Are you with the CIA?” She had to ask. Him being with the CIA would certainly explain how he knew what he did. She'd told Keith O'Connell everything—and he'd died for it.
So she'd decided not to tell anybody anything, ever again, to just disappear, to make Tajikistan Discontent disappear. But disappearing was proving impossible. Bruno the Bull, Reinhard Klein, and a complete stranger named Cesar Raoul Eduardo Rivera had all found her in Denver.
“The question, Cody, is who are you with?” He held her gaze intently, and the knot in her stomach started to twist and turn. He had to be CIA.
“I'm not with anybody.” And that was her problem. She was completely alone and in way over her head.
“Reinhard Klein, Bruno Walmann, and Ernst and Edmund Braun came a helluva long way to find you. Why, if it wasn't to close the deal on the Soviet nuclear warhead you're selling?”
To take her back to Sergei, so he could torture her.
“I'm not selling anything.”
He didn't seem the least bit concerned by her lack of an answer, which didn't fool her for a second. This was an interrogation. He was calm and steady, because this kind of business, this prying out of information, was best done calmly, steadily. He was still wild. He was just biding his time, and she didn't have a doubt in the world that he was damn sure he was going to get everything he wanted before he was finished with her.
Even worse, she had a terrible feeling he might be right.
He pulled a photograph out of his pocket and showed it to her.
“Is this you?”
The terrible feeling she had intensified. It was an old school photograph. Her mother had one, a larger copy in a frame on her mantel, and she'd seen another in her father's house—one of the few signs that he and her mother had ever kept in touch, if only distantly.
“Where did you get that?” He shouldn't have her school picture, no matter who he was. It made her feel queasy, and trapped, and like no part of her life was safe.
It made her feel like getting as far away from him as she could get, even if it meant taking her chances up on the roof with the police.
“I'm asking the questions, Cody, and what I want is answers,” he said, still so damn calmly. “Like why you changed your name from Dominique Cordelia Stark to Dominika Starkova, and why you came into the country under the name Cordelia Kaplan, and how a brunette from Wichita, Kansas, ends up in Prague, meeting with known terrorists, and looking like this.” He took another photo from inside his coat pocket.
It was a picture of Dominika, and the answer to all that platinum-blond hair, movie-star makeup, and scandalous dress was really quite simple—but he wasn't going to get it from her. Not when she felt like she was falling apart.
How in the world had he found out about Wichita?
“Or we can cut through all this crap and get right to the point,” he continued. “Tell me where the bomb is, the exact location, and maybe we can cut a deal on the rest of your problems. And you've got problems, Cody. Serious problems. Enough of them to put you away for life.”
That was a threat, and she felt the impact of it right in her gut, but she would never confess to Wichita, no matter what he pulled out of his coat, not the shortened shotgun, the semiautomatic pistol, or her freaking birth certificate. Wichita was the hill she'd die on. It was where her mother lived, and the only way to protect her mother was by never going there, ever again—not in word or deed, and it broke her heart.
“A deal,” she said breathlessly, trying to pull herself together. She could make a deal. She'd made all kinds of deals in the last few weeks, dozens of deals to get from Prague to Denver, deals for forged papers and deals for silence, deals to start a new life and deals to leave an old life behind. Cordelia Kaplan hadn't come into existence cheaply or easily, but if she had to start over again, she could.
She didn't have a choice.
Even maximum-security penitentiary walls wouldn't protect her from Sergei. She'd be a sitting duck in prison, and he wouldn't just have her killed when he caught up with her. He'd want to make an example of her, like he had with Keith O'Connell.
And he'd get the location of the book out of her. She knew he would. She wouldn't hold up under torture, not to save the world. Her only chance was to never get caught.
God, she'd been so naive before her father's death—but no more. Reinhard had cured her of her last shred of naiveté in a warehouse on the outskirts of Karlovy Vary in northwestern Czech Republic.
And that was something she couldn't afford to dwell on, not without getting the shakes. What had happened to O'Connell, what had happened to her—that whole night had been surreally bizarre.
She tried to push the memory away, but it wasn't easy, and her next breath came a little harder. She silently swore at herself. She was going to blow it, if she gave in to panic. Panic was the enemy.
“I . . . uh . . . can't tell you the location of any bombs. I swear,” she said. “But you're right. Reinhard is after me, and he's into some pretty bad stuff. I can tell you what I know, but I want some guarantees.”
That was the deal, and for basically coming off the cuff, she didn't think it was too bad. Everything she'd said was mostly true—an important aspect of any deal. She knew enough about Reinhard to talk plenty without incriminating herself, and she didn't know where the warhead was located.
She did know where Tajikistan Discontent was located—about two floors below them, in the noncirculating stacks of the old library, shelved in the 500s—and if it was up to her, it would rot there. No one ever needed to find that damn bomb.
Her father obviously hadn't found it before he'd died, or Sergei wouldn't have sent Reinhard and his dogs after her.
“So what do you think?” she prompted, trying to hold her anxiety at bay.
“What have you got on Reinhard?” he asked point-blank.
“He's bad. Really bad. Trust me.” Okay, that wasn't exactly cutting-edge news, but she had to be carefu
l. “He's into . . . well, you obviously know the kind of deals he's into, but there was this incident, you see . . . about a month ago in, uh, Karlovy Vary, and there are a few things your government would like to know about it, some very specific things. All I want is a guarantee of safe passage and enough money to make my life a little easier than it's been lately. That's all. I swear it.”
INCIDENT in Karlovy Vary? Well, that was a damned interesting turn, Creed thought, looking down at her, listening to her talk and spin and try to hook him without actually giving herself away. She was still shivering, but the color was coming back into her face, washing her cheeks in soft pink, and her gaze was focused again, all green and aquamarine with streaks of brown and gray.
Geezus, she was pretty.
“There might even be a reward in this for you,” she continued, looking so incredibly sincere, he couldn't find it in himself to believe her for a second. She was lying through her teeth about not knowing the location of the bomb. She knew. If she wasn't so damn frozen, she'd be sweating with knowing it. “And you can have it all. I swear. I don't need any reward, just enough money to get around. That's all. And the information is good, probably worth a promotion or something. You can count on it. Names, dates, places—the works.”
He wasn't going to tell her, poor thing, but she'd already given him a name, a date, and a place. An incident in Karlovy Vary a month ago could only mean Keith O'Connell, December 7, in a warehouse on the outskirts of town—that's where the CIA had found the body. If she was telling him that she could positively hang O'Connell's death on Reinhard Klein, she indeed had something to sell besides a nuclear bomb. Daniel Alden, the director of the CIA, and every agent in Eastern Europe had laid O'Connell's death at the feet of Sergei Patrushev and the Russian Mafia. If Reinhard had also been involved, then his ties to the Mafia and Patrushev were closer than anyone realized—which wasn't good news.
“Okay,” he agreed, lying at least as much as she was. “We'll talk and see what you come up with. Maybe you do have something I want.” His gaze dropped to her mouth, just a slight shift in his attention that lasted no more than a second, but it was enough to unnerve her. He saw it in her sudden stillness and silently swore at himself for giving so much away.
