Ultimate Weapon

by Shannon McKenna

  Steele ignored the other women in the room, who sneaked slack-jawed peeks at a body the likes of which they’d only seen in their husbands’ airbrushed men’s magazines.

  His cell phone rang. Val was savagely irritated at the interruption, and yanked off the earpiece clipped to his waistband.

  He hung it on his ear. “What?” he asked, with ill grace.

  “So?” It was Hegel, his direct superior at PSS, the man who had recruited and trained him. The tone in the man’s voice put Val’s teeth on edge. Tough. Resentment was another thing that he could not afford.

  “So what?” Val countered.

  “It’s two weeks since you located her. The fat cats are breathing down my neck. Stop sitting on this thing like a fucking hen. Have you got the kid yet?”

  Val’s jaw tensed. “That is not the correct approach.”

  “It’s quick,” Hegel said. “We need results.”

  Val was silent for a moment. “I cannot be sure that she even cares enough about the child for her to be an effective lever,” he said. “I’d prefer to try a subtler approach first.”

  “Subtle. Hah.” Hegel made a doglike growling sound. “Come on, Janos. One of Daddy Novak’s ex-thugs should be more professional. What is your brilliant alternative plan? Knock her on the head and put her in a box? That works for me, as long as you do it soon.”

  Val clenched his jaw. Three steps back. Hegel loved waving Val’s old connection to Novak’s organization in his face, but it could only irritate him if he allowed it to. “I’m working on it,” he said finally.

  “Hmmph. Work harder, Janos. I hope you’re not having an attack of scruples about the kid. That was what fucked up your performance last time. Patience is growing thin up here. Damn, I should have called Henry for this job. He would have been done and gone by now.”

  Val was stonily silent. Hegel liked to sow discord, believing that a situation that he had destabilized himself was more easily controlled. But Hegel could not control him. He could have him killed, yes, perhaps. But he could not control him.

  Nor could he interfere with Val’s bond with his closest friend and fellow operative, Henry Berne. In fact, Henry might well be his only friend. The person known as Val Janos had “friends,” but none of them knew about his double life. Only PSS staff knew, and of them, only Henry could be counted as a friend.

  One friend, in all the world, unless he counted Imre. But Imre was in a category all his own.

  “This job is your ticket to retirement,” Hegel ground out. “Do not fuck it up, Janos. I am tired of your superior attitude. I would love to see the ass end of you head off into the sunset, because the alternative would be stressful and bloody. And my personal responsibility since I was the dick who recruited you. Think about that.” Hegel hung up.

  Val pulled off the earpiece. It flew across the room and hit the wall before he could even try to grasp for his elusive, detached calm again.

  God. Twelve years of sweating blood and taking bullets for those ungrateful bastards, and still they waved their fucking threats at him.

  Scruples. Another thing he could not afford. His scruples had been a problem for most of his life. Ironic, considering the career destiny had in store for him. Imre’s influence, no doubt. He could hear in his mind’s ear exactly what Imre would have had to say about that, but he blocked the lecture before it could start to play in his head. He had no time or energy to spare for guilt.

  He had told Hegel that he didn’t know if Steele cared enough about the child to use her as a lever, but he had lied. No woman of her type sacrificed an hour of her life to suffer through the tedium of Mommy & Me, or spent hours rolling a ball back and forth across the grass in the park except out of love. She cared, intensely.

  From the point of view of expediency, it was difficult to justify not doing what Hegel had urged. Take the child, and start negotiations.

  But he disliked hurting children. Kidnapping that child would hurt her. It would hurt any child. Particularly a small, wounded one.

  That child was wounded. He knew her story, he’d seen her files, read her charts. He would not be the one to inflict the next blow in an endless series of blows. To say nothing of the practical logistics of caring for a small child with medical problems. He would need a team. It would be chaotic, complicated, messy. A state of affairs he took pains to avoid.

  In the course of his career, he’d managed to finesse his dislike of hurting children, and still obtain successful outcomes. He’d relied on luck and cleverness, but his luck had run out last year in Bogotá.

  The problem had been glaringly evident to the powers that be at PSS. Which explained the long vacation they’d given him. Aside from the small matter of the bullet wounds he’d sustained.

  He’d been out of favor ever since, expecting them to put him down like a rabid dog at any moment. Vaguely surprised every morning that he woke to find himself still alive. They hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

  He’d begun to hope that they would simply ignore him for the rest of his life, but no. They had called him to locate Steele—and behold, she had a baby daughter. It was a test he could not afford to fail.

  He clicked automatically on the shower footage, thinking to distract himself with that dance of wet female flesh. It did not help to watch her play with the toddler. It made him squirm, it made him sweat. He could not think straight, could not detach, could not take the three steps. Nothing had ever shaken his self-control to this extent.

  Find the weak point. Then exploit it. The rule droned in his head.

  Vaffanculo, he responded mentally, banishing it.

  The beeper attached to his pants chirped at him. He took a look, and his gut clenched. It was a numeric code, sent by Imre’s housecleaning service in Budapest. They were supposed to inform him of any change in Imre’s health and welfare. They had never beeped him before.

  The code informed him that he had an urgent message to retrieve from the computer bulletin board. Something had happened to Imre.

  His heart accelerated without his permission. There was a tremor in his hand as he entered passwords, clicked the message, decoded it.

  A few terse lines informed him that the woman who was paid to cook, clean, and do Imre’s shopping had come in that day and found the door forced, the apartment ransacked, and Imre unconscious on the floor, badly beaten. He was in the hospital, his condition grave.

  Val stared at the text on the screen for approximately three seconds and sprang to his feet, overturning the cup of tea. He groped for his phone, splashed and slipped clumsily in his bare feet through the steaming puddle in his haste to dress, pack, go, go, go.

  He was breathless, dizzy. Panicking. Calm down. Three steps. Panic was another luxury that he could not afford.

  Find the weak spot. Then exploit it.

  His gut churned nastily. It seemed someone had just found his.

  Chapter 2

  Adrenaline kicked her right across the barrier of sleep. Tam jerked up in bed, every nerve screaming, and instantly put every mental trick she had into action to block the dream that had provoked it. If the images didn’t sink their claws into her conscious mind, the feelings faded more quickly. Though never quickly enough.

  Tonight, she couldn’t block it. The crackle of rifle fire. Hard, clutching hands holding her down under a bruised white sky. Dark silhouettes, mouths screaming, but she could not hear what they said. She was deafened by those rifles popping.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and saw their stiff white faces, blank eyes staring up from the trench. Dirt showering into their open eyes. She had tried to close their eyes. Tried, and tried, but she’d had no coins to weigh their eyelids down. They would stay open forever. She could not hide what she’d become from those staring eyes.

  And the fear, the shame. Burning, corrosive hatred for that evil leering monster. For what he’d done to them, to her. Stengl.

  Her hands itched to kill him, even after sixteen years.

  She pressed her
hands against her face, and tried to breathe deep, but her lungs seized up halfway through each breath in a painful hiccup that jolted her whole body. Ah, God. She hadn’t dreamed about Stengl and his secret police squad, or the horrors of Sremska Mitrovica for years. She’d deep frozen it, buried it, rolled huge rocks over it.

  But something was rolling the rocks away, one after the other. Something like Rachel. Fancy that.

  Tam wrapped her arms around her knees. Her body ached, every muscle rigid. Her heart felt like it was going to explode, it raced so fast.

  Moonlight streamed in the huge windows of her bedroom. She had chosen every detail of the room to calm, to soothe, having pictured an uncluttered, tranquil haven where she could feel safe and peaceful. What a fantasy. Sleep was a dangerous place for her to go.

  The electronically programmed blinds would automatically close shortly before dawn to keep the room dim so Rachel would sleep longer, but the moonlight seemed blinding to her, casting shadows as cold and sharp as knives.

  Tam looked down at the lump in the bed beside her. Rachel stirred, fussed in her sleep. Tam laid down alongside her, and stroked the child’s back. She wasn’t sure it was appropriate to take her nightmares into bed with the innocent toddler, but Rachel wouldn’t sleep on her own for love or money.

  When she was being honest, though, she recognized that excuse for the cheap justification that it was. She just liked to be close to Rachel. She loved to watch her sleep, see the rise and fall of her little chest, the beatific relaxation in her face. To touch and snuggle that warm body. And she liked to be there when Rachel reached for her in the night. Right at the child’s fingertips. Instant gratification. The least she could offer, considering what Rachel had been robbed of up to now.

  Just watching her was restful. Maybe she couldn’t get a decent night’s sleep herself, but watching Rachel get one was the next best thing. Tamara could lie there and feel that miraculous sensation that had taken her hostage in the aftermath of the organ pirate adventure. That hot softness in her chest. The melting.

  The problem was, the rest of Tam’s emotional defenses were melting right along with her heart, and she was by no means ready to live without them yet. Scary.

  Rachel rolled over and reached out, flinging a skinny but surprisingly strong arm over Tam’s neck, dragging her into a strangling, baby-soap, sour milk, and toothpaste-scented hug.

  Tam grabbed the little girl, comforting herself with the warmth of that snuggly, wiry body. Rachel vibrated with life, glowing like a little sun. Being close to her fed something inside Tam that had been starving. Something she had thought was stone dead.

  Rachel needed her so badly. Or rather, Rachel needed someone, and it had been the toddler’s questionable luck that Tam had been the one standing there, at the crucial psychological moment. Snap, click, and hey, presto . . . the kid was stuck to her like glue. And out of nowhere, Tam had suddenly come to crave being needed in return.

  So strange. Where did that come from, after a lifetime of deliberately not giving a shit? After making not caring into a high art?

  Rachel was barely three years old, and she’d had more crap luck than a lot of people pulled in an entire lifetime. Tossed into a sty of an orphanage at birth, scooped up by rapacious organ pirates to be broken down for parts, locked in a stinking windowless pen with a pack of desperate kids for months—it didn’t get worse than that.

  Until you added in the fact that somehow, she’d managed to pull Tam Steele out of a hat for an adoptive mother. Yippee, what a prize.

  And if that wasn’t enough, the mother she had chosen was getting twitchy and paranoid. Which was to say, more twitchy and paranoid than usual, which was really saying something, given her impressive list of mortal enemies. It was a strange sensation, but she couldn’t shake it. For weeks, she’d felt her grunting reptile brain looking back over her scaly reptile shoulder, telling her she was being watched.

  Paranoia or genuine danger? Impossible to tell. Her instincts were good. But the emotions that had broken ranks and gone nuts inside her might have knocked even that out of whack.

  She might never get it all wrenched back obediently into line. Chaos ruled, inside and out. She just had to get used to it.

  Tam petted the fleece-covered back of the sleeping toddler, stroking the warm curve of the child’s head. Her fingers marveled at the spider-silk ringlets, the swell of her soft cheek, that flowerlike pink mouth, half-open, shiny with baby spit in the moonlight. Such a pretty little girl. Her breathing deepened, her heartbeat slowed, steadied. And then, that incredible feeling unfurled in her chest, like it always did.

  Hot and soft . . . and so alive.

  Alive. God help her. There was something alive inside of her, after all. She regarded that development with mingled terror and awe, not quite sure yet if it was good news or bad.

  Moonlight crawled over the wall with agonizing slowness. Tam stroked the child’s back and just breathed. The crackle of gunfire still echoed stubbornly in her head, the shrieks of pain and terror floated up from the basement cells and reverberated through her memory. But if she just concentrated on Rachel, on how beautiful and small and perfect she was, she could get enough oxygen. She could walk that narrow line through the bad memories without falling headlong into a stress flashback.

  It was hard. The dream images weren’t fading tonight. They’d sunk in deep. She’d be hearing that gunfire, those screams, all night long. But she would endure. She was all right. Just . . . breathe.

  Part of her missed the cold numbness she’d felt before Rachel. It was a pain in the ass, being continually tossed and flung around by her emotions like a twig in a flash flood. She hadn’t expected that when she took the child. The impulse had taken her by surprise. She hadn’t had the presence of mind in the turbulent aftermath of the organ pirate adventure to consider what Rachel would do to her equilibrium.

  Hell, she’d thought she could handle anything. She’d been keeping it together fairly well, after all. Flying under the radar, turning a nice profit with her business, paying her taxes, not getting in anybody’s face. Her current identity was holding up nicely, even under the pressure of drawn-out adoption proceedings, which was a testament to her unusual skill set. She’d been a bit bored, yes, after her supremely eventful former career, but the raid on the organ pirates had helped with the ennui. That thrill ride had been calculated to keep her going for a while.

  Enter Rachel. Talk about adventure. Hah. Bye-bye, ennui. She had no time for boredom now. She was fried, trying to stay on top of it all. Blitzed by the hugeness of the responsibility. The massive snarl of bureaucratic red tape that comprised an international adoption. The appointments, the special foods, the allergies, the naps, the illnesses, the medications, the baths, the fits. The fears.

  And even so, life without Rachel was now impossible to contemplate.

  The miracle happened so quickly. Sneakily, too. That skinny monkey of a baby girl wrapped her arms around her neck and hung on for dear life, and the place where her heart was theoretically supposed to be had gone all hot and soft out of fucking nowhere. Something twisted, swelled, went pop inside her and—

  The kid just got to her. Those huge, liquid brown eyes, so much like little Irina’s—ah, no. No. Don’t.

  Tears were slipping down her face, hot and fast. Her chest vibrated with sobs so fast, they were a seamless, silent shudder.

  God, she hated crying. She gently detached Rachel’s clinging arm, and slid out of the bed and down onto the blond bamboo floorboards.

  Fuck this. She did not want Rachel to wake up and see her this way. Pull yourself together, Tamar. The kid had enough to feel insecure about already without watching her mamma come apart at the seams.

  Tamar. She’d slipped into calling herself by her childhood name. And that stern inner voice had sounded so much like her mother. Odd. She’d been insane, to use something so close to her real given name for her alias. A suicidal impulse? Or just pique? Or simply a need to claim someth
ing real for herself. To make herself feel more coherent.

  A tall order. But she was stalling. Up, Tamar. On your feet. Be the fucking grown-up here. There’s no one else to do it.

  She dragged herself to her feet, stumbled into the bathroom and leaned over the big marble sink. She splashed her face, glanced into the mirror. That proved to be a mistake. Her sight of her own thin, hollowed face, her red, staring eyes, her blurred, shaking mouth—it did not help. Eeeuw. Bad. But once one of her crying fits started, there was no way out but through. She leaned over the sink again, ran water into her hands, gulped it. Splashed water over her face. Rinsed away tears, snot.

  That mission accomplished, her legs decided that no more was currently required of them. She pressed her back against the wall and slid bonelessly down. Her ass bumped onto the chilly floor tiles.

  She curled into a shaking knot. She hadn’t cried in years, before Rachel. Over a decade, maybe. Hadn’t missed it, either.

  She pressed her palms against her eyes until they hurt. Poor Rachel. Tam should never have touched the kid in the first place, considering who and what she was. But she had, and the damage was done, to both of them.

  Rachel needed a mother so desperately. A real one, someone committed, smart, sane. Only an idiot would take on a hard luck case like Rachel, considering the child’s background, but an idiot would never survive the experience. The idiot would give up as soon as her pretty fantasies about how sweet and compassionate she was got dashed. And a kid like Rachel would be sure to dash them.

  Rachel needed so much. She was a vortex of need, physical, emotional, financial. She’d been deprived since birth. Sveti, the older girl who had been penned up with Rachel in the organ pirates’ shithole, had been the first one to be tender to her, and Rachel had glommed onto the girl and sucked it up like a thirsty sponge. Just like she did from Tam.