by Nancy Holder
Much to Cat’s relief.
“But there is a problem…”
He furrowed his brow in that way he had. He was soft-selling something, maybe because Bethany was there, working up to tell her something really bad.
The ship rolled heavily under them. Was it Cat’s imagination or did it not fully recover from the wallow? Was the deck now permanently sloping? She shined her light around the big room. No, it was not her imagination. The ocean liner was taking on seawater, lower decks flooding.
“What problem?” she asked.
“Our lifeboat has already left. It was gone when I got here.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Gummi worms and Tums were JT’s midnight supper. Being Robin sucked. He was worried about the woman he loved and yet here he sat like Wash, the pilot character on Firefly who always stayed behind on the spaceship while everyone else committed derring-do. He ate another gummi worm and stewed in his own juices, then punched up two more articles he had just opened on Vodanyov and Chrysalis—two very scary organizations, no matter which side of the law you were on, simply because they were so powerful—when one of the headlines crawling across his screen on his feed caught his eye:
Cruise ship bound for Hawaii ablaze.
“What?” he cried, craning his neck toward the screen.
Storm thwarts rescue.
“What’s the ship’s name?” he yelled at the screen.
JT’s phone rang.
“Tess,” he said without looking at the ID. “More bad news. I think Cat and Vincent are in trouble.”
“A cat?” said the woman on the other end. “I thought you were looking for a chihuahua?”
“What? Oh. Yes.” JT punched the keyboard and brought up a satellite image of the mother of all storms, located midway between the West Coast and Hilo, Hawaii. If their ship was riding that—
“…I didn’t even know Julia had taken your dog. When my mother called and said you’d spoken to her, I asked Juli about it and it turns out she and her best friend Megan have been hiding Princess Wookie in Megan’s garden shed. I’m so very, very sorry,” the woman was saying. JT made himself listen. Except—
—in the center of the satellite image a triangle appeared. It read Sea Majesty. The name of Vincent and Cat’s cruise ship. It was on fire and in the middle of a storm? When had all this happened?
“Holy crap,” JT blurted.
“Excuse me?”
Another call was coming in. Maybe it was them. Or Tess. JT said, “I’m sorry, it’s just… I’m in the middle of something. I’m really glad you have Mookie. I mean Moochie. Mochi. I can come pick her up.” Once all this is over. If I don’t die of a heart attack first. If we’re not all dead.
“Well, we live hours north of you. If we could arrange a time and perhaps we could meet you halfway—”
“That sounds great. Really great. Hold on. I need to grab this other call.”
But the caller on line two had given up. JT checked the number on Caller ID. It was no one he recognized. A phone solicitor, probably.
Then another call came in, and he recognized this one. It was Tess. JT said to the woman, “I’m sorry to do this, but may I call you back?”
“Sure. Of course. I know it’s very late. I figured you would be worried about your dog.”
“I am. A lot. Bye.”
He took Tess’s call.
“Oh, my God, Tess,” he said, “I think Cat and Vincent are in serious—”
But Tess was speaking over him. She said, “So did you start tracking her?”
JT was bewildered. “Do you mean Princess Mochi?” he asked her.
“What?” Tess asked, sounding equally bewildered. “JT? Didn’t Heather just call you?”
“What?” He leaped out of his chair. It fell backwards with a crash. That call was from Heather?
“She should’ve just called you. Vodanyov is after her. She got free and she has a cell phone. I told her to call you so you can track her with your Homeland Security-level software. You can guide me, right? Just in case, I asked her to download—”
“Oh, my God, oh, my God, Tess,” he cut in. “She did call me. I’ve been on the phone and I didn’t recognize the number. Who… what… never mind. I understand. I’ll call her back.”
“Good. She may be hiding,” Tess said. “I told her to put the phone on vibrate but she may not have had the chance. It might ring when you call her.” She paused. “I may regret telling you to do this for the rest of my life, but call her now.”
* * *
Tess sent two units and an ambulance toward the mini-mart while she waited for word on Heather from JT. Judging from the chatter on her radio and the GPS readout, her units had engaged seven armed and dangerous adversaries. Heather had put the number of her pursuers at a dozen. So it was likely that some of them had left the scene of the confrontation and were still after Cat’s little sister.
Tess was driving blind past row after row of abandoned structures punctuated by occupied office suites and warehouses that reminded her of junkyard strays scavenging for scraps. JT still hadn’t gotten back to her with a location for Heather and Svetlana and as Tess rolled on, she listened to the reports on the firefight. Two subjects down. Then an officer down. She listened for a name. Miller. She mentally crossed her fingers that the big burly cop had been caught somewhere on his Kevlar vest and that he’d come out fine.
A second officer down. Dispatch was sending another ambo. Tess clenched her jaw and fought down her impulse to drive to the scene and lend aid. Heather needed her more. She was an innocent. Tess’s guys were performing the job they had sworn to do. But she was their captain, and they were her people.
Sweat beaded on her forehead and her stomach rolled. “Not now,” she gritted, and her thoughts veered momentarily to the pregnancy test that she still had not taken. What if she got shot tonight, and it made her lose the baby?
Her phone rang and she connected. “Vargas.”
“I have them on voice-to-voice and I can see them on my grid. I can also see you,” JT said. “Follow my directions. Go west at the next corner.”
“West,” Tess confirmed. She put on the turbo and fishtailed around a corner. Her tires squealed. The stench of burning rubber seeped into the car.
“West again,” JT said.
“West.”
She forced herself to slow down. If she could have cut diagonally across the grid of buildings to save some time, she would have aimed the vehicle and pressed the pedal to the metal. But to her surprise, the blocks of rusted rebar and crumbling concrete began to give way to waist-high weeds, then to bushes, and finally to trees. The asphalt lost its regularity and the tires bounced into and out of potholes.
“Hey, I’m seeing a forest or something,” she told JT.
“Okay, good. You’re going into a greenbelt. Heather and Svetlana have just run in there and they heard gunfire close behind them. You may have to go in on foot.” He didn’t sound any happier about it than she was. “They’re arguing about climbing a tree. Heather’s hurt.”
“Hurt how? How bad?” Tess cried, alarmed.
“Keep going straight.”
She gunned it. Reminded herself that she couldn’t do Heather any good if she wrapped herself around a tree trunk. Leafy oaks crowded the sides of her vehicle as the road disappeared and she negotiated what appeared to be a hiking trail.
“The trees are growing too closely together. I’m going to radio for backup and then I have to get out. How is Heather?”
There was a pause. Then JT said, “I’ve lost voice.”
“Lost, as in…?” She stopped the car and opened her radio. “This is Captain Vargas.” She gave her badge number and requested backup. Then she went back to JT. “What’s going on?” she asked him.
“I don’t know. Their cell phone is on and I’m still tracking them. But I can’t hear them.”
“That doesn’t necessarily indicate that they’re incapacitated,” Tess theorized. “It could mean
that their pursuers are close and they don’t want them to hear you talking on the other end.”
“Right. Okay, I have them about a quarter mile to your three o’clock. I can give you longitude and latitude.” He did so.
“Got it.” She turned off the car, grabbed her ear buds and her police radio, and put a loaded magazine in her service weapon. She racked the slide, putting the first round in the chamber. Locked, loaded.
She got out. She put one bud in her right ear and kept her radio off in her pocket, then shielded her phone with her hand as she pressed on the illumination and walked toward the coordinates JT had given her. It was eerily silent. She kept her gun out.
After at least a minute, JT’s voice crackled. “They’re on the move but they’re going very slowly. If you progress farther east, you’ll eventually come up behind them.”
“Understood,” Tess murmured. “JT, can you multitask? Get on the scanner and see how we’re doing at the mini-mart? I don’t want to turn my radio on. But please don’t lose Heather.”
“Sure. Hold on.” Another stretch while she aged twenty years, and then JT came back. “It’s not going well. Two more Russians just left the scene. I assume they’re on their way to Heather.”
The news chilled her. “What about my backup?”
“Also on the way.”
“Good.” Hang on, Heather.
As she kept walking, she heard the most beautiful sound in the world—police sirens—when the pop pop pop of gunfire ricocheted through the trees. She hit the dirt, flattening herself against the ground. Then she elbow-crawled toward the nearest tree—a pine—and rolled beneath the branches.
“JT, talk to me,” she whispered.
“Tess, the Russians who split off from the mini-mart are shooting at your backup as they arrive,” JT reported. “From what I can tell, both sides have found your car. Your guys think the Russians have alerted their people that you’re on foot so be extra careful. Heather’s still on silent running,” he added. “They’re talking about sending in a chopper.”
“Have the Russians called in? Made demands?”
“Nothing that I’ve heard.”
“So maybe not a hostage situation at this point.” Tess kept her voice even but they both knew what that meant: Heather and Svetlana might be worth more to Anatoly Vodanyov dead than alive. They were witnesses and Svetlana must know damning information about Vodanyov’s dealings.
“Will the chopper help? Do you want me to let them know I’m in contact with you?”
“There are too many trees. And this is going down too fast. Heather and Svetlana could get caught in the crossfire,” Tess said. “Let me think about what to do. Am I still heading toward them?”
“Yes. They’re pretty much stationary.”
Maybe they climbed that tree after all. Or maybe they’re hurt. Or maybe they’ve been captured.
The first scenario was the best, but it wasn’t very good. She crawled from beneath the branches and pushed herself up to a crouch.
Suddenly she got the feeling that she was being watched. The back of her neck prickled. A branch cracked.
“Tess?” JT said. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
His voice felt loud against her quivering eardrum. Besides, she needed to concentrate. She grimaced, put him on mute, and pulled the ear bud out of her ear.
There was a thud. It was barely audible. She triangulated. It was to her west. The feeling of being watched grew stronger. She remained where she was, alert for more sirens and/or gunfire. Heard neither.
One thing civilians didn’t realize about police work was how much of it consisted of hurrying up and waiting. It took everything in Tess not to dash forward with her gun blazing. But she was one person with one gun.
Pop pop pop! More gunfire. Behind her. She clenched her fists. You are here to serve and protect, she reminded herself. Stay cool. Don’t rush in until you know what you’re getting into.
Crab-walking forward, she was on the move, heading for the last location JT had indicated for Heather. She clenched her teeth as her thighs began to protest way too soon. There was nothing else to be done. She had to keep her head down and she had to hurry. She swore that she would take the stairs from now on every chance she could, and kept going.
Then she came to a clearing. Hovering on the perimeter, she wished she could ask JT for an update but the forest shifted and creaked around her as if it was busy, and full.
Go east? Forward?
There was another sound close behind her. Too close. Footfall? She held her breath and focused. Her heart roared in her eardrums and pounded against her ribcage, demanding to be let out.
This must be what Vincent feels before he beasts out, she thought. Or this times about a million.
She held that thought and exhaled slowly. Waited, waited, waited. If someone was coming up behind her and they were wearing night-vision goggles, they could see her. They could put her in their crosshatches.
What if I’m pregnant?
I am in the field. I am trying to save two innocent lives.
She licked her lips and tasted salt. She was still sweating. And thirsty. And her thighs were screaming.
She pushed on, keeping to the edge of the clearing, until finally she had to straighten up. Her quads seized and she leaned back slightly, stretching them out. The lack of activity told her that JT must have decided not to alert the one-two-five to her location. She had to assume she was alone in this.
She had heard no sounds for quite some time, and she was about to put her ear bud in and take JT off mute, when a shadow roared up right in front of her, startling her so badly she almost fell on her butt. She made out the silhouette of a man armed with an Uzi submachine gun. His back was to her. It was evident that he didn’t realize she was there because he put a cell phone to his ear and murmured a few words in Russian, then hung up. Cigarette smoke wafted like an aura around him as he inhaled, creating a scarlet glow for her to see by. He remained where he was, a sentry.
Waiting for me? she wondered.
She didn’t know if his phone was on or off. If on, whoever was on the other end might hear if she attacked him. If she shot him, they wouldn’t need a phone. They’d be able to hear it naturally. She didn’t have a knife. She wasn’t a Special Forces operative, she was a police captain. She knew martial arts, but he was so much bigger and he was armed. It was harder to knock someone out with the butt of a gun than it was portrayed on TV. It might take several attempts, and if his gun went off—
She was going to have to do something soon. Her luck couldn’t hold out forever. Sooner or later he was going to become aware of her.
His phone rang. That meant no one was currently on the line with him. The best news Tess had had all day. Except, of course, for the fact that Heather had still been alive.
What the hell.
She jabbed her gun into the back of his neck.
“Don’t move or I’ll blow your head off,” she said.
As she anticipated, he immediately dropped his right shoulder, attempting to slam into her with his left as he grabbed for her weapon. She threw herself backwards out of his reach—if he’d added in a jump kick, she might have been too close. The cigarette tumbled into the underbrush and a few dry leaves ignited. She could see him.
And here was the point where she had to shoot because he opened his mouth to yell. The report of the discharge was going to change everything but so was one dead bad guy. Except that he clipped her with a knife-hand thrust; not badly enough to prevent her from firing, simply delaying her—
—when suddenly something plummeted from above them and crashed into his head. He grunted. His knees buckled and he collapsed into a kneeling position, then fell forward on his face. Another projectile slammed against his skull. It was a large rock.
Tess looked up before she stamped out the fire. Two faces beamed down at her.
Heather and Svetlana.
“Tess!” Heather hissed. “Tess, thank God you came!”
“Ssh,” Tess said. “Quiet.”
She put out the fire. In the darkness, someone scrabbled down the tree and stood beside her. Svetlana.
“Glad,” she whispered. Then, “Heather hurt. Cannot climb down.”
Tess said, “Sit tight.” If Heather wouldn’t be able to keep up with them, then remaining in the tree until they could safely get her out might be their best choice.
Svetlana pushed the inert man over on his back. She crouched over him and shined a cell phone light on his face. His sandy brown hair was closely shaved to his skull.
“Ilya. You must shoot,” Svetlana said. “He wake up, he kill us. Never give up. Or I crush.” She picked up the rock and held it above her head with both hands, preparing to bring it down on the man’s face.
With a strangled cry, the man bolted upright. A split-second later, Heather dropped from the tree with the tiniest squeal and landed on top of him. Fists doubled, she battered his head and face with rapid punches while Svetlana hit him with the rock.
Svetlana clamped her hand over Heather’s mouth and said, “Good, good.” Heather was crying hysterically.
Together Svetlana and Tess eased Heather to her feet. Heather lurched to the right, favoring her right foot. Svetlana wrapped her arms around her and Heather sobbed against her chest.
“Shut up, shut up,” Svetlana cooed, patting her. “Is good.” She looked at Tess. “He is dead?”
Tess pushed the rock off his face. The moonlight concealed whatever damage Svetlana had done, which was probably for the best given Heather’s emotional condition. Tess felt for a pulse. There was none. Tess remembered her first kill in the line of duty—mandatory therapy, nightmares for months— and got to her feet.
“He’s still breathing.” It was a lie, and she let Svetlana know that with a quick squeeze of the other woman’s forearm.
“Oh, too bad,” Svetlana replied, and the odd note in her voice told Tess that she had gotten the message.
“He’s not going to be able to warn the others,” Tess said in an undervoice. “He’s out of the game. Does he have information on Anatoly?”
“Da, much,” Svetlana said. “He is nephew Anatoly.”
