by CW Browning
Alina exhaled loudly and got up impatiently.
“We’ve gone over this frontwards and backwards,” she said, turning to go over to the window. “There’s nothing more to say.”
“I know you think I’m being naive and dramatic,” Stephanie said after a moment, watching as Alina looked out the window and up into the sky.
“I don’t think that at all,” Alina said absently, scanning the tree tops.
“What are you doing?” Stephanie asked, distracted.
“Looking for Raven.”
Stephanie gasped and looked around for the cat.
“Oh my God, I forgot about the hawk,” she exclaimed. “Where’s Anabelle? I’ll put her outside the door.”
“She went under the bed.” Alina turned away from the window. “I’ll get her out of the room when we’re done. I don’t see him out there, so I think we’re safe for right now.”
“Angela will kill me if anything happens to that cat, and I wouldn’t blame her.” Stephanie shifted on the bed. “You don’t think I’m being dramatic?” she asked after a moment. “I mean, about Colonel Shore, not the cat. Obviously.”
“No, I don’t think you’re being dramatic. You’re worried. I understand.”
“I’m flat out terrified. Blake was telling me some of the stories about Harry. The man’s a legend, Lina, and for good reason! He’s brilliant, and he never fails.”
Alina’s lips thinned unpleasantly. “Neither do I.”
“But that’s just it! You’ve never gone up against your instructor! He’s dangerous. And yes, I know that everyone you face is dangerous, but this is the man who gets paid to know more than you. He taught you everything you know. You don’t think he kept some things back for himself?”
“I’m sure he did,” Alina said, turning to move restlessly across the room. “But I know I’ve picked up a lot since then, and he hasn’t been active in the field for years. I have. That gives me an advantage.”
Stephanie snorted.
“Don’t let that cane of his fool you,” she said. “Blake said he’s just as deadly now as he was twenty years ago.”
“Oh, the cane’s just for show,” Alina agreed. “I know for a fact that Harry still runs every morning and goes to the weight room three times a week.”
“See? I rest my case.”
“What case? You haven’t presented one yet. So far all you’ve said is that Harry is dangerous, which I know better than most.”
“Alina, remember that time we went to the Poconos for the weekend and I didn’t want to go out on the lake in that sketchy boat?” Stephanie asked. “Remember how I had a bad feeling all night and in the morning I begged you not to go?”
Alina paused and looked at her, memories rushing back from the distant past. She nodded slowly.
“Yes.”
“You gave in and we went to the pool instead. Do you remember what happened to the boat?”
Alina stood very still, staring at Stephanie. When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet and her shoulders were tight.
“The engine caught fire in the middle of the lake. Two of the passengers were killed.”
“Well, I feel the same exact way now when I think of you going after the colonel,” Stephanie told her earnestly. “Don’t go. It’s suicide. Let someone else handle it.”
Alina was quiet for a moment, a chill going through her despite the warmth in the bedroom. Raising her eyes, she looked into her old friend’s face and slowly shook her head.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” Stephanie demanded, her eyes searching Alina’s. “Help me understand. Why does it have to be you?”
Alina sighed and went over to sit next to her again.
“I have to do this, Steph,” she said slowly, carefully. She turned to face her, meeting her gaze squarely. “I know it’s hard, but try to understand. I don’t live in the same world you do. My world is...very different. It has to be. I have to see and do things that you can’t possibly imagine, and I do it so that you can live your life in relative freedom and peace. I went into this life with my eyes wide open, holding absolutely no illusions about how it would end. There are no happy endings for people like me and Damon; we don’t get that luxury. There’ll be no big funeral or parade when we go. No one will even know we’re gone. As far as the world knows, as far as the majority of our government knows, we don’t exist. So, you see, I never expected to live to a grand old age, watching my grandchildren play in the yard.”
“So just because you don’t think you’ll survive, it’s okay to take a suicide mission and speed it up?” Stephanie asked. “Lina, don’t be an idiot.”
“I’m not being an idiot, I’m being practical and trying to explain. If it’s my time to go, I can’t think of a better way to do it than while killing the man who killed my brother and John.”
Stephanie stared at her, understanding breaking across her face.
“This is vengeance,” she breathed. “You’re talking about payback.”
“And making amends.” Alina got up again and took another restless turn around the room. “I brought all this back here and dragged you, Angie and John into my mess. John’s dead now, and Angela is being held as bait to get to me. Your brain is scrambled egg right now, and you can’t walk without a stick because a bullet that was meant for me hit you instead. I brought this down on all of you.”
Alina stopped pacing in front of Stephanie and looked down at her.
“Let me make this right. I have to make this right: for John, for Angela, and for you. This is the only way.”
Stephanie’s eyes filled with tears.
“Even if it means we never see you again?” she whispered.
Alina’s eyes slid away from hers. “Yes.”
Silence fell in the bedroom and Alina turned to pace back to the window. She knew Stephanie didn’t fully understand, but she couldn’t explain it any other way. This had to end now, or none of them would ever be safe again. And Dave and John would never be avenged.
Alina’s lips tightened and her spine stiffened. If Stephanie’s sudden tears had made her question for a second if this was really necessary, the thought of Dave and John both being murdered in cold blood reinforced her resolve. The bastard was going to pay for both of them.
“Damon will be with you?” Stephanie asked from the bed, breaking the silence.
“Yes.” Alina turned away from the window. “We make a good team, funnily enough. He’ll watch my back.”
Stephanie sniffled and nodded.
“Well, tell him if he lets you die, he’ll have me to deal with.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hawk stared at her, his chiseled jaw clenched and lips pressed together in a grim line.
“Absolutely not!” he exclaimed. “Are you out of your mind?”
Viper stared back at him steadily.
“It’s the only way.”
“It’s suicide, and you know it!” He punctuated his statement by pointing at her, then turning to stride impatiently to the far end of the command center. “It’s completely insane.”
Alina watched him as he ran a hand through his hair before turning to face her again. He was still for a long moment, then he strode back towards her.
“I’m not opposed to taking risks,” he said, his voice calmer but still hard, “but this is taking it too far. There are too many variables we can’t control and too much that can go wrong. Hell, if our timing is off by even a second...”
His voice trailed off and he spun around to take another restless turn around the narrow room.
“I don’t see another way,” she said quietly. “I’ve had to adjust for the Sea Queen. The yacht complicates things. This is the only way I can guarantee that Harry doesn’t get away.”
Hawk shot her a look carved in stone. “But at what cost?”
She shrugged and turned her gaze back to the plasma screens on the wall, focusing on the one with a blueprint of the Sea Queen.
“Since wh
en do we think of the cost?”
“Since we decided to try to make this work,” he retorted, striding back. He grabbed her shoulders and turned her to face him, staring down into her face. “There’s no way this ends with both of us walking away. You know that.”
Alina looked into his blue eyes and, for the first time ever, saw fear lurking in their depths.
“Possibly not, but at least our job will be done,” she said softly.
“Will it? Is this our job? Did Charlie actually make this an official op? Because last time I checked, our own personal vendettas weren’t part of the mission statement.”
“Yes, it’s an official non-official op. I wouldn’t be dragging so many people into it if it wasn’t, especially Michael.” Alina lifted her hands and rested them on his chest. “If you can think of another way, I’m all ears. This is the only fool-proof plan I can think of that will get me to Harry and get Angela back alive.”
Damon tilted his head back and exhaled, dropping his hands from her shoulders. He turned to stare at the plasmas on the wall and crossed his arms, leaning back against the counter that stretched the length of the room. He was quiet for a long while, and she reached for her bottle of water. Her neck was throbbing painfully and her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten anything since early this morning. Taking a long drink, she glanced at Hawk’s profile, noting the set of his jaw. For the first time, she had a tremor of doubt. If he wouldn’t get behind this and work with her, the plan was dead in the water. Harry would get away with everything, and Angela’s chances slipped down to nothing. She needed Hawk.
“Do we even have confirmation that she’s onboard?”
His voice jolted her out of her thoughts and she set the water down, turning to type on a keyboard.
“This is the truck from the camera footage behind Angie’s house,” she said, pulling up the surveillance footage.
Damon turned and looked at the monitor. “Ok.”
“This is the entrance to a marina in Georgia at four-thirty this morning.”
The image changed to footage of the same pickup truck pulling through the marina gates. Alina zoomed in on the cab, blowing the picture up until they could clearly see the profile of the driver.
“Is that him?” Damon asked, glancing at her.
She nodded. “That’s the man from Rittenhouse.”
He rubbed the back of neck, turning his eyes back to the image.
“I don’t see another passenger.”
“If I was transporting a kidnapped woman, I’d make sure she was drugged and out like a light. If she was lying in the backseat, we wouldn’t see her.”
Damon turned his head to the map on one of the plasmas on the wall.
“And this is in Georgia?”
“Yes. St. Simons Island. He entered, but hasn’t left yet.”
Hawk glanced at her.
“If he has a boat there, he won’t leave in the truck,” he said unnecessarily.
“Exactly.”
“This doesn’t prove Angela’s on the Sea Queen. It just indicates that she was taken to a boat.”
Alina smiled coldly. “Which is precisely why Charlie is pulling satellite footage.”
He stared at her for a beat, then shook his head, a reluctant grin crossing his face.
“Of course he is.”
“I contacted him this morning. Of course, that was before he contacted me.”
Damon looked at her sharply. “What?”
“I have to go to DC.”
His lips tightened briefly and his eyes probed hers. “Why?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t say. He said he had something that I needed to see.”
“I don’t like it,” Damon said, shaking his head. “Why call you down there? I thought you said you wouldn’t see him now until it was over.”
“I didn’t think I would. Trust me. I don’t like it any more than you do.”
He was silent for a long moment, then turned to her.
“Be on your guard down there,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t like this at all. When will you be back?”
Her eyes met his. “That depends entirely on what he has for me.”
Damon nodded. “When are you leaving?”
“Around six.”
He glanced at his watch.
“That doesn’t give us much time,” he said, turning back to the plasmas on the wall. “Tell me what arrangements I can take care of here while you’re gone. If Angela is on that yacht, we’re running out of time.”
Alina sighed silently in relief, aware of a load of tension leaving her shoulders.
Hawk was in.
Alina looked up when a plate containing a ham and cheese sandwich on whole grain sprouted bread was set next to her laptop. She looked at Damon in surprise.
“What’s this?”
“You haven’t eaten since this morning,” he replied, sitting next to her at the bar with his own sandwich. “You need to eat, and I know you won’t stop on your way to DC.”
She stretched and glanced into the dining room. Michael was intently studying his computer screen, earbuds in, oblivious to everything around him. Stephanie was still upstairs, and Blake had disappeared as well.
“It’s too risky to stop for food,” she murmured, reaching for the sandwich. “You know that.”
“That’s why I made you a sandwich.”
Alina took a bite and turned her eyes back to the laptop.
“Anything new on your side?” she asked after swallowing.
“I’m still waiting to hear from my girl in Guerrero. I should hear tonight if she could dig anything up.”
Alina glanced at him. “Do you think she’ll find something?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll tell you this: if there’s something to find, she’ll sniff it out.”
She nodded and took another bite of her sandwich, dismissing the unknown contact from her mind.
“How’s it going with the camera footage from Angela’s house?” he asked after a moment of silence.
“I just got in. I’m pulling up the footage from Stephanie’s now.”
He leaned over to look at her screen as she opened the footage from the wireless camera they’d left in Stephanie’s apartment a few nights before. The camera position gave them a clear view of the living room, dining room and front and back doors.
Alina clicked a button and began forwarding through the footage, moving that screen to the side and pulling up the camera from Angela’s house. They watched as the footage from Angela’s began with a view of the living room partially obscured by what looked like a hand.
“I guess he didn’t bother to set the camera remotely,” Damon murmured.
“It probably never occurred to him that it would be found,” she said, watching as the hand shifted and the whole first floor came into focus. “Sloppy, but not really surprising.”
They watched as the camera shifted slightly, then stilled. A few seconds later, a tall man came into view. He looked straight at the camera and Alina paused the footage, freezing the full image of his face.
“Hawk, meet the third player from Rittenhouse.”
Damon studied the face for a moment. “Send that photo to me,” he said after a moment. “I’ll run it and find out who he is.”
She nodded and her fingers moved over the keys rapidly.
“See if you can get a hit before I meet Charlie,” she said, glancing at him. “If he’s one of us, I want to know before I walk into that meeting.”
He nodded. “Agreed.”
Alina turned her attention back to the camera from Stephanie’s apartment and reached for her sandwich while she watched the hours roll by without movement. She was halfway through her ham and cheese when the back door slid open and a shadow fell across the wall in the dining room. Reaching out, she clicked play and the footage slowed down to real-time.
“Here we go.”
She and Damon watched as a lone, ta
ll figure moved into the dining room. He slid the door closed and paused, looking around slowly before moving through the dining room. He passed the table and turned to go down the hall towards the bedrooms, moving out of camera view.
“He’s going for the safe,” Damon said.
Alina nodded, finishing her sandwich while they waited for the intruder to come back into the living room.
“He’s probably the one who hit Steph over the head,” she said after a moment. “He didn’t even look twice at all the papers on the table. He already knows what he’s looking for isn’t there.”
Damon nodded, then glanced over his shoulder at the hallway leading to the front of the house.
“Here she comes,” he said in a low voice. “Do you want her to see this?”
Alina shrugged. “It makes no difference.”
Stephanie came down the hall slowly, leaning on her cane, as Alina and Damon continued to watch the footage.
“What are you watching?” she asked, hobbling up behind them. “Anything good?”
“Not especially, no,” Alina said, glancing over her shoulder. “How do you feel?”
“About the same as when I laid down,” she replied with a shrug. “At lease my headache is starting to ease up.”
She looked over Alina’s shoulder and let out a gasp. “That’s my living room!”
Alina nodded. “Yes. When we went to get Buddy the other night, I put a wireless camera in your apartment as a precaution.”
Stephanie gaped at her. “A precaution against what?!”
“Not against, in case of,” Alina said. “In case someone came back.”
“And did they?”
“Yes.” Damon finished his sandwich and looked at Stephanie. “When I went to get your meds, your place was trashed.”
“What?!” Stephanie looked from one to the other. “And you didn’t tell me?!”
Alina looked at her and shrugged. “I haven’t exactly had time.”
Stephanie huffed and leaned her cane, watching the footage.
“Well, it looks fine there,” she pointed out.
“That’s because the intruder is in your bedroom right now.”
Stephanie let out another gasp. “You mean you saw someone go in?”