Nick opened his mouth, then shut it as a car braked sharply in front of her house and a man emerged fast, coming at a run toward the front door. A second later, the bell rang.
Well, this was getting interesting.
It was Di Stefano, and judging by the look on his face, he was furious. At Nick.
Here to join the rapidly growing I Hate Nick Club.
Twenty-two
The one good thing about being angry—really, truly angry, as she never had been in her life—was that it settled her stomach and warmed her up.
Charity’s head was reeling at seeing Nick, alive and well, and here in her house.
The man before her was Nick, but not Nick. Her Nick was a reassuring sort of man, exuding a kind of bland calmness. This Nick was like a dangerous animal, a panther or a lion. Instead of elegant business clothes, he was dressed all in black from head to toe, like a ninja. Jeans, sweatshirt, light parka. Instead of shiny, elegant shoes, he had well-worn black boots on, the kind of footwear meant for serious business and not for show.
He held himself differently, too, with a coiled energy just waiting to spring. Instead of the affable half smile that was his default expression, he looked grim, mouth tight, jaws clenched.
It didn’t surprise her that this new Nick said he’d been in the army and was now a law enforcement officer. Then again, he could actually be a criminal—right now she was reserving judgment on anything he told her. One thing was for sure—he looked dangerous, every inch of him.
And, unfortunately, incredibly sexy.
This was not a good thing. She didn’t want to notice that at all. The doorbell rang a second before Nick yanked it open. There was a tall blond-haired man on her porch, as grimfaced as Nick.
“I knew it,” he began furiously. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Nick was unfazed by his anger. His shoulders stiffened and he stepped forward and got right into the man’s face. “We’ve had this conversation already and watch your mouth, you fuckhead, there’s a lady here.”
The man’s mouth closed with a snap as he looked past Nick’s broad shoulder and saw her. “Ma’am,” he said warily.
Charity nodded. She had no idea what to say.
He sighed and dug into his jeans pocket, coming out with a leather wallet he flipped open. There was a brass badge on the bottom and photo ID on the top. He held it out at chest height and walked into the room, stopping a foot from her.
Charity stepped forward and examined the brass badge. It had an intricate design with symbols she didn’t understand. Department of Homeland Security was etched along the bottom. The ID had a photograph of the man in front of her, obviously taken in happier times, since he was faintly smiling, totally unlike the grim expression he wore. Above the photograph was his name: Special Agent John Di Stefano.
She looked up at him. He wasn’t quite as tall as Nick, but he was still much taller than she was. “Special Agent Di Stefano,” she murmured.
There was sudden silence in the room, as if no one knew where to go from here. They all waited for someone to take the lead.
“Show her yours, Nick.”
Charity’s eyes widened and she almost said, I’ve already seen his, but she bit her lips before the words could tumble out, pure hysteria bubbling in her throat.
Nick took out the exact same kind of leather wallet, with the exact same kind of brass badge with the symbols and Department of Homeland Security written on it. The photo ID was the same, with a grim-looking photograph and Special Agent Nick Ireland above it. He snapped it shut and tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans.
With a hostile glance at Nick, Di Stefano cupped her elbow and started steering her toward the couch. She didn’t have the strength to resist.
He sat her down on the couch and took an armchair, shooting another hostile glare at Nick when he sat right next to her.
Di Stefano leaned forward in the classic male position, legs apart, hands dangling over knees. He stared straight into her eyes and said, “You haven’t seen me. I don’t exist. This meeting never happened. That has to be said and understood right up front, ma’am.” Another dirty look at Nick. “I’m sorry it’s come to this, though. You shouldn’t know about us at all.”
Nick placed his arm along the back of the couch, angling to hold her against him. She leaned forward, away from his grasp.
“Special Agent Di Stefano,” she said clearly, turning her head away from Nick. “I imagine you are referring to the fact that apparently you are both here on a confidential mission. I assure you that I have no intention whatsoever of divulging information that might be harmful to my country. However, if your mission here is to spy on Vassily Worontzoff, then I think you are wasting your resources and our country’s resources. The man is a great writer and nothing more.”
Nick threw some objects on the coffee table between her and Di Stefano, stopping Charity just as she was getting heated up in her defense of Vassily.
She looked at them. A box of medicine, what looked like a steel bolt, and a CD.
“What are these?”
Nick’s jaw muscles rippled. “My own little Worontzoff kit. Pick them up.” Charity just looked at him. He waved a long finger at the little pile. “Go ahead. Pick them up.”
She did so, gingerly, wondering if maybe they hid something. But no. They were perfectly normal objects. A box of medicine by a big international pharmaceutical company with a vial for IV administration inside, a bolt, and a CD with no markings. When she finished studying them, she put them back quietly and waited.
Nick picked the box up again and put it back in her hand. “This is a breakthrough drug, used in the treatment of some advanced cancers, especially effective in pediatric medicine. Look at the price.”
She turned it over and searched for the price on the bottom flap. Her eyes widened.
Nick nodded curtly. “That drug is worth eight hundred euros, more than one thousand dollars at the current exchange rate. It’s experimental, and expensive. Or would be, if it were genuine. What you’re holding is about ten cents’ worth of printed cardboard, glass for the vial, and tap water. Worontzoff’s business partners slipped these packages into shipments to hospitals. Not a bad business at all. One thousand dollars for ten cents’ worth of product. We’re talking a markup of nearly a million percent. Most profitable business on earth. Nothing else comes even close. In comparison, dealing in cocaine and heroin is for chumps. The only downside is that some poor kid dying of leukemia will get a shot of tap water in his veins instead of a drug that could save his life.”
Shocked, Charity turned to Di Stefano. He nodded. “Yeah. New spin on the drug trade.”
“And this?” Nick continued, handing the bolt to her. “A very expensive component of the latest generation of wide-bodied airliners, made of a titanium alloy and machined to within a tolerance of a few microns. They cost seven hundred and fifty dollars each because of the rigorous testing each bolt goes through. Except that this one is made of cheap nickel. It’ll start splitting at about the tenth takeoff. For a while there, until they figure out what’s going on, it’ll be raining planes.”
Charity dropped the bolt as if it had suddenly become red-hot.
“And this?” Nick held the CD up. “I saved this for last. On this CD are the access codes for about twenty percent of our nuclear arsenal. We intercepted it on its way from Worontzoff to the Iranian minister of defense and replaced it with fake codes. Cost—something in the range of ten million dollars. It will take the Iranians some time to figure out they’ve been ripped off, and when they do, it is my earnest hope that they will whack Worontzoff for us, so we won’t have to go to the expense of bringing him to trial.” He clenched his jaws so hard the skin over his temples moved. “And right now? Right now, good old Worontzoff, man of letters, is going to meet tonight with one of the world’s top terrorists and it is very likely that scumbag one will have something nuclear to sell to scumbag two.”
Charity swallowed.
Her throat had tightened so much it was hard to get the words out. “That’s his business meeting?” she whispered. “With a terrorist?”
“Not just a terrorist,” Di Stefano said. “The terrorist. A guy we’ve been after for years.”
“So you see, Charity,” Nick said heatedly, “there is no way on this earth that you can go to Worontzoff’s house tonight. As a matter of fact, we’re going to take you into protective custody as of right now, until this whole thing is over.” He slanted a hard glance at his partner. “That right, Di Stefano?”
“Yes. It wouldn’t be a good idea for you to be there, Miss Prewitt. Some bad things are going to happen and it’s best you be far away.”
“But—I still don’t understand what Vassily is doing here. In Parker’s Ridge. It’s certainly not a crime center. It’s not a center of anything. It’s a remote little town in northern Vermont. What could he possibly want here?”
“You,” Di Stefano said bluntly.
Charity jolted. “Me?”
Nick tossed something else on the table—a photograph of a woman. “Last item in my Worontzoff kit.”
Charity turned it around and gasped.
The photograph was a color close-up of a woman done by a professional photographer. At the bottom of the photograph were Cyrillic letters, perhaps the photographer’s name. The woman had dangling earrings and was made up in a way that was slightly old-fashioned. She had pale blond hair cut in a bob. Charity scanned the familiar features, heart pounding.
She made a little sound of shock. The woman could have been her twin.
“Yeah,” Nick said. “She’s a dead ringer for you.”
Charity couldn’t take her eyes off the portrait. She picked it up, drinking it in with her eyes. It was like looking at herself in the mirror, wearing a wig. She touched the hair in the photo. A pale blond, several shades lighter than her own.
“He—he wanted me to bleach my hair. Light blond. And cut it. In a bob. Like this.” She ran the tip of her finger along the line of the woman’s hair, cut at the earlobe.
Di Stefano winced. “He’s wanting to turn you into her in every way. To make you exactly like her. Physically at least. Wasn’t there some creepy Hitchcock film about something like that?”
“What was her name?” Charity whispered, without looking away from the portrait. So many things were becoming clear to her. The way Vassily sought her out. The way he looked at her, seeing her but not seeing her. He wasn’t seeing her at all. He was seeing his long-dead love.
“Katya.” Nick’s voice was harsh. “Her name was Katya Artamova. She was a poetess and the love of his life. She was arrested together with him. They were both sent to Kolyma. She lasted about a week.”
“Katya,” Charity murmured, touching the face that could have been her own. Poor Katya. Poor Vassily.
Vassily had not only lost his love in the prison camp. He’d lost his soul.
Charity turned to the table and touched the objects, one by one. She was cursed with a vivid imagination. It took very little to imagine a child dying of leukemia, desperately hoping that the tap water in his IV was going to save him. Or to imagine one of the planes going down. She’d read that the newest generation of planes could carry from four to seven hundred passengers. Thousands of dead, charred bodies. Or—God!—nuclear secrets in the hands of an Iranian minister who hated America.
She looked up. “How are you going to follow the meeting tonight?”
Di Stefano and Nick looked at each other. Finally, Nick gave a what-the-hell shrug. “We’ve got a special device aimed at his study window that lets us listen in on conversations.”
“Is it the same kind of device that let you listen in on my conversation with Vassily just now?” she asked sharply.
Nick looked embarrassed. “Ah, no. Those are just old-fashioned bugs I planted. What we have aimed at Worontzoff’s study window is a laser-driven remote listening device, controlled from a surveillance van about a mile out.”
Charity frowned. “Just the study? What happens if they talk business in the living room, or the conservatory or the winter garden? Vassily’s house is huge. If you’re just listening in on one window in one room, what are you going to do if they hold their talks elsewhere?”
Di Stefano heaved a huge sigh. “Good question. With no good answer. All we have is the one laser device, so we’re just going to have to hope that they meet in the study. And that they meet soon. Because of course there’s the problem that—” He stopped suddenly and looked uncomfortable.
“What?” Charity asked. “The problem what?”
Nick slanted Di Stefano a hard glance, a warning. Di Stefano bit his lip.
“What?” Charity asked, her voice sharp. “What problem?”
“Well, the thing is, we can’t use the laser much after last light. Just like we can’t use it in a heavy snowstorm. The laser beam becomes visible. It’s like a huge neon sign—we’re listening to you.”
“So what happens if they meet after dark? Vassily invited me over for dinner, presumably after the talks or negotiations or whatever are over. Or what happens if it starts snowing, just like the weather forecast says. What’s Plan B?”
Silence. Di Stefano looked embarrassed and Nick looked grim, jaw muscles jumping.
Finally, Di Stefano spoke. “There really isn’t a Plan B. We’ll try to get photographs of who goes in and out. Use thermal imaging to count warm bodies.” He shrugged. “We’ll do our best with what we have.”
“There’s another way,” she said softly. “To get more information.”
“Yeah?” Di Stefano raised his eyebrows. “Which is?”
“Wire me,” she said simply.
Nick exploded. “No!” He jumped up from the sofa and ran a hand through his hair. “Not just no, but fuck no. Are you crazy? Hassan al-Banna and Vassily Worontzoff in the same fucking room and you walk into it? Together with God knows how many of their goons? There’s no way in hell you’re going anywhere near that place.” He whirled. “Goddamn it, Di Stefano, you tell her.”
But Di Stefano was looking at her thoughtfully.
“It could work,” Charity said, ignoring Nick.
“It could,” Di Stefano replied.
“No! Jesus, you can’t send a civilian into that! There’s no precedent, no protocol. We can’t do that!”
Di Stefano swiveled his head to stare at Nick. “Seems to me that you’re the first one here to have thrown precedent and protocol out the window, Nick. We’re just picking up the pieces here.”
“Well, I don’t want to pick up her pieces,” Nick snarled. “Did enough of that in Bosnia. This is not an option, so you can just forget it.”
Charity stood, too. Nick had an unfair advantage with his height. It was bad enough while standing, with her on the sofa and him upright and quivering with indignation. It was positively lopsided with both of them standing, an angry Nick looming over her.
“I’m not too sure that is a decision for you to make, Nick,” she said softly. She was speaking to him, but looking at Di Stefano.
What they’d said about Vassily had sickened her. Was that where he had got all his money? Not from his books but from essentially killing kids and abetting terrorists?
Charity didn’t really think of herself as a brave woman. She didn’t go in for martial arts, she didn’t rock climb or go parachuting. She was a very staid librarian who thought a new Nora Roberts book was a real thrill.
By the same token, though, she had a strong sense of honor and of patriotism. It turned out that the man she admired so much, Vassily Worontzoff, was a dangerous man, a man to be stopped.
In some small portion of her heart, she understood well that it was Kolyma that had changed him. He wasn’t responsible for the horrors that had been inflicted on him, that had cost him his health, his love, and, in a real sense, his sanity. But he was responsible for what he became.
She recognized that she was faced with another one of those moments where you show what you are
made of. And she was made of steel. Life had handed her the possibility of stopping something horrendous and she wasn’t going to walk away.
“Do you have the necessary equipment?” she asked Di Stefano softly.
“Yeah, I’ve got a body wire in the car and a button camera. All you’d have to do is just spend some time there. We’d need everyone’s voice on tape and clear visuals of everyone’s face, which we won’t get with long-range cameras. This would be invaluable, Ms., ah Mrs.—”
Di Stefano stopped, not knowing what to call her. Fair enough, she didn’t know what to call herself, either.
“Charity will do.”
You could actually hear Nick’s teeth grinding.
“This is not going to happen!” Nick’s voice rose to a shout. “Goddamn it, this is insane! Have you forgotten who we’re dealing with? These aren’t white-collar criminals; they’re some of the most deadly men on the planet.”
“And yet, by your own reckoning, Nick, one of them loves me. Vassily won’t hurt me. I know that,” she said.
“You can’t know anything of the sort, goddamn it!” His breath huffed out like that of an enraged bull. “Shit, am I the only one with any sense in this room? Di Stefano, you didn’t do service in Bosnia, but I did. I know what these people can do, especially to women.”
“But he loves her. And no one is going to suspect Charity of anything. She’s there because he invited her. She’s going to go in, get a few visuals, then pretend to have a headache. In and out, in half an hour. What can happen in half an hour? And we might just catch a big break.”
“It doesn’t take half an hour to die,” Nick grated. “It takes a second. She’s not doing this, and that’s final. I’m team leader and that’s my order.”
The Dangerous Boxed Set Page 26