Death Echo

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Foolish.”

  “Same difference.”

  “Not always.” He lifted their joined hands and sucked one of her fingertips into his mouth. “I’ve decided I’ll take foolish over lies. Rather than lie, I’ll be blunt. I want you, which under some circumstances could be really, really stupid.”

  Her eyes met his. “What if I want you, too?”

  Mac felt his pulse increase. “Then we’re only foolish.”

  “Foolish,” she said neutrally.

  “Isn’t that supposed to be what happens when you combine business and pleasure? Foolish?” he asked.

  “Under some circumstances, yes,” she said. “Now, what would be stupid is trying to get naked while stuffed behind this dining table. Makes the front seat of a sports car look like a limousine.”

  Mac’s slow grin transformed his face. “I like a woman who doesn’t lie.”

  “Prove it.”

  He slid out of the banquette, pulling her after him. “Your condoms or mine?”

  “Yours. I had to guess at size.”

  He gave a crack of laughter and headed for the master stateroom with long strides. “Not going to touch that.”

  “No problem. I’ll take care of it for you,” she said slyly as they went into the stateroom.

  With a swift movement he lifted her and stretched her out on top of the bed. Then he looked at her.

  Just looked.

  “Mac?” she asked uncertainly.

  “I’m trying to decide where to start.”

  “That’s easy. Take off your clothes.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about my clothes,” he said.

  “I was.” Her hands worked at his jeans.

  His fingers returned the favor on hers.

  Despite side trips for kissing and laughing and tasting, they managed to get naked and locked together from tongues to tangled legs.

  “You taste good,” she said, when her mouth was free.

  His tongue circled the tip of her breast, making her breath break. “Same for you. Really good.”

  “Yes,” she gasped.

  “Yes, what?”

  She wrapped her hand around his erection. “Yes, this.”

  She rubbed the drop of moisture around his hard tip, making him lose track of their game of words. Her hand slipped down, then up, then down, until all he wanted was to be inside her, feeling all of her closing around him at once.

  “Good thing we’re using your condoms,” she said huskily.

  “What?” he managed.

  “I was always told the bigger the man, the smaller the package. I was told wrong. If I’d stuffed you into the kind of condom I bought, you’d have been singing falsetto.”

  Laughing, groaning, Mac made a blind grab for his condoms in the bedside drawer. She straddled him and leaned down, giving him a full-body kiss, dragging her nipples through his chest hair. Then she replaced her hand with the wet ache between her legs. Slowly, she slid up, then down him, enjoying every bit of what she could reach.

  “You’re not—helping,” he said, breathing hard, working the condom box open one-handed.

  “Am I doing—something wrong?” she said, her voice as breathless as his.

  “No. That what’s wrong. Unless you want me going commando inside you in about three seconds, help me with this damn thing.”

  After one long, slow, reluctant glide, she shifted to take the condom package from him, opened it, and rolled it down him. Then her fingertip traced him from tip to root.

  “Glad this thing fits one of us,” she said.

  His eyelids went to half mast. “We’ll fit.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yeah.” He flipped both of them over and pushed slowly into her. “See?”

  Her breathing unraveled. “I love a man of his word.”

  He smiled, kissed her, tasted her, felt her tasting him. Their hands learned the feel of muscle and softness, cool hair and hot skin. He looked at her eyes, stormy green, and she laughed, biting his shoulder, sucking on him.

  Then it was too late for words or for anything but the steamy slide of flesh over flesh, the rushing climb and dizzying fall into satisfaction.

  When they recovered, they began all over again, slower, learning about themselves and one another and the kind of pleasure that created a whole world from two interlocked bodies.

  51

  DAY FOUR

  ROSARIO

  9:15 P.M.

  Stan Amanar hung up the phone and concentrated on breathing past the rage and fear in his throat. When he no longer felt like he was at the dark end of a long downward spiral, he punched in his favorite cousin’s phone number.

  “What’s cooking?” Bob Lovich asked when he picked up the phone.

  “Our asses.”

  Lovich yawned into the phone. “Look, we’ve been pulling too many back-to-back shifts for games.”

  “This isn’t a game. Is Janet home?” Amanar asked. “And the kids?”

  “Yeah. What’s up with you?”

  Amanar let out a long breath. “Good. Good. Throw some clothes in an overnight bag and meet me at the public dock. A seaplane will pick us up in half an hour.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “No, and you better not be.”

  “Stan? What’s wrong? Is Susie okay? The kids?”

  “They’re fine. And they’ll stay that way as long as we meet that plane in thirty minutes.”

  “You’re not making sense,” Lovich said.

  “Shurik Temuri, you remember him?”

  “Hell, yes. I was never so glad to see the back of a dude as when he left for—”

  “Shut up and listen,” Amanar shouted. “Listen good. The lives of our families depend on it!”

  “What the—”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  Lovich took a harsh breath.

  And shut up.

  “I got a call,” Amanar said. “Don’t know who. He had an accent like Temuri’s. Told me the names of my wife, kids, your wife, your kids, our addresses, our individual schedules, where the kids get on the school bus, our license plates, every damn thing but what kind of toilet paper we use.”

  Lovich made a rough sound.

  “Then,” Amanar said, “he said that you and me had to be on that seaplane or he’d kill the kids in front of us, after he raped everyone.”

  “Did…” Lovich’s voice dried up. He swallowed several times and tried again. “You believe him?”

  “What choice is there? You think either of us can stand against weight like Temuri?”

  “Shit,” Lovich said. Then he repeated it like a litany.

  “I’ll pick you up in five.”

  “Shit,” Lovich said.

  Amanar punched out and started packing.

  52

  DAY FIVE

  DISCOVERY HARBOR

  8:58 A.M.

  Mac and Emma rolled separate carts down the marina ramp and over sprawling dock fingers until they reached Blackbird. When the wind had begun to ease shortly after eight this morning, they had divided chores and gone different ways. She had picked up some quick supplies while he went to the chandlery on some mysterious captain’s errand.

  Emma waited until she was certain they were alone before she asked, “Your cart looks like a fishing line factory threw up.”

  Mac looked at the pale green, unruly mound of plastic netting that was trying to crawl out of his dock cart. “Close.”

  “Anyone we know get hurt?” she asked drily.

  “So far so good.”

  “Mac, what the hell is in your cart?”

  “Plan B,” he said. “Or maybe I just missed my yowie suit.”

  “Your what?”

  “You probably know it as a ghillie suit,” Mac said.

  Emma wondered what a sniper’s camouflage outfit had to do with the mess in Mac’s cart.

  “Partner,” she said, “you should know that I make chowder out of clams.”

  “Mmmm, clam chowder” was
all he said.

  She ignored him and concentrated on loading supplies aboard Blackbird. She kept on pretending he didn’t exist until he reappeared in the cabin after stowing the explosion of net in one of the yacht’s many lockers. He took a last bite of something that smelled like a septic tank, then stuffed greasy fast food wrappers into the trash.

  Buzzers told Emma that he was getting ready to fire up the big diesels. One engine turned over and began to purr. The second followed. The muscular throb of power vibrated through her in a wave of sensation she could get addicted to.

  “Want anything more to eat than whatever it was you stuffed in here?” she asked, opening the trash drawer.

  “You.”

  “You had me last night, and then some. Dawn was…a whole new experience.”

  “Same here. A woman like you gives a man a real appetite.”

  “For grease?” she asked, dangling a food wrapper between two fingers.

  “For more. And then more.”

  Emma dropped the greasy paper and looked into Mac’s dark eyes. She knew that honesty was dangerous.

  She pulled the trigger anyway. “You’re the only civilian I’ve ever been in bed with who knew what I was and what I was doing,” she said. “No lies, no games. Truly naked. Incredible.”

  “Like sex without a party hat.”

  She laughed briefly, almost sadly. “Never done that.”

  “Neither have I.”

  Silence stretched, a sensual tension that was as tempting as it was hazardous. They didn’t have time for what both of them wanted to try.

  Dangerous sex.

  She forced herself to turn away and check the engine temperatures. “Getting warm down there.”

  Mac blinked. “You didn’t just say that.”

  “Say what?” she asked absently, wondering why one engine warmed up a bit more quickly than the other.

  He tried to come up with an answer that wouldn’t involve getting naked. A cell phone rang, saving him from having to think.

  “Mine,” she said, patting the pockets of her cargo pants.

  “Yours,” he agreed huskily.

  “Good morning, St. Kilda,” she said into the phone.

  “What’s happening?” Faroe demanded.

  “The wind is down to fourteen knots and supposed to continue dropping to five. Or ten, depending on your weather guesser.”

  “Anything new?”

  Emma doubted that Faroe wanted a roundup of who did what and with which and to whom last night. Much less how many times.

  “We’re leaving Discovery Harbor,” she said. “Other than that, nothing new.”

  Faroe cursed. “Wish they’d pull their finger out and get on with it. Our clock isn’t getting any longer.”

  “We’re aware of that.”

  And she wished she wasn’t. Wished she was Jill Normal getting up with Jack Normal for some Normal daily life.

  No such luck. “We found out through back channels that Temuri crossed into Canada at Blaine, Washington,” Faroe said. “They lost him. Haven’t found him yet.”

  “That you know of,” Emma said crisply.

  “I hear you five by five, but Alara is the only card in our hole right now.”

  “Now that’s a visual.”

  Faroe ignored her. “Our system didn’t detect any calls to you or Mac last night,” he said.

  “Correct.”

  “Chatty, aren’t you,” Faroe muttered. “Anyone there but Mac?”

  “No.”

  “Demidov’s account number went back to accounts used by the KGB.”

  “Which no longer exists,” Emma pointed out.

  “Same people, same accounts, new organization name. Information and extortion are very profitable. Ask the former KGB/present oligarchs who do it for a high-flying living in Russia.”

  “Shocked here. Just shocked.”

  Faroe laughed, a sound as weary as she was beginning to feel. The clock in her mind never stopped running, even when she lay tangled up with Mac. A look at Mac’s face told her that his clock was counting down along with hers.

  They understood each other too well for such a short time together.

  We’re in trouble, Mac.

  Wonder if we’ll live long enough to enjoy it.

  “Lovich and Amanar didn’t turn up for work at Blue Water Marine today,” Faroe continued. “As they’re usually unlocking the door bright and early, at six-thirty or no later than seven, Grace called the Blue Water office at official opening time. She was told a ‘family emergency’ would be keeping them busy for ‘an unknown amount of time.’”

  “If those boys are smart, they’re headed for Ecuador,” Emma said.

  “We’re checking outgoing passports. Rather, Alara is. She can do it faster than St. Kilda.”

  “At last, something she’s good for.”

  Faroe grunted. “St. Kilda will be picking the wheat out of her chaff for a long time. It will work out to our benefit.”

  “If you’re lucky.”

  “Make us lucky.”

  The line went dead.

  “Well, he’s in a sweet mood,” Emma said, putting the phone back in her pocket.

  “Waiting is the hardest part of the game,” Mac said. “It’s the first thing a sniper learns and the last thing he forgets. First to flinch eats the first bullet.”

  “You talk sweeter in bed.”

  “That’s because you taste…” Mac’s voice faded as he listened. Somewhere close by, a seaplane droned toward landing. The sound grew closer, changed direction, went away, then started getting louder and louder.

  A shadow flashed over Blackbird.

  Mac and Emma grabbed for the binoculars at the same time. He was closer. He went outside and stood deep in the shadows thrown by the cabin in the morning sun. Swiftly he put the glasses to his eyes and focused.

  “Single-engine DeHavilland Beaver,” he said over the waning engine noise. “It’s flying out over the forest, turning…damn, that’s not a downwind leg setting up for landing. They’re coming back over the harbor for a better look.”

  “Get under cover!”

  “No need,” he said. But he stepped back into the cabin without losing the plane in the binoculars. “Anyone who cares enough to kill me would know that Faroe could be up here, running Blackbird, before the last echoes of gunfire died.”

  “Sweet-talking man,” she said through her teeth.

  Mac smiled beneath the binoculars, watching the plane grow bigger and bigger.

  A quarter mile away and closing fast, the aircraft leveled off at about one hundred feet above the forest. Even without binoculars, Emma could see a man in the co-pilot’s seat. His face was turned toward them, but his eyes were concealed behind what looked like a camera with a telephoto lens.

  Mac tracked the plane like the trained sniper he was. He read off a single letter followed by the five-digit registration number he could see on the tail of the plane.

  Emma scribbled down the identification code and read it back to him.

  The plane wagged its wings at them.

  Hello, good-bye, screw you.

  Without removing the binoculars, Mac flipped off the aircraft.

  “Friends of yours?” Emma asked.

  “More like yours.”

  “Agency?”

  “I’d take money on it.”

  She grimaced. “I wonder why they waited until now? They must have known about us before we did.”

  “Good question,” Mac said.

  “Maybe. And maybe we’re wrong in our assumptions, they just discovered us, and are here to help.”

  “That would make life easier, which means it ain’t gonna happen.”

  Emma hoped Mac was wrong, but didn’t think he was. She flipped open her phone, hit Faroe’s speed-dial number, and began talking, knowing that every call was automatically recorded. She started with the plane’s tail numbers.

  “Type of plane?” Grace asked when Emma was finished.

  �
�Single engine, dry-and water-landing gear, DeHavilland Beaver. Don’t know the age. White plane, with a blue-green wavy stripe on a diagonal over the fuselage. They made two passes and wagged their wings at us. Mac flipped them off.”

  “One hand or two?” Grace asked absently.

  “One. The other was busy holding binoculars.”

  “Your man is reminding me more and more of Joe. Stand by.”

  “Standing by,” Emma said. Then, to herself, My man?

  It was a heady thought.

  Grace wasn’t gone long. There weren’t nearly as many aircraft registrations as there were for land vehicles.

  “As my husband would say, oh shit, oh, dear,” Grace muttered. “You sure about that tail number?”

  “Repeat, please,” Emma said, switching the phone to its external speaker.

  “Was the tail number real or a guesstimate?” Grace said.

  “Real,” Mac said. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing good,” Grace said. “The registration comes back to a company called Greentree Aviation at Boeing Field in Seattle.”

  Emma looked at Mac, wondering if he understood. The look on his face told her that he did.

  “Back when I was in special ops,” he said, “I rode Greentree aircraft a time or two. Those pilots have balls.”

  “The CIA has never been short on huevos,” Grace said, using the slang of her childhood.

  “They’re certainly hanging them out for God and man to see,” Emma said. “That’s unusual.”

  “Inevitable,” Mac said. “From the moment Demidov showed up.”

  “Yeah,” Emma agreed, disgusted. She’d really been hoping to be left alone to answer questions for St. Kilda and the razor-tongued Alara. “Well, at least we know who three of the locator bugs you found belong to.”

  “St. Kilda put two on Blackbird,” Grace reminded her. “Redundancy in the face of fragile technology.”

  “Then I’m betting the CIA did, too,” Emma said.

  “That takes care of the five we found,” Mac said. “Two St. Kilda, two CIA, one Russian.”

  “I’ll call the instant I have anything more,” Grace said.

  “Wait,” Emma said, “is Canada in on the game?”

  “All our information says no,” Grace said. “What are you going to do?”

  “Head north,” Emma and Mac said together.

  “Like fucking lemmings,” Mac said under his breath.