by Cindy Dees
Just as Isabella had when she’d left home and joined the Air Force. She’d applied for and received an ROTC scholarship to finance her education at an expensive private college. The oldest of four girls, she’d felt guilty about hogging the family budget for higher education. However, she shouldn’t have worried. Only her youngest sister attended college, and she’d dropped out as soon as she married the law student who would support her in fine style for the rest of her life.
Leaving home had forced Isabella to choose her identity. And she’d chosen to be neither Mexican nor Iranian, but to be American.
She was the black sheep of the family because of it. Her relatives simply couldn’t understand what she gained by being in the military. Her father’s family bought into the traditional Mexican-Catholic role for women—staying at home and having kids ad nauseum. Her mother’s Iranian relatives didn’t have a problem with her having a profession like photo intelligence analyst, but they could not wrap their brains around her being a military officer able to give men orders.
She hadn’t told any of them about her assignment to the Medusas. How could she explain her need to escape their restrictive expectations, to be different from her veiled aunts and cousins, her compulsion to push herself to the very limit? She would’ve suffocated in the safe, cloying confines of the traditional lifestyles her family offered. If other women chose that for themselves, fine. But it would’ve killed her.
She’d been driven to succeed at her chosen career, to endure pain and misery beyond comprehension in the first days of the Medusas’ training when Jack Scatalone had been determined to break them. And truth be told, he’d come damned close to breaking her. The only reason he hadn’t was because failure, for her, was unthinkable. She would never go back to the world of her youth.
She wasn’t a gifted athlete. She’d gone to an all girls’ school where anemic, intramural volleyball was as physical as anyone got. Regular old basic training in the Air Force had been a challenge. But she’d worked on her physical fitness. And when Vanessa Blake had offered Isabella a chance to join the first all-female Special Forces team, she’d worked her butt off to get fit, even before their training began.
She’d made it through on sheer guts and the generosity of her stronger, fitter teammates who’d helped her. A lot. She was still working hard to improve her strength and stamina, but her sense of inferiority was hard to shake. Maybe tomorrow when she got off shift she’d head over to that incredible gym and work out.
Sometimes there was no use in overthinking a problem. Sometimes you just had to go with your gut. She might not have any business being a Medusa, but she belonged in this room at this moment, guarding this girl who was so much like her.
Harlan Holt lay in bed, tossing and turning. His wife, Emma, had crashed hours ago. With the Winter Olympics and the first-ever international competition on the super ice he’d developed only days away, he wasn’t so lucky.
He vegged out in front of the murmur of late night talk shows and maybe that was why he didn’t hear the four black shapes until they burst through the window. They ran at the bed so fast he barely had time to be shocked, let alone react, before the men were on him.
He yelled, but too late. Two of the men jumped on Emma, slapping a cloth bag over her head as the other two shoved pistols in his face. This couldn’t be happening to them! They lived in a modest little bungalow on a sleepy street in a quiet college town. They didn’t own anything worth stealing!
Emma kicked and screamed, but the two men who held her by the arms were strong. She couldn’t break free. He tried to lunge for her, but hands grabbed him roughly around the neck, choking him viciously. He was thrown on the mattress where he bounced to a stop. He curled up in a ball and covered his head as one of his assailants raised a pistol high in the air as if to smash it down on his skull. The second masked man stopped the arm holding the gun.
This was a nightmare. The sleeping pill he’d swallowed dry a little while ago was making him hallucinate. Emma struggled again and one of the men slugged her through the bag. That was a very real, if muffled, scream. Impotent fury surged in his veins—except he didn’t have the faintest idea what to do! He was a scholar. A scientist. He’d never hit anything in his entire life, not even a baseball.
“Leave her alone!” he shouted.
A gloved hand slapped him hard across the face, bloodying the inside of his cheek against his teeth. Pain exploded inside his mouth, and with it, fear. Desperate, he surged toward Emma as her attackers dragged her off the bed. She landed on the floor with a thump and cried out. Something cold and hard jabbed his right temple, bringing him up short. Oh, God. The muzzle of a shotgun. He froze. He couldn’t help her if he was dead.
A heavily accented voice snarled, “Dr. Holt. Your wife is going to come with us. You will do exactly as we say. You will not contact any law enforcement official or tell anyone what has happened, or your wife will die. Do you understand?”
They were kidnapping his Emma? What for? Her biology research in recombinant DNA wasn’t of any great significance to anyone outside the medical community and her department at Syracuse University. “No! Take me. Leave her alone, for God’s sake, I’m begging you!”
Whimpering filled his ears. And then he realized it was him making those awful keening noises. He tried to stop. Failed. Hysteria crept over him. His legs shook uncontrollably, and he felt a nearly overwhelming urge to wet himself.
“Listen closely, Dr. Holt. If you wish your wife to live, this is what we require you to do….”
The next morning dawned clear and bright, frigid cold. Last night’s snow crunched underfoot and Isabella’s breath hung in the air as thick as a cloud. The giant Olympic ice complex loomed before her, seven rinks contained in three connected buildings. The original brick ice rink, now called the Lussi Rink, was built for the 1932 Olympics. The 1980 Olympics saw the construction of more rinks, bringing the total to five. Last year, two more rinks had been finished, one of them the giant Hamilton arena where the figure skating competitions would be held in this third Lake Placid Olympiad. It seated close to thirty thousand spectators.
Isabella, Anya and Liz had to clear five separate security checkpoints before they finally gained entrance to the facility. Isabella was relieved to see that the media’s and officials’ area was completely separated from the athletes’ and coaches’ area. To get from one to the other, a person had to leave the rink and go outside around the massive building to a different entrance and another gauntlet of checkpoints.
Isabella watched as Anya put on her skates. Large bunions deformed the ball of each of the young woman’s feet. Her ankles were bony, and calluses covered the tops of her toes. “Man, and I thought ballet dancers were hard on their feet.”
Anya looked up with a shrug. “My feet aren’t too bad. Lots of skaters wreck theirs completely. I haven’t had to have any surgeries yet.”
Isabella watched as the skater pulled out gel pads and stuck them on various parts of her feet, then laced up the rigid skates as tightly as she could. “Doesn’t that cut off your circulation?”
Anya laughed. “You need the ankle support if you’re going to land triples on hard ice while skating at twenty miles per hour.”
Put that way, Isabella could see the need for skaters to torture their feet.
Anya said eagerly, “I can’t wait to try out the new ice. I hear it’s amazing.”
“New ice?” Isabella echoed. “Isn’t ice, well, ice?”
“Not anymore. Some Yankee scientist has invented what everyone’s calling super ice. He’s added some sort of chemical to it that makes it glide smoother and gives it more spring than regular ice.”
“What kind of chemical?”
Anya grinned. “I haven’t the slightest. I flunked chemistry.”
Isabella waxed serious. “While you’re skating this morning, if you hear me shout for you to get down, I want to you dive for the ice and then make your way over to the nearest wall. Wait there for me
to come get you.”
“They’re called boards.”
“Excuse me?” Isabella asked.
“The walls around the ice. They’re called boards.”
“Okay. Get over to the boards. If I yell for you to move out, I want you to skate as fast as you can to the exit. But don’t skate in a straight line. Zigzag.”
“Zigzag. Got it. And why are you planning to do all this yelling at me?”
“In case someone tries to kill you. I’d come out onto the ice to protect you, but the ISU—International Skating Union—officials won’t let me.”
“Just as well,” Anya replied. “You’d hurt yourself. Street shoes and ice don’t mix. If someone in skates ran over your foot, they’d cut off your toes unless you have steel-lined shoes.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. They don’t call these blades for nothing. Besides, you’d end up sitting on your bum as soon as you stepped onto the ice. It’s slippery, in case you didn’t know.”
Isabella grinned. “Yeah, I’d heard that. And you’re right. I would end up on my rear end. Athletics have never been my strong suit.”
Anya looked up in surprise from putting plastic skate guards over her knife-sharp blades. “Then how did you get into your line of work?”
“I’m just too stubborn to quit.”
“You can always train up into better shape. I’ll help you if you like.”
“You?” Isabella blurted in surprise. “You think you’re in better shape than I am?”
Anya shrugged. “People think all it takes to skate is being graceful and having good balance. But skaters are serious athletes. We do aerobic conditioning, weight training, flexibility training, jump classes, dance classes, stroking classes—”
Liz Cartwright called from over by the ice, “Your session’s starting, Anya.”
Isabella accompanied the girl out of the relative warmth of the dressing area to the frigid rink side. “Dang, it’s like a meat locker in here.”
“Probably around eight degrees centigrade,” Anya replied. “All ice rinks stay about this temperature. It feels great on a summer day in Brisbane.”
While Isabella shivered by the boards, Anya warmed up, skimming over the ice effortlessly. Forward and backward crossovers, footwork, spins, easy jumps followed by progressively harder jumps. Idly, Isabella converted the Celsius to Fahrenheit in her head. Forty-six degrees. Brrr. It wasn’t bad for a couple minutes, but the cold was starting to soak into her bones. No wonder all the coaches wore fur coats or parkas up to their ears.
Liz called out the occasional instruction in a shorthand slang. Stuff about edges, leans and centering, it all flowed past Isabella. But when a disturbance broke out not far from where she stood, Isabella went on full alert.
Two people were arguing. Stridently. A tall, dark-haired man who looked too sallow and thin to be an athlete was yelling at an attractive, blue-eyed blond woman who looked about thirty. Isabella recognized the woman’s face from the hasty briefings she’d received on the major players in the skating community. Lily Gustavson of Sweden was a senior ISU official. Isabella hadn’t seen the man before.
She leaned over to Liz and murmured, “Who’s the guy?”
“Harlan Holt. The Ice Doctor.”
“The what?”
Liz grinned. “The Ice Doctor. He’s the guy who invented super ice. This is the first international competition ever to use it. The skaters are wild about it.”
“Any idea what he’s so upset about?”
“I couldn’t say.” The Australian turned back to her student and called, “Anya, you’re dropping your shoulder as you go into that axel. Try it again.”
Isabella headed toward the argument, which, if anything, was growing in intensity.
Holt was saying, “…I’m telling you it’s necessary.”
Gustavson retorted, “How can that be? The skaters are using it now and they love it. We can’t possibly need to replace the ice. It’s three days until the first round of qualifying skating!”
“The polymers aren’t evenly mixed. Some patches are more slippery than others. It’s a safety issue. Somebody’s going to get hurt if I don’t redo the ice!”
Why did he sound so panicked? Like Anya said, wasn’t all ice slippery? These were figure skaters, for goodness’ sake. They could deal with slippery ice, couldn’t they? Faulty logic aside, there was something alarming in the guy’s tone of voice. A note of manic determination. He was dead set on redoing this ice right now. Why? Isabella glanced out at the rink in question. A dozen skaters were flying across the white surface, and not one of them seemed to be having trouble with these supposed patches. Something vibrated way wrong in her gut about this. She eased to the side to better see the guy’s face.
The ISU official glared. “You’ve had six months to get this ice right. This isn’t going to bode well for your ice being used in other international competitions.”
The man looked pained at that, but he stood his ground. “It’s got to be done. If I get on it right away, you’ll have skateable ice by tomorrow evening.”
The official shook her head sharply. “I’ve got practice sessions scheduled all day today. I can’t possibly move them on such short notice.”
“There are seven rinks. There must be room on one of them for the skaters to practice. You’ve got to let me do this.”
The guy almost sounded as if he were begging. Isabella frowned. Definitely something wrong here. She moved away from the pair as the ISU official pulled out her cell phone and started arguing with whoever was on the other end about rescheduling the afternoon practice sessions. Isabella put her hand in her pocket and keyed the microphone clipped unobtrusively to the neck of her sweater.
“Ops, this is Torres. How do you copy?”
“Loud and clear. Go ahead.”
Crud. Dex. He was going to think she was nuts, but here went. “I need a background check run on a guy named Harlan Holt. He’s a credentialed official. In charge of the ice at the figure skating venue.”
“The Ice Doctor?” Dex asked in surprise. “What’s up?”
“I don’t know. Call it a gut feeling. Something’s funny about the guy. He’s insisting on replacing the venue ice. Says it’s not safe.”
“And this makes you suspicious why?”
She closed her eyes briefly. “I couldn’t tell you. It just does.”
Dex had keyed the microphone on the other end to say something when a loud cry came from the ice. Isabella looked up sharply, her senses screaming to full alert. She turned just in time to see a large black shape hurtle into Anya. It crashed into her, sending her flying through the air to land with a sickening thud in a heap that skidded across the ice.
Isabella shouted into her microphone, “Subject down!”
Chapter 3
Isabella hit the ice running. As Anya’d predicted, she slipped and slid all over the place like a colt trying to stand up for the first time.
She’d taken her eyes off the girl for barely a second. The other skaters were all moving toward Anya in concern, and coaches were coming out onto the ice as well. Not good. These people knew a serious crash when they saw one, the same way she recognized a deadly threat.
As she stumbled toward Anya like a drunken sailor, she noticed a second figure down on the ice. As she watched, a young man dressed in black sat up, shaking his head. Had the flash that sent Anya flying been a collision? It would make sense. Half a dozen skaters had been whipping around the ice, crisscrossing the rink aggressively.
Isabella dropped to her knees beside Anya, relieved to be off her feet. She shifted into first aid mode. Anya was breathing. Thank God. Eyes closed. Isabella lifted one of the girl’s lids. White. Damn. “Anya?”
It took a few moments and calling her name several times, but finally, the girl’s eyes fluttered open. Acute pain swam in their dark depths.
“What hurts, honey?” Isabella asked.
Anya opened her mouth but no sound came out. A
look of surprise spread across her features and rapidly turned to panic. Isabella, like all the Medusas, was a trained field medic, and she’d seen this one before.
“I’m an EMT, Anya. You’ve had the breath knocked out of you. Just relax for a few seconds. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
Anya nodded her understanding.
A tight ring of skaters and coaches completely surrounded Isabella and Anya. For once, she was grateful for a crowd of nosy onlookers. They’d act as human shields for Anya. “Did anyone see what happened?”
Someone commented, “Collisions happen all the time. Two skaters get going backward and neither one sees the other.”
Someone else chimed in, “The hazards of practice sessions.”
Everyone nodded. And the knot in Isabella’s stomach started to unwind a little. It had been an accident. No one had tried to kill her subject.
“Does anything hurt?” Isabella asked as she assessed Anya’s condition. No limbs were lying awkwardly and no blood stained the ice.
A nod from Anya was accompanied by a choppy, shallow breath.
“Take lots of short little pants for now. Point at where it hurts.”
Her heart plummeted as the girl pointed at her knee. Isabella put her hands gently on the joint. “I’m going to poke at your knee, and then I’m going to move it around a bit.” She knew a lot about knee injuries. The most common injury areas for special operators were knees and backs, the weak points of the human body.
Isabella put Anya’s knee through a standard field diagnosis routine and sat back on her heels. “The good news is you haven’t seriously injured your knee. The bad news is you’ve strained it and it’s going to be sore for a couple of days.”
Lily Gustavson looked over at Liz Cartwright. “When does she skate her qualifying round?”
“In five days,” the Aussie answered worriedly.
“Did you bring your own doctor with you?”