by Cindy Dees
Still he was silent.
She picked up steam as she became more certain of what it was she was trying to say. “I wanted more. But not only did I want more, I wanted to reject all of that. I wanted to blast it to smithereens. Joining the Air Force was a great start. But joining the Medusas—that was the ultimate ‘screw you’ to my upbringing.”
Man, it felt good to have finally let that idea out of the subconscious recesses of her mind.
He nodded slowly. “And that’s why you’re so close to Anya. You see her doing the same thing—giving a big, fat ‘screw you’ to her fundamentalist roots.”
“Exactly.”
“Do you like being a Medusa?”
The question startled her, but she smiled with genuine warmth. “I love it. I love my teammates like sisters. I’d die for them and they’d do the same for me. Surely you know that feeling.”
His intense gaze relaxed for a moment. “I wouldn’t use exactly those words to describe it, but yeah, I know the feeling.”
A moment of silence fell between them. They shared a mutual knowledge of a world few other people understood.
“Does your family know?” she asked.
“My parents know in a vague way that I’m in the Special Forces. But they have no real understanding of what being a Delta means, and they have no idea what the job entails. My brother desperately hopes I’ll die so he can inherit the family business—and the family fortune—all for himself.”
“Do I detect some bittereness?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I’m like you. I grew out of wanting to break Randall’s neck a long time ago. I don’t live for the dollar signs in my bank account like he does.”
“Is your family really that rich and stuffy?”
“Yes to both,” he answered in disgust.
She threw his own question back at him. “So why this job?”
“I didn’t want to be useless. I wanted to do something worthwhile with my life.”
“Have you found it?”
“Yup. Being a Delta team leader is the most amazing thing I’ve ever done or hope to do.”
“Any regrets?” she asked.
He thought about that one for a long time, and she reciprocated with patient silence. He remarked unexpectedly, “For a woman, you can go a long time without talking.”
She blinked. “For a man, you can say some really dumb things.”
He snorted with laughter. “Touché. I meant it as a compliment, but I take it back.”
“Good call. You may have just saved your manhood some irreparable damage.”
His eyes glinted. “You could try to hurt me, but you wouldn’t succeed.”
She shrugged. “I’m sneaky. Don’t be so sure. Besides, Jack Scatalone taught us everything we know about unarmed combat.”
Dex laughed. “Okay, so maybe you could take a chunk out of my hide. That guy is a beast in a fight.”
She rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it. I had to spar with him for six months.”
Dex threw her a sympathetic look.
“Okay, so you’ve dodged my question long enough, Dex. Now answer it. Do you have any regrets about this job?”
He sighed. Waxed serious. “Yeah. It consumes your whole life. There’s no time for anything else.”
“Anything? Or anyone?”
His gaze snapped to hers, pinning her in her seat with its intensity. “Both.” He added in grim warning, “You won’t have time for anything or anyone else, either.”
She answered lightly, “I’m a firm believer in making time for the things that are really important to me. It boils down to a matter of priorities. If you want a personal life, you have to decide to make it happen and then just do it. In my experience, nothing worth having is ever easy to get.”
“No, it isn’t, is it?” His gaze burned even brighter as he stared directly into her eyes. “So. Are you telling me you want a relationship?”
Chapter 14
Harlan Holt paced the cheap motel room, distraught. He couldn’t sit still. He couldn’t go anywhere. He couldn’t call anyone. What he knew was eating away at his gut like acid. Or maybe like poison nerve gas. Heavens above, he’d put the first half of a binary nerve agent into the ice at the Hamilton Arena. He was an accessory to a crime of such magnitude it took his breath away. He’d actually thrown up when he’d finally identified the white powder.
He was a monster. A murderer on an incomprehensible scale.
He didn’t know, dammit! They’d made him do it!
And he’d let them. He’d known they had to be up to something terrible. But he’d gone along with it anyway. The right thing to do was to sacrifice his wife and tell the authorities what was going to happen. Oh, God. Emma.
He fell to the floor, kneeling as he wept yet again for her. How could he condemn his own wife to death? He wasn’t strong enough. He couldn’t do it. Instead, he moved from place to place, staying at fleatraps and truck stops, paying with cash, staying one step ahead of those women from Olympic security.
They’d nearly caught him in his lab. But those guards had kept walking by and he’d finally gotten spooked enough to run. As an undergrad at Syracuse twenty years ago, he’d played Dungeons and Dragons in the steam tunnels. Strange to think that had come in handy all these years later.
He’d gone home to feed Fritz, but he’d gotten spooked there, too. It looked like someone had been in the house. The area rug and the bedspread weren’t where he remembered them. The details of that horrible night were still vivid in his mind, and the picture when he’d gone home hadn’t matched what he recalled.
Now what? He’d gotten his cell phone charger in that brief stop, and his phone was up and running again. Why hadn’t the terrorists—for surely that was what they were—contacted him? Was Emma okay?
He climbed painfully to his feet and began to pace again.
Was Dex making an offer to have a relationship with her? Holy freaking cow! The guy was direct, all right. Now what? Okay, hot shot, she could give as good as got. She took a deep breath. “Yes, I do want a relationship. Very much.”
His gaze went white-hot. Incendiary. He leaned closer to her and jumped straight up in the air when his cell phone rang.
“Goddamn it,” he snapped under his breath. He jerked out the phone and flipped it open. “What?” he said irritably. He listened for a moment, and said only, “Thanks.” Then he stood up briskly. “Let’s go. They’ve spotted your girl.”
She jumped up, heading for her coat. “They who? Is she okay?”
“New York state troopers spotted her and Lazlo crossing the line into Essex County. If they go straight back to Lake Placid, they should be at the Olympic village in a half hour. I’m assuming you’d like to speak to the two of them?”
She snorted. “That’s a word for it. Am I allowed to do bodily harm to Olympic athletes if they can still compete when I’m done with them?”
He smiled grimly. “Don’t ask and I won’t tell.”
“Deal.”
Anya and Lazlo burst into her room, laughing then stopped cold when they caught sight of Isabella and Dex in the armchairs on the far side of the room. Waiting. Dex had been kind enough not to talk to her after they left his apartment. He seemed to understand her need to focus on what she was going to say to her errant charge—and on controlling the fury raging in her gut.
Anya said in a small voice, “Are you mad at me, ’Bella?”
It had taken her most of the ride over here and the twenty minute wait in the room to arrive at the proper frame of mind for answering that question. She said evenly, “It’s not my job to be mad at you.”
Dex said tightly, “Would you mind telling us where you went?”
Anya answered quickly, “It was amazing. I got to see the Statue of Liberty. I ate a Coney Dog, and stood in Times Square and saw Central Park. There were so many people, and it was so big…” She trailed off as the flat, cold menace of Isabella and Dex’s expressions registered.
Lor
d, it was like they were the girl’s parents, lowering the boom when she’d missed a curfew. She and Dex made a brutal combination for any teenager to face. Any kids of theirs would be so hosed when it came to messing up—Whoa. Kids of theirs? Uh, no. Not likely. Maybe not impossible, but definitely not likely.
Dex stood up. “Young Lazlo and I are going to take a walk and have a little talk about taking care of the people he cares about.”
The boy looked scared spitless. Having grown up away from his own father, he might not have a whole lot of experience with parental ass-whupping. But from the look in Dex’s eyes, Lazlo was about to get a crash course. Isabella waited in silence until the two men left. Dex had employed the classic divide-and-conquer technique. Together, the two teens might have stood their ground and defended their little excursion. But apart, they didn’t stand a chance. It had been a good read of the situation.
She turned her coldest, most menacing look on Anya. “Let us be clear on one thing. If you ever pull a stunt like that again, I will let them kill you. Do you understand me? I will give my life to save you from an attack, but I will not die to save you from your own stupidity.”
Anya nodded, thoroughly frightened. “I never thought of it that way. I’m sorry, ’Bella. Really.” The girl began to cry. Tears piled up in her eyes and spilled over, streaking her cheeks. Her remorse appeared genuine. Probably time to turn her over to her coach. Isabella had faith that Liz was going to rip Anya a new one.
She stood up and moved to where Anya sat on the edge of the bed. She put an arm around the girl and gave her a hug, just like she would have with one of her own little sisters. “I was worried about you, sweetie. I’m glad you’re back safe and sound.”
Anya nodded against her shoulder and cried all the harder.
Isabella stepped out into the hall. Crisis solved. She headed back to the ops center, absolutely drained. The adrenaline of the past fourteen hours dissipated so abruptly she felt light-headed. Since Dex had given her a ride over here, she would need a ride home. He hadn’t come back from his little chat with Lazlo yet, so she went into his office and sat down at his desk. Too exhausted to keep her eyes open, she cradled her head in her arms on his desk and passed out in about three seconds flat.
Abdul sat at the kitchen table with his entire cell. It was rare that he gathered them in one place, but he needed to make a small adjustment to the plan. They were so close now. The end was in sight. Excitement surged restlessly in his heart and he could feel the hand of fate coming closer and closer. Soon, his place in paradise would be assured. But even more important than that, he was on the verge of making his children’s future more secure by protecting their way of life from the infidels. While he worried about his own immortal soul, he worried infinitely more about theirs. And that was as it should be.
The last man arrived. Abdul looked around the six faces at the table—his two nephews not in police custody, the three Chechnyans and the sixth man—his secret weapon. He said solemnly, “Gentlemen, there is one more task we must do before the moment of reckoning. So much attention has been drawn to the Khalid whore that she has been given extra security. That means there are many more soldiers and police at the figure skating stadium than we anticipated.”
The experienced terrorists in the group—the Chechnyans—scowled at this news. They knew the possible implications of it better than the rest of them.
Abdul continued, “Rather than respond with more force, our strategy will be this—We will use the Khalid whore to our advantage. We will increase the apparent threat to her until all the extra security personnel are concentrated entirely around her. If we do this well, the stadium will be even less defended than it was before she drew so much attention to herself with her lewd display. She will help us teach the West a lesson.”
Nods all around, and the Chechnyans looked less tense.
“Here is what we will do…”
It was almost midnight when something touched her shoulder. She woke with a jerk, battle alert. Dex. The first shock of waking faded, leaving her feeling like she’d been run over by a train.
“Hey,” she mumbled.
He smiled kindly. “Sorry to wake you. But I thought you might sleep better in your own bed.”
She looked around, registering fully that she was in his darkened office with the only light coming in through the open door to the ops center. She’d been asleep in here for a solid four hours. “I’m sorry. I was so tired, I just sort of crashed.”
“You’re authorized. It’s been a rough couple of days. Do you want to come get the midnight briefing with me?”
She blinked. That woke her up. The midnight briefing was a classified recap of all the day’s events and any developments that might be of interest to the security group. Only the top-level supervisors attended, and they passed any pertinent information down to their people. “I’d love to go. Any reason why I get to play with the big dogs?”
“The FBI lab told me the initial forensics on the Holt lab and home should be ready tonight. And, Reda Aziz, the guy you nabbed in the alley, was interrogated again this evening. I thought you might want to hear both reports firsthand.”
They walked down the long hallway to the IOC Security team’s conference room, “Why are you being so nice to me?”
He glanced at her. “I’m not being nice. I’m doing my job.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t B.S. me.”
“So, maybe it took me a while to warm up to the idea of women on the teams.”
“In other words, you were only temporarily a jerk before and now you’re back to your normal self. Gee, and I was so sure the asshole was your regular self and this guy was the exception to the rule.”
“I love you too, Torres,” he said sarcastically.
She smirked at him. “I dare you to say that like you mean it.”
He blinked. Startled. And then it hit her what she’d said. She stopped cold, right there, in the middle of the hall. “I’m so sorry. That was out of line. I don’t know what I was thinking. Forget I said anything. Really—”
He put up a hand. “Stop. I’m not going to court martial you for sexual harassment. No offense taken.” He reached behind her and opened the door to the conference room, which was crowded with senior Olympic officials. As she moved past him, he murmured, “Besides, I may take you up on that dare sometime.”
It was her turn to blink, stunned. What in the hell was happening? Well, she knew what was happening, but how was it possible? Well, she knew how it was possible, too, but Dexter Thorpe? Come on. Surely she had better sense than that! She jumped as he put his hand under her elbow and guided her to a pair of seats near the front of the room. Nope, apparently, she didn’t have a lick of sense at all.
The briefing covered a brawl among some spectators at a hockey game. There was discussion over extra manpower that would have to be shifted to the downhill skiing run tomorrow in response to the heavy snowfall that was expected within the next couple hours.
“And now for Major Thorpe and company,” Manfred Schmidt said. “Marcy Hammersmith, here, is from the FBI. I hear you have some lab reports for us.”
The surprisingly young woman nodded and stood up. “We were given two different sets of samples to analyze. The first was a series of swabs from Dr. Holt’s laboratory. Sample number four was a white, powdery substance swabbed from a stainless steel countertop. It turns out this powder is a chemical compound whose name is classified. For the purposes of this briefing, we will call it Agent Alpha. It is one half of a binary compound considered to be one of the deadliest nerve gas toxins in existence.”
Oh. My. God. The powder at the ice rink came from Holt’s lab.
“This sample of Agent Alpha is identical to the trace amounts of powder that were found on the paper bag of, uh, excrement that was thrown at Ms. Khalid. It will take further testing to verify that the two samples came from the same manufacturing process, but given the rarity of this chemical, we speculate this will be the case.�
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Manfred Schmidt leaned forward aggressively in his seat and asked archly, “What other uses does this Agent Alpha have besides being half of a nerve gas poison?”
“None. It is an engineered molecule with no other purpose.”
It was severely satisfying to watch the dismay and then horror cross the German’s face. The seriousness of what the Medusas were investigating had just hit him.
The briefer moved on. “We also were asked to analyze a number of blood samples from the Holt home. We lifted DNA from two different subjects, one male and one female. The female DNA matches DNA taken from hair samples on Mrs. Holt’s pillow and hairbrush. So, we are tentatively identifying the female subject’s blood as hers. We will need to get DNA from family members or a known sample of her blood to make a positive ID.”
Dex spoke up. “We’re not officially investigating a crime at this point, so your tentative ID gives us enough to work on for now. What about the other blood?”
The briefer smiled. “That one was more interesting. The DNA is male and Middle Eastern. We compared it to the list of subjects that Captain Torres gave us as possible persons connected to Mrs. Holt’s disappearance. We got an interesting match.”
Dex leaned over to her. “What list?”
“The FBI lab called me this afternoon and asked for names of any Middle Easterners who might be involved with Emma Holt so they could check the DNA database for a match faster.”
The briefer flashed up a black-and-white picture on the screen behind her. It showed several long, vertical rows of the distinctive stripes of DNA. “We got a partial DNA match between our sample blood here, and this DNA print.” She pointed at a second strand. “It belongs to a man named Al Abhoud.”
Isabella gaped. “The Muslim cleric who declared the fatwa on Anya?”