“How many people were evacuated?” he asked.
“The meltdown resulted in the sudden and permanent evacuation of almost 500,000 people and resulted in the instantaneous closure of businesses, universities, and museums. It forever altered the lives of the people who once thrived there.”
He pressed pause. “Sam?”
She stopped in midsentence and glanced at him.
“Want to see drone footage of Praptan?”
She nodded, gesturing to Abe and Charles to walk over to where Zeus stood. He shook his head and pointed to one of the four television monitors that they’d hung on the wall, sending the video feed from Ragno there so they could all see it.
“Zeus,” Ragno said. “This is high-level intel. It would be damn hard to explain how we have it. I’m not sure we should be sharing—”
“Understood, but I believe it’s necessary to complete the job.”
“How so?”
“Trust me on this. Just like I knew we had to get the Amicus team out of that hotel earlier than planned, just like I knew we had to exit on foot, I know the Amicus team needs to know what we know.” He pressed a button on his watch. “Ragno, you’re now live. Talking to the conference room, which includes the Amicus team and Black Raven agents.”
He replayed the footage from the beginning. As it rolled, he stood and went to the sideboard. After picking up an apple, he cut it into quarters, peeled each quarter, and removed the seeds. Zeus knew the dark red peeling had nutrients. The apple was for Sam, though, and nutrient levels didn’t seem to guide her eating.
New shots picked up with derelict high-rise buildings with broken windows, streets that were reclaimed by greenery, and dark shadows of animals running through what had once been a square.
“You’re sending agents there?” Sam asked, wide eyes on him.
“It’s an option,” he said. “Unless someone finds Maximov first or we come up with a better idea.”
“Are those dogs?” Charles asked.
“Some may be. Mostly they’re wolves,” Ragno answered. “There are thousands of them.”
“I thought Praptan was a ghost town. With no life at all,” Charles said. “What is there for so many of them to eat?”
Zeus glanced at Charles, whose wide brown eyes were glued to the monitor. “Rats. Roaches. Each other. There’s life. Just not as we know it. Ragno, medics are providing rabies vaccines to the team in advance?”
“Yes. Among others. Because timing is a factor, and prophylactic measures likely won’t be fully effective, doctors are working up a post-trip protocol, which includes radiation detection and decontamination.”
The drone banked left, over an amusement park with a tall Ferris wheel, frozen in time, its bucket seats in yellow, red, blue, and white, with streaks of rust dripping down the buckets.
“The amusement park was to rival Disney World. It was going to open in June 1986. Past the amusement park, the drone will get to a university,” Ragno said.
The drone flew slower. A caption at the bottom of the screen indicated the area was Praptan University of the Liberal Arts and Sciences. There were no people. Building after building appeared empty. Trees and shrubbery had overgrown what might have once been a manicured campus.
“Ragno,” Zeus said. “That’s where Maximov went to college?”
“Yes.”
He brought the apple to Sam, along with a bottle of water. Her eyes on him, he took a bite out of one of the pieces and took a sip out of the bottle of water before placing it in front of her. The fact that she hadn’t eaten or drank anything without him first sampling it wasn’t lost upon him. She reacted powerfully and viscerally to real-life situations, and she was still dealing with the cyanide poisoning. Her blood phobia had materialized after being in the car crash with her mother and father. It had been a bloody and violent head-on collision, and thirteen-year-old Sam had been in the car with them as they died.
Years earlier, Zeus had only known that Sam’s parents had died in a car crash and that Sam had been in the car. Now, with Ragno’s investigative skills focused, in part, on figuring out what made Sam tick, Zeus knew much more about her father and his struggles with alcohol. The car crash occurred because her father, drunk at the time, had veered into oncoming traffic.
He touched his watch, muted his mic, and bent to her ear. In a low voice, intended for her ears only, he said, “If you don’t want me to kick your ass when we run, you should eat a few bites.”
Eyes unreadable, but with a smirk that he recognized as a challenge, she reached for a piece of apple. “I’m not racing you.” Eyes on him, she took a delicate bite. “But if I did, I’d win.”
“Would university records provide information on people who may now know his whereabouts? College professors? Fellow students?”
“Zeus, the disaster happened in 1986,” Ragno said, responding to his question as he walked away from Sam while keeping his eyes on the monitor. “The university was large, with over twenty-five thousand students. University records weren’t computerized back then.”
“There have to be paper records,” Zeus said.
Sam answered before Ragno. “Access is a problem. Stanley Morgan and I thought of that a few months ago. We wondered whether anyone had gone there for intel. Research indicates that the university area, which is between the city and the nuclear power plant, is a radiation hot spot.”
“Meaning?” George asked.
“Meaning no one is going there to study or retrieve paper records.” Sam took a sip from the bottle of water he’d given to her. “Throughout the contamination zone, some areas are worse than others. The university is the worst of the worst. Radiation never dies, and everything in that area is toxic. If the answer to Maximov’s whereabouts is in paper records in the university files”—she shook her head—“no one will ever find it.”
The drone flew over sprawling neighborhoods, with swings that no children had touched in years, streets on which no cars drove, and houses where no one lived.
“Sam is correct,” Ragno said. As the drone did one more fly-over of the city, Ragno continued, “People of Chalinda believe the disaster was intentional. In the Soviet era, Chalinda and other Soviet states were competing for supremacy. Needless to say, after the disaster, Chalinda wasn’t a competitor for anything, except on the A-list of the world’s creepiest places.”
No shit.
“Conspiracy theorists blame the Russian Federation and the block of countries that had sent scientists to assist the nuclear facility in implementing safeguards,” Sam said. “That includes the U.S. and England.”
“What are radiation levels in the city itself?” Zeus asked.
“We don’t have reliable measurements. Some areas are believed to be minimal. Other areas are considered hot spots.” She paused. “Zeus, your video chat will begin in two minutes. About Gabe. I talked to him a couple of hours ago. He isn’t worried about the radiation levels. He says he’ll hire guides to take him around the hot spots.”
“Hell. Like he’s a freaking tourist.”
“You know Gabe. Fearless.”
Yes. Fearlessness was a trait that ran in the Hernandez family, and Gabe had more than a healthy dose of it.
“That is all the drone footage,” Ragno said as the monitor went dark.
“Ragno,” Zeus said, as Sam turned back to Abe and Charles. “If I know my brother at all, he’s looking forward to going into Praptan.”
“He’s assembling the necessary equipment, including radiation suits. Odd thing is there are people who live there, off the grid, and they seem to be fine. The Times did an article on the people who live there—just a handful, of course. I’m sending it to you now. They live there without electricity, without internet, without anything. Communication with the outside world is nonexistent, except for satellite phones, and not many people there seem to have them. It’s like being on a prairie in the Wild West.”
“Without the hope of a better life,” Zeus added, as he sca
nned the articles that Ragno sent to him. “Alert Gabe that I need to talk to him. Arrange the call for nine my time.” Two minutes had elapsed. “Is my video chat with Ana ready?”
“Yes. Here you go.”
“Give me a second.”
He stood, picked up his iPad, and almost made it to the door of the library before his daughter Ana, dark hair pulled into a loose ponytail, wearing a T-shirt with two Minions on the front, appeared on his iPad. “Daddy! You won’t believe what happened at school today!”
As her voice carried through the room, his heart swelled at the sight of his beautiful girl. Her wide smile lit her almond-shaped, dark brown eyes. He had Ana most weekends. His workweeks were typically spent at Black Raven’s headquarters in Denver, and weekends were with Ana in Miami or at his house in the Keys. One month on the road on the ITT trial meant he was missing four weekends with his girl.
He should’ve muted the call, but he thought Ragno would listen to him when he said to give him a second. Hand on the doorknob, he glanced over his shoulder at Sam, whose eyes were on him. Something flashed there, but what, he didn’t know. The look struck him with the intensity of lightning, before disappearing fast. In its place, he saw a cool woman, who was determined to ignore his personal life.
As she turned her attention again to Abe and Charles, he stepped through the doorway and focused on Ana. “Hello, my sweet angel. Tell me all about it.”
Chapter Fourteen
“I’ll hit the six mile mark before you,” Zeus said, stepping out of his bedroom.
Sam was on the carpeted floor of their third floor living room, stretching on a towel. Positioned near the two treadmills that had been set up in that room, with her nose on her knees, she remembered what he looked like when they ran together. She braced herself before glancing in his direction.
Mental brushstrokes of her memory had painted his physique as a marvel, a sculpted body that had once been a wonderland for her to enjoy. While part of her—the part that had her remembering what his arms felt like as he’d held her just that afternoon—hoped reality wouldn’t disappoint, the logical part of her fired caution flares with the message, “Don’t look.”
If you do look, don’t pay attention.
She glanced in his direction as he draped a towel over the back of a chair, then turned to her. Bare-chested, wearing nothing but running shoes and shorts that fell to mid-thigh, the reality of him didn’t disappoint her memories.
When God handed out brawn and muscles, he’d blessed Zeus with quality and abundance. The man had built upon what God had given him, honing his body to sculpted, toned perfection. Tawny, naturally tanned skin stretched taut over well-defined muscles, accentuating broad shoulders, tight pecs, a narrow waist, strong arms and long legs. His considerable height added leanness. There was no bulk. No fat. Nothing soft.
Abs? Yes. Dammit, but each one was still there, visibly ridging his taut torso. A memory, for years repressed but now vivid, zinged through her mind. They’d been in bed. She’d run her fingers and lips over his abdomen, from his heart down and counted out loud as she moved down his body. She’d told him she only counted four. He’d insisted on a recount. Four, she had lied again, pretending that she couldn’t feel or see more. Correct the first time, she’d said, and added that his paunch got in the way. He’d laughed as he’d made her pay for that joke. His way of making her pay had felt unbelievable, in ways she’d never forgotten.
If it wasn’t for the bandage at his left bicep, and the small strip of flesh-colored first aid tape barely visible at his forehead, his body could have made her forget he was mortal. Oh—there were other scars. One on his right arm, in the middle of his bicep, was faded. It was a reminder of a bullet that had been intended for her grandfather, the one Zeus had taken instead. The scars added to his aura of indomitableness. His physique made him worthy of his nickname—a brave, powerful god who was known for many things, including erotic prowess.
Stop. Right. Now.
“Good to see you’ve been taking care of yourself,” she said, carefully keeping her tone cool as she straightened her legs and then bent her nose to her knees.
“I try. Performance sometimes counts in my line of work.”
Performance? Dear God, don’t let my mind go there.
Sitting up, she tucked her legs into a cross-legged position. He bent at his hips for a palms-on-the-ground stretch. She tried hard not to stare, but the wide expanse of shoulders and back, tapering to a narrow waist, was beautiful. She let her eyes linger over the ridges and ripped muscles, before refocusing on her own warm-up.
Damn him.
Where was she? Sit-ups? No. Done. Legs. Oh yeah. She stretched them in front of her and touched her toes. Her legs felt ready for a vigorous run, but the tension in her neck was killing her. As she slowly rotated her head, she winced at the sharp pain that emanated down her spine and through her shoulders. Left, back, right, front—no.
Ouch.
Job-related tension. The events of the day. Bombs. Murder. The look of hatred in Duvall’s eyes as he said, “I am Maximov.” The chastising phone call from Judge O’Connor when she had returned to the safe house. Zeus’s daughter’s gleeful greeting to her father. All tension builders, and her neck was telling her she’d had too much.
Shake it off.
She tried to rotate her neck again, but she kept hearing, “Daddy!” The sweet voice zinged straight into the raw place in Samantha’s chest that, after Zeus, she’d learned to protect with hard-edged resolve and mental armor. The evening was now officially a macabre joke, where the thing that troubled her most was innocent and sweet and had nothing to do with the turbulent storm of bloody terror the world was suffering. His daughter’s greeting was the only occurrence of the day that shouldn’t matter to her at all.
Yet it did.
He’s just a man. A man with a life. A life that didn’t include me.
She’d let him go to that life, and he hadn’t looked back.
He’ll do the same thing again. Remember? He’s here because he’s getting paid.
Get the hell over it.
With neck muscles screaming in protest, she tried to bend her head. She exhaled, inhaled, and tried again.
“Neck’s tight?”
She nodded. “It’ll feel better after I run.”
He walked across the room and stood in front of her, giving her a view of well-defined calves and beautifully muscled thighs that made her sorry he wore anything at all. He had just the right amount of dark black body hair, an amount that reminded her of what his skin felt like as he rubbed against her. Male. Pure male, fueled by a sensual nature that had blown her mind.
“That’s a bad way to start a run.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
He bent to his knees on her towel, right in front of her. “Take your sweatshirt off and lay on your stomach. I’ll massage out the kinks.”
Please don’t. My hormones are doing somersaults. I can barely keep my hands off of you. I don’t want the memories you’ll stir with your touch, nor do I want the reaction that is certain to come with the feel of your fingers on my neck. “If I needed a massage, I’d call a masseuse.”
“No time for that.” He rubbed his palms together, warming them. Heat emanating from his body carried wafts of clean, fragrant soap. He wasn’t the type to wear cologne.
Get a grip.
“We’ve got lots to do. So lie flat and let me get to work on your neck. We—”
“We?” She folded her arms.
“We have a race to run. Dinner to eat after, and since it seems to me that you’re not eating a damn thing without me testing it for poison first, that involves me and you, which equals we. Plus, I know you want to look at some of the material Black Raven has gathered in connection with the bounty hunt, and we’ll have a data-sharing mechanism in place in an hour or so. You need a full night of sleep, and so do I. So that’s also we. So let’s get started. You need—”
“Stop telling me what I
need.”
“Security isn’t a democracy, remember?”
“Your definition of security is way too broad.”
He shrugged. “If it has to do with your well-being over the next twenty-seven days—”
“You’re counting the days till the job is over?”
He nodded. “Aren’t you?”
No. Right now I’m doing nothing but thinking about the last time we made love—or whatever it was—because this towel isn’t enough real estate for us to be sharing when you’re almost naked.
Eyes dark, rapid pulse at his temple, jaw set so hard he was almost grimacing. Oh, yes, he was thinking about the two of them together, too. The sex hadn’t just been good. It had been fantastic and, she clenched her jaw—go ahead, admit it—positively unforgettable was an understatement.
Crap. What was his question?
“Yes.” She exhaled with her answer, glad that she hadn’t let the sexual tension between them completely fry her brain. “Verdict. Twenty-seven days.” She frowned, dipping her eyes to his bare chest, before dragging her gaze to his face. “I’ll have a recommendation formulated by then, and your job will be over.”
Payment due. Black Raven moves on, and I’ll never see you again.
With that thought, reality hit her so hard she almost gasped.
Holy mother of God.
Why hadn’t she seen it before?
He was going to move on at the end of the job.
Which meant sex with him was exactly what sex needed to be. Sex. That was it. Nothing more than body parts and glorious release. Praise Jesus—no, not Jesus—praise Zeus, in all of his mortal and muscle-bound, half-naked, testosterone-driven glory.
She wanted it, he could give it.
He’d move on. For a million reasons, mostly because she wasn’t his type. History proved that. But also because she’d make damn sure that he did.
Unencumbered sex sounded great. Problem was, could she be one hundred percent certain that she’d be able to move on without a second thought? Niggling doubt kept her from jumping on him as her brain rejected the win-win scenario by screaming, bad idea.
Jigsaw (Black Raven Book 2) Page 16