“She’s in Russia on a grant from the Bastion Foundation.”
Tasha didn’t even try to hide her frustration over that news. She grabbed onto the armrests and dug her fingernails in to keep from yelling. “Of course she is.”
“What?” When Tasha gestured for Caleb to keep explaining, he did. “They are there under the guise of testing theories about some old hiking incident. One of those big unsolved conspiracies. But I did some digging—”
“I don’t want to know how.” Plausible deniability was a big concept in her dealings with Caleb.
“She’s there for something else.”
All the pieces fell together in Tasha’s head. The CIA’s insistence they had agents working to assess what could be a threat in the Urals, and the steadfast refusal to let her bring in the Alliance to help. Those idiots at Langley were using scientists, endangering people without sufficient training.
She exhaled. “Let me guess. You stumbled upon allegations that a faction within the Russian military—or worse, a private former military group—is using former Soviet era compounds throughout the Urals to do something weapons related, possibly nuclear but also could be chemical, it’s not clear except that the complete takeover of the Ukraine seems to be the endgame.”
Caleb’s arm dropped and his hand smacked against the side of the chair. “I see you already got the memo.”
“It’s my job to know these things.” And since she might need Caleb’s backdoor assistance, she filled him in on the basics. “I’d been told there were assets in the region tracking truck movements and poking around to see if the Alliance should investigate. Then satellite access cut off. Signals are being jammed on the ground.”
“Reid, Parker, and Cara are in the middle of all of that.”
“I’m not happy about you using my men for your personal mission.” Now there was an understatement. She’d firmly crossed over from frustrated to pissed, but with her people scattered, the Alliance being watched closer than usual after Harlan’s murder, and the need to keep this off the intelligence community’s radar for now, she needed Caleb.
“I didn’t know about the alternative reason for the expedition until communication got cut off and I started investigating.” He held up a hand in mock surrender. “I really did ask Reid to go as a personal favor.” Caleb shook his head. “He said something about having vacation time and motorcycles.”
“The fact he still loves Cara probably weighed heavily in his decision to go.” And that was the other unknown factor. Tasha had worked with her fiancé, Ward, in the field in the past and knew just how hard it was to keep the emotional separated from the mission in those circumstances.
“Reid insists that’s over.” Caleb shrugged. “That’s what he says, anyway.”
“Sure.” Men really could be clueless. “I’m assuming you covered your digital tracks. The CIA isn’t hunting you down right now, correct?”
Caleb snorted. “Give me some credit.”
“Good, because we need to do an end run. Convincing the people I answer to that we should put a second team on the ground and risk pissing off Russia will take too long.” Her bigger fear was in touching off an intelligence agency battle between the CIA and everyone else, where the CIA rushed to cover its ass and the science expedition became collateral damage. “You wouldn’t believe the layers of bullshit involved in this sort of thing.”
Caleb’s gaze narrowed. “So, what do we do?”
“Go straight to Nikolay Murin.” One of her least favorite people on the planet, and that was saying something.
“The head of the Bastion Foundation,” Caleb said nice and slow, as if weighing each word as he said it.
“Niko and I have a bit of a history.” She found her first smile since the conversation started.
“A good one?”
“I think so.” She unlocked the safe behind her desk and threw a stack of files in it. Then she took out her gun. “I grabbed him and interrogated him about nine months ago. We made an agreement when he ended up accepting my blackmail terms. Things ended up fine.”
“Does he see it that way?”
Tasha smiled for the first time since the conversation started. She stood up, ready to get this done. “Well, he’s not in jail for fraud, and that’s thanks to me. Me and his willingness to tell me everything I needed to know at the time.”
Caleb shook his head. “I don’t want to know about what.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Maybe I should go in alone.” Caleb said it more as a comment than a question.
“Even with your money and power, it’s possible he’ll never see you.” The man was ridiculously paranoid about his protection. Refused public appearances and played the role of mysterious billionaire philanthropist very well. “But Niko will see me.”
Caleb was slower to get up, but he finally did. “What makes you so sure?”
“He threatened to kill me.” Niko had used harsher words than that, but Tasha was pretty sure she made her point, since Caleb looked like she’d hit him with a bat. “He will think he’s finally getting his chance.”
“Aren’t you worried he’ll actually try?”
She stifled an eye roll. “He’s never been successful before. He won’t be this time either.”
7
WHEN CARA sighed at him for the fifth time, Reid knew he was in trouble. They’d told her the camp was “not far,” and by that he meant five miles off any known path, including adding in extra time for doubling back and creating false trails just in case. In hindsight, he could have handled that information better.
After two hours of walking she tagged as vigorous and he viewed as unnecessarily slow, they came up to the back gate and fence surrounding the outside of what was once known as Norkosov, one of a series of possibly thousands of forced labor camps used mostly by the then Soviet Union up through the fifties. Some had been demolished. Others were turned into museums. This one, small by comparison, probably housed only a thousand or so men at a time, but that didn’t make the horror of what happened here any less dramatic.
Guard towers still stood. So did the outside fence, a fact that started Reid’s instincts ticking. Some of the buildings were little more than piles of rubble. Still, the fence hadn’t been torn apart, wasn’t ripped in places. It and the lock holding the gate shut struck Reid as pristine. Not new and shiny, but not sixty years old and abandoned either.
“Just so you know.” Cara glared at Reid out of the corner of her eye. “I hate you both. We walked around in circles forever.”
Parker shrugged. “Not exactly a circle.”
Not one to be overly cautious, Reid still understood there were times that called for the ability. He’d spent his younger years being passed from foster home to foster home. He learned how to maneuver, how to fight, and when to listen to the voice in his head as it warned about incoming danger.
He’d been on his own a long time, not depending on anyone or anything. He didn’t collect people or things. But he did trust his team and his common sense, and nothing about what he saw in front of him looked right.
“We’re not alone.” In long strides, he walked along the fence line a few feet down for a better angle on the main building in the center of the complex, then returned.
Cara paled. “Meaning?”
“The fence. The truck.” He noticed the front end of the older model vehicle sticking out from behind the edge of one of the buildings. Who knew what he’d see if he ventured farther. “The place is supposed to be rotted out and human-free.”
“It could be kids hanging out where they absolutely shouldn’t be, but I really don’t see anyone.” Cara peeked through the lines of barbed wire. “Nothing looks new or in working order.”
Reid’s gaze shot back to the long two-story structure running down the center of the camp. Faded spots of yellow dotted the white. Paint peeled from the outside walls. Pieces of concrete lay stacked in piles on the ground as if a section of the building had crumbled
. But the windows, every single one of them, were intact.
“I don’t like it.” Reid watched Parker scan the area and focus on the ground and what looked like covered-over tire tracks.
Parker nodded. “Me either.”
“Let’s move.” Reid didn’t see cameras, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. He grabbed Cara’s arm, careful not to pull too hard, and marched them over to the small guard shack about fifty feet along the fence.
When they stopped, Cara sighed at them. Threw in an eye roll, too. “Is this a paranoia thing or do we really have a problem?”
“Fair question.” Parker checked his gun then his extra ammo.
Looked like they were on the same page. The world worked better when that happened. Despite his fractured life before the Alliance, Reid was smart enough to know heading into danger alone sometimes just heightened it.
“We do a little surveillance.” They might be there for her and to find her team, but if someone was starting up the gulag system again, Reid wanted to report back to Tasha. He really wanted to shut the shit down, but he had Cara to worry about. Speaking of her . . . “You’re going to hide—”
She was already shaking her head. “No.”
“Cara.”
“I am not leaving your side.” She gestured to indicate him. “If someone comes for me, they have to go through you. That’s a plan that works for me.”
“I think that’s a compliment, but I’m not totally sure.”
Her gaze traveled over Reid, as if assessing his strength and abilities just by looking at him. “I know for a fact those big shoulders are good for many things.”
Parker nodded. “Very romantic.”
“I’m practical.”
As if Reid would let hers be the last word on the subject. “And untrained.”
“Not to jump in the middle of a lovers’ quarrel here . . .” Parker repocketed his backup ammunition. “. . . but if any of the scientists from her expedition are here, we won’t be able to identify them. We actually need her help.”
Logic. Just what Reid needed. “Shit.”
“You picked her, man.”
“And people think scientists suck at communication. Again, I would point out that you two need to work on your people skills.” She stood in front of both of them and held out her hand, palm up. “I’d rather keep you alive than charm you.”
When she didn’t drop her hand, Reid couldn’t resist asking, “What are you doing?”
“I want a gun.”
Parker snorted. Looked horrified by the suggestion. “Nope.”
The idea of a novice with a gun made Reid twitchy, but Cara was no novice. “She can shoot.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How do you know?”
Because he knew every damn thing about her. Caleb had filled him in on some of the details. Reid wasn’t sure if that amounted to torture or matchmaking, but the truth was, he never lost touch with her. Not really. “You took lessons after we broke up.”
“She dumped you,” Parker said, sticking his head between them. “She’s made that clear.”
Cara pushed Parker back without looking at him and glared at Reid. “I’m going to ignore the fact that you know what I’ve been doing and how that means you’ve been stalking me, because in this case it helps me win the argument.”
“Fine.” And by that Reid meant the issue about stalking was closed.
She held up a finger in front of his face. “But we’re going to talk about your knuckle-dragging behavior later.”
Reid reached around, pulled out a second gun and handed it to her. “Once I save you.”
She treated him to another eye roll. “Or vice versa.”
Parker laughed. “I really like her.”
Yeah, Reid was not getting into this argument now. He knew he sometimes missed the boundary lines others saw and easily navigated. Every now and then he went overboard. His protective instincts had been known to misfire.
He even understood that when it came to her, the desperation to keep her safe overwhelmed everything else. He’d tried to rein it in, and the first time he did she ran into trouble in the middle-of-fucking-nowhere Russia and he came running.
His need for her bordered on pathetic. He’d never been so attracted to a woman before. Never screwed up so much.
Time to get back to work. He nodded at the phone sticking out of Parker’s pocket. “Check the comm.”
“Already did and nothing.”
“Damn it.” That meant they had no choice about the closer investigation. Part of him wanted to bundle Cara away somewhere, but leaving her only opened the door to having someone sneak in and grab her. They had enough missing scientists at the moment. “Fine, you swing to the left. We’ll take the right. This is intel gathering only.”
“As opposed to what?” she asked.
Parker winked at her. “He doesn’t want me to shoot anyone.”
“Sounds like a good plan.” She checked her gun then moved her finger off the trigger. Refrained from sticking it in her pocket or something equally stupid.
Reid was impressed. Someone taught her well. “Not to me.”
With a nod, Parker took off. All those years of Army training paid off. He moved fast and low and without a sound. Combine that with his shooting ability and willingness to step in front of a bullet, if that’s what had to be done for the mission, and he was one of the most solid of the Alliance agents. Except for the whole conspiracy nut thing.
Reid dropped to his knees and reached into his pack to find a small leather pouch. He glanced over his shoulder at Cara as he went to work on the fence. “Be ready. I move, you move. No talking. Got it?”
Instead of stepping back, she closed in. Loomed over his back until her shins touched his ass. After a few seconds she shifted to stand by his side, bent over with her hands on her knees.
Her hair slipped off her shoulder and the ends blew around in the breeze. This close, stray strands skimmed across his cheek. He could feel the heat coming off her body and fought off a reaction in his.
“I’m going to assume you think you need to talk to me this way.” She whispered the words right into his ear. “Even if so, you should stop doing it before I punch you.”
The small puffs of air sent something raw and primal racing around inside him. He chalked the feeling up to the rush of the moment. Adrenaline pounded in his veins. The energy he needed to get them through the next few minutes built inside him. Grew stronger.
“Whatever you say.” Opening the pouch, he took out the tool he needed and slipped on a thin pair of gloves. The kind that wouldn’t interfere with his shot or limit his mobility.
The wire cutters sliced through what should have been old barbed wire only after he exerted some force. Instead of cracking into pieces, each strand broke with a clean snap. One more sign this compound was not as old and decrepit as someone wanted people to believe.
“Keep using that tone and you can count on it.” She held out her hand and collected the cutter, putting it back in the small bag and then into his bigger pack. “The whole pissy alpha act turns me off.”
“I thought women liked the hot and lethal thing,” he said as he rolled back the sharp edges of the fencing, making an opening big enough for them to slide through without trouble.
“Stop talking.”
It was good advice, so he followed it. Flattening the pack as much as possible, he set it on the ground, just outside of the fence. The extra weight could block his shots and make it tougher for him to spin and shoot. He wasn’t looking for more obstacles, so he abandoned this one for now.
Then he took off sprinting across the open space between the fence and the first building. He knew she followed right on his heels because he could hear the soft thump of her boots as they hit the ground. Keeping up wasn’t a problem. The woman could run.
They landed at the side of the first building. With his back plastered against the wall, he motioned for her to join him and stay quiet. They slid along the l
ength of building without any windows. When they got to the end, Reid checked the area around them then turned a corner, leading to a set of massive double doors. Heavy chains and two locks blocked their entrance. New locks.
Looked like his instincts hadn’t failed him this time either. “So much for this place being abandoned.”
Cara placed her palm against the door. “I hate to think of what happened in that building in the past.”
Reid wanted to know what was happening in there now. Not hearing any noise and not having the time to get out the equipment he needed to pick the lock, he mentally added that to the list of things to check later and moved them on. “One down.”
Low and fast they jogged to the nearest corner of the next building. The rumble of voices hit Reid first. Leaning toward the edge of the window, he saw a cube positioned on the floor. It threw off just enough light to chase away the darkness but not enough to show through the windows or give him a good shot at what was happening inside. He needed a better angle.
He glanced back at Cara and felt her fingers tighten on the lump of his jacket she held in her fist. He tried to turn around but she held firm.
She put her mouth right against his ear. “Don’t even think of leaving me out here alone.”
The woman did pick the oddest times to pull him in close. At some point they’d need to work on her timing and the forty pounds of other baggage stacked between them. Unless she ran again, which he feared was inevitable.
He pointed at the window. “People.”
“I know.” She mouthed the words more than said them.
“I need one second. Promise not to go far.” Now to make some identifications, or at least try to. He toyed with the best way to get her closer without endangering her more than he already was.
The body count came first. He’d expect guards. Hell, the place was set up with lookout towers and sight lines in every direction. When no guards appeared, he went with the possibility that whoever hung around inside expected to be alone up here. A logical assumption but a dumb one.
Under the Wire: Bad Boys Undercover Page 7