Wow, lovely propaganda spiel. I could do so much with it—commerce, my foot and three eyes. Commerce meant the rich industrialists in Rose’s favorite organization, Top Hat. They printed textbooks and media with insane lies to prove their ridiculously unscientific dogma, robbed people of their life savings, stomped on the little man and the middle man and thought women belonged in the kitchen, propagating more little termites. Okay, so I’m good at propaganda too.
But I’d educated myself in Rose’s background. I’d followed the money, read the evidence of lies, seen the results, instead of listening to the shiny, exciting sound bites that concealed reality. It looked like Bill was a tool who believed what he wanted to hear rather than study the facts. That made him deluded, but not dangerous. Yet.
“And in your democracy, it’s all right for Ivan to kidnap me and try to shut up my mother?” I asked innocently, taking a bite of the sandwich because my tea was too hot. I used the mug to warm my hands.
“Your mother started the dirty tricks. She needs to be stopped before bringing down a good man, one who will make us all wealthy.” The gleam in his eyes wasn’t promising, and yes, there was definitely an accent beneath his excellent English.
The chicken in every pot promise—how many times did that one have to go around before people realized it was a scam? “And wealth is more important than peace or law and order?” Better to question and see if his upper story worked at all.
He rescued toast from the toaster and slathered it with butter. “One buys law and order with wealth. A strong military ensures peace.”
Brainwashed, got it. If he’d been raised in that kind of society, as I suspected, he was totally prepared for that kind of thinking. “Oh yeah, tell that to Iraq and Afghanistan,” I said through a mouthful of bread. “A strong military ensures war and might is greater than right, and dead babies don’t matter. So let’s get back to my mother. What has she done to irritate your boss?”
Bill shot me a look of annoyance. “She talks like you, apparently. What do dead babies have to do with anything? Women just don’t have the minds to understand complex matters.”
Man, that was guaranteed to get me on his side. Did he want to die? I fingered the paring knife—now in my pocket—and wondered how it felt to sink a blade into a gullet.
“Your mother stupidly conspired to bring Nadia here to bring down a successful industry,” he continued with a hint of scorn. “Why does she care what Scion did to survive in his youth as long as he turned his life around? It is no more important than Senator Rose’s teenage indiscretions. What matters is what they do now—which is building strong industry that brings wealth to impoverished nations. She simply wants to embarrass and humiliate strong men.”
I didn’t think reminding him that despite all the big industry in the world, the poor people were still poor and the only people getting rich were the people who had money. And snakes were no less lethal when they shed their skins. Logic only confused the brainwashed.
I latched on to the one possible fact in his sermon. Magda brought Nadia here? Scarily, I didn’t even have to ask why. I was starting to think like my mother. She wanted Scion to fall. And she meant to hit Rose with Scion’s filth. The old—edited—expression excrement hits the fan applied nicely.
“Would that strong industry she’s bringing down be distributing soma to the masses?” I asked, knowing he wouldn’t get it. Brave New World wouldn’t be required reading in Eastern Europe. It certainly wasn’t here that I could ascertain. It ought to be.
He frowned and returned to building his sandwich. He made a mean sandwich. I’d nearly scarfed mine and considered asking for more. Arguing with dangerous idiots apparently made me hungry.
“Nadia once used that term, soma. I do not know what it means. Mylaudanix is making many people wealthy. She was wrong to turn traitor and bite the hand that fed her.”
Uh oh. “You know Nadia personally?” I tried to sound casual. That meant he probably knew her ex-assassin husband.
He cut a tomato with a vicious chop of the one decent knife in the kitchen. “She was accountant.” He hesitated, apparently realizing he was revealing too much. “I knew her husband.”
Right. Confirmation that he came from overseas. He knew Viktor only if he’d been in the Ukraine or thereabouts. Viktor couldn’t travel here. “He must be worried about his children,” I said with what I hoped sounded like sympathy.
In between sandwich bites, I concealed the second knife in my coat pocket. The two sharp blades were tearing the heck out of the lining, but I was never wearing this rag again.
“Nadia’s life insurance will be enough to buy back the children. Viktor is not too concerned. You should call your mother, tell her to come get you. We can talk then. Maybe she will understand the wrongness of her ways.”
And maybe she’d end up dead or comatose, like Nadia. I fretted that Bill talking about Nadia’s life insurance meant he knew something I didn’t, but he could just be assuming she would die. I didn’t even know where to start with my questions.
“How would I call Magda? I have no phone and have no idea where I am.” I finished off the sandwich and eyed the eggs sitting on the counter. I could fry a couple of more on my own, make more toast. . .
He looked surprised. “No phone? You do not have the phone you took from the bar?”
He hadn’t been there when I took Tony’s phone.
But he and some female had been in the hospital when it had rung in my pocket, and I’d panicked and given it to the security guard.
I did my best to look puzzled. “I picked up my phone at the bar. Ivan stomped it into the sidewalk. I haven’t memorized my mother’s number or anyone else’s. Without it, I can’t call anyone.”
That was a lie. I had a handful of numbers memorized—the ones in my burner—the important ones, now languishing in my leather jacket.
He scowled and took a gulp of the beer he’d been guzzling along with his sandwich. Wiping his mouth, he glared at me. “Ivan will find her. It is too important that Senator Rose win for us to fail now.”
I really didn’t like the sound of this. Now that I had him riled, I might as well push him all the way. If I had a 50-50 chance of escaping, I wanted to make it worth my while.
“If your Ivan is stupid enough to think Magda will come because he’s holding me, he doesn’t know my mother very well. He’s failing as we speak.” I sipped my lemony tea and waited. I’d spent years antagonizing people. I could do it with surgical precision when called on.
“He will not fail,” Bill said with confidence, slurping his beer. “I have hacked Moriarity’s phone and know what they plan.”
Filthy foul word. He was one of the hackers? Crapadoodle-doo and other obscenities. I chewed the last of my sandwich and followed that thought to its logical conclusion. By the time I finished chewing, I figured I might as well get the whole picture because I wasn’t leaving here alive if it was up to Bill and Ivan.
“Huh, you’re the hacker who put that video of Magda and Moriarity on Scion’s security camera? That was pretty smart,” I lied.
“Hacked Moriarity’s kitchen to do it, too,” he boasted.
Yup, the male ego was so easy to manipulate.
“My brother is good, but he’s not that good.” I lied again. Tudor would never have been stupid enough to leave his earmark all over a hack. I fingered the smaller knife in my arsenal. “So that means you probably know about Graham’s servers too?”
“I do not know Graham. Ivan tells me the ISP to hack, and I enter and do as he says.”
Double dog stupid. “Graham is the guy who infected your computer with malware and blew up the cell tower you were transmitting from,” I said as casually as I could. I was a mere woman. Macho Bill wouldn’t perceive me as a threat—until I was ready.
He flung his mostly empty beer can at the wall. It bounced off the massive stainless steel refrigerator. “I will kill him!”
I guess that answered that.
H
is once-friendly face darkened. “I am expert shot. I will find him, and I will kill him. No one does that to me and lives to brag of it.”
Uh oh. Expert shot? That’s what Graham had said it would have taken to bring down Scion. Combined with Popov and this kidnapping action—I think I may have just found Scion’s killer.
Chapter 22
Jogging into the hospital parking garage, Graham spotted an enormous Hummer entering, dripping in ice, snow, and salt. Some days, the gods answered prayers. Or the only people insane enough to be driving in a blizzard were people with insane vehicles.
He ran out in front of it, forcing the driver to a halt. Graham held up his security badge, which was meaningless but made him look official. The driver rolled down his window.
Hoping the only person who wasn’t in ER coming out in this weather had to be a doctor or other medical personnel, Graham pulled an Ana and lied through his teeth. “We need to bring in stranded nurses. Are you here for a while?” Graham knew all about the need for medical personnel in emergencies. Blizzards counted.
“Who the hell are you?” the driver rightfully asked.
“Security for the president.” This would almost be fun if he didn’t fear Magda blowing up bombs all over DC while Ana got tortured. “I need your car. I’ll have it back before you need it again. Talk to Jackson.” He stuck out his hand for the keys.
Jackson was head of hospital security. The driver didn’t look any happier, but he apparently recognized the name. He switched off the ignition. “The president? The president is here?”
“His security is. Can’t tell you more than that.” Graham practically snatched the keys from the driver as he reluctantly climbed out.
Say anything with enough authority, and people listened. Well, it might also help if the doc recognized that Graham was wearing a designer leather coat that cost a few grand. Graham hopped in the driver’s seat and left the poor sap standing in bewilderment. He felt no guilt in stealing the car. He’d pay the guy whatever it was worth when it was all over.
Gunning the motor, Graham tore through the garage and out the exit. He dropped his phones in the cup holders and activated his Bluetooth headphones. At the first major intersection where he was forced to halt in line, he punched in the call for his command central.
“What have you got?” He shifted into gear as the line moved.
“Not good,” his operative said, sounding worried. “The limo rear-ended the taxi with our duo in it. The taxi stupidly stopped. The M’s jumped out and ran but we fear one of the limo thugs caught up with your female. She was wearing heels. The snow isn’t bad here yet, but the streets are slick.”
His men avoided being overheard but kept names to a minimum as a precaution. He knew the M’s were Magda and Moriarity, so the female in question was Ana’s damned mother. “What the hell were your men doing?” Graham shouted at the speaker as he roared the Hummer past a line of cars slipping downhill.
“Sliding on an ice patch. They got off a shot at one of the thugs going after your male, brought him down in the street. But your female had already reached an alley. By the time we had feet on the ground, she was gone, out the other side—so was the thug following her.”
“Does she still have her phone on her? Are you tracking?”
“She gave her phone to the male at some point. We’re taking him on to his destination, and we’ve picked up his signal heading for dinner.”
At the next intersection delay, Graham punched the address he’d chosen into the Hummer’s GPS. “Call her number anyway. See what happens.”
Magda had given her personal number to her children. He thought she wouldn’t have done that if she didn’t have multiple ways of accessing it. Installing tracking devices only worked on the physical phone, not the number. If she decided the limo had followed her phone, she’d ditch it pronto, which she had. But he’d bet half his fortune that she’d had the number set up to forward to a different phone.
He hit the Beltway ramp while his man did as told. The snow was coming down harder here, making visibility nearly zero. Gunning the motor, Graham tested the Hummer’s tires. They kept traction. He’d have to think about buying one of the gas guzzlers.
“The call went through, but there’s no answer, just dead space.”
“Like she answered, left it on, but can’t talk?” Graham asked urgently.
“Yeah, exactly like that. We’ve started triangulation. Think it’s her and not the guy?”
“We’ll know when you follow the signal. If she’s smart enough to divert her calls to different phones, she’s smart enough to have turned off the tracked phone when she planted it on male M.”
Graham kept the connection open and gunned the Hummer past a salt truck and a line of cars that had slid off the side of the road. The address Melissa had given him for Popov was north, in the Chevy Chase area just over the state line.
Scion’s house had been further north, in Bethesda. Graham hadn’t been in either place in a decade, but he’d grown up in the area of palatial mansions and gated communities. They’d have snow plows out before the city did.
“We have a location,” an excited voice said in his ear. “She’s traveling north, not on foot. I’d say they’ve got her.”
Graham clutched the wheel so hard that his fingers hurt. Ana and her mother might not get along, but he knew instinctively that they’d fight to the death for each other. He didn’t want to waste resources on a woman like Magda who brought trouble down on anyone in her vicinity, but for Ana, he had to try.
“Have someone follow the signal. I’m nearly at Chevy Chase.”
He took the turn and prayed.
I wandered as casually as I could toward the patio doors at the back of the kitchen, holding a fresh mug of tea. Was the blizzard letting up? I couldn’t tell.
Through the mist of tiny flakes, I could see a walled yard layered in even snow. No trees, no bushes. The garage and drive formed a wall on the right. I couldn’t see a door into the garage from this side. Awkward set-up for the cook, but presumably groceries got carried in through the hall door.
If I scaled that wall, would there be help on the other side?
“How good a shot are you?” I asked idly. He’d just admired Scion. Why would he have killed him?
But if Bill had replaced the video in Scion’s kitchen with the one of Magda and Moriarity—he had some kind of access. Maybe he’d just hacked Scion’s computers.
“Top of my squad,” he bragged, pulling another beer from the enormous SubZero refrigerator. “But the military gets you killed. I prefer school.”
He’d gone from saying he’d kill my mother to talking like any self-absorbed college student. Minor personality disorder, I diagnosed.
“I never had a snowball fight,” I said in my most wistful feminine manner. Which wasn’t very wistful or feminine. I’m a good liar but no actress. “Show me your sharpshooting skills with snowballs.”
I found the patio door latch and flipped it.
“You have to hit the alarm button or they drop bombs on us,” he said, crossing the room to the security box.
I wasn’t at all certain he was kidding. I was fine with setting off alarms that brought police to the door—bombs, not so much.
And if Ivan was in the habit of keeping prisoners, I was pretty sure his alarms didn’t alert the police.
“Bombs, huh?” I asked, waiting for him to shrug into his down coat. “That’s a pretty drastic reaction to burglars.”
“Ivan is paranoid. It is how he survived.” He hit the alarm code, turning it off.
Cool beans. No bombs. No guards riding to the rescue?
“It probably alerts local security,” Bill continued. “They drive around the neighborhood, looking important. But knowing Ivan, it will alert him and his bodyguards as well. He’d be furious if I brought in the locals.”
Maybe he really was just a misguided college student. Just because he was a sharpshooter and hacker. . . Naw, I didn’t believe
in coincidence. Personality disorders, yes, but not coincidence.
I pulled on my furry gloves and hat and strode out the doorway he opened. I breathed deeply of night air and freedom. Could I scale that wall before Bill stopped me? Probably not. I wasn’t particularly athletic but he would be.
But I was quick, and I had lied. I’d had royal snowball battles in my injudicious childhood. Pity there wouldn’t be any rocks in this barren yard. I scooped up a handful of snow, crunched it, and smacked Bill upside the head.
“Cheat!” he cried. “We have not yet declared war.” He rolled up a ball and threw.
I dodged. As far as I was concerned, we’d declared war the moment I’d been brought here. I didn’t want to gut the kid with my hidden knives, but I wanted out. His snowball whizzed past my head and hit the wall. Good velocity.
I made small balls with my small hands, and I didn’t have a ballplayer’s arm. But what I lacked in muscle, I made up for in speed and skill. I pounded him relentlessly. He got in a few hard hits—he had pretty good aim, but I was still fast and dodged most of them.
I was no longer shivering, and I had a better idea of how little the yard offered in the way of escape.
He was forming a cannonball-sized nuclear weapon when we heard the garage door open—followed by shots and shouts.
Bill dashed for the kitchen door. I smacked him in the back of the head. He didn’t even turn around.
Idly, I made more snowballs and stacked them where I could reach them while I considered the eight-foot, snow-covered wall—my only means of escape from here. I was seriously considering scaling it when one of the shouts sounded familiar.
“Touch me again and I’ll skin you alive, toad,” the low, feminine voice purred.
The only person alive who can purr with a shout is my mother. Take a moment to think about it—purring in a stage voice.
I mentally said a word I never used aloud. I was pretty certain Ivan didn’t mean for us to leave alive. If he did, we’d have the feds down on him so fast that they’d use his head for a bowling ball before he knew what hit him. But I’d seriously underestimated Fat Guy if he’d actually managed to catch my mother.
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