Athena Force 7-12
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“You know,” she said, tucking her hair away from her face, “I am sorry for your loss, Mr. Mansour. I can see it caused you terrible pain, and I’m sorry you had to endure it. I’ve lost someone, too, and sometimes his face keeps me up at night.” She frowned. “But can you tell me how you killing my sisters will bring yours back? How is it ever going to make anything better?”
Maybe she’d hoped for a flicker of repentance, or guilt, or sorrow. “Ask your country,” he said. “Ask them when they will stop funding rebels to kill our wives and daughters and sisters. When they stop, we will stop.”
Kim shook her head. She glanced at the third man, the stiff-faced man she’d struggled with at the television station. “And you—may you burn forever, wherever it is.”
He didn’t bother with a reply, and the police led the trio and the young boy away.
Lex said beside her, “Nice try. Now, let’s get to work.”
“What kind of bombs do we have today? Bomb caps? Time pencils? Plastic? What?”
He grinned. “C’mon, little girl, let me show you.” His eyebrow wiggled.
Chapter 21
Election Day
After a dinner of homemade raviolis and at least a quart of red wine, and rolls as fluffy as cotton candy, and bowls of buttered carrots and green beans, Kim sat on the couch in her mother’s living room and tried to keep from groaning.
On her right, Lex had no such qualms. He sprawled, all six foot four of him, limbs akimbo, across the couch, rubbing his belly every so often. “Mama Eileen, that was so good.” He reached out and snared her hand as she was about to pass, and kissed her knuckles. “Thank you.”
Kim gave him a look. “No,” she said to forestall the next question. “I will not marry you.”
“What if I cooked like your mama?”
“Not even then.”
On her left, Scott chuckled. He was very thin, and had not fully recovered his strength after being in the hospital for nearly three weeks, but he was on the mend. The doctors expected it would be at least a year before he was back to his former health, but Scott had vowed to make it six months. She believed he could do it.
A graphic came on the television they were all watching. “It appears we will not have to hold back our prediction of who will be the next president of the United States,” the anchor said. “After tallying votes in just six states, incumbent president cannot hope to surpass the electoral votes now amassed by opponent, Gabriel Monihan. The race goes to the new president of the United States of America, President Gabriel Monihan.”
Kim jumped up and did a little dance around the room. “Whoohoo! The bastard is gone!”
“Kim!” her mother said.
She laughed and kissed her sisters on the cheek. “Cut it out!” cried Jenni.
“You‘ve never heard that before, huh?”
Behind her, Lex whistled and clapped, and she gave him a kiss on the cheek, too. Then Scott, who looked disgruntled said, “We can’t have a president who is that young. It’s just not right.”
Kim grinned and kissed him, too. “You’ll just have to be the most handsome president ever, not the youngest.”
He winked.
“In other news,” the announcer said, “terrorists suspected of nefarious activities within the U.S. have been arraigned in Washington, D.C.”
Kim turned to see the photo of the elegant Mansour flash over the screen. Video of him in orange prison clothes, his hair too long, made her sad. “He had so much potential,” she said. “And how did he use it? Killing people, destroying the world instead of trying to make it better.”
Eileen jumped up, wary as always when the subject turned to terrorism and soldiers. “Anyone want coffee?”
“Let me help you,” Scott said, and hauled himself to his feet.
Behind Kim, Lex said quietly, “Come sit down, honey.”
The pain was finally starting to emerge, like a splinter working its way to the surface—for the past few weeks, Kim had been overflowing with grief for her brother, Jason. It was healthier than the bottled-up agony she’d felt before that, but it still wasn’t comfortable, and something about Mansour always made her think of her lost, beloved brother.
She sat down and rested in the circle of comfort Lex provided. “It gets easier,” he said. “I promise.”
“I know,” Kim returned and put her hand on his long and sexy thigh. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” he said, and settled his hand in a comforting way over her once-torn ear. It was protective and sweet and she appreciated it.
“You’re all right, Lex Luthor,” Kim said.
“You, too, Wind Talker.”
TARGET
CINDY DEES
Published by Silhouette Books
America’s Publisher of Contemporary Romance
Special thanks and acknowledgment
are given to Cindy Dees for her contribution
to the ATHENA FORCE series.
This book is dedicated to women everywhere
who work in their own way—as mothers, professionals
or role models—toward making this world a safer place
for all our children. Thank you for your vision
and your quiet heroism.
Contents
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Diana Lockworth lurched bolt upright in bed. She blinked, disoriented, at the blanket of darkness around her. Something had ripped her from a deep, dreaming slumber to full consciousness. But what? Even the street outside was quiet, deserted at this hour. Silence pressed against her eardrums. Nothing.
Sheesh. She was letting work get to her again. But then paranoia was the logical price of sitting around day after day hunting for conspiracies for Uncle Sam. At least Don Quixote had real windmills to joust with. She tilted at shadows and innuendoes, vague rumors and possibilities. Maybe that was the problem. The reason her predictions had gone sour lately. She’d moved so far away from concrete reality in her thinking that she could no longer tell the difference between the possible and the actual.
She flopped back down on her pillow in disgust. The telltale whirl of disjointed thoughts in her head did not bode well for getting back to sleep anytime soon. Crud. She propped herself up on an elbow to plump her squashed eiderdown pillow. And heard a noise. Either the biggest mouse in the history of mankind was in her house, or else someone had just bumped into something in her living room.
Intruder. Autonomic responses programmed into her relentlessly since she was a child kicked in. Adrenaline surged through her veins, sending her brain into high gear and preparing her body to fight. She rolled fast, flinging herself off the far side of the bed. Counted to sixty in the thunderous silence. Nobody opened her door. But no doubt about it, someone was out there. She could feel it.
She reached up onto her nightstand for the telephone, her hands shaky, and dialed 9-1-1. She whispered into the receiver, “There’s someone in my house.”
The 9-1-1 dispatcher efficiently asked her address, name, physical description, and current location in her home. He was in the middle of telling her the police would be there in under five minutes when Diana heard another noise. The distinctive metallic squeak of her computer chair as someone sat down in it. She heard a faint, rapid clicking. Typing! On her computer full of sensitive and highly dangerous material.
She pushed upright, the phone forgotte
n, her bare feet silent on the hardwood floor. On bent knees, she moved catlike to the bedroom door. She opened it inch by cautious inch. A fast spin out into the hall. Empty. She plastered herself against the wall and tiptoed toward a blue glow emanating from the computer workstation in her living room. She leaped forward, surging into the living room on a wave of fury and fear.
One male, dressed in black. A ski mask over his face. He jumped to his feet and spun to face her in a fighting crouch. Wiry body. Hands held open and ready at shoulder height. Weight centered and balanced. A trained martial artist. Fortunately, so was she. In Krav Maga, the deadly system developed by Israeli Defense Forces for street fighting. Dirty, deadly street fighting.
She settled herself before the intruder. He rocked on the balls of his feet, noncommittal about attacking. She didn’t want this guy to flee. She wanted to know who he was. Why he was poking around on her computer. She needed him to stand and fight.
“You think you can take me?” she taunted. “Think again. You’re not man enough.”
The guy snarled audibly. Excellent.
“Go ahead. Try me,” she urged.
Another growl, but no attack.
She laughed derisively. And that did it. The guy came in with a fast roundhouse kick aimed at her face. Impressive in a Bruce Lee movie, but completely impractical in a real fight. She ducked under it easily. While he was still regaining his footing from the kick, she stepped in and stiff-armed him in the sternum. He staggered backward. But to his credit, he came out swinging. Fast hands. She blocked three quick jabs, but took a glancing hit from the fourth on the nose. Pain radiated outward from it, making her eyeballs ache. She blinked fast to clear the involuntary tears oozing from her eyes. And as she did so, she lashed out with her foot toward his knee. A solid hit. The guy cried out. Staggered. But righted himself and charged.
He was too close. She couldn’t avoid the tackle. They both went down on the floor. She got an elbow between them, but the guy was pissed off now. He went for her neck with his gloved hands. She heaved and came around hard with her elbow. And clocked him in the jaw. The guy reeled back. A mighty shove and he was off her. She jumped to her feet.
“Who do you work for?” she demanded.
The guy’s only answer was a nifty back-bend-and-jump-to-his-feet move. Damn. She should’ve stood on his head while she had him down. He launched at her with a flurry of kicks and punches that forced her to give ground. She banged into the coffee table. Knocked it over. Stumbled over it and righted herself barely in time to get a hand up as his foot came flying at her face with lethal intent. She grabbed his ankle and yanked, using the momentum of his kick to propel him into the sofa. But she was off balance herself and crashed to the floor flat on her back. She rolled, pulled her feet under her and shoved vertical. And felt faintly nauseous as the room spun around her. She saw double images of her assailant bouncing off the cushions and spinning to face her. She huffed hard a couple times to clear her head and focus.
His gaze flicked over her shoulder for an instant. Toward the front door. Either he had a partner who’d just walked in and she was hosed, or the jerk was contemplating getting out of Dodge. With a wordless shout, he charged her. But at the last second, he veered left. She dived for him as he ran past and wrapped her arms around his legs. They fell hard, his heels jamming into her gut until she nearly barfed. He kicked furiously, twisting and wriggling frantically. She hung on as best she could, but he slipped through her grasp. He jumped up and took off for the door. She pushed up and gave chase, bursting out onto her front porch. There! To the left. A sprinting figure.
She charged after him, the concrete sidewalk rough and cold beneath her bare feet in Maryland’s January chill. He screeched to a stop by the door of a car. Ripped it open and jumped in. The car peeled away from the curb. She dived between two parked cars as the getaway car sped past, both to take cover and to get a closer look at the vehicle. Silver, midsize foreign sedan. The license plate was covered with something black. Maybe a plastic garbage bag. It rippled as the car accelerated away from her into the night. Helplessly, she watched the vehicle turn onto River Road. Her Bethesda home had ready access to major highways in several directions, no telling where her assailant had gone. The bastards had gotten away.
And she was standing in the middle of the street on a freezing January night, with snow on the ground for God’s sake, in nothing but a cropped T-shirt and soft cotton short-shorts.
In the two more minutes it took the police to arrive, she hurried back inside and threw on a pair of slim black jeans, a bra and a slightly longer and less tight T-shirt that nonetheless hugged the slender curves of her body. She pulled her wavy, shoulder-length blond hair back into a ponytail and checked the spot on the back of her head where she’d hit the floor. No goose egg forming. She examined her eyes in the bathroom mirror, and the aqua-blue rings of her irises were identical in diameter. No concussion, then. Her nose was a little red, but that could be as much from the cold as the glancing blow it had taken.
A chiming noise sounded. The doorbell. She moved carefully through the living room so as not to destroy evidence and opened the front door.
“You reported an intruder in your house, ma’am?” the officer asked tersely.
She nodded and stepped aside to let the pair of policemen inside. Quickly, she relayed what had happened.
“And you fought him off?” the guy asked, sounding surprised.
“That’s right.”
“Are you injured, ma’am?”
She shook her head in the negative and flinched as her nose twinged. She’d been clocked worse than that by her big sister in a boxing ring more times than she could count.
“I’m Officer Grady and this is my partner, Officer Fratiano.” The pair of big men stepped into the room. “Tell us exactly what happened again, and this time include every detail you can remember.”
The poor cops scribbled busily until she was done with her trained observations, and no doubt they had a good case of writer’s cramp. Grady moved around the room, notepad in hand, walking through the events she’d described. And then he looked up at her, skeptical. “I’ve never seen a victim of an attack who could describe it in such perfect detail. Your account jives exactly with the evidence. Almost too exactly.” He paused and then added slyly, “That usually indicates the crime scene was a setup.”
The guy thought she was lying about the intruder? She frowned and looked around the living room. It did look shockingly undisturbed given how violent a fight had just taken place in it. The upended coffee table and a few sofa pillows on the floor were the extent of the damage. She explained carefully, “I’m an Army Intelligence officer. I’m trained to notice details, even under duress.”
“Mind if we have a look around, ma’am?” Grady asked dryly.
“Not at all,” she answered coolly. Jerk.
Grady wandered down the hall toward her bedroom while the second officer checked her computer for fingerprints with a special flashlight. Fratiano looked up at her regretfully. “Do you have long fingernails?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered cautiously.
He nodded. “That explains why there are no complete fingerprints on your keyboard. You don’t leave full prints when you type, and your intruder didn’t leave any, either.”
“I told you he was wearing gloves. Of course he didn’t leave any prints,” she retorted. The beginnings of desperation tickled the back of her neck.
“What kind of gloves did he have on? It’s not like you can type in most gloves.”
She thought back to the sight of his hands coming up to fight. “They looked like driving gloves. Thin material. Maybe Lycra or very fine leather. Can’t you check the keyboard for fibers or something?”
The cop nodded reluctantly. “But we usually don’t call out a full-blown evidence collection team for a simple B and E when nothing was taken and nobody was hurt.”
“Look,” she explained patiently. “I’m not your usual r
andom victim. I work for the government. I uncover conspiracies and predict terrorist activity. I have enemies. No break-in to my home, particularly when my computer is the target, is a simple B and E.”
“Then I’d suggest you call the Army Criminal Investigation Division—”
“Hey Vinny!” Officer Grady shouted from her bedroom. “Come have a look at this!”
Cripes. She winced. He found her wall of pictures. She hastened after Officer Fratiano to explain herself before they hauled her in as a stalker. She rounded the corner into her bedroom and sure enough, the two cops were gaping at her massive collection of pictures of Gabe Monihan, President-elect of the United States. She had literally hundreds of pictures of him pinned up on the wall of her bedroom opposite her bed, the entire space wallpapered with images of him. They were taken mostly in the final months of last year’s Presidential campaign—the months leading up to and immediately after a thwarted terrorist attack at Chicago O’Hare airport that he’d nearly been caught in the middle of. The planned attack, a suicide bombing, had occurred just a couple weeks before the Presidential election, and many pundits credited sympathy votes for Monihan’s election. Monihan and the incumbent, now-outgoing President James Whitlow. Had both been in the area to campaign. Reports had it that Monihan’s presence there had been a bonus for the terrorists, but his death was not their goal. She had other theories on the incident, however.