Swordfish

by Andrea Bramhall

  “Hello, what do you need?” Sean asked.

  “I need info. I think my client’s just been kidnapped.”

  “Then call the police.”

  “No time. Can you take a look at something for me?”

  “What?”

  “Is William Sterling still behind bars?” She listened to the crunch of keys as he pounded on the keyboard.

  “Yup.”

  “Shit.”

  “Bailey, what’s going on? Seriously.”

  She didn’t want to betray Cassie’s confidences, but right now finding her was more important. She trusted Sean. He’d saved her butt more times than she could count. She took a deep breath. What did it matter anyway? Cassie wasn’t talking to her, and all indications were that she wouldn’t talk to her again. What did she have to lose?

  She gave him every detail she knew and listened to the silence down the end of the phone. “You still there?”

  “Walk away.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me, Bailey. Walk away.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not? You did what she paid you to do. You found the girl for her. You brought her home. Cash the check, and walk away. Done.”

  “They just kidnapped her.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I saw them manhandling her into the car and then I saw her in a helicopter.”

  “And that’s kidnapping?”

  “Yes.” She groaned and ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t know. Maybe.” She climbed back into the car. “I just need to be sure she’s okay.”

  “Why?”

  “I just do.”

  Sean laughed. “Bailey, you might play tough girl, but you’re a marshmallow on the inside. But even you usually know when to walk away. This is the point where you put your cards on the table or you fold. So which is it gonna be?”

  “I think I love her.”

  “Oh. My. God. I thought I’d never live to see the day. About fucking time. Let me make some calls and see what I can find.”

  “You bastard,” Bailey said, laughing.

  “Yeah yeah, save the badass attitude for someone who’s buying.”

  *

  Bailey watched her cell so closely that it didn’t even sound before she answered it. “Tell me.”

  “I don’t have anything concrete.”

  “Sean, just tell me what’s going on.”

  “Cassie’s handler is a guy called Stephen Knight. Word is last night he was badly injured on a mission that went wrong. I can’t get the details. All I can get is that he was working with Daniela Finsbury-Sterling trying to get his hands on a guy who was planning to release some bio weapon.”

  “And?”

  “He’s in the hospital. Seems he was betrayed. Someone sold him out to the bad guy for cash and the bio weapon’s already in play.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s taken after her old man after all.”

  “What? Like I said, this is little more than rumor.”

  “Thanks for the info, Sean. Gotta go.” It was the only thing that made sense. Daniela wasn’t all sweetness and light like Mrs. Richmond seemed to think. She’d sold out the CIA agent, sold a biological weapon, and now Cassie was gone. Sterling didn’t need to escape prison. Daddy’s little girl was going to finish the job he started. Bailey turned on the engine and checked her mirror. Not if I’ve got anything to do with it.

  Chapter Forty-six

  “You okay?” Oz asked, clasping Finn’s fingers in her own. “Geez, your hands are like ice.” She chafed them between her hands, trying to warm them up. Finn was grateful but couldn’t look away from the unconscious body of Stephen Knight strapped to the gurney fixed to the side of the military transport plane Charlie seemed to have magically created out of thin air. Blood still seeped through his bandages and his face had taken on the pallor of someone near death.

  “How long before we land?” Finn didn’t recognize her own voice. It was hoarse, scratchy, and her throat was sore from Mehalik’s brutal hold on it earlier.

  “About ten minutes. There’s an ambulance waiting for him. He’ll be in the hospital fifteen minutes after that. He’ll be okay.”

  “No, he won’t.” Finn pulled a ragged breath into her lungs. “You saw those wounds. If he lives, his life will never be the same. He may lose limbs, and if he doesn’t end up in a wheelchair, he’ll walk with a limp for the rest of his life.”

  “I know, baby.”

  Finn wiped angrily at the tears rolling down her cheek. “That’s my fault.”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s the fault of the man who tortured him. It’s the fault of the man who put you both in that situation. It’s their fault. Not yours.”

  “Oz, I knew bringing the toxin was a mistake. I knew it—”

  “Yes, and you told us all from the very start. Stephen and Whittaker both insisted otherwise.”

  “That’s why I didn’t trust them.”

  “I know. But he did listen to what you said. He knew the choices if it went wrong, and he knew the risk we were all taking, including him. If we only lose one good guy in a mission like this, well, that’s an acceptable margin.”

  “Acceptable margin? Are you kidding? That’s not acceptable, Oz. It’s very bloody far from acceptable, and I can’t believe you think that. I could have told Mehalik where Gamble was, and then they wouldn’t have tortured him like that. Hell, I could’ve told them about Lugh and then they would have had no reason to hurt him like that.”

  “No, you’re right. They wouldn’t.” Oz tugged on her hand until she met her gaze. “They would have killed him because he was useless to them. Just like Whittaker.” Oz cupped her cheeks and held her in place when she tried to pull away. “We talked about this before, that there would come a point where you have to choose to trust me when you couldn’t believe in yourself.” She kissed her gently. “This is it. Your actions and choices in there gave him the best possible chance to live. He knows that. It’s one of the reasons he told you to do it.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Because he knew there was far more at stake than his life, and he was willing to sacrifice it for the greater good. He’s a good man. But you have an important job to do now, and you won’t be able to do it if you’re still blaming yourself for Stephen’s injuries and the toxin’s release. You simply won’t be able to focus.”

  “It isn’t that simple.”

  “I know, baby, but I believe in you. I believe you can do this. You will, because you won’t give up until you do.” She checked her watch. “You’ve got eighty-eight hours—”

  “No, I don’t. I have maybe seventy, if I’m lucky. We have to get it back to Israel too, and administered.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “It’s an eleven-hour flight, I have no idea how long the delivery system will take or how much red tape we’ll have to go through to get it distributed. That alone could take days.” She rested her forehead against Oz’s shoulder. “There just isn’t time.”

  “You leave the transport and the red tape to us, and we’ll see what we can shave off that eleven hours. You just make it, okay?”

  Finn started to argue the impossibility of the task, but the confidence, the trust, and the unmistakable belief in Oz’s eyes stopped her. Instead, she nodded and hoped that she could do what needed to be done.

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Only about you.”

  The plane bounced, and the vibrations of the wheels rolling over the tarmac drew a groan from Stephen. The usual windows she would have looked through were missing from the cargo plane, and before they had stopped moving, everyone was in motion. People released the gurney so Stephen was ready and waiting at the rear doors. People grabbed bags, and Charlie and Billy were both bellowing out orders.

  Cars were waiting for them on the tarmac, engines running and ready to go. Oz helped her into the front vehicle and got in behind her.


  “Where to?”

  “Sterling Bio Tech,” Finn said immediately.

  “You don’t want to go home or anything?”

  “I only have seventy hours. I don’t have time to take a pee, never mind go home.” She smirked at Oz’s little laugh. “Thank you for the pep talk. Any news about Stephen’s expert?”

  “Charlie said they got a message in the air. Professor Sandra Burns is waiting at the lab for you. Apparently, she’s going over the research and getting up to speed.”

  Finn snorted sarcastically. “Good luck with that.”

  Oz held out her arm and patted her shoulder in invitation. “Why don’t you rest your head here for a few minutes and I’ll wake you up when we get there?”

  Finn wanted nothing more than to never leave the safety and security of Oz’s strong arms. She closed her eyes and prayed that when she woke this would all have been a nightmare.

  *

  “Finn, baby, we’re here.” Oz’s voice was soft in her ear, and Finn burrowed closer to the warm body beside her. “Come on, baby. Lots to do, remember?”

  She groaned. Not a nightmare, then. She pulled herself out of Oz’s arms with a quick kiss and climbed out of the car. The short nap had given her a second wind, and she was already focused on the task ahead, trying to break down in her mind just how she could create something no one had been able to do for decades. And do it in a matter of hours. She shook her head. No point dwelling on the difficulty of the task. No one was under any illusions about that. Instead she tried to section the workload into manageable pieces; each one was a part of a huge jigsaw puzzle that she would come at from a different angle.

  She knew Balor. She knew the way it worked, and the way each component of it worked individually. What she needed most was a way to stop the neurotoxin element of the weapon. If that were possible, the lasting effects of Balor would be hugely reduced. There may still be deaths, but nothing as catastrophic as they’d forecast. “Have you got a stopwatch on your watch or something?” she asked Oz.

  “No. Why?”

  “I want to set a countdown. I know I’m going to lose track of time at some point. I need a reference.”

  AJ pulled out a cell phone. “I can do it on here for you, Finn, and I’m not likely to be screaming into mine like the rest of these guys will be.”

  She smiled at him. “You’re an angel.”

  He laughed. “Don’t you dare say that. I’ve just earned myself a bad boy rep. Don’t go and destroy all my hard work.”

  Finn chuckled and stepped out of the lift first, and led them all through the security door and into the lab. The lights were shining in one section of the room, but Finn couldn’t see through the banks of benches, cupboards, and equipment to make out clearly the hunched figure with their back to the door. A guy stood facing her, a frown on his face, and he shrugged in response to something she asked him. In an instant, Finn’s view was blocked by Junior stepping in front of her, his gun drawn, and Oz spun her back toward the exit.

  “Show me your hands.” Junior’s voice was low and menacing. “Slowly.” Finn couldn’t see anything, but she could imagine whoever it was holding their hands above their head while Junior stared them down. She would have chuckled if she weren’t in a state of barely repressed panic.

  “You’re making a mistake, Son.” Finn didn’t recognize the man’s voice. “We have authority to be here. Put the gun down and I won’t have to shoot your ass.”

  “I’d like to see you try it, Gramps. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  “Calm down, everyone.”

  A woman’s voice rang out clearly, and Finn struggled against Oz but had to settle for standing inside the doorway with Oz forming a protective cage around her.

  “We don’t need the guns. I was brought here by these two fine CIA agents earlier today,” the woman said.

  There was something familiar in the voice—the tone, maybe. Finn tried to place it, but the answer was elusive and remained beyond her reach. From somewhere in the room, she heard someone gasp, and then there was a flurry of whispered voices too quiet for her to hear properly. And still, she couldn’t figure out where she recognized that voice from. It irritated her, like an itch she couldn’t scratch, gradually getting stronger and increasingly maddening.

  “Oz, it’s probably just the professor that Stephen told you to call. You can let me go. I’m sure it’s fine.”

  “Charlie’s just checking IDs, and as soon as they’re cleared, we’ll go over there.”

  “This is ridiculous. We don’t have time to waste.”

  “And if anything happens to you, we don’t stand any chance whatsoever of helping those people.”

  Finn wanted to argue but knew it wouldn’t help the situation. None of them understood how difficult the task ahead of her was, or how unlikely it was to be successful. And the time, or rather the lack of it, made her shudder. There was none.

  “Finn?” Billy came over to stand with her.

  “Can we get started now?”

  “Well, yes. But you’re gonna need a minute here.”

  “What are you talking about?” She stepped away from the obscuring circle they had formed around her and came face-to-face with Professor Sandra Burns.

  Eyes the same color as her own gazed back at her, and Finn’s knees went weak. It was like looking in a mirror, one that showed her exactly what she’d look like in twenty-five years. The fine lines at the side of her eyes and mouth, and the streaks of gray at her temples, made the red highlights in her auburn hair a little less bright and made her face look softer. But there was no way to miss the similarity.

  “Daniela.” Her mother held out her hand.

  Everything seemed to grow distant, like she was moving away from everyone, but her feet didn’t move. Voices around her grew quieter, and the entirety of her view was centered on the woman who stood in front of her, hand held out as the softness in her eyes morphed to a look of concern.

  “Someone get her a chair.” She barked orders without breaking eye contact. “Daniela, breathe. Take a nice deep breath for me.”

  Every word sounded like it was too long, like it was stretched to the point where she barely recognized what it was meant to be. Her stomach churned, her body doubled over of its own accord, and she vomited on the pristine white floor.

  This has got to be some sort of joke. She felt a hand rubbing her back and leaned toward the comforting touch. She’d lost her bearings when she closed her eyes and took the tissue that was offered her to wipe her mouth, but she was certain Oz would be the only one to touch her when she was like this. She knew the boys would be looking around, trying to find anywhere else to be. But the hand didn’t feel quite right. It wasn’t heavy enough, or large enough.

  She turned her head toward the warmth she leaned against and opened one eye.

  It was no joke.

  The woman smiled down at her. “Not the greeting I was hoping for, but you didn’t order me out of here, so I guess I’ll take it.” Soft fingers stroked her face, just the way they had when she was a small child on nights when she couldn’t sleep.

  “Mum?”

  She nodded, and it was too much. Finn closed her eyes and let the darkness envelop her.

  *

  Daniela’s weight knocked Cassie over as she tried to catch her and prevent her from hitting the ground, and they both landed on the floor with Daniela’s head in her lap. She wrapped her arms protectively around her daughter and felt whole for the first time in twenty-five years.

  “Finn.” The tall blonde Cassie had seen in the photographs at Mrs. Richmond’s pulled Daniela from her arms and lifted her easily. Cradling her against her chest, she stalked out of the room to a smaller one at the far end. All Cassie could do was watch them disappear while she sat sprawled on the floor. She knew Daniela wouldn’t expect to see her right now, but Mrs. Richmond had told her that Daniela knew she wasn’t dead. She hadn’t prepared herself for such a strong reaction, though.
She moved away from Daniela’s vomit with a grimace.

  “She’s had a rough time. Must have been too much.” One of the two older men stood in front of her, hand held out to aid her to her feet. Kind blue eyes met her gaze, and a small smile pulled at the corners of a generous mouth. “But I do know she’s been trying to find you since the moment she knew you were alive.” Cassie took hold of his hand and let him pull her up. “Billy Zuckerman, ma’am, and it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “And you, Mr. Zuckerman.” She dusted off her slacks and straightened her lab coat. “Can I see her?”

  Billy waved his hand toward the small office. “We’re not stopping you. Oz knows there’s a couch in there to lay her down. What should we call you? Professor Burns? Mrs. Sterling?”

  “No. God no. Don’t call me that. You all know who I am,” she said as she pushed open the door. “Call me Cassie.”

  She stopped in the doorway and stared at the tender scene laid out before her. Oz sat on the small sofa, Daniela cradled in her arms as she planted soft kisses on her forehead and whispered words she couldn’t hear but could well imagine. The look on her face could only be described as adoration, and Cassie’s heart warmed at the knowledge her daughter had someone so devoted to her.

  “Do you have a problem, Cassie?” Billy asked.

  She shook her head. “I can’t believe she’s really here.”

  Billy laughed. “Well, it is her lab.”

  She knelt by the side of the couch. “Is she okay?”

  “Yeah.” Oz stroked Finn’s face. “Just the shock, and we’ve all had a really tough twenty-four hours. I’m Oz, by the way.”

  “I figured. Mrs. Richmond speaks very highly of you, Olivia.” She grinned and winked.