I nodded.
“And if I keep you on this mission, what will happen to you?”
I paused. Holy crap! I’d never even considered that. I let go of Frost’s hand and sat back on my heels, really taking a moment to think about it. I could follow the energy of my going forward with Dutch on the mission like a current moving along a river. There were rocks, rapids, and twists and turns to come, but I could feel the strength of our combined force and knew we had a chance. “Make it out,” I whispered, and pointing back and forth between me and Dutch, I added, “But only together.”
Frost pursed his lips and gazed sideways at Dutch. “I think I’m with Cooper on this one, Rivers.”
Dutch clenched his fists, gave Frost a murderous look, then got up and stormed right out of the room without another word. It hurt to watch him leave, but I had to accept that I’d won, and gotten my way, which was all I truly cared about.
“You know,” said Frost into the silence that followed, “if this thing goes south, Cooper, it’ll be my butt on the line for not pulling you off the mission when I had the chance.”
I offered Frost a small smile, then reached out to squeeze his hand. I mouthed, “Thank you” to him before turning around to crawl back to bed. The pain pill I’d taken was adding to the exhaustion I felt. Once I’d lain down, Frost got up and came over to cover me with an afghan. “You rest. We’ll talk more in the morning.”
The next day I woke up early and tiptoed to the bathroom to take a long hot steamy shower and get the dried blood from my head wound out of my hair. All things considered, I felt pretty good and the only thing that still really hurt was my blasted missing fingernail.
When I came out, Dutch was awake and watching TV. “How’re you?” he asked.
“Better. You?”
“Better.”
I caught our reflection in the mirror over the dresser. “We look like Mr. and Mrs. Smith after they’ve tried to kill each other and their house has been destroyed.”
Dutch grinned. “Match made in heaven.”
I went over to sit next to him on the bed. “You still mad at me?”
He looked at me quizzically. “I’m not mad at you.”
“Oh, really?” I said, not believing him for a second. “ ’Cause the way you stomped out of here last night, I could’ve sworn you were miffed.”
Dutch reached out and squeezed my knee. “I was ticked off at Frost, not you.”
“Don’t be mad at him, Dutch. He’s only doing his job.”
“By letting you get killed?” The playful tone he’d started the conversation with had vanished and there was now a flinty edge to his voice.
“I’m not going to get killed,” I told him, really hoping I was right.
“Someone wants you out of the way.”
I sighed. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Abs,” he said curtly. “This isn’t a game. We have no idea who’s trying to kill you. It could be that Grinkov’s working to set us up, and thinks that your intuition’s going to figure that out sooner or later, so he had us separated yesterday, and quietly sent someone to take you out of the picture.”
“He didn’t even know where I was yesterday,” I replied, going quickly to Maks’s defense.
Dutch’s lips pressed together as if he was regretting something. “What?” I asked him.
“When I first got to the meeting, before Boklovich arrived, he asked about you. I told him you were back at my office waiting to hear about our meeting.”
“Did he make a phone call or something to let someone else know that?” Maks had two perfect opportunities to take me out when I visited with him at his house. It didn’t make sense that he’d wait for some innocuous tidbit about my whereabouts to send someone to kill me with a shoelace.
“No,” Dutch admitted. “But he could have ordered the hit the minute the meeting was over.”
“Honey,” I said gently, stroking his arm. “My attacker tried to strangle me with a shoelace. Would you hire a hit man who resorted to something as unreliable as that?”
“He’s a dangerous guy, Abs,” Dutch countered defensively. “Don’t underestimate Grinkov, okay?”
“Which is all the more reason why you shouldn’t go it alone, cowboy.”
Dutch shook his head and stared hard at the T V. Baloney, he wasn’t mad at me.
I gave him a minute before I asked, “Do you really think Grinkov tried to kill me?”
“Who else could it have been?”
I thought about that for a minute. My intuition just didn’t accept it. “Maybe it’s simply another one of Des Vries’s enemies,” I suggested. “Lord knows the man must have plenty of them.”
“No one’s made an attempt on my life yet . . . except Grinkov.”
I scowled at him, feeling like I wanted to defend Maks and move him out of the way as a suspect so that Dutch wouldn’t fight me so hard on staying with him for the auction. “He didn’t try to kill you, Dutch. He just beat you up a little, and he only did that because he wanted to make an example out of Des Vries.”
“A little?”
I sighed. “Fine. He’s a murderous son of a one-eyed snaggletoothed she-beast and we’re both likely to have shorter life spans the longer we hang out with him.”
Dutch snorted. “That’s all I’m sayin’.”
I rolled my eyes and thought it best to steer the conversation in a different direction. “So, what happened at the meeting yesterday?”
Dutch put the TV on mute but continued to watch the screen while he talked to me. (Which reminds me, why are men only capable of carrying on a conversation while the TV is playing? Do they think talking to us sideways is enjoyable for us?)
“Frost told me that you’d hooked into my energy during the meeting and picked up some of what happened.”
“Oh, I come with skills,” I told him with a stroke to his sideburn.
Dutch grinned again. “Babe, I know all about those skills, and the minute these ribs heal and you feel one hundred percent, we’re putting those skills to good use again.”
“Hallelujah.”
Dutch kissed my hand and got back to telling me about the meeting. “As you already know, Grinkov pulled in Boklovich.”
“I didn’t really know, but I had a pretty good guess when I tuned into the meeting and found you with Grinkov and another powerful man. I didn’t expect him to show up so soon.”
“That makes two of us.”
“I’m assuming the meeting went well?”
“It did,” Dutch said. “He agreed to host an auction, and he let it slip that he’d come across another seller with something similar to offer his clientele.”
“The drone,” I said knowingly.
“Yep.”
“So, does Boklovich have it in his possession?”
“No,” Dutch said. “But he knows who does.”
My eyebrows rose. “Did he give you a name?”
“Nope,” he said with a sigh. “He’s keeping that pretty tight-lipped. But he is willing to put both of our items up for sale at his private home in B.C., and open it up to anyone interested. And by anyone, I mean every terrorist and corrupt government in the world will be able to bid on it.”
“Yeah, but the main head honchos won’t actually be there, right? I mean, he’s not going to host all these well-known terrorists in his house, for God’s sake.”
Dutch’s left eyebrow rose. “Of course they’ll be there, Abs. What did you think all this time the auction would look like?”
I blinked. “I thought it would be a room full of representatives, you know, connected to phone lines and stuff, like the auctions at Sotheby’s.”
Dutch snorted. “It won’t be anything like Sotheby’s, toots. These guys are gonna be the heavy hitters and they’ll show up to make sure they can take immediate possession of either Intuit or the code once they pay for it, and maybe even take out an enemy or two while they’re at it.”
My breath caught in my throat. “Holy
shish kebab!” I gasped as the full weight of what he was saying sank in. “Dutch! What if one of these bigwigs recognizes that you’re not Des Vries! I mean, he probably did business with a lot of these guys, and with enough of them together, they could start comparing notes about you and put two and two together! They’ll kill you on the spot!”
“It’s a risk I’m going to have to take,” he said simply. “Which is why I don’t want you along.”
I grabbed the remote and turned the TV off; then I very carefully moved over to straddle him, making sure I put no weight on his rib cage. Taking his bruised and swollen face in my hands, I said, “You can’t do this. Honey, it’s way too dangerous!”
His one good eye stared out at me, and there was such sadness there. “I don’t have a choice, Abs,” he said.
“Yes, you do!” I insisted, my heart racing with the panic I felt. “You can quit!”
“Abby,” he said seriously, reaching up to hold my wrists. “I took an oath to protect and serve my country to the very best of my ability. That oath didn’t include the words ‘or until it gets too dicey.’ ”
My eyes began to water and I felt a lump form in my throat. “You’d give up your life?”
“Yes.”
“You’d give up me?”
Dutch didn’t answer me for a long, long minute. Finally, he said, “You have to know that you’re the most important thing in the world to me. But if I walked away from this, and someone important died because of it, I could never live with myself. It would change who I am inside. And I could never marry you and take you down that road, babe. In the end, it wouldn’t be fair to you.”
I was so choked up I couldn’t speak. We’d been playing with fire this whole time, but this wasn’t fire—this was a nuclear bomb.
Dutch gently wiped at my tears. “So now you see why you can’t come with me,” he said earnestly.
I shook my head and swallowed hard. “Like hell I can’t!”
“Abs,” Dutch said, his voice pleading with me. “If I go down at this auction, you’ll have no chance, and I can’t live with that.”
“And you think I can?”
“One of us should make it home, and it should be you.”
I was breathing hard now. I was so furious with Dutch, and so afraid for him, and so angry at having accepted this stupid suicide mission, that I wanted to scream.
Instead I leaned in, kissed him tenderly on the lips, and said, “If you do anything, and I do mean anything, to keep me from going with you, Dutch Rivers, I will not only never forgive you, but if you make it back to me, I will end our relationship there and then. I will never marry you, and I will go to work full-time for the CIA. I’m sure they could use my help on some of their most dangerous missions . . . don’t you?”
Dutch sucked in air. “You wouldn’t.”
I sat back on his thighs and crossed my arms, my gaze unwavering. “Frost and I have already talked about it,” I told him. “As far as he’s concerned, I’ve proven myself in the field and he thinks I could be a real asset. He’s actually already offered me the job.”
“Abby . . . ,” Dutch warned.
I moved off his legs and headed for the door. Without looking back, I said, “You take me with you this time, Dutch, or you’ll lose me forever. Even if you don’t come back, I’ll still join the CIA, because what the hell will I have to live for anyway?”
The silence from the bed cut straight through me, but it was the only way to get Dutch to listen, and the only way I wouldn’t go completely insane if he somehow managed to keep me from going with him to the auction.
I left him with those final words and even managed to make it all the way down the hallway before I had to lean on the wall to steady myself and wonder how the hell we were ever going to get out of this mess.
Chapter Ten
It took a few days to pull together the auction, which allowed both Dutch and me some good recovery time and afforded us an opportunity to do our homework. An unexpected hitch in the plan came up when Grinkov told us that Boklovich was still waiting to hear from the drone thief about whether he would attend. My radar insisted the thief would be there, but Frost and Dutch were still sweating it.
We’d tried to get a list of the attendees, but Boklovich seemed to be guarding that information tightly. The most we could do was to have the CIA monitor their channels and present us with a list of the most likely attendees. We knew the margin of error was going to be big, and we’d have to cross our fingers that of those people identified as having previous dealings with Des Vries, most either were not big enough to attend or wouldn’t especially notice the subtle differences between Dutch and Des Vries.
The list the CIA gave us was pretty impressive in a holy-cow-these-guys-are-super-dangerous kind of way. Lots of names on the list sounded Middle Eastern. Several others were Asian, and the rest were mostly Eastern bloc and Ukrainian. “It’s the United Nations of weapons dealing,” I muttered, looking over Frost’s shoulder at the list. In the background I could hear Dutch’s smooth baritone singing Sinatra in the shower, and I would have laughed if what I was looking at weren’t so sobering.
“Let’s just say you wouldn’t want to meet any of these guys in a dark alley,” Frost agreed.
Frost clicked on the link next to the name of one Arab sheikh, opening up his profile.
“He looks like someone I’d like to avoid meeting in a dark alley,” I said, pointing to the Saudi.
“Oh, you would—trust me,” Frost said. “He’s also stinking rich. His name is Sheikh Omar bin Muhammad. We’ve long suspected he’s been supplying various anti-Western terrorist groups with money and arms.”
“Is he Saudi?”
“His father was. His mother is from Yemen, where he’s been spending a lot of time lately.”
“We’ve got trouble all over the globe, don’t we, Frost?”
“Cooper, we’ve even got it in our own front yard.”
“Do you think he’ll be at the auction?”
Frost sighed as if he was troubled. “I really hope not, but it’s possible.”
My radar pinged with a little warning. “Why do you hope not?” I asked.
Instead of answering me, Frost clicked over to another window and pulled up a video. He pressed play and I realized I was looking at surveillance video of the sheikh and Des Vries sitting down over coffee, talking business. “He knows Des Vries,” I whispered nervously.
“He does,” Frost said. “And not in a good way.”
“What does that mean?”
“Shortly after this video surveillance was taken, our operative in Dubai reported that Des Vries backed out on an arms deal he had with the sheikh. He left him high and dry and the Arab was furious. Not a smart move on Des Vries’s part, because this guy has a long memory, and he will find a way to get even.”
I felt a cold chill along my spine and I worried anew for Dutch’s safety. “What if he comes to the auction?”
“We’ll have to hope that Sheikh Omar thinks Dutch is Des Vries and doesn’t scrutinize him too closely, and then we’ll have to hope that Boklovich maintains the peace and prevents the sheikh from killing Rivers long enough for you guys to steal back the drone and get the hell out of there.”
I watched the video in silence for a while. The audio was both terrible in quality and in a foreign language, so I couldn’t follow what the men were saying, but it was obvious they were negotiating something and not just trading small talk. The cameraman shifted the angle slightly near the end, and I noticed someone sitting behind Des Vries.
Moving my finger over the mouse pad, I said, “Hold on a second . . . ,” and rewound the section.
“What’s up?” Frost asked me.
I squinted at the screen, then stood up straight and swiveled toward the living room. Mandy was sitting on the couch, twirling her hair and watching Nickelodeon . . . which I seriously considered might be over her head. “Mandy,” I said.
“What?” she replied, never taking h
er eyes off SpongeBob Square-Pants .
“Come here a second.”
“I’m busy.”
I could feel my jaw clench. “I wasn’t asking,” I said through gritted teeth.
Mandy sighed dramatically, took her time getting up, smoothed out her hoochie skirt, and clomped her skinny butt over to us. “What?” she asked again.
I pointed to the screen, which I’d paused so that I could show it to her. “Is that you?”
Mandy made a face at me and bent over to squint at the screen. Frost was watching her with renewed interest. “Oh, yeah!” she said. “I remember that. Rick took me to Dubai three years ago for my birthday; only we didn’t do much celebratin’ ’cause he had some business or something. It was really hot there.”
Frost pointed to the Arab man on-screen. “Do you remember him?”
Mandy snickered. “Yeah. He offered Rick five thousand bucks for me. He wanted to add me to his harem or something. Rick almost took it, but I talked him out of it. I’m worth way more than five thousand.”
I opened my mouth to tell her exactly how much I thought she was worth, but Frost placed a hand on my wrist, silently warning me not to. Reluctantly I let the moment pass.
“Do you know if Rick and this man met again after this time in Dubai?” Frost asked next.
Mandy shook her head. “No. It was a onetime thing. Rick didn’t like him so much ’cause he said he was cheap. I guess he tried to low-ball Rick or something, you know, like he did when he made an offer on me, and Rick didn’t want to close a deal with him ’cause he didn’t trust him.”
Frost let go of my wrist and closed his laptop to consider Mandy before asking his next question. “I need you to give me your honest answer on this next question,” he said.
“I’ve been honest!” Mandy replied defensively.
“I know, Mandy, and I appreciate it,” Frost told her carefully. “But we’re worried about your safety—as well as Cooper and Rivers. If we send the three of you to B.C. and someone there recognizes that Rivers isn’t Des Vries, it could go bad for everybody, including you.”
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