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Grinning, he belly crawled toward the front door. Claudia’s men had made for the exits and were scattering to the woods as he looked on. Good call. The Spetznatz team had superior numbers and the element of surprise on their side. Not to mention, his father had personally trained this team, and they were fully as good as the CIA team at fighting in close quarters.

The last thing the CIA team needed was to be pinned down in the confines of a house with wooden walls, entirely permeable to high-caliber gunfire. He’d have bugged out, too, if he were caught in the same situation.

Black figures chased other black figures into the woods, and sporadic muzzle flashes were accompanied by increasingly distant sounds of gunshots. He sat up cautiously on the porch,leaning back against the wall of the house. Katie did the same beside him. He didn’t know if she was even aware of huddling tightly against his side.

“Umm, what was all of that?” she asked in a small voice.

“The cavalry, Russian style.”

“Holy cow. That was impressive.”

“My old man comes through in a pinch.”

“He really loves you, you know.”

“Yeah. He’s got a funny way of showing it, though.”

“Those are some parents you’ve got,” she commented dryly. “They’re going to make the world’s worst in-laws.”

He chuckled, and then it grew into a laugh, and then into uproarious hilarity. She joined him, laughing until tears ran down her face. They’d done it. They’d survived his first meeting with his mother.

A black Hummer rolled up the driveway as their humor subsided.

“Now what?” Katie muttered in disgust. “Do we have to run again?”

“My leg’s shot. I couldn’t run if I wanted to,” he commented.

“What?” She jumped away from him in panic. “Where? How bad is it?”

“Bullet passed through my calf. It’s not life-threatening.” He jerked his chin at the man climbing out of the Hummer. “Besides, we’ve got company.”

He recognized the bulldog silhouette of André Fortinay. Alex sighed. Time to face the music for this little stunt of his. “Help me to my feet,” he murmured to Katie.

She leaped up and bent down to help hoist him upright. His leg hurt like hell, but that was a good sign. The nerves were operational. He tested the limb, and it held his weight without any new pain or numbness. Bone wasn’t broken, then.

Fortinay strode right up the porch steps, not stopping until he was face-to-face with Alex and Katie, who’d wrapped her arm tightly around his waist. Protective little thing, she was.

“What in the hell have you done, Alex?” André demanded.

He shrugged. “I took what measures I deemed necessary to protect myself when I approached an armed and hostile target.”

“Thattargetwas your mother. A high-level intelligence asset in the U.S. government in charge of an extremely important and classified mission that you have blown to hell and back.”

“That asset tried to kill me and Katie.”

“Speaking of which, where is she? I have orders to bring her in for debriefing.”

Katie piped up fervently, “Please tell me she’s in huge trouble for trying to kill her son.”

André shrugged. “I’m just following orders. I have no idea what will happen to her.”

Alex looked around the front yard and pasture. “She didn’t come out this door. She must have gone out the back.”

“Or she’s still inside,” Katie added. “Did she get caught in that initial burst of gunfire?”

Alex hobbled inside quickly, alarmed. He didn’t pause long to examine his feelings. For operational purposes, he hoped she’d been immobilized if not taken down, outright. But in his heart, his feelings weren’t so simple. He’d loved the idea of her for so long it was hard to separate the reality of the woman from the fantasy of her.

Katie wrapped her arm around his waist again, restraining him when he would have hopped over to the stairs to clear the upper floor of the house. “Let André’s men do it,” she murmured.