Page 49

Even better, he stopped for a moment, appearing to listen for movement around them. Grateful for the respite, she leaned against a tree and took several blessedly deep breaths while Alex extracted the two remaining bullets from the first clip and pocketed them.

She knew from experience that he usually had at least two spare clips on his person whenever he was packing a weapon. They were back in business for a little while, at least. Thank God for his paranoia and his associated obsession with preparedness.

Hopefully, they would not need their remaining firepower.

And…she was wrong.

Alex froze abruptly in front of her. She peered over his shoulder and saw a man in a black leather jacket poised beside an SUV, wielding a sawed-off AK-47 alertly.

The guy spoke into the lapel of his jacket where there must be a microphone of some kind. Her jaw dropped as she identified the language he spoke to be something Slavic sounding. Russian, perhaps?

Alex frowned faintly beside her, but she dared not break the silence to ask what the man had said.

Slowly and with maximum stealth, Alex backed up a dozen feet with her staying behind him. Only when they’d placed the crest of the ridge between them and the man below did Alex eased down quietly behind a thicket of weeds and brambles. She was relieved to join him in hiding.

He lifted away a few leaves to reveal wet, black earth. In the soil, he drew a crude map with a car, a hill, and two X’s, she gathered were her and Alex.

Alex pointed at his own chest and then drew an arc to the left. He pointed at Katie and then drew another arc to the right. He then drew two lines from the stick figures from him and her toward the man.

He mouthed the words, “Field of fire,” and she nodded immediately. By flanking the shooter below, the two of them had to be careful not to end up shooting each other. Alex was darned lucky she’d grown up in a military family and happened to know about such things!

“Shoot when I do,” he breathed. Without any further ado, Alex moved away from her.

Lord, she felt naked out here without him beside her.

She eased off to the right, arcing around to the far side of the man with the AK-47.

Every tiny sound made her jump, and she felt as twitchy as a marionette on a string.

When she deemed that she’d reached the position Alex had drawn for her, she inched forward in a crouch, pistol at the ready. Using the largest tree she could find, she straightened and peered out from behind the trunk.

The shooter was looking off toward Alex’s position intently. Focused. Had he seen or heard Alex out there?

The guy’s AK-47 swung up from his hip to a shooting position as she planted her forearm against the tree trunk to steady it, blew out her breath, and lined up the sight on the front tip of her gun barrel with the sights mounted above the trigger.

Oh, the Russian dude was so not getting off a shot at her man.

Screw Alex’s signal. Without hesitating, she went ahead and fired. She was sure she’d hit the bastard. Although he staggered, he didn’t go down. The man swung his weapon toward her and raked the hillside with a barrage of automatic fire as she ducked behind the tree.

She was sure she’d hit him. But then an awful thought occurred to her. Was the guy wearing a Kevlar vest under that bulky jacket? Alex had been taking head shots a lot, today. He must’ve assumed their attackers would be wearing body armor.

Duh. Of course they would. How dumb of her not to anticipate that.

Alex opened fire from across the ridge, and the automatic gunfire swung away sharply from her and toward Alex’s position. She wasted no time stepping out from behind the tree far enough to take aim and fire again, this time at the man’s head.

She missed twice and was forced to duck back behind the tree as he sprinted toward the back of the SUV.

She only waited a fraction of a second before swinging out from behind the tree again.

The shooter was going to take cover behind the vehicle and possibly take to the woods beyond it.

Their lives would be immeasurably more difficult with this jerk and his vastly superior fire power roaming around in the forest hunting them.

Alex shouted something in Russian and the man shouted back as she took careful aim one more time on the guy’s head. She held her breath and squeezed off the shot.

The man’s legs crumpled and he dropped to the ground.

She held her position and scanned the woods in the direction she and Alex had come from.

She heard Alex crashing out of the trees behind her.

She turned in time to see him running fast and low, zigzagging as swift and nimble as a cheetah, toward the downed man.

“Come to me!” Alex called out in Zaghastani.

She stepped out of the woods in time to see Alex fire two shots into the prone man’s head.

It was brutal. Cold-blooded, even. She could shoot at an armed attacker who was shooting back at her, but she severely doubted she could’ve taken those shots.

Alex had just executed that man. Shock and horror roared through her.

He crouched, patting down the dead man’s pockets. He straightened, a car ignition fob in hand as she reached his side. “Did you have to kill him like that?” she demanded, appalled to her core.

“Get in. I’ll drive.”

She piled into the SUV’s front passenger seat as Alex punched the ignition button. The big engine roared to life. He steered the vehicle toward the fresh tracks in the grass at the edge of the clearing and they bumped down a rough driveway of sorts.

“Buckle your seatbelt,” he ordered without taking his eyes off the path ahead of them. How could he sound so damned calm? Didn’t he care in the slightest that he’d just murdered a man?

As she clicked the seatbelt across her body, she asked incredulously, “Aren’t you the slightest bit upset that you just executed a helpless man like an animal for the slaughter?”

He glanced over long enough for her to reel away from the cold calculation in his eyes. “I never claimed to be a Girl Scout. You knew who I am, what I do, when you signed up for this. Deal with it or leave.”

Just like that? “It’s not that simple—“ she started.

He cut her off sharply. “Yes. It is. He would’ve killed us both. This is my life. If you want to be part of it, don’t ask me to change. I can’t be someone else and survive. I have no choice.”

She subsided against the cushions. Was it really that simple?

“When we reach a road with a smoother ride, check the back for weapons,” he bit out.

They duly turned onto pavement, and she clambered over the front seat and into the back. She leaned over the bench seat, reaching into the far back to pull up a canvas tarp and peek beneath it. “Two AK-47’s, a wooden ammo box, and two pistols. I think they’re Makarovs.”

Without waiting for him to tell her, she dragged all the weapons forward to the back seat. The ammo box was heavy and gave her more trouble, but she horsed it into the seat as well. She rejoined Alex in a few minutes.

“Who were those men back there?” she finally asked as the SUV turned onto a major road and Alex stomped on the accelerator. “We’ve got Russian weapons. The shooter was speaking in Russian. Did your father order this hit on us?”

Grimly, Alex fished out his cell phone and punched in a number, one-handed, as he drove. He jammed the phone to his ear and snarled, “I know it’s the middle of the damned night in Moscow. Did you order a hit on me?”

It was as angry as she’d ever heard Alex. He listened in silence for a few seconds and then swore under his breath. “Check it out and let me know,” he snapped.

“He denied being behind this, did he?” Katie asked grimly.

“Bingo.”

“Do you believe him?”

Alex shrugged. “I think he believes he can still convince me to work for him. If that’s true, he wouldn’t kill me.”

“Would he have some thugs fake a hit on you to give you credibility with the CIA?”

One corner of Alex’s mouth turned up briefly. “There may be hope for you, yet. You’re learning to think like a spy.”

If that meant she was learning to be suspicious of everyone and not take anything at face value, she supposed he was right. “Could it have been someone else in the FSB?” she asked.

Alex frowned. “I fail to see how they could have picked up our trail from that library so quickly. I could see the CIA picking us up that fast, however, particularly if they were already looking for us in the New Jersey area. But not the Russians. They only have certain number of resources on short notice call in the States, and Russian wet teams aren’t cruising around rural New Jersey for grins and giggles. ”

For that matter, neither were CIA wet teams, to her knowledge. In fact, wasn’t it supposed to be illegal for the CIA to operate in on U.S. soil at all? Not that a small matter of legality would slow down the darker elements of that organization, she supposed.

“Aloud, she asked, Why would the CIA send a team to kill you?”

Alex was silent long enough that she thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then he said grimly, “I am controversial within the agency. I have many detractors.”

“Yes, but a hit team masquerading as Russians?” she challenged. “That seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to. I mean, they even spoke Russian to teach other.”

Alex frowned and didn’t respond. She gathered she had asked the right question, then. He steered the SUV out onto the highway, pointing it north.

“Now what?” she asked.

He smiled slightly at her trademark question. “New York City for the moment.”

As it became clear they hadn’t been trailed, she relaxed and took a look around the SUV for clues as to who their kidnapper and assailants had been. She opened the storage console between the front seats and peeked down inside.

“Hey, look what I found,” she exclaimed. She reached down into the compartment and pulled out a cell phone. It was a high-end model like someone might own for personal use, not a cheap burner phone.

Alex grinned wolfishly. “Well, well, well. The civilian hits the mother lode.” He added more seriously, “Speaking of which, that was some nice shooting back there. You’re a hell of a markswoman.”

“For an amateur?” she added wryly.

“You saved my hide a couple times. That’s as much as I could ask of any pro.”

She sat back, shocked by the compliment. “Thanks,” she mumbled.

“We make a good team,” Alex commented off-handedly.

Whoa. She wasn’t anywhere close to being in his league and never would be when it came to being a spy. But it was the first time he’d ever acknowledged she wasn’t always a dead weight on his back. She liked being able to hold her own beside him...at least a little.

Silence fell between them as he got onto the New Jersey Turnpike and navigated the increasingly heavy traffic.

Eventually, she asked, “What are you going to do with that phone?”

“Strip it of all the information it’ll give us and form a plan based on what we find.”

“Should we ditch this vehicle?” she asked.

“If we didn’t kill all our attackers, it’ll take the survivors a while to report in. In the mean time, it’ll throw off whoever’s tracking this SUV on GPS when they see it moving. They’ll assume the mission was accomplished.”

“This car’s being tracked?” she squeaked. God, would they never escape the constant surveillance? She was beginning to think they were living in a high-tech police state. Oh, Lord. And now he had her thinking just like him about the United States government’s potential to be Big Brother.

He said casually, “I figure we’ve got another hour in this car before it’s burned. But we’ll be in New York City by then.”

“Then what?”

“I’m sick and tired of sitting back waiting for these assholes to come after us. It’s time for us to go on the offense.”