Page 33

Kira Waters’ phone was chirping as soon as she got off the plane at Dulles. So was Michael’s. It was a text message from Michael’s FBI friend, Stryker, who had cc’d them both. “White has Dr. Stoltz. CALL.”

Kira’s blood chilled in her veins. Her sisters crowded close to look over her shoulder at the phone.

“Oh God,” Cait whispered.

Michael beat Kira to the call button, but she took his phone right out of his hand, hit the speaker icon, and held it outward as the others gathered around.

“Stryker,” a man’s voice said when he finally picked up.

Kira angled the phone toward her husband. He said, “It’s Waters, We’re at Dulles and you’re on speaker. What can you tell us?”

“I’m with Romano,” Stryker said. “He handed Stoltz off to his former boss, Darren Wade. He didn’t know Wade wasn’t with the Bureau anymore.”

“Why not?” Kira asked.

“Wade resigned. I suspected he was in collusion with the international terrorist known as Mr. White.”

“Oh my God,” Cait said again.

“Why is an international terrorist after our sister?” Toni asked.

Kira shot Michael a look, and he gave a subtle shake of his head. It bothered her not to tell her sisters about the biological weapon Lexi’s mad scientist fake-father had created.

Then again, not knowing that would probably let them sleep easier at night.

“Thanks, Stryker,” Michael said. “We need to meet up with you, join forces, help with the search.”

“You and Kira,” Stryker said. “Keep the civilians a safe distance out, all right?”

“All right?” Michael asked, looking at the women.

They exchanged glances, and then all shook their heads left and right.

Raining. Great, Lexi thought. A perfect match for her mood.

Snowing up north, probably. Raining here.

She thought about commuter flights and ice-coated wings, and wondered if it would stop raining by the time she was free to catch a plane back to New York state.

And then she shook her head, knowing it didn’t matter.

She wasn’t going anywhere. Not until she saw Connor again.

She supposed she was a glutton for punishment, but she couldn’t just walk away without knowing what happened to him tonight; whether he went through with his plan to kill White; whether he came out of the whole thing in one piece.

She had to look into his eyes just once and see that it was really over.

Because she hadn’t seen that in his eyes tonight. Not at all.

Darren Wade hadn’t said a word since they’d got into the car. He’d offered her a slice of pizza, then eaten one himself while driving away from the bustling streets and into more rural areas. She saw the sign when they crossed into Virginia and wondered just how far away this safe place was.

The car continued steadily onward, wipers slapping water from the glass, headlights piercing the gloom. And then he pulled to a stop in front of what looked like an empty warehouse or equipment hangar at the end of a long road through a lot of nothing.

“What is this place?” she asked, squinting through the windshield, trying to make sense of what she saw. Broken windows, sagging roof. “Why are we stopping here?”

Darren didn’t turn to face her. Very softly he said, “I’m real sorry about this, Miz Stoltz.”

Then her door was yanked open from the outside, letting in a blast of cold, wind-driven rain. The interior lights came on, and they were enough to illuminate the pink eyes and white hair of the man she’d thought she’d only see again in nightmares.

She screamed and kicked him while scrambling backward across the seat.

He leaned in, absorbing her kicks like they were nothing.

He grabbed her shoulders, his fingers sinking deep, and dragged her out into the frigid, icy rain that pelted her face like shrapnel.

He crushed her against his chest, pinning her arms to her sides.

She twisted and kicked, but he was oblivious.

“Come on, I don’t have all day. The syringe is in my back pocket. Take it and inject her so we can move on with things.”

His shrill words terrified her, and she fought harder. Darren’s steps slapped the wet ground as he came around the car.

“No, you can’t?—”

And then the fine, sharp tip of a needle pierced the flesh of her buttocks. The rain grew louder and louder until it enveloped her. And soon she couldn’t do anything more than listen. Her body was weak, and seemed to have stopped obeying commands.

White picked her up, draped her over his shoulder, and she felt the cold rain soaking her back but couldn’t move to avoid it.

He opened the car door, tossed her across the back seat. “You,” he said to someone beyond her sight, “Drive the car inside before it’s seen. Secure her but be careful. She’s clever. Bear in mind, I might need her later. Mr. Wade and I have some business to conduct in the office.”

She heard whoever it was get in, heard and felt the car door close, and then the vehicle was moving.

“I’m sorry, Monroe,” Michael Waters said to Stryker. He was apologizing for the six extra civilians he’d brought with him.

Waters’ wife Kira stood beside him on the side of a deserted stretch of road. She wore tall black boots and leather, and she was armed to the teeth. She was also agitated and twitchy.

“Don’t apologize,” she said. “We’re her family, and we can help. Besides, none of us are exactly civilians.”

“Look, I specifically said—” Stryker began.

“He’s going to kill her,” Romano said. “Who the hell cares who’s here and who’s not? He’s going to fucking kill her if we don’t find her in time!”

Kira slammed her palm to his chest, just when he’d been about to turn away in frustration, and when he blinked down at her, there was something familiar about her face, the curve of her cheeks, the shape of her nose.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Connor Romano.”

“I figured,” she said. “Lexia Stoltz is my half-sister. And that piece of shit White is not going to kill her.”

And then he realized these people were the relatives Stryker had mentioned. “She doesn’t know she has a sister.”

“She has four of them,” Kira said with a loving look at the three other women standing around in the rain, two blondes and a brunette who shared Lexi’s coloring, stood nearby.

Stryker looked frustrated and walked away, back to the gathering of agents and state police who’d gathered at this deserted crossroads. Darren’s phone had pinged a cell tower nearby. One of the cops had found it in the ditch at a four corners where he’d apparently tossed it.

Romano wished the icy rain could shake the sick feeling from the pit of his stomach.

But it didn’t. It couldn’t. Nothing could.

Lexi was still alive, or had been when Darren had run a red light and the traffic-cam had snapped a picture.

She’d been sitting in the passenger seat.

That should’ve given him a hint of relief.

But it didn’t. She was alive, but in the hands of brutal killers because of him. He would get her back or die trying.

Aloud, he only cleared his throat and went over to Stryker. “Where the hell is that chopper you asked for?”

Stryker answered, but Romano was almost beyond hearing. He had no idea where Darren had taken Lexi. But he was afraid she’d be turned over to White along with the formula in short order. Unless he could get to her first.

One of the women in the group, gasped. Kira Waters went over to her, and they spoke quietly. She had a head full of wavy caramel and honey blonde hair, and at the moment her hands were buried in it, as if she had a headache.

In a minute, Kira came to him, took his arm, and led him a little bit away from the others. “She’s being held in a large building. It’s pre-fab metal, light blue with white doors. The windows are mostly busted out. It’s cold.”

“How the hell do you know all that?” he asked.

Kira looked at the blonde she’d just spoken to. “Joey saw it. Just … trust me. Go with it.”

“There’s a map in the car,” Mike Waters said, and Kira scrambled into their rental, leaving the door open as she dug through the glove box then unfolded a map over the dashboard.

“Stryker said the cell signal stopped moving—” he glanced at his watch.

“Seventeen minutes ago. Given the heavy rain, let’s estimate a radius of about?—”

“Fifteen to twenty miles,” Kira said. “Maybe up to twenty-five, but I doubt it.” She measured with her finger, then drew a crooked ass circle encompassing the search area.

Then she looked up, confidence in her eyes.

“How many big blue buildings with white metal doors and busted out windows do you figure there are within that radius?” Then she drew a line through the center of the circle, “And even less if we rule out the ones back in the direction we came from. We’re gonna find her. ”

“We’d better hurry,” Romano said. “Once White has the formula, he won’t have any reason to keep her alive.”

Her back thudded from the car to the floor, then scraped over rough, cold concrete as one of White’s lackeys dragged her. She heard voices from some other part of the building, but didn’t dare open her eyes to look around.

He let go of her shoulders, and her head dropped onto the floor. She had to clench her jaw to keep from yelping in pain.

“… pay me now,” Darren Wade was saying in the distance. “I kept my end of the bargain. You have the formula.”

I should’ve torn those pages out of that notebook and flushed them. I knew I should’ve. Dammit, why didn’t I?

“If it proves to be legitimate.” That was White’s vibrato voice. “More legitimate than your loyalty.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you really think I don’t know what you’ve been up to? That you’ve been negotiating with certain … competitors, trying to get a better offer?” White made a little clucking sound with his tongue. “You’re a fool, Wade. I know everything you do.”

“I did ask around,” Darren said. His voice was different. Pitched with fear. “But I didn’t go through with it?—”

“You might have, though, if I hadn’t arrived here and monitored your every move. You’ve put me to a lot of trouble, you know. All the expense and effort of trying to take the formula from Romano before he turned it over to you, just in case you grew the gonads to betray me.”

“None of that matters, now,” Darren said, his voice trembling. “I gave the formula to you. You have it in your hands right now.”

“Indeed,” White said slowly, calmly. “You did deliver what you promised. So your reward will be that much greater.”

“It will?”

“Yes,” White hissed. “I’ll kill you quickly.”

A single gunshot exploded, and Lexi jerked in reaction, then forced herself to be still while the echoes of it died. She’d be next unless she was very careful.

She heard White speaking, as if to himself. “You sold out your best friend for a price, Mr. Wade. You let me kill his family to cover your own crimes. I knew all along you’d turn on me as well.”

Lexi cringed, trying not to envision the bulky Darren Wade lying on the concrete, bleeding, dying as White stood over him, watching with those terrible pink eyes.

And then White’s words sank in, and she understood that Connor had been betrayed by his best friend.

The thug was back to dragging her again.

Then suddenly there was no floor beneath her anymore.

The shock of suddenly falling made her suck in a sharp breath.

She couldn’t have screamed if she’d wanted to, though because her back slammed onto a hard floor and the impact drove the air from her lungs.

Her head snapped backward, hitting concrete.

Pain was a blinding white light before her eyes. And that was all.