72 Hours (2 page)

“We’re going to convince little Johnny here we’re his new best friends,” Alex answered, sliding into the driver’s seat.

“You shouldn’t have moved on him,” Gallagher said critically when he got in the other side. He spoke in a low voice, his words probably not penetrating Washburn’s panic.

“We were made anyway.”

“Maybe we were, and maybe we weren’t. Now there’s no question.”

“I have to place that voice,” Alex said again, and then swore.

“We sure as hell won’t get close enough to do it now. We’re done here, unless Washburn spills his guts, and whoever you bring in now will have it that much harder.”

Alex already knew he’d screwed up royally. He’d exposed himself and Gallagher, as well as a crowd of civilians, to a hell of a lot of risk on a hunch. He’d blown the operation wide open—alerting both Johnny Washburn and his buyer to a surveilling presence.

“Guess you and I are on vacation, pal,” Gallagher said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I think you can probably use one.”

He didn’t need a damn vacation. He needed inside Johnny Washburn’s head. Then his computer and cell phone. It was time to start shaking the contact tree. The bastard wasn’t getting away from him now.

One week later, New Hampshire

Something’s burning
. The thought hit Grace Nolan a mere second before the alarm shrieked.

“Hold on!” She ripped off her headset, then pounded down the stairs. Dammit, this couldn’t happen again. She’d worked so hard to make sure it wouldn’t.

The room was quickly filling with smoke, and Grace grabbed a potholder. She yanked open the oven door and took out the smoking cookie sheet. With a curse, she dropped it into the sink and turned on the tap.

The pan popped and warped as the chocolate chip briquettes slid into a black, soggy mess in the sink.

“Crap!” she yelled at the smoke detector, flapping a towel under it to clear the smoke.

She could disable any security system known to man, and sell the CIA its damn own secrets, for chrissake. Why the hell couldn’t she bake a decent batch of cookies? A boy should come home from a long day in second grade to something warm and homemade with love.

When the alarm had chirped its last chirp, Grace rummaged through the cabinet for the Chewy Chips Ahoy. After tossing a few on a plate, she shoved the package back behind the bran flakes and glanced at her watch. Just enough time to wrap things up with Carmen before she poured Danny’s milk.

“Forget to set the timer again?” Carmen Olivera asked after Grace retrieved the headset.

She nodded, then shrugged at the Latin beauty in the high-definition video screen. “I think I forgot the vanilla, anyway. Do they taste the same without the vanilla?

“Do I look like Betty Crocker? You need to get out more,
chica
.”

If only she could. “Who’d have thought motherhood’s harder than infiltrating Russian military installations?”

“Honey, I
know
it is. Why do you think I run so fast from men?”

“Because they usually have badges from some alphabet agency or another, and want to see you in an orange jumpsuit?”

“That too. You should come back to us, babe. Can you believe Gallagher and I are staying at the freaking Plaza Royale?”

“I’ve been to the Plaza Royale. And I quit the agency eight years ago, Carm. When are you going to believe me when I tell you I’m not coming back?”

“Never. You know the Devlin Group—we
never
give up.”

“Yeah, like Mounties, only a little more juvenile, and a lot more delinquent. And speaking of delinquents, how’s Gallagher doing lately?”

Carmen rolled her eyes. “Not too happy about being the hired muscle, but Dev didn’t have anybody else available. Pretty good money just to hang around and make sure nobody kills me, if you ask me.”

“Damn straight,” Grace agreed. Sean Devlin had founded a very lucrative business brokering assignments for the loose network of international freelancers specializing in just about anything. His primary focus was assisting government agencies whose hands were tied by red tape, but he certainly didn’t do it for free.

“Like hanging out pool side’s such a hardship for him,” Carmen was saying. “You’d think he’s on vacation for all the attention he’s paying me.”

“Based on some of his previous jobs, I’d say this is pretty close to vacation for him.”

“Knowing my luck he’ll try to cut the power to the camera bank and set off the fire alarm instead.”

“What’s the job?” Grace asked, knowing Carmen would tell her if she could, shrug it off if she couldn’t.

“Some pencil pusher from a biochem company got it into his head to sell a sample of a new biotoxin to the highest bidder.”

“Wow! I hope you brought good gloves.”

Carmen pulled her sable mass of hair into a sleek ponytail. “A very unsexy, but surprisingly flexible hazmat suit, actually. It makes blending in a bit of a challenge, though, so the whole thing’s gotta go down like clockwork.”

“And the seller?”

“We’ll leave him for the big, bad buyers to take care of. The client doesn’t want the publicity of prosecuting a guy for managing to steal a very scary concoction out from under their noses.”

“People really have to start taking better care of their scary concoctions.”

“Yeah. Nice to know there are people making up poisons so they can have an antidote to it by the time somebody else makes it up.”

“It’s a scary world out there,” Grace agreed. Just one more reason she had traded in her cat suit for an apron.

“I wish you were still in the field with me, Grace. I’d feel a lot better if you had my back.”

Not a chance. When the Devlin Group had poached her away from the FBI, she’d jumped at the chance to leave her small-town, white bread upbringing behind. Miss Most-Likely-to-Organize-Carpools was going to be an international super agent.

It didn’t take long for the flash to fizzle. Fast cars, hard people, and too much adrenaline. Each mission left her more jaded and more tired. She could barely recognize the person in the mirror at the end of each day.

Not until the doctor treating her for a gunshot wound told her she was pregnant did she have the strength to walk away.

Being a civilian contractor for legit government agencies didn’t pay as well, but it let her be home with Danny. Her mission now was to be both mother and father to one hell of a great kid—the only mission that ever made her curl in her bed and cry in fear of failure.

“You know I can’t raise Danny like that.”

And she did know. Carmen Olivera was the only person connected to the Devlin Group, besides Sean himself, who knew about Danny. Her need to have an ear to bend had overcome her initial decision to never tell a soul.
Nobody
knew who his father was, though. She’d told them it was her doctor, and Carmen and Devlin—the only two people she’d kept in contact with—had no reason not to believe her.

“Maybe when Danny’s all grown up, you can come out and play, huh?”

Grace laughed again and shook her head. “Sure. I’ll just stock up on the Geritol.”

They chatted for a few minutes, then she severed the digital connection to her former life and returned to Mommyworld.

She was pouring milk into a plastic cup when the screen door slammed.

“How was your—” She turned.

Her throat closed. The clock ticked.

Cold milk splashed over her bare toes.

The man smiled.

“Your son won’t be coming home, Ms. Nolan…for now.” He held up an 8x10 photo.

Danny, with a large, tanned hand pressing against the backpack he still wore, ushering him onto a small plane. No markings were visible on the aircraft. No other faces in the picture. Only Danny’s. The camera captured him looking over his shoulder, his blue eyes under his Red Sox cap wide and liquid.

“You bastard.”

Inside, she shattered. Her chest hurt with the effort of inhaling and exhaling each breath.
Please, God, don’t let them hurt my baby.

Even as the maternal agony threatened to shut her down, the old training kicked in. Instincts she thought she’d lost reawakened, and the quickening of her senses—the burst of adrenaline—sharpened Grace’s mind.

Let him underestimate her. This guy thinking she was incapacitated by grief was her best weapon.

He’d said
for now
. She focused on those precious words while collapsing against the counter in a sign of distress she didn’t have to feign. Hanging her head in a gesture of defeat, she scanned the floor, noting the location of the spilled milk. She slid her hand a little to the left. Closer to the breadbox. Right now, the fact that she’d never totally let go of the constant fears of her former life was a very good thing.

Process the situation, her training prompted. Soft-looking white male. Slavic bone structure. Five-ten or so. Big, but in a middle-aged way. Very expensive suit. Voice too carefully devoid of any trace of an accent. Grace looked him in the eye. A follower, not a leader. She could take him.

“Where did you take my son?”

“Little Danny’s safe. For now, as I said.” The man pulled out a chair and sat, crossing an ankle over his other knee. “Whether or not he stays that way is totally up to you.”

“Who do you work for?”

“That’s not important right now. What is important is Alex Rossi.”

Alex? She flinched and cursed herself for letting the scumbag see her do it. Dammit, Devlin’s network was supposed to be secure. How had they connected her to him?

“I’m retired,” she said in a low voice. There was no sense in trying to bluff her way out. If they knew where to find her—knew she had a son to use against her—they already knew too much.

Images flipped through her mind. Faces and names ran through her subconscious until one clicked. “Peter Rustikov. I heard you were taken out in Greece a couple years back.”

Rustikov smiled. “Those reports were greatly exaggerated, as you can see. Fortuitous, though, as I was in the act of changing employers.”

“Which lowlife’s paying you now?”

“As I said, that’s not important right now. Neither is your supposed retirement, which is a farce. People like you don’t retire. They die.”

“What does your boss want with Alex Rossi?” Grace let herself slump more over the counter, bringing her right hand slightly across her body. Very slightly. Peter Rustikov didn’t play on her level, but he was no amateur.

“Rossi has something my employer wants, but information on his whereabouts is hard to come by. The international grapevine says you’re close to him.”

Grace forced a derisive laugh. “We blew off some steam in Brazil years ago. He didn’t take me home to his mother.”

“Maybe if he had she’d have taught you how to cook.”

He dropped his head to laugh at his own joke, and Grace moved. She spun, knocking the breadbox away from the wall with her left hand, and peeling the Sig .38 from the back with her right as she turned.

The tearing of Velcro jerked Rustikov’s eyes back to her, but she was already there, taking his crossed ankle and jamming it up hard. His shin hit his nose with a crack and the chair fell backwards.

Grace moved with him to floor, pinning his ankle to his shoulder with the left side of her body while she pressed the muzzle to his forehead.

“Where’s my son, asshole?”

Chapter Two

Blood ran from his nostrils, but other than his breathing, he offered no reaction. Grace moved her knee to his thigh, unmindful of the tearing seam of her soccer-mom sundress, to put more pressure on his already overextended groin muscle.

“Tell me where my son is and you might walk out of here.”

“I’ll walk out of here,” Rustikov said in a hoarse voice now betraying his Russian origins. “Because if I don’t, the man sitting in the car out front is going to make a phone call.”

For a second Grace considered shooting Rustikov, then hitting the man in the car, but she wasn’t stupid. If these two idiots didn’t check in, the game was over. And so was Danny’s life.

“What’s the deal?”

Rustikov took a deep breath, relief clear in his eyes. “You have seventy-two hours to deliver Rossi. We get him, you get your son. That’s all there is to it.”

The toad had obviously never crossed paths with Alex. There was more to it than he could imagine. But the decision was out of her hands.

She’d bring him in. The man who once upon a time she would have sacrificed everything for. The man who set her blood on fire in a way living on the edge of death never had. She would trade Alex’s life for Danny’s and never look back.

Grace concentrated her weight on Rustikov’s thigh while she got to her feet. Sweat broke out at his hairline. She hauled him to his feet while he cursed, then stepped back out of his reach. Getting shot with your own gun taught you a lesson you never forgot.

“Details,” she demanded.

Rustikov used his sleeve to mop blood from his face before answering. “Seventy-two hours from now you deliver Rossi to a boat docked at the Last Stop Marina in Key West.
The Intrepid
.
Then you’ll get the boy back.