Hard Target (21 page)

“What about the frame?” Simon jerked his chin toward Günter at the opposite side of the room. “We need to find out what’s inside.”

“We already did.” Alex slid her gaze toward Gun.

Günter, expression grim, packed away the optics.

Simon’s cell rang and, distracted, he lifted it to his ear without looking at the display.

“Tomorrow night,” Gibbons said.

“Huh?” Simon gave the device a cockeyed stare and put it on speaker. “Tomorrow night what?”

“We need you to switch the frames tomorrow night. The painting is being cleaned the day after. Removed early.”

“Are you nucking futz?” Simon sat forward and wished for the ability to strangle people across long distances. “We’re not remotely ready. You gave me a week and that wasn’t nearly enough.”

Alex made a cutting motion across her throat and Simon muted the phone.

“What?” he growled, feeling as if he’d channeled Günter.

“I’ll get us in. Just tell him we’ll do it.”

“But what about the telecom appointment?” There was no way the museum would allow them to come in on such short notice. The personnel would need to be vetted and…

“I’ll get us in,” Alex repeated and unmuted the phone.

“Fine,” Simon said to Gibbons. “But no more surprises.”

“Just get the job—”

Simon hung up and looked around at the worried faces in the room. Alex’s color had gone a new shade of pale, a muscle in Gun’s temple jumped repeatedly, and Jenny tried to drill a hole through her lower lip with her incisor.

“So what’s in the frame?” he asked, knowing the day couldn’t get any more fucked up.

“A bomb,” Alex said.

God he hated it when he was wrong. This day had just gotten exponentially more fucked up.

He stared at Alex as if she’d slapped him. “We’re setting up a bomb…to be in the same building with the President?”

Holy hand grenades. That’s why Downing wanted the security information. If Simon thought prison was bad, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t enjoy lethal injection.

“So, what do we do now?” Jenny asked.

“There is no
we
.” Lips thinning, Günter stared at her. “You’re staying out of this for once.”

“Jenny, you find out the name of the visiting dignitary Downing is so interested in, because I believe he actually likes this president.” Cutting off the budding argument, Alex surprised Simon when she took control of the situation and began marshalling their troops for battle.

“Now wait ju—” Günter started.

“Simon, you and Günter defuse the bomb.” Alex pointed first at the frame and then to herself. “I’m going to get these prints to Ryan.”

Jenny gave Alex an affectionate mock-salute and faced one of the security flat’s many laptops. Günter clenched and unclenched his fists and stared at his girlfriend. Finally, he leaned down and whispered something in her ear.

“I’m doing it anyway.” Her expression widened into a mischievous grin. “Maybe because I like that idea a little too much.”

“Come on, Gun.” Simon drew his friend’s attention away. They’d never get to work disarming the live bomb in their midst if Jenny pressed all the man’s buttons.

“Be careful,” he called after Alex.

“I will. You too. With that.” Pausing, hand on the doorknob, Alex nodded at the frame. “I don’t want to hear about you on the six o’clock news.”

Again
, he thought, remembering London last year.

The closed door held his attention for a long while. Eventually, he ceased folding and unfolding the arms of his glasses and found Jenny and Gun giving one another the sort of knowing look only a couple can exchange. Their silent communication irked him more than it should have, he knew, so he shoved his glasses on and stood.

“I have another job for you, Jenny.” He removed the laptop from her lap.

“Oh?” Brows arched, she stared up at him in curiosity.

“I need to get intel on the president’s security detail for the awards banquet. If I get you to the right place, can you gather the documents I need along with the building blueprints?”

“What?” Gun stood so fast he knocked over the frame and barely caught it with his fingertips to prevent its crashing to the floor. “Have you gone barking?”

Ignoring Gun, using the password he’d stolen from under the keyboard in Alex’s office the morning after she’d arrested him, Simon found the server he needed and proceeded to grant her security permissions way above her pay grade. Günter loomed above him, awaiting an answer. Simon pushed up his glasses with his index finger and refused to look up.

“Downing will kill my sister if I don’t get this intel for him by 9:00 p.m. And I’m not supposed to tell Alex.”

Günter sat in the occasional chair as if his limbs had given out. “That’s madness.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll tell her when she gets back,” Simon said. “I meant to tell her earlier, but things happened and…” He shook his head. “Anyway, I need to get the information first. Then I’ll tell her.”

“She’ll be fit to string you up,” Jenny warned.

“Probably.” But he really didn’t care. This was his sister’s life they were talking about and he couldn’t afford Alex asking the AD’s permission. They’d just have to argue about it later.

“There you go.” Simon returned the laptop to Jenny before turning to Gun. “What kind of device are we looking at?”

Günter cleared his throat. “You shouldn’t have slept with her.”

“Gun!” Jenny said.

Feathered lines in the frame’s gilding absorbed Simon’s attention as he answered, “I only have one bed.”

“Do I really have to define what I mean by the term
slept with
?”

The implication—what Günter really didn’t say—batted around the edge of the conversation with all the finesse of a cat toying with an injured mouse. Could Simon stay focused and objective after he’d been intimate with Alex, or would they be identifying his body in the morgue when he screwed up?

“Fine. So I slept with her.” Several glorious times, and he wouldn’t trade a single one of them for all the first editions in the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library. Kneeling now, Simon peered at the crack along the edge of the frame. It gaped wider where they’d inserted the scope. “Is there a booby trap?”

Jenny snorted. Simon blinked at her in confusion and then recognized the pun. He pursed his lips and gave her a hard stare.

“Sorry.” She tamed the corners of her mouth into a more serious expression.

“You know how to get to the heart of a matter, Jenny.” Günter searched Simon’s face for signs of God-only-knew-what.

Standing, Simon decided the less he said the better. Even a fool might pass for intelligent if he didn’t open his mouth.

“Can you work with her?” Günter leaned against the wall and kicked up one foot so his sole rested on the walnut paneling. “Because we could make a case for her partner taking her place.”

Simon recalled last night’s bet with Alex and wondered not for the first time in the last eighteen hours why he hadn’t just let her walk out the door. Then he felt the overwhelming tightening in his chest that said against all logic Alex remained more important to him than air. Yet he knew he had very little common sense when it came to her. In a life or death situation would he make the wrong choice because he found himself too distracted by his emotions?

“I don’t know.” That was the truth. He really didn’t know. “One minute I know where I stand. Where she stands. Then, it’s like— She’ll say or do something I don’t expect and I’m completely out of my element. It was easier when I just thought I hated her.”

“It’s harder to hate someone in person,” Jenny observed softly.

“Sometimes it’s easier.” Simon snorted and shoved his hands in his pockets. “But I’ve never hated her.”

Now that he’d spent several days in Alex’s company—discovered her vulnerabilities and rediscovered her body—he knew he could never approximate that bitterness with her again. The love she’d expressed earlier had sliced him open, exposing the raw pulp of his emotions as if they were no more than a forbidden fruit ripe for the plucking. She’d caught him off guard. The shock and confusion she’d seen on his face had forced her to lock down the fortress surrounding her heart. While he knew all of this, he remained at a complete loss as to the solution. Love seemed such a long way off from his universe, and yet it had never orbited so dangerously close.

He shook his head. This was getting him nowhere. “We have a bomb to defuse.”

“There’s no booby trap,” Gun said.

“So it’s safe to pry open?”

“It’s packed with C4 and a remote detonation device.”

“You’d think they would’ve made it difficult.” Simon snorted at the simplicity of the setup. “They really thought we wouldn’t look?”

Günter paused, the thin blade of his knife flashing to a halt in the act of prying open the two sections of the frame. “Do you think there’s a reason why they didn’t make it difficult?”

“Why would there be a reason?” The question came from Jenny, who now sat on the sofa, legs curled underneath her as she searched for information on the FBI servers.

“There’s always a reason for why and how someone chooses to employ a particular explosives device,” Gun said over his shoulder.

Jenny drew her brows together in a quizzical expression.

“Different bombs do different kinds of damage and some situations require more precise timing than others,” Simon explained.

“Like an assassination,” Günter finished.

“That’s comforting.” Tugging her hair elastic out, Jenny rearranged her ponytail. “So you think that’s what they’re trying to do? Assassinate someone at the state banquet?”

“Depends on what else you find out in your research.” Simon held on to the frame as Günter continued prying at it to dislodge the wood glue. “Once we know who else will be there, it’ll be easier to determine who Downing’s target is.”

It was dinnertime before Günter finally cleared all the glue away and the frame loosened enough to be pried apart.

“It’s 6:00 p.m. already?” Simon peered worriedly at the afternoon light. It was hardly nearing dark this time of year, but Alex should’ve returned ages ago. “Any luck on finding out who the guest of honor is at the banquet?”

“A few people… One is receiving a humanitarian award.” Jenny pressed a button and the printer in the little office began to whir. “The rest are receiving medals for contributions to the arts. I also got your intel on the venue security.”

Günter laid the frame on its back and Simon held one side as Gun held the other. They nodded to one another and lifted evenly at the same time. Setting the top piece aside they both folded their arms and stared at the section still on the floor.

“That’s a bloody lot of C4,” Gun said.

“I’ve seen more.” Simon met his friend’s stare and knew they both recalled that awful evening in London last year in the tunnels under MI-5 headquarters.

“Jenny…” Günter began.

“Not leaving,” she said, the laptop perched on her outstretched legs.

“Christ.” Günter blew out a breath. “I hope we’re not about to create a new open-air living space for Tallis.”

Simon laughed despite the tension that sent a sickly sweat popping out across his upper lip. “That should’ve been my line.”

“I think you’re rubbing off.”

They grinned at each other, a little crazy. In theory, simply unhooking the ignition wires from the blasting caps and removing the tiny devices should defuse the bomb. C4 in itself remained stable and relatively safe until detonated with a primary explosive.

“Why am I doing this when you have more experience?” Simon asked as he unfolded a pocketknife.

“Because you’ve read about all of those pesky little things that can go wrong if you fuck it all to hell.”

Simon tried not to think about all those things and sliced through the first wire with a flick of the knife.

“Christ on a crutch! You could have warned us!” Günter shouted.

“What? You’re still standing here, aren’t you?” Simon swiped at the sweat threatening to drip into his eyes. “And if you weren’t you wouldn’t know the difference by now.”

Even the sound of Jenny’s typing had stopped. Face pale, features drawn, she threatened to chew her lower lip off with worrying it between her teeth. Making short work of the other wire, he sliced it clean away from the ignition device then pulled the blasting caps from the C4 by the frayed wires and tossed them in a metal explosives box Günter had produced.

“Why do you need to put them in the box?” Jenny asked.

“In case there’s C4 residue on the caps.” Simon stood on shaking legs and brushed damp palms on his jeans.

“Let’s get her together then.” Günter’s tone was all business. “Then talk about the plan for tomorrow.”

By the time they finished seamlessly gluing the two sides of the frame together, full dark had fallen and Alex still hadn’t returned. They couldn’t exactly plan without her. Simon dialed her phone and received no answer. Remembering the state of her apartment and Downing’s warning about her involvement, he cursed himself for allowing her to go alone.