Hot Ice (26 page)

And why
, he asked himself,
would someone go to the trouble of gassing them only to leave them alive and still armed
?

Without a doubt it was because whoever had utilized the tranq gas had believed it would
kill
them all. Sloppy. Extremely sloppy not to positively confirm the hit. He couldn't imagine Morales being this careless.

Bishop
? Hunt wondered, furious with himself for letting down his guard for a moment. Had the operative turned rogue and betrayed them? Tranqed them, stolen the disks, and even now headed to sell the intel to the highest bidder?

Hunt sprung the latch and pushed open the car door. Cool damp air rushed in. It felt good on his face. He bent to feel Max's pulse. Alive, at least. He nudged him with his foot. "Rise and shine, old son."

Max raised his head, groggy but, Hunt knew, immediately aware. Max pulled himself back on the seat across from Hunt and rubbed his jaw, eyes still glassy. "Jesus. What hit us?"

"
Who
?" Hunt said grimly. "They got the disks." He reached for Taylor, then thought better of it and stepped out into the high, damp grass alone to reconnoiter, leaving the door open to the chilly, late-night air. She couldn't have had anything to do with this, could she? His gut told him she was nothing more than a not-so-innocent bystander.

"Ah, crap." Max got out of the car as well, weapon in hand. Whoever'd hit them was long gone. "Just fucking perfect."

Other than a centuries-old oak tree in front of the vehicle, there wasn't a damn thing to see for miles around. They were in the middle of bloody nowhere. Not even the city lights were visible.

"Bishop's split," Hunt told Max grimly. "I'll check the driver." He walked around the back of the car. "Tire tracks. We had an escort." He paused to inspect the deep ruts in the wet grass. "Following in behind us. Truck, it looks like. Two sets of footprints here—men. One five-eight, five-ten, hundred and sixty. The other taller, about two hundred pounds. But check this out. Another vehicle…" He crouched down to get a better look. "Four-door sedan. Five, six people. Lighter weight. Small guys." He rose, followed the crisscrossing steps.

"Scuffle here by the rear door. Did what they had to do, then got back in their vehicle—truck, by the look of the tread—and peeled out fast. These guys were in a hurry… The sedan took off behind them. Look at the tracks going off over there. They were burning rubber following the truck."

"Working together?" Max asked.

"If they were, they fought about it," Hunt said dryly, looking at spatters of black-looking blood on the grass and the side of their limo. There was a great deal of it. Either someone had bled out and they'd taken the body with them, or several people were seriously injured. It was impossible to tell.

He opened the driver's-side door. The sour-sweet smell of blood hung thick in the damp air. "Christ. Driver's gone. But I found Bishop. He's up here, tucked nicely and neatly in his place." He had a momentary twinge of guilt for believing that Neal Bishop had turned on them, but was over it in an instant.

Bishop had been buckled into the driver's seat and was slumped over the steering wheel. Hunt reached in, feeling for a pulse beneath the younger man's ear. Slow but steady. His forehead bled sluggishly, like lava, from the Mount Vesuvius of a bump in the middle of the poor bastard's forehead. That was going to hurt. But he'd live.

The windshield was shattered. A spider's web radiating from where Bishop's head was supposed to have hit it. Crumpling the front end of the limo was the huge oak tree. A neat "accident," cleverly constructed.

Bloody, bloody hell.

"He'll be all right." Hunt straightened, looking over the roof of the car. "Helluva headache, I suspect."

"Ah. The master of understatement," Max said laconically, breathing fast enough for Hunt to know he was fighting nausea. His own stomach didn't feel too hot either. "
Mano del Dios
, Black Rose, or another tango we haven't connected yet?"

"Even odds," Hunt responded, scanning the vast field they were in. "The real question is, how in the bloody hell did they know we were in Zurich?"

"Flight plan." Max rubbed his face. "Man, that was some powerful stuff."

Hunt shot him a pointed look. "Flight plan?" T-FLAC rarely filed a correct flight plan. It was yet another way to stay a step ahead of the tangos. "No, I suspect they were keeping close tabs on Taylor."

"Maybe. But there's no way in hell they could've landed in Zurich before us," Max pointed out. "Absolutely no way."

"Satellite tracking of the plane." Hunt dipped his head to see how Taylor was doing on the backseat. Still out. He straightened, leaning an elbow on the car's roof.

"The news about her Houston museum heist was in the paper by the time we reached the airport. If you're looking for a thief, you follow jewel thefts. They had her in Houston."

"Or the Mediterranean, or wherever else someone pulled a jewelry heist in the past two months," Max pointed out, his color returning. "She's spectacularly good, but she's hardly the only jewel thief in the world."

"They'd do what we did. Follow up on
every
lead. No matter how small. Like us, they'd eventually figure out the who and the why. Then they'd have the where."

Though their pilots would have filed a false flight plan on takeoff, even T-FLAC couldn't go over international airspace without talking to traffic control to let them know exactly where they were.
Bingo
. "One call with the correct destination, and they had someone waiting to follow us from the airport. And talking about calls…" He felt in his breast pocket for his cell phone, frankly not expecting to find it.

"Look at this." He held it up for Max to see. A bad feeling swirled in the pit of his stomach, and it had nothing to do with gas. "They left us with not only our weapons, but also a way to contact help. The bastards were confident their knockout potion would kill us."

"
Very
inefficient," Max agreed.

"Indeed. Come and get Bishop."

"How come
I
don't get to rescue the pretty girl?" Max demanded, walking around the back of the limo to join him on the driver's side. He tugged at Bishop's sleeve, then grunted as Neal Bishop fell into him.

"Because you're too ugly. You'd scare her the moment she comes around. We need her thinking clearly, not reeling." Hunt shrugged out of his jacket and spread it on the ground, then reached in for Taylor.

She felt light and deceptively unsubstantial in his arms. Odd, when her personality was so much larger than life. Kneeling, he gently settled her onto the meager covering. Wet grass beat the god-awful stink of death hands down.

"Bishop's coming out of it," Max reported. "
Ah, man
!"

Hunt chuckled as he heard the unmistakable sound of vomiting. He rose and reached into the car for the carafe of water for Taylor, then thought better of it. Who knew if the gas they'd inhaled was also water soluble? Or if the person who gassed them had taken the extra precaution of spiking any open container in the limo? He grabbed a can of soda instead. The carbonation would help her nausea.

It was another fifteen minutes before she opened her eyes and groaned. By which time Max had called in and requested backup, Bishop had ordered the pilots to stand down, and Hunt had walked behind the vehicle tracks looking for clues,
anything
to indicate who had hit them and where the hell they'd gone.

"Nothing?" Bishop asked, looking a little green about the gills as he leaned against the side of the vehicle.

Hunt crouched beside Taylor. "Nothing."

She opened dazed eyes when he touched her clammy cheek. Blinking, she swallowed several times. "What—" She licked her lips and stared up at him with pain-stricken blue eyes. He could see her brain trying to function. Trying to process. Trying to assimilate what had happened.

"What did you do to me?" she demanded.

How like her to assume he was the culprit. One corner of his mouth quirked. "Sorry, darling, but it wasn't us. And it wasn't done only to you. We're minutes out of it ourselves. Someone pumped the vehicle with some sort of nerve gas."

"
Someone
?" She frowned. "Why'm I the only one lying down?"

"Smaller frame, lighter body weight." Her dark hair, misted by raindrops, curled around her stark white face. Her cheek felt hot and clammy in his palm. "How do you feel?"

"L-Like sh—" Her throat convulsed. He quickly moved his hand to support her forehead and rolled her over. In the nick of time.

When she was finished, Hunt handed her a neatly folded handkerchief. "Done?" He watched her carefully as she pressed it to her mouth.

She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered fervently, "Please God."

"Ready to sit up?"

"I feel kinda pukey," she admitted, throat moving as she swallowed repeatedly to keep from throwing up again. He did what he could to check her pupils by moonlight. A bit dilated.

"That's to be expected. Here, let me help you." He assisted her, holding her as she fought back the nausea. He handed her the open can. "Sip slowly on this until it passes."

She managed to gulp down a good portion of the cold drink, and a little color came back into her face. "Is everyone else all right?" She pressed the can to her cheek.

"All present and accounted for."

"Oh, God." She rested her head against his chest. Her body felt warm against his, her silky hair brushed his chin, smelling of wet violets. "Why would anyone—" Her head shot up and she stared at him. "Oh my God. The disks! It was those damn stupid
disks
they wanted. Wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"That gas was meant to
kill
us." She dropped her head into her hands. "I would've been responsible for killing—Oh, my God."

"Water over that bridge," Hunt said unsympathetically. Although he certainly felt a smidge as she peeked up at him over her hands with such a look of horrified contrition that he wanted to gather her in arms and—
Jesus fucking Christ
. "None of us died."
Not today
.

"The authorities are on their way," he said. "You're going to the hospital as soon as they get here." He held his weapon ready as several pairs of headlights broke the night. The rain began again in a soft, barely felt mist. He wanted her out of the weather and in a warm bed. Preferably with him wrapped around her. Jesus, what a bloody mess. Literally and figuratively.

Chapter Twenty-five

The next few hours passed in a blur for Taylor. Hunt refused to let the authorities interrogate her until she'd been checked out. The nausea subsided by the time they reached
Universitäts Spital
, but by then she was too exhausted to protest when he remained with her for the entire examination. A clean bill of health and a nasty lecture to get good rest were all the hospital offered.

Max and Neal waited for them outside the hospital, beside what was presumably a rental car. She looked around in surprise to see that the rain had cleared and it was already well after dawn. The air smelled clean and fresh; the light glowed a hazy, pale yellow of a canary diamond. Pretty.