Point Of No Return
Susan May Warren
An American boy and a warlord's engaged daughter have disappeared - together - in an Eastern European border country.Only one man can find them in time to prevent an international meltdown - Chet Stryker. But Chet is taken aback when he realizes the boy is the nephew of Mae Lund, Chet's former flame.When Mae insists on rescuing her relative herself, Chet knows he has to protect her from the enemy on their trail. Yet can he protect himself from falling for Mae again?
Oh, Mae, why do you make this all so hard?
Why couldn’t she be the kind of woman who didn’t have to be on the front lines of trouble? The one he’d known for a crazy, romantic week in Seattle?
Or maybe he hadn’t known her at all.
She finally spoke, her words losing some of their heat, yet still stiff with anger. “If you knew anything about me, anything at all, Chet, you would know that I will not just go home and leave my teenage nephew here. I’m not built that way. I don’t know what’s going on with him—why he did this, or who this princess is—”
“She’s the daughter of a warlord.”
“Perfect. For all I know, he’s being held against his will. But I made a promise to my sister. And I keep my promises.”
He did know that about her.
He had four days to find a runaway princess and stop a love-struck teenager from starting an international incident, all while trying to keep up with the woman he most wanted to protect in the world.
Books by Susan May Warren
Love Inspired Suspense
(#litres_trial_promo)Point of No Return
Steeple Hill
In Sheep’s Clothing
Everything’s Coming Up Josey
Sands of Time
Chill Out, Josey!
Wiser Than Serpents
Get Cozy, Josey!
SUSAN MAY WARREN
is the RITA
Award-winning, bestselling novelist of more than twenty-five novels, many of which have won an Inspirational Readers Choice Award, an ACFW Book of the Year award and been Christy and RITA
Award finalists. Her compelling plots and unforgettable characters have won her acclaim with readers and reviewers alike. She and her husband of twenty years, and their four children live in a small town on Minnesota’s beautiful Lake Superior shore, where they are active in their local church. You can find her online at www.susanmaywarren.com.
Point of no Return
Susan May Warren
When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.”
—Genesis 32:25–28
A huge thank you to my family—Andrew, David, Sarah, Peter and Noah, and my secret weapon Ellen Tarver for helping me craft a book that I pray brings glory to the Lord.
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LETTER TO READER
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
PROLOGUE
Sometimes Chet Stryker could still feel Carissa’s muddy grip slide from his. He could still see those brown eyes, stripped of all mystery, pleading with him, could still hear her scream echoing through the chambers of his brittle soul. Tonight, the memory twisted him inside his bedsheets, tightening like a constrictor around his legs, lacing his chest, noosing his breath. Sweat slicked his body, despite the rattle of the air conditioner pumping out breath against the sweltering, polluted Moscow air. He hiccupped, and with a cry that sounded more animal than human, he lurched into a sitting position, ripping himself from the dream, blinking against the darkness.
It wasn’t real. Not real. Still, Chet pressed his hand to his bare chest, his heart jackhammering under his sternum, still smelling the cloying odor of bodies pressing him to the earth, his face ground against the loam of decaying leaves.
He closed his eyes, but of course, that only made it worse. His mind too easily scraped up the image, now twenty years old, of Akif Bashim pushing Carissa to the dirt, holding her there. Hurting her, even as his Ossetian tribesmen made Chet watch.
Taking Chet’s life apart, one blow after another.
“No!” He shook himself out of the nightmare and fumbled for the lamp, knocking over his water onto the carpet, his watch after it. The light switch slid under his sweat-slickened fingers, refusing to turn. He gave up, and for an agonizing, lost moment, fought with his tangled covers. Then, freeing himself, he lunged from the bed toward the bathroom.
He slapped on the light, braced his hands on the sink and simply breathed. One breath in, the next out. In. Out. Breathe.
He turned on the faucet, letting cold water trickle through his shaking fingers. Scooping it up, he splashed it on his face. The shock of the icy water against his skin loosened the last fingers of the dream from his mind, and he blew out another long breath. Stared into the mirror.
Water, caught in his overnight beard, glistened in the mean fluorescence, and his face seemed more brutal than he’d remembered. Or maybe he usually just refused to look too closely. He touched the spiderweb scar on his abdomen, running his fingers along the ridges, touching the hard knot of the scar tissue in the center. Sometimes he could still feel the instant, blinding burn of the bullet tearing through his flesh, see David’s eyes flash with horror. Could hear his own teeth-grinding grunt as he crumpled onto the cement, hands clutched over his wound. Chet had let his partner shoot him without a whimper. Because that was what patriots did when asked to sacrifice for their country, especially while working undercover. At the time, the pain seemed a reasonable cost to help David keep his cover in a Chinese triad.
But no one had told him about the residual suffering, the ache and sometimes sudden, sharp pain. As if the wound still might be healing, deep inside, even after more than a year. Thankfully, most of the time, it just felt numb.
How he cherished numb.
He ran his fingers through the water again and rubbed a thumb and forefinger against his cracked, blue eyes. It eased the sting, albeit momentarily.
Turning off the water, he grabbed a towel and scrubbed his face, glancing again in the mirror. He needed a haircut—should have gotten one before today. His nearly black hair curled past his ears and down his back. It was no wonder Viktor’s groomsmen David Curtiss and Roman Novik looked at him like something the dog dragged in. He wanted to explain that he looked a lot better with the mess tied into a ponytail, that it was a look fashionable with his most recent clients, but now it only seemed a pronounced departure from his once-tidy military life.
Although it had been years since his life had actually resembled tidy.
Still, his cousin Gracie—the bride—deserved better from him. Maybe he’d have time to visit the local barber before the ceremony.
Reaching over, he turned on the shower, running his fingers through the trickles of ice, waiting for it to warm. Sleep would be impossible even if weren’t foolhardy at this point.
The shower refused to cooperate, and he let the water spray as he walked over to the window, pushed aside the curtains and stared down from the sixth floor onto the street below. Its streetlamps pooled luminescence upon Neglinnaya Street, over a mix of ancient Ladas and new Mercedeses.
The sun had just begun to syrup through the cityscape, sliding between ancient buildings occupied by the former gentry of old Russia, gliding the turrets on the corner of the Kremlin walls, over the bright cupolas of St. Basil’s Cathedral and lighting afire the iron troika perched atop the building across the street. Perhaps he’d go for a run. He liked Red Square in the morning, the slap of his feet against the red cobblestones of the parade grounds. Lately, he could even hear the ghosts of the Kremlin whispering, reminding him, in this new age, that the old conquerors still stirred.
Even his friend Viktor knew the past had begun to awaken. No wonder he wanted to escape Russia and move with his new bride to Prague, Czech Republic, to help start Chet’s new security firm. It couldn’t bode well for a former KGB agent to marry an American on the eve of a new cold war era.
Chet pressed his hand to the glass, wishing he could shake himself out of the dread that had kept him awake too many hours into the night.
He’d taken one look at Mae Lund at the rehearsal dinner, dressed in that green evening gown that shimmered under the indulgent moonlight of the terrace garden and turned her beautiful eyes to gems, her long, red hair to fire, and he knew he was in big trouble. He couldn’t let her be a part of his new life.
Not if he wanted them both to survive.
He winced even as he imagined the conversation.
“No, Mae, I’m not hiring you.”
“But, Chet, I’m the best pilot you have—”
“True.”
“And I fly not only planes but helicopters, and I’ve flown in every kind of terrain.”
“Again, true.”
“And you’re desperately in need of a great pilot for your international security team.”
“Painfully true.”
Then, in the agonizing silence, she’d look at him with those eyes that could make his stomach turn inside out and turn his mouth dry, and ask why.
And all he’d manage to growl out would be another cryptic No.
Because how could he tell her that it had taken him ten years to piece his life—his heart—back together after Carissa died?
Or that Mae had somehow put it back together?
Most of all, that he couldn’t risk losing it again?
How could anyone expect Mae to sleep the night before her whole life would be transformed? Everything—her career, her home, even her identity—would change tomorrow.
A pilot for one of the premier security teams in the world. Her dream job.
Mae knew exactly how Gracie Benson, the bride-to-be, sleeping in the other double bed, might feel.
Well, maybe. It wasn’t like Mae was getting married, or even that Chet had the big M on his mind, but Mae had long ago pushed marital bliss from her list of reasonable, even desirable, life goals.
No. She wanted to fly.
And to do it for Chet’s new company, Stryker International Security Management, the one he had just put together in Prague, Czech Republic.
Mae turned over onto her side, punched her pillow and stared at the ribbon of gray light streaming in through the dark velour curtains and across her mussed covers. He had to say yes. If anyone had been born for the job of transportation officer, it was Mae Lund, who’d spent twelve years in the Air National Guard, flying everything she could get her hands on. Somehow, when the army had stripped away her career—punishment for saving the life of an innocent man, which had included sneaking into Russia and hijacking a Russian chopper—they’d also stripped from her the reason to push herself out of bed every morning, and the strength to silence the voices of her childhood that prophesied failure.
Lately, she’d begun to listen.
Still, Mae had tried—given it all she had—to stave the desperation from her voice last night as she smiled at Chet and listed her qualifications.
As if he needed reminding. As if they hadn’t been corresponding for over a year, since they’d met at Gracie’s birthday party in Seattle. As if he didn’t know how flying for Seattle Air Scenic Tours slowly chipped away at her life, one sickeningly sweet, safe tour at a time. She could love the breathtaking beauty of the jagged mountain peaks of Mount Rainier, or the moonscaped lava dome of Mount Saint Helens, without embracing the hollowness of her everyday existence.
“Are you awake?”
The voice came from the other bed.
Shoot, the last thing Gracie needed on the early morning of her wedding was a restless roomie. “Sorry, am I keeping you awake?”
“Are you kidding? I’m keeping you awake.”
Mae rolled over as Gracie sat up. Gracie looked wan and tired in the morning shadow. “You should have gotten a single room. Really. I’m so sorry.”
“And miss out on early-morning girl talk? Never. Mind if I turn on the light?” Gracie reached for the lamp. “Truth is, I can’t sleep.”
“Stressed?” Mae sat up, rubbing her hands down her face.
“Excited. And worried. And excited. I can’t believe we’re finally getting married.”
“And moving to Prague.” Mae flopped back against the pillows, one arm over her head. “I love Prague. The clip-clop of horses’ hooves on the cobblestone streets, the smell of the roses from the vendors in Old Town, the grandeur of Prague Castle, the gong of the Astronomical Clock echoing over the Charles Bridge.”
“You make it sound romantic.”
Mae would have termed it… “Resonant. Your life has to take on some sort of meaning amidst all that history. Think about it. Good King Wenceslas—you know, from the song?—lived there. It has outdoor markets and bistros…it’s so…European.”
“Please. Like we both don’t know why you want to go there.” Gracie grinned at Mae, pushed back her covers and climbed out of bed. “You’d move to the London slums, or better yet, war-torn Bosnia, if it meant you could fly choppers for Chet’s new team.”
Gracie had let her blond hair grow, and it now fell to her shoulders, shimmering in the sunlight as she parted the shades. Mae turned away from the brilliance even as Gracie peered down into the street. “He’ll say yes. There’s no one more qualified than you.” Letting the curtain fall, she turned to Mae. “Besides, I think he has a little thing for you.” She grabbed the complimentary robe and flung it over her shoulder. “I’m hopping in the shower.”
Mae listened to the spray, to Gracie humming behind the closed bathroom door, and stared again at the sliver of light, now growing more luminous. So, she had a little thing for him, too. Who wouldn’t? With that unruly curly black hair and those wide shoulders, Chet had a reined-in recklessness about him that could whisk her breath from her. Probably, it only nudged her own tendency to live on the edge.
Still, she couldn’t forget their one and only kiss, nearly a week after Gracie’s birthday party over a year ago, right before he disappeared to Taiwan and another overseas assignment. She could still feel the press of his strong hands against her lower back. She could see the smile that had emerged, ever so briefly, from his dark blue hooded eyes.
A year of corresponding—especially when he’d been recuperating from the gunshot wound he’d received while on mission in Taiwan—had revealed a man devoted to his country. To his friends. To a life that she wanted, too. No, a life she needed.
She had no illusions—not really—that this thing between them might flourish into anything lasting. Not with her traumatic history and his tendency to throw himself in front of gunfire. But she did hope he’d see beyond that to her skills.
No, more than hoped.
Prayed for it with all she had in her.
Please, God, he had to say yes. Had to hire her as his new chopper pilot.
Because the alternative just might slowly suck the last of the marrow out of her already depleted life.
ONE
Times like this, Mae Lund thought she might actually hate Chet Stryker.
Mae stared at herself in the dingy mirror of the one-stall hangar bathroom, grimacing at the splotch of vomit-scented wetness that stained her jumpsuit. How she loved it when her scenic air tour passengers didn’t follow instructions.
She should be flying C-130s for Chet Stryker’s international security team. His voice still rang in her head. I just don’t want you to get hurt Mae—
A pounding at the bathroom door made her jump. “Mae?” It was Darrin, her new, grumpy boss, annoyance in his tone that she’d stalked away from her nauseous tourists.
“Just a second!” She chucked another handful of paper towels into the trash and stripped off the jumpsuit. Still, her skin reeked of sickly-sweet, soap-imbued vomit. If her boss wanted her to go up again—
“Mae, get out here!”
“Hold your horses, I’ll be right there!” She tugged on a pair of clean overalls over her tank top and pulled them up over her shoulders, then slipped on flip-flops. Scraping the edge off her voice, she reached for the door. “I just had to change. I can’t believe that kid urped all over me. Can’t his mother read the direc—”
Uh-oh.
Darrin stood before her, flanked by the dangerous urper and his mother. She gripped the kid around the waist as he sagged against her.
“They need to use the bathroom,” Darrin said tightly.
They moved past her, the mother uttering a word that Mae would have edited for the kid’s sake. The door clicked shut behind them, and Mae winced as she heard the splatter of another round of lunch.
“I’m not cleaning that up.” Mae stared at Darrin—or, rather, stared down at Darrin and his bald spot. His furious little beady eyes made him appear more angry mole than former bush pilot.
“Rough ride?” Darrin took her by the elbow, pulling her away from the door. Mae glanced down at his hand and shot him a dark look.
“Not especially.”
“She said that he wouldn’t have gotten sick if you hadn’t descended so quickly. And apparently there was also a steep climb—”
“Are you serious? It’s a small plane, Darrin, not a jumbo jet. Airsickness is a probability, not just a remote possibility. You can’t climb—or descend, for that matter—without feeling a little queasy. Why not ask them about the stop-off at McDonald’s on the way to the airstrip? And, by the way, I didn’t hear any complaints when I was buzzing them around the south crater.”
So maybe…well, okay, she had been a little quick on the stick as they’d slid in and out of Olympic National Park, a favorite on the Seattle Air Scenic Tours schedule. But she’d wanted to give them a great view of the Carbon Glacier. Some people paid extra for that kind of flying.
Some people considered that kind of flying a talent. A work of art.
“This is the third complaint this month, Mae.” Darrin pulled out a well-worn gimme cap from his back pocket and shoved it over his bald spot. He looked up at her and pursed his lips. “You’re a good pilot, but you take too many risks—”
“What?” Risks? A risk was liberating a learjet from a serial killer and abandoning ship a second before it turned into fire and ash. Or hijacking a clunker chopper and flying under the radar into the icy winds of Siberia to save a buddy from execution. Okay, that one had cost her a thriving career with the military. “But really, I didn’t risk anything—”
“You’re risking my business. My livelihood.” Darrin nodded to the mechanic wheeling the mop bucket out to the plane. “And I’m not the only one. Shall we count how many companies you’ve flown for in the past couple years?”
She looked over his head, through the hangar, out to where the sky was just purpling with the end of the day. She refused to wince as he listed them, one after another, in the nastiest tone he could muster. “You’re out of options, lady. You either start flying smart, or you stop flying.”
Stop flying. That was what it had come down to, hadn’t it? Get a job serving coffee, or perhaps teaching—although she doubted any flight school would take her on, thanks to the closed ranks of the air charter services in Seattle.
She swallowed past the dread in her throat. “Sorry, Darrin.”
“Now I gotta write up a refund. Go help clean up the plane.” He turned and stalked back to his office.
Perfect. She’d gone from decorated rescue pilot to cleaning crew.
That was what she got for putting her dreams into the hands of Chet Stryker.
She met the mechanic rolling his mop bucket back inside. “All cleaned, Mae.”
“Thanks.” Time for a quick escape. She jogged out to her ten-year-old Montero, which felt like a sauna after sitting in the summer sun all day, and rolled down the windows. The stereo came on full blast, and she twisted the knob to Off before Darrin could hear her fleeing.
Pulling out, she spotted him emerging from the hangar and ignored his frantic waving. She angled her elbow out the window as she exited the airfield, noticing a beautiful Piper Cub from the local aviation school touching down. And beyond that a gleaming helicopter sat on the pad. Most pilots weren’t rated on both aircraft and helicopters, but she’d taken her chopper exam for her stint in ocean rescue.
Frankly, she didn’t care what she flew. Just as long as she could escape into the heavens. She slammed her hand on the steering wheel, then turned on the radio. Screamer music. Loud. Pulsing. Perfectly impossible to think at this decibel.
Nearly impossible, also, to hear her cell phone nestled in the cup holder between her seats. Had she not glanced down at the stoplight and seen it vibrating inside its silver skin, she would have missed the call altogether.
She turned the radio down and grabbed the cell, flipping it open. “Mae here.”
Oh, why hadn’t she checked the display? “Mae Lund, you turn your car around this second or don’t bother showing up here again.” Mae shut her phone. Nope, no job tomorrow.
The phone vibrated again in her grip, and this time she checked the display.
Lissa.
What now? She flipped the phone open and didn’t bother to check her tone. “What, Lissa?”
“Mae?” The voice on the other end wobbled.
Mae bit back a “Whose phone do you think you’re calling?” and opted for something softer. After all, her kid half-sister didn’t mean to be Mae’s polar opposite—timid, pliable, fragile. That blame Mae reserved for their mother.
“It’s me, Lis.”
Mae heard silence, or perhaps a gasp of breath—still, the hiccupping sound was enough for Mae to pull over. She turned into a Dunkin’ Donuts and switched ears.
“What’s up, honey?”
Sometimes—well, most of the time—it was hard to believe that Lissa, only two years younger than Mae, had a college-age son, given the way Lissa so often resembled a thirteen-year-old in the throes of a temper tantrum. Then again, she’d been just a little more than thirteen when she had little Joshy.
Little Joshy. Perhaps Mae should stop thinking of the nineteen-year-old by the nickname she’d given him when he’d run through their trailer in a saggy, wet diaper.
“What is it, Lis?” Mae pulled the ponytail holder out of her hair and wrapped it around her wrist, running her fingers through her sweaty mane.
“It’s…it’s Josh.”
Mae switched ears again with the phone, rolling up the window to cut out street noise. “What’s wrong with Josh?”
“He’s…missing, Mae.”
Huh? “Wasn’t he going camping or something?” Josh had called earlier in the summer, right after his freshman year at Arizona State, excited because he’d hooked up a summer internship with some medical group. “No, he was going to work for Ambassadors of Health, right?”
“Yeah, and they sent him to Georgia.”
Mae had been to Georgia few times. “Maybe he and few friends just took off, went camping somewhere along the Appalachian Trail. He said he was bringing that backpack I got him for graduation—”
“No! No, Mae, listen. Not Georgia. Georgia. The country.”
Mae’s gaze focused on a woman and a young boy emerging from the doughnut shop as she tried to process Lissa’s words in her head. In the heat of the closed car, her own odor watered her eyes. “Georgia, as in former-satellite-of-the-Soviet-Union Georgia?”
“Yes.” Her word caught on a sob.
“Georgia? North of Iraq, next to Pakistan, Georgia? The one that recently got invaded by Russia?” Mae opened the door and got out, gulping in fresh air. “Why is he in Georgia?”
“That’s where the aid group sent him. They went over to work in a clinic. Give vaccinations and checkups or something. He was supposed to be there for a month—the rest of his team came home last week—but he wanted to stay. I thought it would be okay, but I just got a call from his leaders, and yesterday he vanished. Maybe he ran off, or maybe…maybe…”
“Kidnapped.” Mae pushed her sweaty hair away from her face as she turned toward the road. Cars clogged at the stoplight, the rhythmic beat of a radio spilling into the chaos. Pedestrians hurried across the crosswalk, most with cell phones pressed to their ears. A dog barked at her from the cracked window of a banged-up caravan.
But for Mae, everything had gone still. “Kidnapped,” she whispered again.
Lissa’s communication had been reduced to muffled crying.
Mae knew the price of an American teenager in a foreign land—for any American, really, but a kid, now that amounted to a jackpot for any terrorist group looking to cash in. Only this time, they’d picked the wrong kid. A poor kid. A kid without rich parents.
Her kid.
“Find him, Mae. I know you…you have friends in the military—what about those friends from Russia? Or your old roommate? Didn’t she marry someone from Russia? Or maybe that American soldier—what was his name—?”
“David.”
“Yeah, him.” Hope quickened Lissa’s voice. “He might know something. Or maybe you could ask that boyfriend in Europe?”
“Chet.” Mae’s throat burned even as she dredged out his name. “Chet runs an international security company.”
“Yes, Chet! Aren’t you two dating?”
“We were dating, a long time ago, Lis. Good grief, don’t you listen to anything I say?”
Silence on the other end, followed by an indrawn, even shaky breath, made Mae cringe. “We broke up a year ago but that doesn’t matter.” She opened her car door and slid back in. “I’ll find him, Lis. I’ll find Joshy.”
When Lissa spoke again, Mae heard the confidence, the trust that she’d always found so painfully suffocating—and today, terrifying. “I know you will, Mae.”
Mae hung up. Stared at the phone. Shoot. She hated this part.
I love you, Mae. But I don’t want you to work for me.
You mean you don’t want me in your life, she’d said.
She would never forget his steady, dark-eyed stare, or the rawness in his expression.
Nor the hurt on his face when she’d dumped her drink over his head and walked away.
She only gave herself another moment’s debate before breaking all her promises to herself and dialing the man who’d nose-dived her life.
Her heart.
Chet Stryker.
As with every mission Chet Stryker had ever accepted, he did his homework, armed himself with the latest technology, contemplated every strategy and embraced whatever character his assignment demanded.
“I really hate tulle,” he said, as he exited through the security gates of Hans Brumegaarden’s expansive estate in his Snow White costume. The sun had long ago abandoned the day, and a sprinkling of stars barely outshone the lights of Berlin.
“It does tend to snag on your ankle holster,” Brody “Wick” Wickham said, hoisting his overnight bag of supplies—ammunition, a Heckler and Koch submachine gun, a couple of Glocks and various high-tech surveillance equipment—over his shoulder, his bad mood etched on his craggy face. “I could use a night at the Hyatt.”
Chet didn’t blame him. His elite security team had spent five hours in the late summer sun dressed as Grumpy, Sleepy and Sneezy. Lucky him, as the team leader, Chet had landed the role of Snow White.
He had to be the laughingstock of the international-security community. Apparently, if anyone needed a decorated, former Delta Force operative with ten years of undercover experience and his team of highly trained specialists to impersonate fairy-tale characters, Chet Stryker was their man.
He’d wanted to run Stryker International on his terms. With his choice of assignments.
But clearly pride wouldn’t pay the bills. And they had accomplished their mission—to protect six-year-old Gretchen Brumegaarden and one hundred of her closest friends and family members from a terrorist threat. Still, it felt like a compromise. He needed to do everything he could to make his little company a success, hoping to convince himself that he hadn’t blown everything when he’d retired early from the military.
Since the day he’d kicked Mae out of his life, it seemed he’d made one glaring mistake after another.
“We’re taking the midnight train back to Prague,” Chet said, pressing the automatic unlock on their economy rental car.
“No airplane?” Artyom, his computer techie from Russia, ran to catch up, toting his own provisions, most of them contained in his laptop case. He’d been recruited by Wick, a former Green Beret whom Chet had enticed to leave special ops after a particularly brutal tour. Chet’s business partner Vicktor—a former FSB agent—had closed the deal, talking Artyom into joining Stryker International. Luke Dekker, former Navy SEAL, acted as medic and team explosives expert. Now all Chet needed was a profiler, perhaps a negotiator, and, yes, a pilot.
He still hadn’t found someone as skilled as Mae. Not even close. He’d been setting his sights lower and lower, until he was looking at recruits fresh out of a bush pilot school in Alaska. He needed Mae. But every time he opened his phone to call her, his chest would burn, old wounds stirring to life, and he’d shut his phone and the image of her from his mind.
He wouldn’t—couldn’t—put someone he loved in the line of fire. Been there, done that.
Chet opened the trunk and threw in the gear. “No airplane. This check barely covers our expenses and salaries for the next month. An airplane means another dwarf suit in your near future.”
Chet needed a break, something to put his business on the map. Something big, international and newsworthy.
Maybe even something to make him feel like a soldier, a patriot, again. Anything but a cartoon character playing a charade.
The wind blew against the ancient elm trees ringing the property, picking up his rather un-Snow-White scent. “Let’s get out of here.”
His cell phone vibrated as he opened the car door. Fishing it out of his pocket, he looked at the number—and stilled.
“You drive, Wick.” Chet tossed him the keys, walked over to the passenger side and opened the phone. “Chet here.”
“It’s…me.”
“I know.” Wow, did he know, because just like that, everything he’d felt that day when he’d met Mae Lund—the longing, the hope, even the delight—rushed back and took a swipe at his voice. He found it, although it emerged a little roughed up as he turned from the car. “How are you, Mae?”
“Not so good.” Was there a tremor in her voice?
“What is it?”
“It’s my nephew, Josh. He’s missing.”
“Then call the police.”
“He’s in Georgia.”
“I’m not sure what I can do from here—”
“Georgia, the country!” Her voice resounded loud and clear, and on the edge of desperate, despite being on the other side of the world. Uh, she was on the other side of the world, right? “Where are you?”
“Getting on a plane in Seattle.”
“Let me guess—to Prague.”
Silence. Then, “No, to Georgia. Why would I come to Prague?”
Wow, that hurt, more than he would have ever guessed. Because for a second he’d been hoping, wildly perhaps, that she’d forgotten how he’d stomped her pride into tiny bits, and instead remembered that once upon a time he really cared what happened to her. What she thought about. What food she liked and what movies she saw. What her dreams were…outside the ones that included the rather negative byproduct of him watching her die, that was.
“You’re going to Georgia?”
“Where else would I be going, Chet? Honolulu? My nephew is missing, and I speak Russian, which means I can probably get by, thanks to the years of Russia occupation. My sister is losing her mind, and I think I can find him. I know he was working near Gari…in a village called Burmansk.” Her voice dropped. “I was hoping that…maybe…oh…never mind.”
“Wait!” Don’t hang up. “You want me to find him?”
“No. I can find him. I was hoping you could tap into your contacts in Georgia to help me.” Her voice dropped.
“You know the ones.”
“Yes, I know the ones.” He climbed into the car as Wick started it up and cranked the air conditioner. “I’d forgotten that I’d told—”
“I didn’t.” She said it softly, as if the details of the letters he’d written while he’d been in Taiwan had mattered to her. Only she didn’t know it all, because if she did she would never have called, would never have asked him to dig into his past.
“I…I’m not sure that’s such a great idea, Mae. I don’t even know if I can find the right people anymore.” Not to mention the bounty on his head in that particular country. Mae could be walking right into the fallout that he’d always dreaded. “Have you called the embassy?”
“Yes, but their official position is that Josh ran away with a local village girl.”
“Maybe he did.”
“He’s not that irresponsible. He calls home every Sunday night, and was the only kid in his Sunday school who earned a gold star for perfect attendance. He’s an Eagle Scout, for Pete’s sake. He’s not going to just take off and scare everyone around him!”
“Calm down, Mae. I’m sure he’s already back.”
“He’s not back, Chet, that’s the point!”
“But it doesn’t mean you should go running off to Georgia! There’s still a war going on over there!”
“Exactly why we need to find him. What if he’s been kidnapped?”
“What if you get kidnapped?” He took a breath and lowered his voice to something that resembled calm. “What if something happens to you?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
But it would; he knew it in his gut. He’d seen the civil war between Georgia and Ossetia up close, and with Russia as Ossetia’s new comrades, one nasty misfire from the Georgian side and the entire mess could reignite. Just give the Ossetians one reason, and no amount of international tongue-clucking would keep them from unloading their Kalashnikovs right into the rag-tag Georgian defenses.
And Mae would be caught in the middle, a beautiful redheaded American pawn, leverage for whatever terrorist group nabbed her.
“Please don’t go, Mae. It’s not safe—”
“Last time I checked, I didn’t need your approval. You’re not my boss.”
He clenched his jaw so tight he thought his molars might crack. “I can’t believe you’re doing this again! Have you learned nothing about acting on impulse?”
He realized he was shouting when Wick glanced at him. He exhaled slowly as they turned onto Karl Liebknecht Street. The architecture in this part of old Berlin betrayed the age of the city—the dangling chandeliers that lined the streets, the colonnades of the stately former Third Reich buildings, the grandeur of the Brandenburg Gate, now silent and looming over them. “I’m sorry, Mae, that wasn’t fair—”
“You bet it wasn’t. If I hadn’t ‘acted on impulse’ and helped spring Roman out of prison, he might still be there. Or maybe not—maybe he’d be dead. I know that he wasn’t your friend, but, well, I guess it’s clear that even if he had been, you wouldn’t have lifted a finger to—”
“Watch yourself, Mae.”
“Forget I called. Just forget it, Chet.” The phone went dead before Chet could open his mouth.
He closed the phone, holding it in his shaking fist, gritting his teeth.
“Maybe you’ll feel better if you throw it,” Wick said quietly.
“I knew a woman like that once,” Luke said from the backseat. “Drove me crazy.”
“I married one,” Artyom added.
Chet shook his head, staring out the window. Crazy was going to Georgia to search for a teenager who’d probably decided to backpack around Europe. Or better yet, hooked up with a village girl and disappeared for a weekend tryst.
“She’s going to Georgia.”
“Isn’t that where you—”
“Yep,” Chet snapped, cutting Wick off.
“Where what?” Artyom asked, leaning forward in the seat.
Wick glanced at Chet, and when he didn’t answer, filled in the silence. “When he was a young Green Beret, Chet embedded with a group of rebels in the breakaway territory of Ossetia and helped them with equipment and supplies—”
“I helped them start a civil war.” Among other things. His own words had the precision of a scalpel, the old wounds fresh and raw. His palms slicked. Carissa’s scream still echoed through the chambers of his brittle soul. He shook himself from the memory, wiping his hands on his knees.
“He did more than that,” Wick said. “The leaders in Georgia declared him an enemy of the state and put a price on his head. If he ever goes back to Georgia—”
“Unofficially, I’m also wanted in the territory of Ossetia—the one that recently conspired with the Russians to invade Georgia—by a terrorist group called the Svan. Their leader, Akif Bashim, would like nothing better than to find me, and throw in a little torture—just for payback—before he beheads me, of course.” Deep breaths, in, out… Chet tapped the phone on his leg.
“I don’t understand—if you helped the Svan, and Akif was their leader, why would he want you dead?”
Chet shook his head. Leave it, Wick.
Wick’s eyes narrowed just a second before he betrayed him. “Let’s just say that Akif had a daughter, who fell in love with Chet.”
Chet drew in a breath. “Yes, something like that.”
Wick reached over and tugged the cell from his whitened grip, dropping it into the cup holder. “Mae will be fine.”
“She won’t be fine.” Chet flexed his hands. “But if I set foot in that part of the world, Bashim will know it. And neither of us will get out of Georgia alive.”
“You can’t go, boss,” Luke said quietly.
Chet leaned his head back against his seat, closing his eyes, and almost instantly Mae appeared, her green eyes bright, her red hair ribboning down her back, her skin sweet and tangy, her soft laughter like a balm on his calloused heart, smiling as he waltzed her around the dance floor of Viktor and Gracie’s wedding reception. Their last magical moment.
Before she dumped the drink over his head.
He ran his finger and thumb over his eyes, dispelling the image. “But can I live with myself if I don’t?”
TWO
Chet blamed his stupidity on his fatigue and the fact that he’d spent twelve hours on a train staring at the ceiling of his sterile compartment, listening to Wick snore, and trying not to imagine Mae disembarking in the Georgia airport in Tbilisi to Russian gunpoint.
No, he’d thought he was overreacting. The gun pointing wouldn’t start until she got to Gori and met one of the trigger-nervous eighteen-year-old Russian “brown boys” supposedly “peacekeeping” along the Ossetia-Georgian border. He’d read the papers over the past few months. “Peacekeeping” seemed to be a euphemism for “daily terrorist attacks.” These days, regions of Georgia bore a strong resemblance to some areas of Iraq.
And hadn’t that been a comforting thought at 2:00 a.m. as they’d crossed the Berlin border into the Czech Republic? Chet had found himself staring out the window at the dark, rolling countryside of Europe, seeing instead the sweeping hills of Ossetia, rimmed by the jagged, snowy peaks of the Caucasus Mountains to the north. Ageless villages, nestled in the nooks and crannies of mountains lush with fir trees, each centered on a lone, stone church. He could nearly smell the lamb kebobs roasting over an open pit, or baking Khachapuri, dripping with cheese. He could hear children laughing as they bicycled through the village, just outside his window, open to the spring air.
But every memory of Georgia ended with the staccato roll of a Kalashnikov being chambered.
He’d closed his eyes, breathing out the past.
No, sleep, regardless of how inviting, hadn’t been a great idea. Not if he ended up rolling in his sheets, lathered in a cold sweat, screaming. Just what Wick and the rest of his team needed for inspiration.
Instead, Chet had focused on figuring out a way to get into Georgia, sans capture, track down Mae and talk her—or throw her—out of the country.
No wonder he hadn’t gotten any sleep on that train. And no wonder, when he’d shoved his key into his office headquarters, he didn’t realize that the security system hadn’t beeped. He’d just pushed his way inside the sparse and dreary three-room flat, dropped his gear on the checkerboard red and black floor, and reached for the light.
It shed the barest luminescence over his dismal office. He’d turned a fifteenth-century, three-room residence into his headquarters. The largest room, flanked by two ornate French doors, housing his black prefab desk, his computer, a couple of black faux-leather chairs and a huge window that overlooked a grassless courtyard, served as his reception and office area.
In a room the size of his former walk-in closet in D.C., he’d fashioned a kitchen of sorts. It overlooked the alley, held a mini-fridge and a one-burner hotplate, and did a nearly miraculous job of infusing everything in the kitchen with the smell from the corner dumpster below. It was with relief that he did his dishes in the bathtub.
The last room housed their equipment, a veritable stash of electronics, and enough weaponry to take over a small, unarmed country. Oh, and his single bed. And a hanging rack for his clothes.
And, he noticed too late, the CIA.
The two suits, with their high and tight crew cuts and clean-shaven chins, must have lost some shut-eye themselves on the flight over from the Pentagon, because they barely cleared their holsters before Chet walked in on them, rubbing his eyes and hoping to flop down on his bed.
“What the—”
And that was all he got out before he, too, had his Glock in his hand, pointed at the taller of the two spooks, a guy who looked as if he might have played defensive end for Ole Miss, complete with the square jaw and blue-eyed stare.
They all breathed a long moment before Ole Miss lowered his weapon. He glanced at his pal. “Agents Miller and Carlson. We just want to talk.”
“Talk without the guns,” Chet said, his voice dead-pan, all vestiges of fatigue flushed from his system.
Carlson lowered his weapon, tucking it back into his arm holster. “We’re the good guys, remember?” A smirk tugged at his mouth as his brown eyes ran over Chet.
Yeah, good guys. He’d been a “good guy” for a different organization once upon a time. He wasn’t sure there was such a thing anymore.
Chet lowered his Glock. “What do you want?”
“We have a situation and we need your help.” This from Ole Miss, who backed away and sat on Chet’s bed, right on the sleeping bag. He folded his hands and smiled, like, Calm down, pal, everybody’s friends here.
Chet didn’t put his gun away. “I’m tired, guys, so make it snappy. What situation?”
Carlson glanced at Miller and nodded. Miller reached for a briefcase that Chet was now noticing about thirty seconds too late. If it had been a bomb, well, so much for worrying about what Disney character to play in his next gig.
Miller pulled out a folder and handed it to Chet.
Chet took it, his gaze still on the spooks. “Why don’t we talk in my office?” He gestured with a nod toward the front room, then stepped back to follow his guests.
He opened the folder on the way.
The girl in the photo staring back at him couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Huge blue eyes, regal cheekbones, long sable hair that framed her face in thick waves. She wore a red jilbab ornamental dress, and in an inset photo, accompanied it with a silky white hijab. She looked very familiar. Painfully familiar. No, it couldn’t be.
“Who is she?” Chet asked as he dropped the file onto his desk. Miller and Carlson had already folded themselves into the chairs.
“She’s a princess. A Svan princess.” Miller said.
A knot tightened low in Chet’s gut. “Please don’t tell me—”
“She’s the daughter of Akif Bashim.”
Chet closed his eyes, running his hand over them. Of course. She was the spitting image of Carissa. “Who is she?”
“Her name is Darya. Do you know her?”
No. But she could have been a young Carissa at sixteen, except for the eyes. Chet eased himself into a chair.
“I’m too tired for games. Just lay it out there.”
“She’s been kidnapped. Or maybe something else. Intel’s a little sketchy. But we need you to find her.”
Chet was too raw to play it cool, too tired to even be curious about why the CIA had darkened his door to dangle this mission before him.
“When? How?”
“Yesterday. West of Gori, in the state of Georgia,” Carlson said.
Chet closed one eye to stave off the stabbing sensation in his brain. Clearly the cosmos, or perhaps providence, didn’t want to give him a break.
“We think she was taken by an aid worker from one of the refugee camps.”
Chet turned another page and stared at what could only be Mae’s nephew. Joshy? He recognized a hint of trouble in the kid’s green eyes, in the angled set of his jaw. Great. Two stubborn redheads running around Georgia for him to rescue.
“American?” Chet didn’t want to give too much away, just in case the CIA wasn’t tapping his cell phone.
“From Arizona, on a do-gooder trip. He’s nineteen. He’s been there for a month, working with some local mission group. We’re not sure how he met Bashim’s daughter, but they were last seen walking away together from the refugee camp.”
Miller leaned forward and turned the next page for Chet, revealing a map of the hot zones inside Georgia, demarcating troop movements on both sides of the no-man’s land. Gori sat smack in the middle. “I don’t have to tell you that we’re sitting on an international incident here, Stryker. Bashim hasn’t been easy to nail down over the past few years, and more than a few intel sources suggest he’s behind the Ossetia rebel forces.”
“I thought he’d moved to Chechnya.”
“We haven’t had an official sighting since, well, since you and your team moved out, really. We had an insider source who kept track of him until a few years ago. Since then, he’s gone dark.”
Chet said nothing, made no comment on their knowledge of his history. He just turned the page. Yep, there was Bashim, bearded, yellow teeth, his head swaddled in a tight black turban. Chet’s hand began to tremble.
“You know why we picked you, Stryker?”
Chet nodded as he looked up and closed the folder.
“But I’ll only make it worse.”
“You’re the only one who can do this. You know the territory, the languages—”
“It’s been a while since I’ve spoken Georgian—”
“Then study up. Most important, you understand why you must find this girl. The agency will make it worth your while—not only now, but later, too.”
Chet glared at them, hating how they knew so much—and the way they knew just how to use it.
Miller leaned forward, lowering his voice. “And if Darya did run away on her own power, you gotta talk her into going back home.”
Chet stared at him, fighting the urge to launch himself across the desk, take the man by his burly neck and have a go—frankly, it might make him feel better, flush out all this simmering frustration. Or perhaps, instead, he should fling the file off his desk and watch the papers scatter into the air, not unlike his life so many years ago. He was still working on scraping up the pieces.
“Has it occurred to either of you geniuses that she’s better off? Life at home in Bashim’s camp isn’t exactly peaches. Who knows what she’s had to endure, living on the run in the mountains of northern Georgia with terrorists?”
“She’s a student at Oxford.”
“She looks like a kid.”
“That was taken a few years ago, obviously.” Carlson got up, paced to Chet’s window and peered down at the courtyard. “She was in Western culture long enough to know just what her father is up to, and what it could mean for the world.” He turned to Chet, arms folded.
“She’s betrothed to Akeem Al-Jabar.”
The agent waited as if that name might ring a bell for Chet.
“I’m too tired—”
“Iranian prince. Son of Osama Al-Jabar.”
Oh. Of course. “The same oil tycoon who’s behind the truckloads of cash being poured into Iran’s nuclear program.”
“You do read the international news wires, then.”
“When I’m not catching up on Reader’s Digest. Just so I can connect the dots, Darya is educated, and I’m assuming since you know her political disposition—you, meaning the collective CIA—”
“And others.”
“Right. And others, have coerced—” he particularly enjoyed watching Carlson flinch “—her into a forced marriage so she can, what, spy on the Iranians for you?”
Carlson turned back to the window. Miller pursed his lips, staring at Chet.
“Great. So now I’m a matchmaking service. Let me get my wand.” He pushed back from the chair and stood. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, guys, but I’m not going to track down a runaway girl and drag her back by her hair like some caveman so I can throw her into marital slavery. Sorry, but I gotta draw the line somewhere.”
“I know you won’t draw the line at dressing like Snow White, but saving the world from nuclear holocaust puts you over the edge?”
Chet scooped up the folder and held it out. “Personally, I’m against human trafficking in all forms. You should have discovered that in your homework somewhere.” Before he started his company, he’d spent five years—and earned one spider-webbed scar low in his gut—bringing down a Chinese human trafficking ring. His last great mission.
He stared at Carlson, then Miller. “I can’t help you boys.”
Miller stood and took the folder. “That’s a real shame, because I hear that Bashim already has a price out for the kid who took her.” He met Chet’s eyes, speaking slowly. “And anyone caught aiding and abetting him.”
So they had been tapping his phone.
“Listen, Stryker,” Carlson said quietly. “Darya agreed to the marriage. In fact, she came to us with the idea of marrying Al-Jabar. They’re friends from London. We’re not the thugs you’ve drawn in your mind.”
“She ran away for a reason.”
“She’s nineteen. She got cold feet. Or maybe she has a thing for this kid. We don’t exactly know, but until someone finds them, Bashim is a powder keg. He gets itchy and invades Georgia again, and suddenly we have an international incident. Georgia fights back, Russia roars in to protect Ossetia, and with Georgia on track to be a member of NATO, well, who knows how far this thing could reach,” said Miller.
Translation: American troops on the front lines of another war.
“And, as Miller pointed out, this thing touches home for you in many ways, doesn’t it?”
Chet wasn’t sure what they might be referring to. Yes, he’d spent his years early in his career arming the Ossetian rebels, namely Akif Bashim and his tribesmen, for freedom during their civil war. Back in the late eighties, the powers that be had simply wanted Ossetia to break free of Russia’s grip, via the Republic of Georgia. But he held no allegiances to Ossetia—especially since, twenty years later, they had banded with the Russians to attack Georgia. Maybe Miller referred to Chet’s hope of revenge and the opportunity to see Bashim pay for murdering the woman Chet was tasked to protect. Or perhaps he referred to rescuing Mae Lund, the woman he couldn’t forget—didn’t want to forget—who was now flying right into the danger zone of southern Georgia without a clue about the hornet’s nest awaiting her.
He sighed.
Miller tossed the file back on the desk. “There’s a visa and your flight pass. Hope you don’t mind flying military. It’ll be just like old times.”
Oh, joy, the chilly back end of a C-130. He hoped he still had his earplugs.
Carlson followed Miller out. “According to our sources, you’ve got five days until the groom arrives. Try not to be late for the wedding.”
It didn’t matter what former Soviet satellite country Mae stepped into—it all smelled, sounded and felt like Moscow.
It wasn’t a fair assessment, and Mae knew it—after all, Ukraine had worked hard to shed the residue of Russian imperialism the minute the iron curtain fell. Mae well remembered the crowds toppling the iron statues of Lenin along Khreschatyk Street. And Latvia and Estonia fought for their freedom years before they actually saw the Russian tanks heading for the border.
But despite the battles for freedom, Russia had stamped her architectural and cultural fingerprint onto the satellite societies so indelibly that, as Mae climbed up from the subway line to the center of Tbilisi, Georgia, time swept her back to her days at Moscow University.
From the names of the streets—Lenin Square, of course, and Komsolmolskaya Street—to the statuesque cement buildings with their narrow wrought-iron balconies and street vendors lined up selling shiny gold religious icons, sunflower seeds, walnuts and bright pink peonies…she could be standing in the shadow of the Kremlin. She half expected to see her old college Russian pals, Roman and Vicktor, emerge from under the red umbrella of a food vendor, holding a dripping plumbere ice-cream cone.
In a wide fountain at the end of the square, children splashed, water dribbling off the backs of their drawers as they shivered in the early fall air. A yellow trolley-bus rattled by, sparks jumping off the overhead electric line. Mae’s stomach rolled over at the aroma of grilled mutton—shashlik, probably—but all she spotted was a scarf-headed babushka in a doughy apron sitting beside a tin milk can hawking chebureki—deep-fried meat sandwiches. She’d exchanged money at the airport and now held out a bill, waving off the change as the woman handed her the bread wrapped in grease-dotted paper.
She bit into it, letting the grease drip out onto the sidewalk, and familiarity soothed her ragged nerves as she focused on her next steps.
She hadn’t eaten since the airport in New York, about a thousand years ago.
A thousand years, four airplanes, and three hours in passport control. Thankfully, she still had some connections, the kind that could nab her a humanitarian-aid visa in twenty-four hours, which she picked up in Amsterdam. She owed pal and embassy officer in Russia David Curtiss again, for his quiet trust in her, as well as his string-pulling.
She refused to even allow Chet’s reaction to her trip into the no-fly zone to enter her thoughts. Have you learned nothing about acting on impulse?
Hey, impulse saved lives. Sometimes impulse was all a girl had.
Although impulse was exactly how she’d ended up getting her heart broken with Chet. Maybe he had a point.
She used to be some sort of army pilot—they said she could fly just about anything. Too bad she threw away her career. Now she’s waiting tables…
She heard the voice in her head and tried to shake it away, remembering now how she’d stood at the threshold of the sliding-glass door to the balcony of Gracie’s apartment two years ago listening to three know-it-all teenagers from the youth group Gracie worked with summing up her life. Or rather, the life of the “hot redhead who lives with Gracie.” She’d nearly crammed the serving plate full of cream-cheese roll-ups she’d been about to bring them down their throats.
She appreciated the fact those words hadn’t issued from the military type who’d come to Gracie’s birthday party dressed in a pair of jeans and a suit coat, the one who stood for ten minutes by the door, sizing up the room as if searching for terrorists, before wandering out to the balcony.
Mae still hadn’t gotten his name and hated that her gaze had lingered on him, taking in his dark blue eyes, curly, short dark hair and wide shoulders. He stuck one hand into his front jeans pocket—a casual pose—but every inch of him radiated a sort of coiled tension, as if at the slightest provocation, he might morph into Jason Bourne or Jack Bauer.
He stood apart from the teens, clearly listening and forming his own opinion as one of those dark eyebrows arched up.
Mae shouldered right into the group, ignored the openmouthed expressions of her accusers, and shoved the plate at the chief hanging judge, a pimply kid no more than seventeen with wide eyes peeking through a shank of unwashed hair. “Care for a cream-cheese roll-up? Gotta earn my tips, after all.”
He blanched, and with a shaky hand reached for the appetizer.
“Be glad you don’t pull back a nub, son,” the quiet man said from just behind him. Mae narrowed her eyes at his slight smirk, then turned on her heel, ready to bail.
So it was her new roommate’s birthday party. So what if one of Gracie’s best friends from Russia had shown up. Last time Mae had checked her status, she was jobless, her former squeeze—Vicktor—was engaged to said roommate, and now she had a bunch of teenagers laughing at her and her dismal life. And to make it worse, as she returned to Gracie’s squatty galley kitchen, yet another teenager from Gracie’s youth group streaked out and hit the plate, which flew from Mae’s grip.
“Clearly, you’re not a waitress.” She whirled and Special Ops from the balcony held up his hands in surrender. “Not a criticism. Just an observation.” He bent down and began to gather up the debris.
“No, I’m not,” she finally said, as he stood and handed her the plate. “I’m a pilot.”
“And according to my former partner David, a good one.”
And then he smiled.
Beautiful. Lethal. She actually felt her heart stop.
“Chet Stryker. Gracie’s cousin.”
And the Delta Force pal of one of her best friends, David Curtiss.
Oh, she knew how to pick ’em.
She smiled and stuck out her hand. “Mae Lund. Former pilot and current catastrophe.”
She meant it as a joke, but even as the words came out, they felt so raw, so fresh, that stupid tears raked her eyes.
She turned away before he could see.
But he had, because he touched her arm. “Don’t listen to those kids. They don’t know the facts like I do. You saved a friend from execution, even if you had to break a couple international laws to do it—that’s worth waiting tables, I think.”
She closed her eyes. Yes. Yes, it was.
He turned her, gently. “Hey, we all make choices we regret. Even if they’re the right ones.” He pushed her long red hair from her eyes, tucking it around her ear. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here. I promise to take good care of you.”
Such good care that a year later, knowing what it meant to her, he refused to give Mae a job flying for Stryker International.
Sometimes she just wished for a man who wasn’t quite so…protective.
Except it wasn’t as if Chet had come rushing to Tbilsi, was it? Apparently Chet had really meant it when he said he didn’t want her on his team. He didn’t even want to be associated with her.
It didn’t matter. She was so over Chet Stryker. Over him and his swagger and his overprotective urges and his devastating smile. O-ver.
She’d find Joshy on her own.
She wadded the greasy paper and sandwich into a ball and threw it into a trash can, no longer hungry.
Now that she was here, she’d start by checking in with the powers that be—namely, the American Embassy—and see if they might point her in the right direction.
She’d looked up the address online at a kiosk in Amsterdam and printed a map, and now headed in what she hoped was the right direction.
Funny, she’d expected less foot traffic, given that the residents of Georgia had been through a war not so long ago. Instead, street cafés and vendors selling ice cream and hot dogs festooned the sidewalks. Strollers scattered pigeons, and the occasional artist called out a price.
Normalcy. A country in crisis craved it, perhaps.
She understood. Whenever she’d come home from a mission, especially a rescue, she’d dive into her routine—yoga, health food, Bible study on base and weekly phone calls home.
She hadn’t had a real routine since she’d left the military. Which was why, perhaps, she was always living in crisis mode, pushing herself, never finding her default rhythm.
In a way, the foreign aromas made her feel more at home than anything had in the two years she’d spent in Seattle.
She turned onto George Balanchine Street and spotted the embassy set off from the road, wire fencing cordoning off Little America from the rest of the world. A guard station flanked a gate at the end of the rectangular fencing. A driveway beyond led to an enormous white building—austere in relation to the rich architecture of the Tbilisi streetscape. Of course, Americans had to be different, stand apart, resist blending in.
She hoped, however, just this once, her nephew hadn’t listened to her advice and had done exactly that—not blended in. It would be a thousand times easier to find him if he’d left a conspicuous trail.
And as for this runaway girl…well, Mae hoped she was worth it.
The light changed and she stepped out to cross.
Something grabbed at the canvas bag slung across her body, jerking her back.
On instinct, she whirled around to slam her fist on the hand holding her bag. Didn’t even think when she followed with a side kick to the shins.
She finished with a stiff arm chop to the neck.
The pickpocket didn’t run. Didn’t, in fact, even flinch. He just blocked her chop, his grip iron on her bag, dark eyes on hers, his voice just above a growl. “Calm down and stop hitting me.”
Then he released her bag. Mae tripped back, words stuck in her throat.
Chet?
He looked good, too. Dark curly hair, a little shorter than she remembered. Rumpled in a gray snap-button denim shirt rolled up just above the elbows. And a messenger bag slung across his chest. He stared at her with those piercing blue eyes that seemed to be able, in this moment, to stun her into silence. Chet Stryker. The man who’d told her that she couldn’t ever be on his team. That she couldn’t keep up.
That he didn’t want her in his life.
He had her off balance—that was why she let him drag her back toward the shadowy enclave between two doors. She was still reeling when he pushed her against the wall, bracketed her between his arms, and said tightly, “Can’t you listen to anything I say?”
And then, because it felt right, because he deserved it, because all her adrenaline suddenly peaked, she hit him again.
Square in the chest. “Apparently not.”
THREE
“Why do you always have to make things so difficult?” Chet rubbed his chest where Mae had boxed him. The first two punches he’d taken—after all, he had pounced on her like a bandit, but he’d been trying to keep her from igniting an international incident. The last thing he needed was to alert the local militia to his presence in the country.
The third punch, however, hurt more than it should have. Especially since Mae had looked him square in the face, full recognition in those beautiful green eyes, right before she walloped him.
Although he probably deserved that one, too. Not just for stomping on her hopes of flying for Stryker International, but also for walking out of her life.
Or perhaps for letting her believe that he could make room for her in his heart.
Okay, she still took up way too much room in his heart, but she didn’t have to know that. No, that wouldn’t be safe for anyone.
Mae stalked down the street, ten feet ahead of him, fists tight, as if she might be trying not to hit him again. He’d vote for that. In fact, he should probably be ecstatic that she was heading in the opposite direction of the embassy, that she’d bought his reasoning that the government would only send them packing stateside. Unfortunately, he’d expected—no, hoped was more accurate—that she’d actually be happy to see him. That her eyes would light up, and maybe she’d throw her arms around him.
He’d been jostled around the cargo hold of the C-130 harder than he’d thought.
She looked better than the image his imagination had conjured up. Her auburn hair had grown, and she wore it in a sloppy, curly, tantalizing ponytail. Despite trying to hide her figure inside a pair of baggy cargo pants, a green T-shirt and a canvas jacket, she took his breath away. She still looked like she had the day he’d met her—about ready to bullet a group of disrespectful teenage boys with gooey tortilla wraps.
They’d deserved it. He would have helped her, even. Something about her—the spark in her eye, the pride in her jaw, the way she turned away, hiding her pain—stirred his respect. Of course, he knew the story—thanks to his pal David Curtiss, one of Mae’s college buddies—of how she’d risked her life for her friend Roman and rescued him from a Siberian gulag, and just what it had netted her.
No pension. No job. Stripped of her very identity as a soldier.
Seeing her pain had made him suddenly long to make it all better. To make her smile.
Just another person he’d managed to disappoint.
At least he hadn’t gotten her killed.
Yet.
Unfortunately, it might be easier to reason with a rhinoceros than with Mae when she was in this kind of mood.
He dashed to catch up and was on her heel when she whirled. He plowed right into her and had to grab her to keep them both from going over.
She shook out of his grip. Opened her mouth. Closed it. Glared him into a pile of ash.
“Still not using our words, are we?” Chet stepped back and held up his hands. “Okay, I’ll fill in the blanks. I’m here to help you find your nephew. And the runaway princess.”
For the first time, her expression flickered. He leaped on it.
“Yep, I said princess. From a Caucasian tribe. Did you know she’s pledged to be married in a few days, and guess who ran off with the bride?”
Mae’s expression drained and she rolled her eyes—or perhaps looked heavenward for help. Which he was all for, at the moment.
“The bottom line is, your nephew is in big trouble, and I’m here to find him.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a plane ticket. “Alone. You’re headed back to the states, Mae.”
Before you get killed.
“In your wildest dreams, pal.” Mae turned on her heel.
Well, uh, yes, actually. Because in his nightmares she stuck around to get tortured and killed by Akif Bashim.
He grabbed her wrist. “I’ll drag you to the airport if I have to.”
She snapped her wrist away. “I never thought I’d actually be glad to say this, but…you’re not my boss.”
He flinched a little at that. “No, but I do know this country and what happens when people get caught in the crossfire. Which, if you didn’t happen to notice, is exactly what’s happening in that little hot spot of the world Josh and his girlfriend seem to have gone walk-about in. So, yes, honey, you’re leaving.”
Mae, as if deaf, kept walking.
“Oh, nice, Mae.”
She ignored him. And where exactly was she going? He sped up behind her, matching her long strides. “I thought you might be glad to see me—after all, you called me.”
She stomped along in silence.
“C’mon, Mae, listen to me. I am on your side here, believe it or not. It’ll be better for Josh if you go and let me track him down. I can travel faster, and I know the language and—”
She stopped.
He skidded to a halt and took a step back. “What?”
Her stare could probably leave blisters. “You want me to leave so I won’t get in the way, is that it? It’s too risky to work with me, so you’ll just kick me to the curb?”
He opened his mouth, ready to refute her, but of course nothing came out. Because, as usual, she’d bulls-eyed it. He lifted a shoulder in a rueful shrug.
She shook her head, as if dispelling some inner voice, and stared at him a long time. Oh, Mae, why do you make this all so hard? Why couldn’t she be the kind of woman who didn’t have to be on the front lines of trouble? The one who’d let him take her out for ice cream? The girl he’d envisioned on the other end of his emails? The one he’d known for a crazy, romantic week in Seattle?
Or maybe he hadn’t known her at all.
She finally spoke, her words losing some of their heat, yet still stiff with anger. “If you knew anything about me, anything at all, Chet, you would know that I will not just go home and leave Josh here. I’m not built that way. I don’t know what’s going on with him—why he did this, or who this princess is—” She added air quotes, as if he couldn’t catch her tone.
“She’s the daughter of a warlord.”
“Perfect. For all I know, he’s being held against his will. But I made a promise to my sister. And I keep my promises.”
Right. He did know that about her.
“So, you go ahead and do whatever you need to do. Find the princess, save the world. Whatever. But you need to stay out of my way. Yasna?”
He hated it when she spoke Russian. It only reminded him that she had friends and experiences that didn’t fit into the neat, safe world he wanted her to live in. Worse, as she met his eyes, unblinking, he saw that the anger had vanished, only to be replaced by something more frightening.
Resolve.
And when she turned and stalked out again for parts unknown, all he could do was follow.
Wasn’t this just swell? He had four days to find a runaway princess, talk her into helping save the world by marrying a man twice her age, and stop a love-struck teenager from starting an international incident, all while trying to keep up with—forget ahead of—the woman he most wanted to protect in the world.
He’d felt more comfortable in his Snow White costume.
“Just tell me where you’re—we’re—going, please.”
“The market,” she said without looking at him.
The market. Okay. He cataloged the changes in Tbilisi as he followed her down the street. The smell—dust, car exhaust, the slightest whiff of grilled lamb—all seemed familiar. He didn’t recognize, however, the red and blue vendor kiosks selling ice cream and candy, the electric beat of European bands banging from boom boxes. Traffic hummed and horns blared, motors coughing out black smoke from Russian-made vehicles—Ladas and Zhigulis, he supposed—but also Japanese imports and even German Volkswagens. It all evidenced a new capitalism, not the Georgia he’d remembered.
Of course, when he’d been sneaking around Georgia, it had been in the hills, back when the Russians occupied the offices in the ornate buildings in downtown Tbilisi, back when his government decided that a little revolutionary thinking might help take down communism. His stomach churned as he pondered the fact that the seeds he’d sown over two decades ago still wreaked havoc in the country today. Back then, he’d believed he was arming freedom. Oh, hindsight.
A woman, her head covered, holding her toddler daughter in her lap as she sat on the grimy sidewalk, held out a hand to him as he passed by. He couldn’t meet her eyes as he dropped a lari into her grip. Just ten feet away, yet another woman, this one much younger, huddled under her veils in the alcove of a Soviet-era building peering at him with huge brown eyes.
Carissa.
He inhaled so sharply that Mae glanced at him.
Of course it wasn’t Carissa. Couldn’t be. But memory had sharp claws and it knew how to make him bleed.
If not cost him his life, this time around.
Maybe he should have called Wick and the rest of Stryker International instead of packing his duffel and hopping on a transport without so much as a check-in. His team would show up at the office and read the hastily scrawled, “Off on a private trip. Be back soon.” And since he hadn’t taken a day off since he’d started Stryker International, those cryptic words would have the opposite of the intended effect, igniting speculation, if not an all-out manhunt. Starting with a phone call to his partner, Vicktor Shubnikov.
With some more rotten luck, Vicktor would mention it to his wife, Gracie, who would immediately think of her former roomie, Mae, and probably follow up with a phone call to Seattle. To which she’d get no answer.
How long, really, would it take his team to figure out he’d headed to Georgia, scrounge up a plane and stir an already-simmering mess to full boil?
Clearly, Chet had needed more coffee and a few moments to think before running off after trouble.
Trouble who seemed to be outdistancing him de spite his near run. Sheesh, Mae had long legs. “Slow down.”
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