Secret Contract Read online

  Chapter Four

  Nick sprinted across the distance, pushing for speed, but even as he skidded over the hood of a parked car, he knew he was too late. He wasn’t going to get to her in time.

  All he could think was Not again, not again, not again.

  He couldn’t lose another one.

  He watched her throw herself forward and hit the pavement hard, the truck bearing down on her. If she stopped to look where she was going or to see if the truck was still coming, she would be run over. But she rolled forward blindly, into the negligible gap between two convertibles parked on the other side.

  The driver of the pickup braked hard. Then he must have seen Nick coming because he revved the engine again and shot out into the main street, disappearing from sight the next second.

  “Are you okay?” He was kneeling next to Carly, helping her to sit—his relief sharp and overpowering, his attention divided between her and the street. No suspicious movement, nothing out of place that he could see.

  She lifted her left arm and winced. Her elbow was scraped raw.

  “Can you stand?” He needed to get her out of here. Now.

  “Yes.” She was trying to look tough, but her voice was shaky. “Who was that?”

  “No license plate.” He didn’t get a good look at the man through the windshield either. He stood and held out his hand, pulled her up, waited as she tested each toned limb. Everything seemed to work. “Let’s get you home.”

  He fished out his cell phone and dialed Anita. “Carly was just attacked. Everyone on high alert until further notice.”

  “Are you both okay?”

  “Fine. Can you call the others?”

  “They’re here. We left work together and I invited them—”

  “Stay together,” he cut her off, eased by the knowledge that they weren’t scattered across the city, that Gina with her cop skills could probably handle things if someone went after them. “I’ll be in touch.”

  He slipped the phone into his pocket then looped his arm around Carly. He kept a close eye on every car that passed by, scrutinized the dark doorways of the row of closed businesses as he walked with her, keeping to the shadows. Anger boiled on the back burner of his emotions, anger at himself because he hadn’t been close enough to her.

  He walked her to the apartment she rented a few blocks away, choosing a roundabout way, constantly scanning the streets as they moved.

  “Keys?” he asked when they got to her door on the second floor. And when she gave the key ring to him, he said, “Stay back.”

  He pulled his gun before he pushed open the door, went in low. He saw nothing that looked out of place, on top of the usual mess, as he moved down the short entry hall and checked out the connected kitchen and living room, then the bedroom in the back.

  He’d been in her place before, been to the apartments of all four women—twice. Once checking the places out before they got rented, then a second time after they’d moved in, while they were at work, to make sure they weren’t hiding anything they shouldn’t have, that there were no signs of any of them thinking about taking off.

  Anita’s place was the tidiest; Gina’s okay. Sam and Carly lived like a couple of teenagers. Sam probably because she’d never had an apartment of her own before, and Carly out of simple absentmindedness. If there was a computer in the room, she saw and cared about little else. She had the kind of focus he’d only seen in sharpshooters.

  “Okay. You can come in.” He shoved the gun in the back of his shorts. “Lock the door behind you.”

  She went straight to the fridge and got water, turned, trying to hide that her hands trembled as she lifted the bottle to her lips.

  He went back to the living room and poked around some more, giving her time. Adrenaline was still pumping through them both.

  “I guess I didn’t expect that,” she said after a while.

  And when he looked back at her, she was leaning against the counter. She had gathered herself pretty fast.

  She had an athletic build, long legs, toned muscles. Add to that those curves of hers and her big hazel eyes that shone with intelligence and curiosity, the blond hair that tumbled down her back. She was a stunning woman—the perfect bait.

  Then why was he feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the mission? Her performance on the training course should have set his mind at ease. She’d done well, better than expected. He had pushed her to the limit during her training. She needed to know what she was capable of. And so did he.

  To his surprise, she was capable of just about anything. She was a fast learner, never had to be told anything twice. And better than that, she anticipated. But even with her demonstrated competence, he had plenty of nagging doubts about the viability of the mission.

  “I didn’t expect it either.” But he should have. It was his job.

  What if the women couldn’t handle it? Their team was unlike any other he had worked with before. For one, they weren’t professionals, save Gina. And more or less, they’d been bribed into joining the mission. Not one of them was here because they believed in what they were doing, because they wanted to fight for what they thought was right.

  Four women against the most cunning criminal in the world. Sure, they had records, but other than that, they were babes in the woods.

  And now the black pickup. What was that about?

  “Want a drink?” she was asking.

  “No, thanks. You should sit down.” He pulled a chair from the round, glass-on-wrought-iron kitchen table for her. “Do you have any peroxide?”

  She sat and put her water bottle on the table, glanced at her arm. “I’m not that settled in yet.”

  “I’ll get you some.” He had a first-aid kit in his car.

  A pang of guilt slid through his chest. Were they really this desperate? Were the women necessary? The answer was yes. It didn’t help him to hate the whole concept even a little less. Their plan was insane. And yet, why not this? a part of his mind reasoned. Nothing else had worked.

  “Somebody tried to kill me,” she half asked, half said.

  No sense giving her false security. She was better off knowing what she was up against. “He was going for you.”

  She still looked a little shaken, but not hysterical, not crying, not out of control. She handled herself well in a real life situation, stood up to pressure. This was what he had tried to accomplish when he had roused her hours before dawn to push her further and further. He had done the same with the others when they’d finally gotten to Quantico.

  “Why?” She looked wide-eyed and bewildered. “Nobody even knows me here.”

  Somebody knew her. Enough to want her dead.

  He hadn’t been prepared for that. He kept his eyes on the four women mostly to make sure they weren’t trying to get away. Later, when they were further into the game, he was going to make sure they weren’t followed, weren’t hurt. Then once contact had been made with Tsernyakov, he would have to fall back and let them manage on their own. He didn’t like the idea, but accepted it. His close presence at that point could jeopardize the mission.

  Damn, but he had become a soldier to fight, not to sit back. He wanted to be the kind of a man who could protect himself and others, unlike his father—Taras Sergeyev, a famous Russian writer, carried off and killed by the communists for his political satires. The sword was mightier than the pen as it had turned out, a lesson Nick had learned young.

  His mother had brought him to the U.S. so he wouldn’t have to grow up fearing the same fate. They’d become political refugees, taken in and taken well care of by the sizable, affluent Russian emigrant community. They’d expected big things of him, to become a great man, a symbol of freedom for their nation like his father had been. They, including his mother, never understood why he’d become a soldier.

  It was his way of fighting for freedom, that was all. He believed in that with everything he was.

  He watched Carly, his gaze falling again to the scrape on the back of her
arm. It could have been much worse.

  “Is the apartment next door still empty?” He motioned that way.

  “I think so.”

  They’d thought about renting it for Gina, then had changed their minds and instead of putting the women close to each other, their places ended up being more spread out. That way, if they were in any danger anywhere in the city, there would be someplace safe nearby to go to.

  “Okay, so someone wants me dead.” She capped the bottle. “The way I see it, we have four choices. One, T. knows what we’re up to.”

  “I doubt that. Barely a handful of people know about this mission.”

  “Two, random violence. Maybe the guy was on drugs and having a fit.”

  “Right.” Not that he really believed that.

  “Three, I’ve made an enemy since I’ve been on the island.”

  Her analytical mind was an asset to the mission. Hopefully she had commitment to match.

  “Hard to imagine,” she went on. “I haven’t been around anyone but Gina, Anita and Sam. I’ve been working almost around the clock.”

  “Four,” he said, “someone from your past is holding a serious grudge and he knows that you are here. Who did you tell that you got out?”

  And what had she been doing on her laptop at night? The invisible tracker program he’d installed recorded activity, but she covered her tracks exceedingly well so he could gain no information beyond that. He had a feeling Carly Jones had several cards up her sleeves. He could guess what they were.

  He had fully expected that some of the women would give trouble, smell freedom and rethink the deal. That was why he was here, among other things—to keep the team together. It pissed him off that she’d be the one. She was so incredibly bright. How could she not understand how important this was? She should have been one hundred percent focused on the mission.

  Good men, his men, had died for the cause, to keep people like her safe. Was she too selfish to comprehend that? Grief that would not go away mixed with anger as he pinned her with a hard look.

  “I didn’t tell anyone where I was.” She looked away, hesitated.

  “The truth,” he said. “Intelligence is buzzing with bits and pieces of information about a major unspecified attack. Large amounts of money are moving in targeted accounts, disappearing.” Was it going to Tsernyakov? It was a fair guess. He’d been a major player in these kinds of games. What was he selling this time? “We don’t have any time to waste.”

  “Okay, a couple of friends online know I got out. I signed on to some boards I used to hang out at before. People know my sign-in.”

  People who probably told other people. She was known in the hacker community. Basically, at this stage, anybody who made it his business would know. And there was more, something she wasn’t telling him.

  He did her no favors by coddling her. She needed to know how serious the situation was, what she was playing with. He had to somehow shake her up before she ended up dead or put the others on the team in jeopardy.

  “You know what your problem is?” He let his frustration show. “You’ve never been challenged enough to really test that intelligence of yours. That’s why you had to go looking for trouble. And now that you are faced with a challenge that could try you as nothing before, you’re too busy with your own agenda to recognize it. Either that or you’re too scared to really try yourself. Which one is it?”

  Her face flushed with heat, sparks igniting in her eyes. She was getting mad, too. Fine, welcome to the club.

  “You know nothing about me,” she said in a clipped voice.

  Wouldn’t bet on that. He’d spent weeks studying her files. “Tick off anyone in particular before you went away?”

  She shook her head, her expression defiant.

  “Hard to believe.”

  “I was a hacker.” Heat flared in her voice.

  Right. Not a cracker. To hackers, the distinction was important. Hackers broke into systems to learn, they wanted to deconstruct code and thereby increase their own knowledge and then through sharing, gain knowledge from other hackers so that the next even more difficult challenge could be tackled. They claimed bragging rights, might have even added a tag to the injured party’s server or Web site, something along the lines of “You’ve been had by XY.” Which they considered a helpful service, pointing out weak security.

  True hackers did not steal data, destroy data or cause intentional harm. That was the crackers’ domain. He’d come across both types during his work and knew what was what.

  “Maybe someone thinks you saw something in their system that you shouldn’t have,” he said.

  “And what? Told the police? If I could have used something like that to bargain down my sentence, I would have done it long ago.” She spoke with just enough indignation in her voice to make him think that maybe she had seen just such information on occasion, a knowledge that she had kept to herself.

  Hackers had their own code of honor.

  He watched her as she rubbed her temple, probably trying to make sense of the attack. She thought herself different from the other women. Maybe she was. In the past, she had lived in a subculture, so to speak, in the closed society of hackers. She’d kept their rules, gotten into trouble because those rules didn’t always coincide with the laws of the land.

  He drew a slow breath, trying to be reasonable. The two of them had very different life experiences. He shouldn’t blame her for not feeling the same about the mission as he did. She hadn’t fought the fights he had, hadn’t known the victims and hadn’t felt her guts ripped out, listening to the twenty-onegun salute at the funerals at Arlington National Cemetery.

  Maybe he wasn’t being fair to her. Maybe he expected more of her than any of the others. She was new to this. He had to give her time and patience, trust her that she was smart enough to figure it all out.

  “Are you hurting anywhere?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Not enough to take a pill. It’ll pass.”

  He liked that part of her. The toughness. He could relate to that. And maybe she was a little like him in other ways, too, common ground he hadn’t considered before. The SDDU, Special Designation Defense Unit, was its own little world—much like the community of hackers she’d been part of.

  The SDDU, a top-secret military organization created after 9/11 to be able to rapidly respond to terrorist threats, did not obey regular laws. They didn’t need congressional approval to operate. Congress wasn’t aware of their existence. Most everything they did, entering the sovereign territory of another nation without permission, and yes, even kidnappings and assassinations, was illegal. To be able to fight the enemy successfully, they used the same methods as the enemy. And maybe that meant that they weren’t any better than the bad guys. But when they finished a mission, they knew that whatever they’d done had saved the lives of hundreds, and sometimes hundreds of thousands, of innocents.

  Right now, his job was to protect the women and keep them together. An important job, even if it frustrated him to death to know that when the time came he wouldn’t be in the first line of action. They would be the ones to make contact with that bastard, Tsernyakov. If they all could comprehend the importance of the mission and fully commit.

  “Where is your weapon?”

  She had a Makarov. She’d seemed to favor the gun, lighter than both the SIG and the Beretta, at target shootings at the training center, so that was what he’d assigned her upon “graduation.”

  She winced. “In my desk drawer at work.”

  “Not the best place for it.” He put his Beretta on the table in front of her.

  “Lock the door behind me. Don’t let in anyone but me. I’ll be back as fast as I can.”

  He would get his first-aid kit and, while he treated her scrapes, he would try to figure out what on earth she had done that made someone want to kill her.

  The guy in the pickup was a threat to their mission, which didn’t need further complications. He had to get the man out of t
he picture before he messed something up.

  She reached for the gun and pulled it closer, settling down, refocusing. She looked like a different person from the one he’d seen four weeks ago at FCI Brighton, the medium-security federal correctional institute outside of Baltimore, Maryland. The amalgam of attitude, movement and looks he called “the smell of prison” had finally worn off her as it had from the other women.

  He remembered her from six years before.

  She’d been naive and bewildered at her sentencing. He’d been there because she was being considered for his unit, the SDDU. She had one of the best brains for computers in the country, but she had zero experience in other, equally important areas so the notion had been rejected. Prison had added that hard, finishing layer she’d lacked at the time.

  Six years ago, if he’d put her on that training course at Quantico, she would have broken down in the first five minutes. Now, shortly after almost being run over by that pickup, she was already brushing it off, refocusing on her mission. Back then she might have, after some time, been able to stand up to the physical challenges, but not the psychological ones. She’d been just a kid when she’d done what she did. Too smart for her own good.

  She hadn’t remembered him. Probably hadn’t even seen him at the trial.

  He wasn’t surprised. She’d sat there staring ahead for the most part, stunned and quietly angry. At the very end, she had cried.

  He remembered that vividly.

  He couldn’t see her crying now, no matter what happened.

  “Sit tight,” he said as he walked out the door.

  He was not going to lose her, or any of the women, not like the last group he had trained. He would not, could not fail again.

  CARLY SIPPED HER COFFEE while she worked. It probably wasn’t the brightest thing to do; her nerves were jittery enough already.

  She touched the bandage on her arm that Nick had fixed before he left an hour ago.

  Somebody had tried to kill her.

  As in, end her life, leave her dead. Not in a “you lose points but have two more lives” computer-game kind of way.