A female voice barked in Arabic for the men to stop where they were or be subdued by force. That was Vanessa. Isabella glanced up and saw five women parked defensively around her. The Medusas. Isabella allowed herself a millisecond of relief.
She spoke urgently in Anya’s ear. “I’m going to stand up, and then I’m going to help you to your feet. A bunch of women are going to crowd in close and we’re going to hustle you out of here. Just go with the flow and let us move you. Okay?”
The skater stared up at her, terrified. No way to tell if the girl understood or not. No time to calm her down, though. That mob was out for blood. The maneuver went off exactly as Isabella had described it. The mostly Middle Eastern men were taken aback by the aggressive posture of the Medusas long enough for the women to whisk Anya into a back hallway, closed off from public access.
Python slammed a door shut behind them, and sudden quiet enveloped the seven women. “What was that all about?” the Marine asked tersely.
Isabella answered, “That gray-bearded guy said he’s a Bhoukari cleric of some kind. He just declared a fatwa on Ms. Khalid.”
Karen asked, “And a fatwa is…”
Isabella finished for her. “A formal ruling on a matter of Islamic law. The guy with the beard declared a death sentence on our girl here. Every Muslim is essentially ordered to kill Anya on sight. They’ll get in trouble with Allah if they don’t.”
Karen retorted in disbelief, “And some guy is just allowed to stand up in the back of the room and declare this for the entire billion plus Muslims in the world? No trial, no discussion, just boom, she’s to be killed?”
Isabella shrugged. “If he’s a cleric of sufficient authority, yes, he can. We’ll have to find out who that man was, ASAP.”
Anya spoke from behind her. “That was Ahmed al Abhoud. He’s the high mufti for all of Bhoukar.”
Isabella swore. A mufti was a Muslim scholar who interpreted Islamic law. He would, indeed, have the authority to declare a fatwa. “Anya, do you understand what he just did?”
The girl shrugged. “I haven’t lived in Bhoukar since I was a little girl. I grew up in Australia. People there don’t listen to crazy old men like him.”
Isabella stared. “If you don’t mind my asking a personal question, how religious is your family?”
Another shrug. “They’re as religious as they have to be when they’re back in Bhoukar. But in Brisbane…” The girl paused, searching for words. “We wanted to fit in. My family lives by western rules there.”
“How familiar are you with the conservative ways in Bhoukar?”
“I’ve heard stories. I mean, I know about the five pillars of Islam and all that.”
Great. This girl was up to her neck in a religious controversy, and she hardly knew a thing about it.
Karen asked, “How seriously will people take this man and his fatwa?”
Isabella explained carefully, “What that mufti just did is very serious. While the majority of Muslims may not try to act on that order, plenty of them will.”
“You mean people Anya’s never met are going to try to kill her?” Karen exclaimed.
Isabella looked her square in the eye. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
Manfred Schmidt rolled his eyes. “Ms. Torres, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. This is the twenty-first century. These are the Olympic Games. Athletes aren’t going to run around trying to kill each other because some guy stood up and told them to.”
Isabella huffed in frustration. “The Olympics bring together people from around the world. It’s a microcosm of mankind. We’ve got three thousand athletes and their support staffs here, and several dozen of them are Muslim. Statistically, at least a few of them will feel obliged to act on that fatwa, Olympics or not.”
“Preposterous.”
“Actually, Captain Torres is right.”
Isabella whirled at the sound of the male voice behind her. Major Thorpe had just stepped into the room. Was he actually backing her up? Surely her ears deceived her.
He spoke with quiet certainty. “Anya Khalid is in danger, not only from outside the Olympic village, but potentially from within it.”
Schmidt scowled at Thorpe. “And what do you propose to do about it?”
The major scowled back. “I’m going to assign Torres and her pals to pull around-the-clock bodyguard duty on the Khalid girl.”
Schmidt drew himself up officiously. “We do not put bodyguards on athletes. It goes against everything the Olympics stand for.”
Isabella dived into the argument. “So did the Munich Massacre. But it happened anyway. If you don’t want blood on your hands, you’d better let us protect this girl.” It was a low blow, invoking Munich to the German, but this guy had to understand the threat.
Schmidt glared at the pair of them, and she became aware that Thorpe had moved up beside her, shoulder-to-shoulder with her. It took a few seconds, but Schmidt eventually gave in to the two commandos glaring him down. His belligerent posture wilted. “Okay. Fine. But keep her protection completely invisible. And I mean invisible. I don’t want the media picking up on this. Understood?”
Isabella and Thorpe nodded, and then together watched the security chairman storm out of the briefing room.
She looked over at her temporary boss. She’d never paid attention before, but he was a good-looking guy up close like this. His brown hair had red highlights, and his eyes were a dark gray-green that reminded her of moss on granite. His face ran to the lean side, but his features were classically handsome. “Thanks,” she muttered.
He nodded briefly. “What’s your handle?”
“Adder.”
“Ahh, I get it. Medusas. Snakes. You all go by snake names?”
“Yeah.”
“Let me know if you need help with your girl.”
“Right.” Like she’d ever go to him for help.
“My handle’s Dex.”
Not real original. But she was startled he’d even told it to her at all. Handles were shared among teammates and friends, not with outsiders.
Thorpe turned and strode out of the room. Well. That monosyllabic exchange was the most pleasant the guy’d been since she’d met him. Jerk. Time to go find Anya and the rest of the Medusas, who were babysitting the skater right now.
She was alarmed when nobody answered the door to Anya’s room. She pounded on it, and the next door down opened up. Liz Cartwright stuck her head into the hall. “Anya was hungry. Your friends took her down to the food court.”
Isabella nodded. “Have you got a minute?”
The coach stepped back, gesturing into her room. Isabella followed. Man, these digs were plush. The hotel chain, which was acting as a corporate sponsor that would buy this facility after the Games, had already decorated the place like a five-star hotel.
“Mrs. Cartwright—”
“Call me Liz. We Aussies don’t go for much formality.”
“Liz. My colleagues and I realize Anya needs to prepare for her competition, even with twenty-four hour security. I just want to assure you that we’ll do our best to cooperate with both of you and stay out of your way as much as possible.”
“Thanks. But I think your biggest challenge is going to be getting Anya to cooperate with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Despite growing up in Australia, she has lived a fairly sheltered life. And now she’s halfway around the world at one of the most exciting places on the planet. She may not take too kindly to you and your friends hovering over her and limiting her freedom.”
Lovely. Just what every bodyguard wanted to hear. That her protectee was a wild child who wasn’t going to help her do her job. “Thanks for the heads-up. We’ll do our best not to restrict her enjoyment of the Games.”
The Australian woman’s eyes twinkled. “Good luck.”
And on that ominous note, Isabella headed down to the twenty-four hour food court and its global array of cuisine. Food lines stretched the length of a giant ballroom and absolutely every food from all corners of the world was here. Moving through the serving area and between the tables where the athletes dined, she scanned the space and didn’t spot her teammates. Crud.
She moved on to the arcade beyond the dining room. Every conceivable video game was here—free, of course, along with tall stacks of limited edition gifts from all the major sports equipment and clothing vendors. There were two discos, and on the terrace outside, a stage was set up for private concerts by internationally renowned bands. Lights and colors flashed everywhere, giving the place a casino-like glitter.
And then, of course, there were the workout facilities. A health club to end all health clubs stretched away behind glass windows to her right. She could see why Anya was going to be difficult to corral with this wonderland available around the clock. And that didn’t even take into account the town of Lake Placid itself, and the nonstop party it would turn into when the Games started.
Over there, across the expanse of video games, she caught a glimpse of Misty Cordell, the tall, blond Medusa from California. Isabella started toward her teammate, but with her highly trained peripheral vision, she caught sight of something odd. Two men were moving across the room at the same time, probably fifty feet apart. That, in and of itself, wouldn’t have drawn her attention, but she’d seen the two men trade looks and slight nods. Were there more of these guys? The guy nearest her looked in her general direction. And nodded again! She glanced to her right and immediately spotted the third guy.
They wore nondescript white polo shirts and dark slacks. Could be staff or athletes. And they were definitely converging on the wide ring of Medusas with Anya in its center. Isabella’s internal threat-warning system exploded. Now what? She needed to warn her teammates, but Schmidt’s orders rang in her head. They were to be invisible.
It didn’t look like the men had spotted her. She increased her speed enough to get in front of them. She wasn’t worried about her teammates’ ability to defend the skater, but that damned invisibility order would be blown to hell if they had to fight off a trio of assailants in a public place. If only the Medusas were wearing their usual throat microphones and earpieces! Schmidt had vetoed use of their full military equipment in the name of their blending in and not appearing threatening to the public. Whatever.
As she closed in on the Medusas, she willed one of them to spot her. Thankfully, Misty did. Isabella flashed her a hand signal for hostiles incoming. Her teammate turned and signaled to the others. Isabella ducked behind a video game, bending down like she’d dropped something. Time to stalk the stalkers.
As the Medusas collected Anya and moved swiftly toward Isabella, the three men scattered. Damn! She didn’t want to lose the men! Aleesha Gautier, the team’s doctor from Jamaica, peeled off to follow one guy, while Misty followed another one. Vanessa signaled Isabella to take the guy nearest to her, and Isabella signaled back an affirmative—not a tricky hand signal; it was an old-fashioned thumbs-up. They so needed their radios!
Her guy darted down a side hallway, and used a magnetic strip card to unlock and dive through a service entrance. Nice try, but she had one of those, too. She dug a master key card out of her pocket and let herself in after the guy. And looked around in dismay. A stainless steel jungle of counters, cooking equipment and chefs stretched in front of her. Dozens of men and women moved around the space, and she hadn’t gotten a good enough look at her target to pick him out of this sea of faces. Dang it!
She spied a male figure who might be her guy moving quickly down one of the rows. She took off after him and prayed he was the right one. He ducked out another door on the far side of the room. Isabella followed quickly.
The door led outside. A gust of icy wind showered her with powdered snow. Her arms prickled with goose bumps as she looked both ways. A male silhouette was just ducking around a corner up ahead. She broke into a run, slipping and sliding on the slick layer of snow dusting the sidewalk. The sun shone brilliantly, glaring off the blanket of white until it nearly blinded her. She turned into the alley’s relative darkness, and pinpricks of light danced in her eyes.
A dark form barreled at her. Aww, crap. Not the old bowl-over-the-tail stunt. She braced a shoulder to take the blow, but the guy dodged around her at the last second. She leaped out of the alley to give chase when a much bigger, faster form slammed into her. This time, she landed square on her behind, with a guy wearing a dark blue Olympic security jacket sprawled across her lap. She’d seen him before, on the military side of the house, but had never met him.
He swore copiously as he pulled out a radio. “Track the bastard on camera!” Scowling, he climbed to his feet and helped Isabella up. “You all right?” he growled.
“Yeah. I bump heads with rhinoceroses every day.”
The guy grinned briefly. “Most women would cry at a crash like that.”
He didn’t seem to be holding a grudge that they both lost their man. That was decent of him. She shrugged. “I’m not most women. Let’s get back to the ops center and see where that guy goes. And don’t offer me your coat,” she snapped as the guy started to unzip his jacket.
“Sorry. My mama raised me to be a gentleman. Name’s Beau Breckenridge.”
That rang a bell. “Is your handle Hobo?” she asked. “Delta Four?”
He flashed her a killer smile. “Yup. That’s me.”
Delta Four was Dex Thorpe’s team. Curious, she asked, “What kind of team leader is Major Thorpe?”
Beau didn’t hesitate. “He’s the best I’ve ever seen.”
Wow. The jerk earned the unswerving loyalty of his men, did he? Hard to picture. She trudged back up the slippery hill to the hotel entrance and stepped inside gratefully. She was an ice cube. Her teeth chattered as she made her way to the ops center.
“Whatchya got?” Beau called as Thorpe motioned the two of them over to a cluster of men around a bank of cameras.
“Lost him. He ducked out of the village before we could close the gates.”
How had that happened? She glared at the major. “How hard is it to call the guard shacks and tell them to stop traffic?”
“Schmidt has to give the order.”
“That’s bull—”
Thorpe cut her off. “I’m with you, Torres. With this incident to back me up, I’ll argue against the policy again at the IOC staff meeting in the morning.”
“While you’re at it, get us our radios, will you? It’s damned hard to coordinate anything with my teammates if I can’t talk to them.”
Dex raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Didn’t they teach you hand signals in Special Forces school?”
She replied sweetly, “Gee, they only taught us this one.” She flipped him her middle finger.
While the guys around her developed a sudden case of the coughs, she asked, “Did Sidewinder and Mamba catch their runners?”
“Nope. Their guys ducked into a men’s locker room, and by the time your friends worked up the nerve to go in, the men had slipped out another way.”
She gritted her teeth. No way had it been a lack of nerve that caused her teammates not to give chase. There must’ve been a bunch of athletes in the locker room who would’ve been freaked out if the Medusas had barged in.
Damn! Round One to the bad guys. Except it wasn’t a total loss. At least the Medusas knew three of them had credentials to get into the Olympic village, probably as employees. That list was finite, and the people in this room had access to it. Knowing Thorpe, they’d examine it under a microscope until they found the runners.
Thorpe’s jaw flexed. “We got a couple facial shots of them. The computer boys are enhancing the images now. We’ll ID these guys before too long. I’ll call you when we get something.”
Hey, that was an improvement! Thorpe had spoken to her like a human being. Would wonders never cease. With a terse nod in his direction, she turned and headed for Anya’s room.
“That old man is going to ruin everything!” Abdul, griped, exasperated. If only he could afford to tell his father about the plan. But he dared not. Ahmed might be inexorably conservative, but he also was totally opposed to…direct action. In a word, to terrorism. “The fatwa has drawn the attention of the security forces right to the figure skating event. It didn’t help that you three hotheads took it upon yourselves to tail the Khalid girl. In the future, you will not take such initiatives by yourselves. Understood?”
The three cousins nodded glumly.
He sighed. “We must be careful and execute the plan properly. Our countrymen are depending on us. We must send the message strongly to the Americans to keep their hands off Bhoukar. No more foolish stunts out of you. Do only what I tell you to do.”
More extreme elements within the Red Jihad would have cut these overeager boys’ heads off and fed their entrails to dogs to teach the other members of the cell to follow orders. But these three were his nephews. He wasn’t going to kill family members for being too zealous in their patriotism. He wasn’t a fanatic, after all. He was a reasonable man.
One of his nephews shifted his weight from foot to foot and asked nervously, “Have we ruined the plan? Should we scrap it?”
The mere thought made him ill. “After all this planning? After all our hard work and sacrifices? When will there be another chance like these Olympics to strike such a blow against the United States? Oh, no. We proceed as scheduled. Tonight, we grab the woman.”
Anya was not a happy camper. Her coach had declared a mandatory nap to help the skater adjust to the time zone change. Isabella watched the girl pace her room, as restless as a caged tiger. In big sister fashion, she said soothingly, “After dinner you can go out and play to your heart’s content.”
Anya made a face. “After dinner, I’ve got a flag bearer rehearsal for the opening ceremonies. Since I’m the only athlete from Bhoukar, I have to carry my country’s flag.”
Great. Like that wouldn’t be a total security nightmare! A giant stadium, thousands of people milling around on the infield, and, if she didn’t miss her guess, spectator seating open to the public. “Why don’t you watch a little TV? I hear it has on-demand programming in twenty languages.”
Isabella left Anya fooling with her television remote control. Karen was posted outside the door while Isabella headed for the ops center to set up what security measures she could for tonight’s rehearsal.
Thorpe was there when she walked into the bustling control room. He glanced up from a computer terminal and waved her over. “Your girl’s caused quite a stir. Look at this.”
She leaned over his shoulder gingerly and scanned the deluge of press reaction to Al Abhoud’s fatwa from around the world.
“The media is having a field day with that tackle you laid on Anya. You made all the major news networks.”
She flinched. “So much for being invisible.”
Thorpe shrugged. “Schmidt was smoking dope if he thought you were going to be able to remain invisible for long. Just stay out of the limelight as much as you can. But, first and foremost, do the job. Keep the kid alive.”
Isabella nodded. “We’ll do our best.”
“I got you your radios. I’m assigning you a discrete channel. That way the guys here can contact you directly. Cell phone capacity for the city isn’t going to be sufficient once the Games get rolling and Lake Placid fills up.” A muscle ticked in his jaw briefly. “But I lost the fight to get more cell towers installed.”
“Careful, sir,” she replied lightly, “you’re almost starting to sound human.”
One corner of his mouth turned up, but it hardly qualified as a smile. “For the duration of the Olympics, we’ve been asked to suspend use of military titles. We wouldn’t want to appear like a police state, after all.”
She heard the echo of Schmidt’s words and grinned. “Perish the thought.”
“Just use my handle if you need me. I’ll keep your frequency on my list of critical channels.”
“How many do you have piped into your ear?” she asked.
“Ten so far.”
Yikes. Talk about multitasking. She didn’t like to listen to more than four channels at once. Aloud, she said, “We shouldn’t be hard to pick out. We’ll be the only girls talking to you.”
“Right,” he growled, abruptly surly.
Didn’t like the reminder that he had to work with women, huh? Tough. Abruptly feeling surly herself, she turned to leave. Kat and Vanessa were meeting her at the Olympic stadium in fifteen minutes.
After a dismayed survey of the giant Torch Stadium, they concluded there wasn’t a damned thing they could do to protect Anya out here. The security people screening the crowd would be the only real line of defense.
The good news was they knew that anyone who wanted to kill the girl would do so as a political and religious statement. They’d make the attempt while Anya was on the center of the world stage. And tonight’s rehearsal wasn’t televised. The assassin would wait until the actual opening ceremonies or some other moment with similar media coverage.
Nonetheless, Isabella insisted Anya wear a bulletproof vest under her parka for the walk-through of the parade of nations. It was better than nothing, but not much. Any sniper worth his salt would see the suspicious bulk of her coat, shift his aim to her head and kill her anyway.
The rehearsal went off without a hitch and Anya was safely tucked into bed before 10:00 p.m. She had ice time the next morning at nine, and despite her desire to sample all the fun at her fingertips, she was still a disciplined athlete with the biggest competition of her life only days away. Thank God.
During the first night shift, sitting in the dark watching Anya sleep peacefully, Isabella eyed the girl. Was Anya truly unaware of the turmoil brewing around her, or just totally disinterested in it? She seemed like a bright kid.
Isabella sighed. Sometimes she forgot how naive she’d been at nineteen. Even though she was only half-Iranian, it had been her mother’s copious relatives who dropped in for coffee and generally meddled in each other’s lives. It had been her Iranian aunts who tsked at her mother’s decision to raise the girls as Americans, her Iranian grandfather who bellowed over Isabella and her sisters not being raised as Muslims.
Thank goodness her father had stood his ground on that one. He’d insisted his children be free to choose their own faiths. He’d probably expected them to choose between Catholicism and Islam, but for her part, she’d chosen neither. She’d lived trapped between the two worlds with neither church to act as a buffer against the other.
Anya was in the same boat. She lived in a Western society, but she had been raised, at least partially, according to the traditional Bhoukari culture. Her parents were fairly liberal, after all they’d let their daughter figure skate in the first place. But her extended family was from ultraconservative Bhoukar. Did Anya know what she was doing by being here? Surely, it had been explained to her. Maybe when she found herself alone in the middle of this mess, she would learn to handle the conflict between the two halves of her identity.
Just as Isabella had when she’d left home and joined the Air Force. She’d applied for and received an ROTC scholarship to finance her education at an expensive private college. The oldest of four girls, she’d felt guilty about hogging the family budget for higher education. However, she shouldn’t have worried. Only her youngest sister attended college, and she’d dropped out as soon as she married the law student who would support her in fine style for the rest of her life.
Leaving home had forced Isabella to choose her identity. And she’d chosen to be neither Mexican nor Iranian, but to be American.
She was the black sheep of the family because of it. Her relatives simply couldn’t understand what she gained by being in the military. Her father’s family bought into the traditional Mexican-Catholic role for women—staying at home and having kids ad nauseum. Her mother’s Iranian relatives didn’t have a problem with her having a profession like photo intelligence analyst, but they could not wrap their brains around her being a military officer able to give men orders.
She hadn’t told any of them about her assignment to the Medusas. How could she explain her need to escape their restrictive expectations, to be different from her veiled aunts and cousins, her compulsion to push herself to the very limit? She would’ve suffocated in the safe, cloying confines of the traditional lifestyles her family offered. If other women chose that for themselves, fine. But it would’ve killed her.
She’d been driven to succeed at her chosen career, to endure pain and misery beyond comprehension in the first days of the Medusas’ training when Jack Scatalone had been determined to break them. And truth be told, he’d come damned close to breaking her. The only reason he hadn’t was because failure, for her, was unthinkable. She would never go back to the world of her youth.
She wasn’t a gifted athlete. She’d gone to an all girls’ school where anemic, intramural volleyball was as physical as anyone got. Regular old basic training in the Air Force had been a challenge. But she’d worked on her physical fitness. And when Vanessa Blake had offered Isabella a chance to join the first all-female Special Forces team, she’d worked her butt off to get fit, even before their training began.
She’d made it through on sheer guts and the generosity of her stronger, fitter teammates who’d helped her. A lot. She was still working hard to improve her strength and stamina, but her sense of inferiority was hard to shake. Maybe tomorrow when she got off shift she’d head over to that incredible gym and work out.
Sometimes there was no use in overthinking a problem. Sometimes you just had to go with your gut. She might not have any business being a Medusa, but she belonged in this room at this moment, guarding this girl who was so much like her.
Harlan Holt lay in bed, tossing and turning. His wife, Emma, had crashed hours ago. With the Winter Olympics and the first-ever international competition on the super ice he’d developed only days away, he wasn’t so lucky.
He vegged out in front of the murmur of late night talk shows and maybe that was why he didn’t hear the four black shapes until they burst through the window. They ran at the bed so fast he barely had time to be shocked, let alone react, before the men were on him.
He yelled, but too late. Two of the men jumped on Emma, slapping a cloth bag over her head as the other two shoved pistols in his face. This couldn’t be happening to them! They lived in a modest little bungalow on a sleepy street in a quiet college town. They didn’t own anything worth stealing!
Emma kicked and screamed, but the two men who held her by the arms were strong. She couldn’t break free. He tried to lunge for her, but hands grabbed him roughly around the neck, choking him viciously. He was thrown on the mattress where he bounced to a stop. He curled up in a ball and covered his head as one of his assailants raised a pistol high in the air as if to smash it down on his skull. The second masked man stopped the arm holding the gun.
This was a nightmare. The sleeping pill he’d swallowed dry a little while ago was making him hallucinate. Emma struggled again and one of the men slugged her through the bag. That was a very real, if muffled, scream. Impotent fury surged in his veins—except he didn’t have the faintest idea what to do! He was a scholar. A scientist. He’d never hit anything in his entire life, not even a baseball.
“Leave her alone!” he shouted.
A gloved hand slapped him hard across the face, bloodying the inside of his cheek against his teeth. Pain exploded inside his mouth, and with it, fear. Desperate, he surged toward Emma as her attackers dragged her off the bed. She landed on the floor with a thump and cried out. Something cold and hard jabbed his right temple, bringing him up short. Oh, God. The muzzle of a shotgun. He froze. He couldn’t help her if he was dead.
A heavily accented voice snarled, “Dr. Holt. Your wife is going to come with us. You will do exactly as we say. You will not contact any law enforcement official or tell anyone what has happened, or your wife will die. Do you understand?”
They were kidnapping his Emma? What for? Her biology research in recombinant DNA wasn’t of any great significance to anyone outside the medical community and her department at Syracuse University. “No! Take me. Leave her alone, for God’s sake, I’m begging you!”
Whimpering filled his ears. And then he realized it was him making those awful keening noises. He tried to stop. Failed. Hysteria crept over him. His legs shook uncontrollably, and he felt a nearly overwhelming urge to wet himself.
“Listen closely, Dr. Holt. If you wish your wife to live, this is what we require you to do….”
The next morning dawned clear and bright, frigid cold. Last night’s snow crunched underfoot and Isabella’s breath hung in the air as thick as a cloud. The giant Olympic ice complex loomed before her, seven rinks contained in three connected buildings. The original brick ice rink, now called the Lussi Rink, was built for the 1932 Olympics. The 1980 Olympics saw the construction of more rinks, bringing the total to five. Last year, two more rinks had been finished, one of them the giant Hamilton arena where the figure skating competitions would be held in this third Lake Placid Olympiad. It seated close to thirty thousand spectators.
Isabella, Anya and Liz had to clear five separate security checkpoints before they finally gained entrance to the facility. Isabella was relieved to see that the media’s and officials’ area was completely separated from the athletes’ and coaches’ area. To get from one to the other, a person had to leave the rink and go outside around the massive building to a different entrance and another gauntlet of checkpoints.
Isabella watched as Anya put on her skates. Large bunions deformed the ball of each of the young woman’s feet. Her ankles were bony, and calluses covered the tops of her toes. “Man, and I thought ballet dancers were hard on their feet.”
Anya looked up with a shrug. “My feet aren’t too bad. Lots of skaters wreck theirs completely. I haven’t had to have any surgeries yet.”
Isabella watched as the skater pulled out gel pads and stuck them on various parts of her feet, then laced up the rigid skates as tightly as she could. “Doesn’t that cut off your circulation?”
Anya laughed. “You need the ankle support if you’re going to land triples on hard ice while skating at twenty miles per hour.”
Put that way, Isabella could see the need for skaters to torture their feet.
Anya said eagerly, “I can’t wait to try out the new ice. I hear it’s amazing.”
“New ice?” Isabella echoed. “Isn’t ice, well, ice?”
“Not anymore. Some Yankee scientist has invented what everyone’s calling super ice. He’s added some sort of chemical to it that makes it glide smoother and gives it more spring than regular ice.”
“What kind of chemical?”
Anya grinned. “I haven’t the slightest. I flunked chemistry.”
Isabella waxed serious. “While you’re skating this morning, if you hear me shout for you to get down, I want to you dive for the ice and then make your way over to the nearest wall. Wait there for me to come get you.”
“They’re called boards.”
“Excuse me?” Isabella asked.
“The walls around the ice. They’re called boards.”
“Okay. Get over to the boards. If I yell for you to move out, I want you to skate as fast as you can to the exit. But don’t skate in a straight line. Zigzag.”
“Zigzag. Got it. And why are you planning to do all this yelling at me?”
“In case someone tries to kill you. I’d come out onto the ice to protect you, but the ISU—International Skating Union—officials won’t let me.”
“Just as well,” Anya replied. “You’d hurt yourself. Street shoes and ice don’t mix. If someone in skates ran over your foot, they’d cut off your toes unless you have steel-lined shoes.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. They don’t call these blades for nothing. Besides, you’d end up sitting on your bum as soon as you stepped onto the ice. It’s slippery, in case you didn’t know.”
Isabella grinned. “Yeah, I’d heard that. And you’re right. I would end up on my rear end. Athletics have never been my strong suit.”
Anya looked up in surprise from putting plastic skate guards over her knife-sharp blades. “Then how did you get into your line of work?”
“I’m just too stubborn to quit.”
“You can always train up into better shape. I’ll help you if you like.”
“You?” Isabella blurted in surprise. “You think you’re in better shape than I am?”
Anya shrugged. “People think all it takes to skate is being graceful and having good balance. But skaters are serious athletes. We do aerobic conditioning, weight training, flexibility training, jump classes, dance classes, stroking classes—”
Liz Cartwright called from over by the ice, “Your session’s starting, Anya.”
Isabella accompanied the girl out of the relative warmth of the dressing area to the frigid rink side. “Dang, it’s like a meat locker in here.”
“Probably around eight degrees centigrade,” Anya replied. “All ice rinks stay about this temperature. It feels great on a summer day in Brisbane.”
While Isabella shivered by the boards, Anya warmed up, skimming over the ice effortlessly. Forward and backward crossovers, footwork, spins, easy jumps followed by progressively harder jumps. Idly, Isabella converted the Celsius to Fahrenheit in her head. Forty-six degrees. Brrr. It wasn’t bad for a couple minutes, but the cold was starting to soak into her bones. No wonder all the coaches wore fur coats or parkas up to their ears.
Liz called out the occasional instruction in a shorthand slang. Stuff about edges, leans and centering, it all flowed past Isabella. But when a disturbance broke out not far from where she stood, Isabella went on full alert.
Two people were arguing. Stridently. A tall, dark-haired man who looked too sallow and thin to be an athlete was yelling at an attractive, blue-eyed blond woman who looked about thirty. Isabella recognized the woman’s face from the hasty briefings she’d received on the major players in the skating community. Lily Gustavson of Sweden was a senior ISU official. Isabella hadn’t seen the man before.
She leaned over to Liz and murmured, “Who’s the guy?”
“Harlan Holt. The Ice Doctor.”
“The what?”
Liz grinned. “The Ice Doctor. He’s the guy who invented super ice. This is the first international competition ever to use it. The skaters are wild about it.”
“Any idea what he’s so upset about?”
“I couldn’t say.” The Australian turned back to her student and called, “Anya, you’re dropping your shoulder as you go into that axel. Try it again.”
Isabella headed toward the argument, which, if anything, was growing in intensity.
Holt was saying, “…I’m telling you it’s necessary.”
Gustavson retorted, “How can that be? The skaters are using it now and they love it. We can’t possibly need to replace the ice. It’s three days until the first round of qualifying skating!”
“The polymers aren’t evenly mixed. Some patches are more slippery than others. It’s a safety issue. Somebody’s going to get hurt if I don’t redo the ice!”
Why did he sound so panicked? Like Anya said, wasn’t all ice slippery? These were figure skaters, for goodness’ sake. They could deal with slippery ice, couldn’t they? Faulty logic aside, there was something alarming in the guy’s tone of voice. A note of manic determination. He was dead set on redoing this ice right now. Why? Isabella glanced out at the rink in question. A dozen skaters were flying across the white surface, and not one of them seemed to be having trouble with these supposed patches. Something vibrated way wrong in her gut about this. She eased to the side to better see the guy’s face.
The ISU official glared. “You’ve had six months to get this ice right. This isn’t going to bode well for your ice being used in other international competitions.”
The man looked pained at that, but he stood his ground. “It’s got to be done. If I get on it right away, you’ll have skateable ice by tomorrow evening.”
The official shook her head sharply. “I’ve got practice sessions scheduled all day today. I can’t possibly move them on such short notice.”
“There are seven rinks. There must be room on one of them for the skaters to practice. You’ve got to let me do this.”
The guy almost sounded as if he were begging. Isabella frowned. Definitely something wrong here. She moved away from the pair as the ISU official pulled out her cell phone and started arguing with whoever was on the other end about rescheduling the afternoon practice sessions. Isabella put her hand in her pocket and keyed the microphone clipped unobtrusively to the neck of her sweater.
“Ops, this is Torres. How do you copy?”
“Loud and clear. Go ahead.”
Crud. Dex. He was going to think she was nuts, but here went. “I need a background check run on a guy named Harlan Holt. He’s a credentialed official. In charge of the ice at the figure skating venue.”
“The Ice Doctor?” Dex asked in surprise. “What’s up?”
“I don’t know. Call it a gut feeling. Something’s funny about the guy. He’s insisting on replacing the venue ice. Says it’s not safe.”
“And this makes you suspicious why?”
She closed her eyes briefly. “I couldn’t tell you. It just does.”
Dex had keyed the microphone on the other end to say something when a loud cry came from the ice. Isabella looked up sharply, her senses screaming to full alert. She turned just in time to see a large black shape hurtle into Anya. It crashed into her, sending her flying through the air to land with a sickening thud in a heap that skidded across the ice.
Isabella shouted into her microphone, “Subject down!”