Lazlo glanced around the airport nervously. Ilya should be here, but damned if he could spot the guy. Knowing the bastard, he’d sneak up behind Lazlo and scare the piss out of him just to show that he could. The guy was psycho.
The commuter flight from New York pulled into the gate, and in spite of himself, Lazlo’s pulse leaped. He hadn’t seen his family in more than two years. Although he’d lived away from them for the past decade, he still missed them fiercely.
Thankfully, seeing their son skate in the Olympics had been sufficient reason for the Chechnyan government to issue visas for this trip. Because of the incriminating knowledge his parents possessed about certain now-legitimate members of the Chechnyan regime, they’d never been granted exit visas before. Of course, these visas also came with three minders—Ilya Gorabchek and two of his associates.
Somehow, some way, Lazlo would figure out a way to get his parents and two sisters away from the Chechnyan thugs. For good.
Harlan Holt cowered behind the steering wheel as a man slipped into the car beside him. One of the guys from his bedroom!
“Drive.”
“Where to?” He took his foot off the brake.
“Around.”
He pulled into traffic. “You said you’d bring me proof that she’s alive.”
The man reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a sloppily folded piece of paper. Harlan snatched it, unfolding it and squinting down at the writing. He glanced up and jerked the car back into his own lane. His heart pounded as the passenger snarled something about not getting them both killed.
H.—I’m alive and they’re not hurting me. Please do whatever they ask. I love you—E.
That was it? He’d expected more. A description of the living conditions, what she was eating, maybe even a confession of being afraid. Emma might be a scientist, but she was more talkative than evidenced by this terse little note. “What have you done to her?”
“We have done nothing to your wife.” The guy added menacingly, “So far.”
If it wasn’t his beloved Emma they were talking about, Harlan would curl his lip at the guy’s melodrama. But, Sweet God in Heaven, they had his wife, and he could only imagine the horrors they were inflicting upon her. Sudden certainty overcame him. “You dictated this note to her, didn’t you?”
The man shrugged. “This is not intended to be a communication. It is merely proof that she still lives.”
“I want to talk to her. Now.”
“No.”
Hysteria rose in his chest. Wild thoughts spun in his head about driving off a mountainside and turning this monster into a bloody pulp. Except then there’d be no one left to save Emma. It was a struggle, but he squashed his violent impulses.
“Did you do as we instructed?”
“Yes,” Harlan said through gritted teeth. “The chemical you gave me was mixed into the ice.”
“All of it?”
“Yes, all of it. And I had to mess around with the polymers to get it to freeze with that stuff in the mix. What is it, anyway?” The big bags of white powder he’d been given weren’t labeled. The substance hadn’t given off any distinctive odor or shown any unique qualities that would identify it. It hadn’t bothered his skin when he’d touched it, and a tiny taste of it on his tongue hadn’t produced any numbing or painful effects. And there’d been a lot of it, several hundred pounds. Thankfully, it had been a fine, talcumlike powder that didn’t add any appreciable grit to his glass-smooth ice.
“I will ask the questions. You do as you’re told. Turn right here.”
He followed the guy’s directions for the next several minutes.
“I did what you wanted and put that stuff in the ice. Now give me back my wife.”
“All in good time, Doctor.”
“When?” A note of hysteria crept back into his voice. “You said you’d set her free when I’d gotten the ice relaid with your chemical in it.”
“Until we are finished with our work we also need you to be silent. When we are done, you may have your wife.”
“Alive and well,” Harlan added forcefully.
“Yes, yes. Alive and well. Stop the car.”
Harlan stepped on the brakes so hard the tires squealed, and both men were flung against their seat belts. His passenger swore in some foreign language.
The guy threw open the door and paused long enough to say, “Keep your cell phone on. We’ll contact you that way. In the meantime, disappear.”
He stared. “Excuse me?”
“Disappear. Don’t talk to or be seen by anyone. We’ll know if you contact the authorities. If you do, your precious Emma is history.”
Holt stared in dismay at the man’s retreating back. The Lake Placid bus station was crowded with tourists heading out for an evening of fun. A small town, Lake Placid’s streets couldn’t handle thousands of additional vehicles. So, during the Games, spectators were forced to park outside the city limits and use the many white Olympic buses with their stylized, multicolored, five-ring motifs. Only residents and Olympic officials got cars.
The man disappeared into the crowd, just another tourist among the thousands. Except that tourist was up to something terrible. Something he was willing to kill an innocent woman to protect. Harlan fingered the baggie of powder in his pocket. He pulled away from the curb and pointed his car southwest. Toward Syracuse. Or more precisely, toward his lab.
Isabella crouched in a frozen rhododendron bush, last year’s leaves pitiful protection against the abundant light. With all the glaringly white snow cover here in Syracuse, it didn’t take a lot of moonlight to turn the Holt’s backyard into a brightly lit expanse. God, it felt good to wear all her usual gear. Her Glock pistol felt solid against her hip. Who’d have ever guessed she’d grow up to miss having a gun strapped to her side? Not bad for a girl who was supposed to stop her education after high school, find a nice boy, marry into a big family, and be an obedient, silent daughter, wife and mother.
“No movement back here,” she whispered into her throat microphone.
“None here,” Vanessa reported from the front of the house.
“None over here.” Kat’s hiding spot was over by the detached garage. “One car inside the garage. Engine block’s cold.”
Isabella blinked. Kat had gone inside? She hadn’t heard sounds of entry or movement, and the wall of the garage was right at her back. But then, as a sniper, getting into and out of places quietly was part of Kat’s job.
“Let’s converge on the house,” Vanessa murmured.
Isabella took one last look around. Given the blue glow emanating from a back window of the bungalow next door, the neighbor, Mrs. Tannager, was watching television. No other neighbors appeared to be awake. Wincing as her feet crunched in the snow, Isabella sprinted across the yard and crouched under the master bedroom window. She glanced down. Stared. And looked again. Pointed a narrow flashlight beam at the ground.
“I’ve got something,” she murmured. “Back bedroom. Come have a look.”
Frozen into the mud at her feet were a jumbled set of footprints. Why would those be here in the back of a dormant flower bed in the dead of winter? She squatted down. At least three men had been here. And—holy cow! A barefoot print. It was February in upstate New York! Nobody in their right mind came out here at this time of year barefoot. She looked closer. Narrow foot, about the same length as hers.
Two shadows materialized beside her.
“What do you make of these prints? Check out that bare print. It’s female.”
While her teammates examined the tangle of prints, Isabella shined her flashlight at the side of the house. “Forced entry marks.” The paint around the sill was chipped, and the wood hadn’t had time to age.
“This bare print’s pointed away from the window,” Kat breathed. “Whoever made it was headed out the window, not in.”
“Emma Holt ran away from home?” Vanessa asked.
“After she broke into her own bedroom through the window?” Isabelle added.
The three women squatted, taking a hard look at the footprints. Carefully, they used their hands to dust away snow that obscured the trail as it led away from the house. Vanessa pulled out a camera and took pictures with low light film. They found two more partial bare prints frozen into ice beneath the fresh snowfall from last night.
“She stepped here and the heat of her bare skin melted the snow enough to make these frozen prints.” Isabella said. “Why did she leave her house barefoot?”
Kat added, “We could tell more if we got inside and had a look around.”
The Medusas were trained in rudimentary crime scene analysis. The other side of that forced window might indeed yield some interesting information. Isabella whispered, “We have no authorization to break in.”
Vanessa’s grin flashed. “Then I guess we’d better not get caught.”
Isabella grinned back. The Medusas never had been very good at playing by the rules. Quickly, she assumed a wide-legged stance under the window. Kat stepped onto her thigh and quickly jimmied the simple window lock—and undoubtedly didn’t leave scratch marks behind like the last intruder. In a matter of seconds, the sash slid up quietly. A quick push against Isabella’s leg and Kat disappeared inside. Vanessa climbed up next, and then it was Isabelle’s turn to reach up and grab her comrades’ hands. They lifted her over the sill until she could lay across it and ease herself inside.
The room was a shambles. Bed sheets and pillows were strewn over the floor.
Kat knelt by an askew area rug. “The way it’s laying, I’d say someone was dragged across it from the bed toward the window.”
“Could Harlan have fought with his wife, maybe knocked her out, and then dragged her out of here?” Vanessa asked.
Isabella shook her head in the negative. “Emma put her weight down on those footprints. She was conscious when she made them.” She knelt down to examine the bedspread where it lay on the floor. And frowned. “Why hasn’t Holt cleaned up this room? Correct me if I’m wrong, but that looks like a layer of dust.”
The others knelt down and pointed high-intensity flashlight beams at the fine dusting of beige covering the fabric. Isabella leaned back on her heels.
“So,” Vanessa said. “There was some sort of break-in, a big struggle, Emma Holt leaves barefoot via the window and Holt leaves the house and doesn’t come back. Where’s he been since this happened?”
“He skedaddled to Lake Placid,” Isabella answered grimly. “He insisted on tearing up the ice at the figure skating venue like a man possessed.”
Kat commented, “Okay, color me confused.”
That made two of them.
Isabella barely made it back to the Olympic village by 4:00 a.m. after the long drive back from Syracuse to take over the late shift watching Anya. While Misty, Aleesha and Karen were briefed on what the others had found at the Holt house, Isabella settled in beside the sleeping girl. Kat had volunteered to share the shift so they could take turns power napping. Both of them managed to get an hour of solid rest before Anya’s wake-up call at 7:00 a.m. Kat left to fetch breakfast while Isabella stayed with Anya.
The skater got up, showered, dressed, and then proceeded to spend an inordinate amount of time drying and styling her hair and putting on makeup. A suspicion blossomed in Isabella’s gut. After all, she had three little sisters. She called out casually through the partially open bathroom door, “Are you expecting to see Lazlo today?”
Anya emerged, looking beyond gorgeous. Her eyes sparkled and her skin fairly glowed with happiness. “We have practice ice together this morning.”
Isabella frowned. “If he rams into you again, I’m going to hurt him. Bad.”
Anya laughed. “He won’t. It was an accident. He’s apologized a hundred times.”
Her frown deepened. “I’m not joking, Anya. My job is to be your bodyguard. If he hits you again, I’m going to respond to it as a violent attack, and I’m required to neutralize him using whatever force is necessary.”
Anya’s smile dimmed. “You don’t have to be such a wet blanket.”
“Wet blanket’s my middle name. It’s my job to protect you.”
“Yeah, well, I never asked to have bodyguard,” the girl said resentfully.
Isabella understood. This girl had finally slipped out of her cage, and she didn’t want to land in another more constrictive one. “Sweetie, I don’t want to ruin your fun. Lord knows, you’ve earned it. I just want to keep you safe. You work with me, and I’ll do my level best to work with you. Okay?”
Anya nodded.
Isabella said lightly, “That pink lip gloss you had on yesterday was awesome. Why don’t you go get some and we’ll be on our way. You can eat in the car. We don’t want you to miss a minute of your ice time this morning, eh?”
The girl smiled widely and whirled, disappearing into the bathroom.
When they arrived at the ice complex, Isabella and Kat had to all but sit on Anya to get her to wait for a security check before she leaped out of the bulletproof car. Ah, the exuberance of first love. Isabella shook her head as she all but broke into a jog to keep up with the girl as they headed for the skating rink.
Anya threw on her skates, stretched at the speed of light, and hastily declared her knee fine. Thankfully, Anya’s coach played bad cop this time and forced the girl to spend several more minutes carefully warming up the sore joint and working out the kinks before she took to the ice.
Isabella spotted Lazlo the second they stepped into the arena. He was the surly guy dressed in black waiting off to one side. The big clock on the hockey scoreboard clicked over to the top of the hour, and a stream of colorfully dressed skaters stepped onto the ice. As a group, they commenced stroking around the rink like speed skaters, getting blood flowing to the heavy thigh muscles endemic to their sport. Anya looked disappointed that Lazlo hadn’t waited for her. Poor kid.
As the session progressed, two things became clear. One, Anya’s knee was not up to full speed and she was skating in considerable pain. Two, Lazlo was completely ignoring Anya. That was strange. The two of them had all but dripped syrup together night before last. And now he was freezing her out? What was up with that? He could just be a colossal jerk. But that felt too simple. She glanced over at the boy’s longtime coach, an American named Peter something. Surely he wouldn’t have any strong moral objection to Lazlo seeing Anya.
Several hundred spectators watched the session. Isabella overheard a coach telling a skater that the judges came to the practice sessions to learn the skaters’ programs before the competition. Apparently, there were a few hecklers here today, too. Every time Anya did a spiral—lifting one of her legs high in the air and sailing across the ice like a flying bird—shouts came out of the crowd in Arabic, calling her lewd and other unrepeatable insults. How Anya was ignoring the catcalls, Isabella didn’t know. Hopefully, her concentration was such that she honestly wasn’t hearing any of it.
About halfway through the session, Anya and the other skaters lined up along one side of the rink to take turns running through their programs. Isabella was already moving in that direction, to inject herself between the crowd and her charge, when something flew out of the stands and hit Anya in the back of the head.
As she took off running, everything went into high focus. The object that hit Anya was melon-sized and brown. It didn’t drop the girl. Anya flinched, and grabbed the back of her head. The American skater beside Anya had the presence of mind to yank her down below the level of the waist-high boards. A quick glance up at the crowd didn’t reveal anyone with an arm extended or trying to flee the scene.
Isabella reached Anya, leaping over the boards and onto the ice. “You all right?” she bit out.
“Yes. It wasn’t hard.”
Isabella already had her eye on the projectile. It looked like a paper lunch sack was split open with a brown substance visible inside. She approached it cautiously, and scowled when she recognized the contents by the stench rising from the bag. But she didn’t let down her guard. It was fully possible for some sort of device to be concealed within what smelled like dog poop.
She keyed her microphone. “Ops, Torres here. Someone just lobbed a paper sack of doggie doo-doo at Anya. Do you want me to treat the bag as a dangerous object and get the bomb squad over here, or do you want me to pick it up and move it?”
Dex snorted in disgust. “Is it ticking?”
“Negative on the ticking poop,” she replied dryly.
“Let’s get a dog over there to have a look at it.”
Isabella retorted, “What, so he can mark it?”
Dex laughed. “No, a bomb dog. Let’s not send in a full squad. That would make too much of a fuss. Mamba, are you up on freq?”
Aleesha piped up immediately, “Mamba here. Whatchya need?”
“You’re EOD, right?”
“I’m trained in explosive ordinance disposal, not doggie doo-doo.”
“Go have a look at that bag. Adder, the guys here say rink four is empty. Send the skaters and coaches over there to finish the practice session. I’ll notify the rink security guys not to let the crowd follow the skaters next door.”
Isabella felt patently stupid clearing a skating rink for a stink bomb, but there was no help for it. They had to do what they had to do. “Not to further complicate this scenario, but if we’re going to treat this as a threat, should we bring in a biohazard team?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Dex muttered. A heavy sigh in her ear. “Yeah, that’s a good thought. I’ll make the call. Just get everyone out of there before the guys in the space suits come to look at the Fido Surprise. We’ll never live it down otherwise.”
It was easy enough to clear the skaters from the ice. As soon as they were apprised as to the contents of the bag, they were more than happy to adjourn to another rink. Security guards took care of the spectators, and in a little under ten minutes, the cavernous stadium was empty except for Isabella, Aleesha and the offending bag. The rest of the Medusas were next door, keeping an eye on Anya.
Isabella watched her teammate kneel beside the bag with a handheld X-ray machine, examining the bag without touching it. To lighten Mamba’s irritation, Isabella asked gravely, “Can you tell what kind of dog it came from, Doctor?”
“Yeah,” Aleesha muttered. “A big one who ate Mexican for supper last night. This stuff reeks.” Aleesha sat back. “There’s nothing in that bag but crap.”
Isabella looked up as two men, each carrying a bulky metal box, arrived. “You fellas the biohazard guys?”
They nodded.
“Did you hear what we’ve got?”
“Yup. The dog shit of doom. Let’s have a look at it.”
Isabella watched intently as the two men went to work. It turned out the big boxes were elaborate chemical detection machines. While one guy waved what looked like a vacuumcleaner hose in the air around the bag, the second guy prepared sterile paper swabs and wiped down the outside of the bag. He placed the specimen in a little drawer in the side of his box.
The first guy announced, “No airborne biohazards were detected. Other than that stench. Sheesh. Wouldn’t want to meet the dog who did that.”
But then Isabella noticed the second guy frowning at his monitor. “What’s up?” she asked.
The guy spoke quietly. “I got a hit.”
All of them froze, staring down at the paper bag.
“Talk to me,” Isabella said.
He glanced around the huge arena and spoke in a hushed voice that only carried a few feet. “This paper bag has been in contact with a nerve agent. A really freaking nasty one. Military grade. Supersecret. Even its name is classified.”
Isabella stared. “You’ve got to be kidding. Run the test again.”
They all waited in tense silence while the guy reswabbed the bag and redid the test. Sure enough, the machine emitted a quiet beep. The two biohazard men traded grim looks.
“It’s a trace hit, but it’s definitely a hit. Whoever handled this bag has probably recently handled the chemical. Uh, we need to secure this bag. We’ve got to take it back to the lab and run some more tests.”
Isabella nodded in minor shock. A nerve agent? Whoever’d lobbed that bag at Anya was obviously part of something much bigger and much more dangerous than merely scaring a girl away from skating in the Olympics.
She keyed her microphone grimly. “Dex? We have a little problem.”