AT ONE POINT IN HIS LIFE, Kirk Stevens had been terrified of flying. Three cases with Carla Windermere had all but cured him. Still, he felt no small relief when the BCA’s chartered King Air touched down in Minneapolis. The flight had been smooth, the pilot calm and confident, but nothing could shake the funny feeling in the back of Stevens’s mind.
They’d moved Irina Milosovici out that morning. Driven her to the little airfield north of Walker in a convoy—the sheriff’s pickup and a couple of cruisers—Stevens’s eyes searching the road for threats the whole way. Probably just paranoia, but as Dale Friesen might have attested, but anyone who shipped a bunch of women across the ocean in a box was bound to be a little bit ruthless.
Nancy was going to drive down with the kids and Triceratops later in the day. They’d packed up the Cherokee together, and he’d caught Nancy looking at him.
“Make sure she’s okay, Kirk,” Nancy had told him. “She’s still going to be scared of you and the deputies. Treat her gently, okay?”
Stevens had thought about Irina, how she’d shivered when she’d seen him, as if a light breeze could blow her over. Felt that same twinge in his heart again. “I will,” he said. “I’ll make sure they go easy on her.”
He gave his wife a kiss. Held her for a moment. Then he kissed his daughter’s forehead and ruffled his son’s hair. “Gotta go,” he told them. “I’ll see you back in town tonight, okay?”
Andrea looked up from her phone. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine.” He forced a smile. “Duty calls.”
“Daddy.”
She studied Stevens, wide-eyed and serious, and he felt a pang of sudden tenderness toward her. Andrea had been a hostage, briefly, in one of Stevens’s earlier cases, and since then had viewed her dad’s job with a kind of worldly concern. She wasn’t going to buy his reassurances, Stevens knew. Not now that she’d seen what cop life was really like.
Stevens bent down, wrapped his daughter in a hug. “We’re going to be fine,” he told her as Triceratops licked at his ear. “We have a woman in custody, and we figure she’s in a little bit of danger, so she’ll be safer off with Agent Windermere in town. That’s all.”
Andrea let him hold her. “Just be careful.”
“I will,” Stevens said. “You be careful, too. Help your mother take care of JJ, okay?”
She hugged him tighter. “Okay.”
He held her a minute or two longer. Then he kissed Nancy again, waved about fifteen good-byes, and walked the couple of blocks to where Irina and the translator waited with Sheriff Watkins, ready to get the heck out of Walker.
Irina Milosovici didn’t say much the entire flight. Stevens had the translator explain the situation, watched Irina’s brow cloud over.
“My sister,” she said.
Stevens nodded. “We’re working on it,” he told her. “We’ll get her back for you. We’re just going to need a little more help.”
Irina studied his face. Didn’t react. Turned away to stare out the airplane’s window and watch as Walker disappeared beneath them.
The flight took a couple of hours. Terminated at Crystal Airport, a small public facility northwest of Minneapolis. Stevens checked his phone, found a text message from Nancy. On the road, it read. See you tonight. xoxo.
He wrote a quick text back—Made it to Mpls. Hurry home. Love, K.—then put the phone away. Followed Irina off the plane and found Carla Windermere waiting on the tarmac.
Even now, three years after their first meeting, the sight of her made him pause. She was a beautiful woman, tall and slender, looked more like a movie star than a badass FBI agent. But she was badass, the toughest partner Stevens had ever had, and as he stepped off the plane and walked toward her, he felt his nerves suddenly calm, as if Windermere’s mere presence could deter Irina Milosovici’s kidnappers.
“Stevens.” Windermere was smiling, sly, those deep chestnut eyes fixed on his. “Even on vacation, you couldn’t resist me.”