Gray picked up the pen on the table and tapped it against the side of his glass. Maybe Cedar just had a feeling about Olaf and no proof at all. Feelings didn’t do them much good.
The pen rattled and Gray wrinkled his brow. He shook the pen again. His pulse ticked up a notch. He pulled the cap from the pen and dragged the point across a napkin, ripping it to shreds.
The blood roared in his ears. He unscrewed the top of the pen and tipped out a black device onto the table. He slammed his fist against the GPS and jumped up.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cedar spin around on the barstool, but Gray didn’t have time to explain. He charged toward the restrooms, his heart pounding out of his chest.
Jerrica hadn’t been in there long, and he’d seen just one middle-aged woman head into the hallway after her.
Gray slammed his shoulder against the ladies’ room door, but it didn’t budge. He banged on the door with his fist. “Open up. Jerrica?”
Cedar drew up behind him and panted. “What’s wrong?”
“Someone tracked us here. A pen in Jerrica’s purse had a GPS device in it.”
Cedar cursed. “I knew it. I knew they’d find a way. I knew Olaf would find a way.”
Gray kicked the door with his boot. “Open it now.”
A woman’s voice answered. “Move out of the way, or she’s dead.”
“Jerrica?” Gray croaked her name from a throat parched with fear. “I want to hear her speak.”
“She can’t speak.”
Gray dug his fingers into his scalp. “Why not? What did you do to her?”
Cedar touched Gray’s shoulder and pointed to a wide-eyed woman at the end of the hallway. He called to her. “Sorry, ma’am. Just a little domestic altercation. My sister got tipsy and locked herself in the bathroom.”
“Sh-should I get the manager?”
“Not yet. We’ll be out of your way soon.”
“Move away from the door.” The woman hissed from the bathroom. “Or I swear, I’ll end it here.”
Cedar pulled at Gray’s arm. “Give her space so we can see Jerrica—see that she’s okay.”
Against every instinct in his body, Gray stepped away from the door, his muscles aching from tension.
A click resounded from inside the ladies’ room and the door eased open. The woman he’d seen earlier wedged her body against the door and pulled Jerrica’s limp form in front of her, placing a gun against her temple. “She’s just drugged. We won’t hurt her. We just need information. That’s what she does, anyway, exposes data. We want her to expose it to us.”
Cedar growled behind Gray. “Why has Olaf turned on us?”
“Everyone has a price.” The woman’s lips tightened. “Now move and nobody gets hurt.”
Gray took another step back, his fingers curling around a fake inhaler he’d packed earlier.
Jerrica’s abductor inched into the hallway, one hand gripping the gun at Jerrica’s head, the other arm wrapped around Jerrica’s waist to keep her upright.
Jerrica’s lashes fluttered, and she formed an O with her lips as if trying to speak. Thank God she was alive—and Gray had to keep her that way.
The woman began to half-drag, half-carry Jerrica in the other direction, to what must be a back exit.
“Wait!” Gray pulled the inhaler from his pocket. “Jerrica has asthma. She’s going to need her inhaler if you want her to live through this. That’s what Olaf wants, isn’t it? He wants Jerrica to live and if she doesn’t, he might stop cooperating with you.”
The woman’s eyes darted from Cedar, well behind Gray, back to Gray’s face. She adjusted Jerrica’s body so that it leaned against her own, and then stretched out her left hand. “Put it in my palm. If you grab me or try anything, she’s dead.”
Gray doubted this woman had authority to shoot to kill, but his hand trembled slightly as he extended his hand holding the fake inhaler. As he leaned in closer, he signaled Cedar behind him to get ready.
The woman ducked her head, and Gray tipped up the inhaler and depressed the button on the bottom of the container, releasing tear gas into the woman’s face.
He kept his gaze pinned to the gun in her hand and as she gasped and stumbled back, the gun slipped down from Jerrica’s head.
Holding his breath, Gray swung his arm, knocking the gun up to the ceiling.
Cedar dropped to the floor and scrambled toward the woman’s legs, throwing himself at her knees.
Her body buckled and she squeezed off a shot.
Panic coursed through Gray’s body as Jerrica slumped, but when plaster rained down on them, he grabbed her ragdoll-like form and tossed her over one shoulder.
“We can get out the back. You okay?”
His eyes watering, Cedar choked out some response but he kept low and crawled past the flailing woman, now hugging the wall and gasping for breath.
Gray turned left and ran toward the exit sign down the dark hallway, Jerrica’s body bouncing on his shoulder.
Cedar reached the door before he did and shoved it open. Cedar staggered into the alley, gulping breaths of air.
A car idling in the darkness shot forward and squealed from the alley.
“There goes the getaway car.” Gray pointed to a dumpster. “Behind here for a minute.”
They took refuge behind a dumpster, and Gray thumped a coughing Cedar on the back. “Can you breathe?”
“Barely. How’s Jerrica?”
“Conscious but out of it. I don’t think the gas affected her that much because she wasn’t taking deep breaths to begin with.” He thumbed up one of her eyelids. “I can see it affected her eyes, though. We need to get out of here before the police show up. At least the lady had a silencer on her gun, so the shot isn’t going to cause immediate panic but someone will discover her soon. I don’t know what management is going to make of that scene in the hallway, but I don’t want to try to explain it.”
“That bitch was no lady.” Cedar wiped his own eyes with the hem of his T-shirt. “You can’t very well stagger through the Lower East Side with a woman over your shoulder without drawing attention to yourself.”
“She can walk. Like you said. She’s tipsy. Had a little too much to drink.” He pointed to the end of the alley. “Go hail a taxi like only a New Yorker can. I’ll get Jerrica in a position to walk her out to the street and the cab.”
Cedar took off in a sprint. The kid had guts.
Gray slid Jerrica off his body and patted her face. “Jerrica, can you hear me? Can you walk? You’re safe now. I’ve got you.”
She moaned and shook her head.
“I know.” He steadied her on her feet. Hanging his arm around her shoulders, he propped her up against his side. “Just move your feet, hacker girl. You got this.”
He walked and she stumbled beside him, but she was upright.
When he got to the street, his estimation of Cedar rose again. A taxi waited at the curb, its back door flung open.
Gray poured Jerrica onto the bench seat and gave the driver the name of his hotel while sliding in after her.
Cedar stepped back from the curb. “I can see she’s gonna be okay with you.”
“Oh, no you don’t.” Gray made a grab for Cedar’s arm, but the hacker slipped from his grasp. “You’re going to tell us everything you know.”
“I don’t know anything but what I already told you.” Cedar put his finger to his lips. “Find out who brought Olaf in from the cold and you’ll have your culprit. I do better on my own.”
Cedar plucked the baseball cap from his head, shook out his long hair and flipped up the hood of his sweatshirt, melting into the crowd.
The driver barked, “Are you done, man?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Gray slammed the door. “Get going.”
He kept his eye on the back window, but for all he knew Jerrica might have another GPS planted on her person and whoever Olaf was working with could be tracking them right to his hotel.
He’d have to figure that out later. He needed to get some water into Jerrica, keep her awake. But if she’d been poisoned with the same substance that had been running through Russell’s veins, she’d need more than water to come around.
The driver pulled up in front of the hotel and met Gray’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “She okay? This ain’t one of those roofie things, is it?”
“My girlfriend can’t hold her booze. She’ll be okay.” Gray almost tipped the guy extra, but figured that might look too much like hush money. He added twenty percent to the fare and left it at that.
As he stood Jerrica up on the sidewalk, he whispered in her ear. “C’mon, love. You can do this. Let’s get to my room. It’s not far.”
Her chin dropped to her chest and his heart sank, but then she lifted her head and he could’ve sworn her spine straightened.
As they walked into the hotel, her head lolled against his shoulder but she kept her body erect and stumbled only once or twice. When they got into the elevator, she slumped against him as her knees buckled.
“You’re doing fine. We’re almost there.”
The door opened on his floor, and he poked his head into the hallway, looking both ways. The empty hallway beckoned.
When they stepped out of the elevator, Gray swept Jerrica up in his arms and cradled her against his chest as he strode toward his room.
Once inside, he sat her on the edge of the bed. “Don’t lie down, Jerrica. Not yet. Don’t go to sleep.”
She blinked her red eyes at him, and he dove for the credenza where two five-dollar bottles of water waited. He cracked open one bottle and sat beside her on the bed.
“Drink this, all of it, even if you don’t want to, even if it makes you feel sick. It won’t help if you throw up because I doubt she gave you something to eat or drink, so the poison’s not in your stomach. I’m thinking maybe the water can dilute its effectiveness in your blood stream, though.”
Whether she understood anything he’d just said, she parted her lips, anyway, and he tipped the bottle into her mouth. Some of the liquid ran out the side of her mouth and down the slender column of her throat, but her Adam’s apple bobbed as she gulped down what she could.
When she finished the first bottle, he put her to work on the second. She gulped even more of this one down, gagging a few times.
He smoothed her hair back from her damp brow. “How are you? Can you talk?”
She nodded. “Hard to move.”
“Maybe she gave you a super-accelerated muscle relaxer, something to make you compliant and keep you quiet, but not to knock you out.” He squeezed her knee. “I knew she wasn’t going to shoot you. We surprised her. You weren’t in there that long, and she probably figured she had time to drag you out the back door to the car waiting in the alley.”
“How?” She dug her fist into one eye where the gas had irritated her.
He jogged into the bathroom and soaked a washcloth with cool water. He squeezed it out, folded it into a square and returned to Jerrica.
“I’m going to hold this against your eye. Is it stinging?”
“Uh-huh. How?”
“It was the pen, Jerrica.”
She tilted her head to the side, and he pulled the pieces of the pen, minus the GPS, from his shirt pocket and bobbled them in his palm. “The pen you pulled out first, the one that didn’t work, had a GPS device in it. You know who put it there, right? They’ve never been able to track our whereabouts before—not until we ran into Olaf at Dreadworm. He slipped it into your purse when he gave you that hug. I should’ve never let him near you.”
A tear rolled down her cheek from her other eye, but he couldn’t tell if it was from the news of Olaf’s betrayal or the tear gas he’d sprayed at her abductor.
She dashed away the tear with the back of her hand. “Must’ve been. Cedar?”
“He’s okay. Took off after we got you into the taxi.”
She smoothed her hand across the bedspread. “Your hotel?”
“Yeah. Ironic, isn’t it? Just when I moved my clothes to your place, I’m back here.” He made a half-turn to the credenza. “Coffee? Do you think coffee would help?”
“I do.” She switched the washcloth to the other eye.
He measured out the coffee for a single cup and sat beside Jerrica on the bed while it brewed. “Can you tell me what happened in there? Did she say anything to you?”
“Nothing. Said more in the hallway.” She cleared her throat. “Came in after me. Washed her hands. Passed behind me. Jabbed me with a needle.”
“Unbelievable. Then she planned to walk you out of there and into the waiting car.”
“It’s Olaf.”
The words from Cedar’s chalk message took on a whole new meaning now.
“She told us as much in the hallway. Said he didn’t want to hurt you, just wants you to stop doing what you’re doing.” He toyed with the edge of the bedspread. “You could.”
She dropped the washcloth from her eye. “No. Major Denver. The terrorist attack. It’s real.”
“I could take it from here. I have the decoded transmissions. Maybe I could get my father to turn it over to the CIA for further analysis.”
“CIA?” She sniffed. “Could be them. Could be someone there.”
“I know.” He gathered the bedspread in his fist. “This whole thing would’ve been unimaginable to me six months ago, until I saw how Denver was being railroaded. Even with proof that the initial emails implicating him were false, the narrative about him working with terrorists continued.”
“To you.” She closed one eye in what could’ve been a wink.
“What does that mean?”
“Unimaginable to you—not me.”
“I know.” He jumped up when the buzzer went off on the coffee pot. He slid the glass cup from the coffee maker and wiped the rim with a napkin. He dumped a few of the little creamers into the dark liquid and stirred it with a stick. It would probably be more effective black, but Jerrica wouldn’t touch a cup of coffee without a bunch of cream in it.
He brought it to her and slid to the floor next to the bed. “We’re going to have to return to your place and get your laptop. Then I think we’d better leave for my folks’ place. Do you think Olaf will try to break in? Does he know where you hide your computer?”
She slurped the coffee. “He’ll know that I have a backup. Won’t do any good to take what I have in my apartment.”
“I’m sorry it’s Olaf.” He circled her ankle lightly with his fingers. “I know he means...something to you.”
“He fed my paranoia for sure.” She dropped her lashes. “And...”
He waited. When she didn’t continue, he glanced up at her. “How are you doing?”
“I’m feeling more in control of my faculties.”
“You’re talking better. She gave you just enough to incapacitate you to get you out of that restaurant.” He unzipped her boot and pulled it from her foot. “I should’ve never let you out of my sight.”
“We were both making fun of Cedar for being so careful.” She swirled her coffee. “I think I let my guard down because I was with you. You make me feel safe.”
“Yeah, and I failed.” He stripped off her sock, and she wiggled her toes at him.
“We had no idea I had a GPS in my purse.”
“We should’ve guessed something like that might happen. We were already suspicious of Olaf. Cedar left that message, and there he was in the Dreadworm office. I should’ve never let him near you.” He removed her second boot and sock. “Do you think he was in there trying to disrupt your and Amit’s programs?”
“Probably, but even he can’t do that. Even if he takes a hammer to the computer, that program is still running somewhere. He can destroy the hardware, but not the process.”
“I’ll bet he’s cursing all the precautions he put in place when first establishing Dreadworm.” Gray rubbed his chin. “What’s his endgame? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind bringing down the government.”
“Maybe. I couldn’t tell you.” Jerrica swung her feet up onto the bed and crossed her legs. “I knew he was no fan, but to be a party to killing innocent people? I didn’t see that one coming. Still can’t get my mind around it.”
“He had Kiera killed, or at least allowed it to happen.”
“Had Amit tortured, poisoned Russell.”
“And encouraged and abetted your kidnapping—three times.”
“Should I meet with him and find out what he’s doing?”
He sprang up from the floor and took her empty coffee cup from her. “Absolutely not. We know what he’s doing—working with government insiders and terrorists to plot an attack to undermine this country.”
She fell back on the bed, her legs hanging off the edge. “I’m so tired. Do you think it’s safe for me to sleep now?”
“Sleep?” He stretched out next to her and slipped his hand beneath her shirt, flattening it against her belly. “I don’t recommend it.”
She released a sigh and yanked her shirt over her head. “I suddenly have all my senses back, but I want to make sure touch is still working.”
She unbuttoned his jeans, and tucked her hand inside his briefs.
He sucked in a breath. “Can we try taste now?”
He rolled on top of her and kissed her sweet, coffee-flavored mouth. “I don’t know about you, but my taste is just fine. Only problem is, it makes me want more and more.”
His phone, stashed in his shirt pocket, buzzed, tickling his chest. He plucked it out, intending to toss it on the bedside table...until he saw his father’s number.
He held the display in front of Jerrica’s face. “I’d better take this. It might be about the plane.”
“Go for it. I’m going rinse out my mouth since neither one of us has a toothbrush here.” She shimmied out from under him.
Gray answered the phone. “Hey, Dad. I booked the plane for tomorrow. Is there a problem?”
“No problem. I just wanted to let you know that Keith will be piloting tomorrow. Randy got called away unexpectedly. You know Keith?”
“I don’t think so. Always flew with Randy.”
“Keith’s reliable. Good pilot. Navy man.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Gray grabbed a few pillows and shoved them up against the headboard, and then sank against them. “I have a question for you.”
“Fire away.” The clinking of ice carried over the phone, and Gray hoped his old man hadn’t had enough drinks to fog his mind.
“What do you know about Olaf from Dreadworm?”
Silence answered him on the other end of the phone. Had he caught his father at the tail end of one too many Scotches?
“Dad?”
“Why are you asking about him now? Did you see something on the news?”
“The news?” Gray sat upright. “Olaf’s in the news?”
“Not yet. That was the agreement, anyway. He shouldn’t be in the news, but that’s just it. You can’t trust a guy like that.”
“Agreement? What are you talking about, Dad?” Gray raised his eyebrows at Jerrica, who sashayed back into the room wearing a black bra and panties.
Sensing his mood, she yanked a white robe from a hanger in the closet and stuffed her arms into the sleeves as she sat on the edge of the bed.
His father’s voice came through the line, roughened by the whiskey. “Why are you asking about Olaf?”
“I heard something about him. I’d rather not say how. You first.”
“Dammit. If he went to the press and defaulted on the arrangement, I’ll have his ass in federal prison so fast his teeth will rattle in that big head of his.”
“Agreements. Arrangements. What the hell is going on?”
“As you already seem to know something and you have top-secret clearance, I suppose I can tell you.”
“And I’m your son.” Gray rolled his eyes at Jerrica.
“The government made a deal with Olaf to allow him to come out of hiding and back to the US.”
Gray’s mouth got dry and he ran his tongue over his teeth before answering. “What kind of deal?”
Jerrica bumped his shoulder and he put a finger to his lips. The booze had loosened his father’s lips, making him uncharacteristically chatty but if he knew he had an audience besides Gray, he’d clam up.
His father coughed. “He’s going to stop hacking government databases and turn over everything he has right now.”
“You’re kidding.” Gray’s pulse thumped erratically in his temple, giving him a headache.
“I am not.”
With Cedar’s words ringing in his ears, Gray jabbed two fingers against the side of his head. “Who approved that, Dad?”
“I did.”