Paul sighed and pushed out of the chair, grabbing a cane before moving toward her, slow and unsteady. She understood why he wouldn’t leave. He couldn’t.
He stopped a couple feet from her, a pleasant smile on his lips. “I knew you’d get in here. You’re still good.”
“And you’re a dirt bag. Wow, nothing’s changed.” She snatched the leather pouch and unrolled it. “What the heck is this?”
“Follow it. Figure it out and follow it. Whatever is at the end of it is vital.”
She looked up, frowning. “You’ve gone nuts in here, is that it? Follow a map? Do I look like a treasure hunter? I can’t do this. I have a life, and I’m not playing this game.” She held it out and when he wouldn’t take it, Tessa shoved it in his hands. They were cold and clammy and that forced her to look more closely. Dark circles under his eyes left him hollow, a hint of skeleton, his skin pale. His lips had a gray tinge to them.
“Why haven’t they taken you out of here? What are you doing here?”
“If I could leave now, I would. Denmark stinks and, no, they don’t know who I am.”
Tessa shook her head as if it would make the pieces fall into place. “If you’re playing Garcia, where’s the real one?”
“Dead.” He quickly explained the last assassination attempt during the coup, and the lack of a body. “This President spouts socialism, but his table is filled with some bad-ass Commu—”
“Like you give a damn.”
“When it means staying alive, yes. Garcia and his supporters stand in the way, and I’m Garcia, the target.” He pointed to his face and wobbled on the cane.
She frowned. “Have you seen a doctor?”
“I think the doctors did this to me.”
“You’re trapped, a hostage? Who’d do that to the Vice President?”
“Don’t you read the papers? Take a number. Democracy is circling the rim here. Take that off,” he snapped.
Tessa pulled off the black hood and met his gaze.
Paul Ramos stared into her icy-blue eyes and didn’t have to see the rest of her. Her image was planted in his mind years ago; a body that was all curves, and an exotic look in sable hair and tanned skin. But it was her pale blue eyes that were arresting, intense light in sultry features.
He already regretted bringing her into this, but he was cornered on all sides and couldn’t move freely. His only choice was calling the number that he’d recited like a bedtime chant, a reminder of his one decent act. Yet seeing her was like looking back on his shame.
“What’s at the end of this?” She gripped the leather pouch.
“It was my wife’s—his wife’s,” he said, leaning hard on the cane. “She’s getting chummy with a lot of powerful people, too. Granted, her husband is like this”—he gestured to himself—“and she’s filling in, but she’s up to something.”
“Up to something? Skulking in the shadows? Passing notes, what?” He was hallucinating. Eloisa Garcia was in her late fifties, well preserved and genuinely loved by the people. She reminded Tessa of Betty Crocker or Nancy Reagan with a fetish for handbags. But seeing him struggle to move, Tessa was realistic. She couldn’t get him out. She stuffed the map in her small backpack, thinking that the wife of the VP creeping around her own house was just ridiculous. “What will you do?”
His features tightened as if he didn’t expect her to care enough to ask. “Find out what’s really going on and stop it.”
The courageous hat didn’t fit him well enough for that to have a shred of truth. “Why did you drag me into this again? We had a deal and you’ve broken it.”
He looked repentant for about two seconds. “I’m cashing in the only chip I have left. Do this and we’re done, forever, I swear.”
“I don’t trust you, so that means nothing.”
Then behind him, she saw movement. She stepped back quickly as three men materialized from the far shadows in a circle behind Ramos. She watched through the sheer curtains. A hand over his mouth, a knife at his throat, and in seconds, he was gagged and secured.
The man in the center turned in her direction, aiming his gun. “Step out from the window, hands up.”
Tessa held her hood, panic flooding through her. A bizarre sense of déjà vu engulfed her.
“Now.”
She took a step forward, her eyes already burning with regret. Like the overlay in her memory, the new image pressed forward. He lifted thermal goggles to his forehead, his face and body hidden in Black Ops gear. Just like before. His gaze ripped over her and she saw it all in his eyes. Shock, dismay, then confusion.
His weapon lowered. “Tessa?”
In that instant, Ramos hit his heel on a floor alarm, setting it off. Tessa whipped her hair into the hood and slipped out of sight.
Logan headed after her, but Max grabbed his arm. “We’ve got to split.”
Quickly, Logan cut Ramos’s bond, yet stared into Garcia’s face. It was uncanny.
“The whole family’s here, how nice.”
Ramos’s shock was palatable and Logan recognized the oily smile. “We came for you, asshole. You blew it.” Logan’s anger exploded in his fist, one hit dead center of his nose. Ramos didn’t move again and he started to heft him over his shoulder.
“No time, no time,” Sebastian said into his headset, watching the doors. “We’re blown.”
“Finn? Finn? You get that?” Logan whispered Riley’s call sign. “Abort. Cut all comms, all comms, bug out, now.”
Reluctantly Logan left Ramos, rushed to the side of the room and checked the halls already filling with people. So the team moved to the only exit left. Logan opened the window and climbed out, scaling down the ironwork, going still when the searchlights splattered them in white relief. Waltzing from cover to cover, he tucked into the evergreen growing up the wall, waited for a pass of light, then slithered down the wall. He hit the ground running, Max and Sebastian flanking him, and they had a clear shot to the tree line. If they could get to the street…
Forty yards out, armed men swept in from all sides.
Logan stopped short, breathing hard, his hands up. “Well, crap.”
Soldiers pushed assault rifles in their faces. The USA would not respond to their capture. They were on their own.
Two blocks and one street over, Riley Donovan tore off the headset, and put the SUV in gear, driving away from the residence. As he did, he shut down all communications and let the computer rest for a few blocks, then rebooted. The small laptop pinned to the dash glowed in the dark, and he switched frequencies, then pulled into a parking lot near a skyscraper and shut off the engine. He tipped the screen to lessen the glow, yet never took his eyes off the frequency line, open and waiting.
He wondered if he could hack into the security cameras, yet as he tried, two questions repeated. Who was Tessa? And what the hell was she doing in the private residence with Ramos?
McGill stood so fast his chair rolled back. The two other people in the room had seen that disaster happen. No one spoke, but ruination hung in the air. The night vision film rolled again and he watched, knowing it wouldn’t change. Anger coiled in him. Ramos, he thought. McGill couldn’t say for sure that Ramos hadn’t recognized Chambliss before he set off that alarm, but it gave the woman enough time to escape, and trap the team.
“I want a digital of that woman.”
“Cleaning it up now, sir.”
Tessa