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He had to be the laughingstock of the international-security community. Apparently, if anyone needed a decorated, former Delta Force operative with ten years of undercover experience and his team of highly trained specialists to impersonate fairy-tale characters, Chet Stryker was their man.
He’d wanted to run Stryker International on his terms. With his choice of assignments.
But clearly pride wouldn’t pay the bills. And they had accomplished their mission—to protect six-year-old Gretchen Brumegaarden and one hundred of her closest friends and family members from a terrorist threat. Still, it felt like a compromise. He needed to do everything he could to make his little company a success, hoping to convince himself that he hadn’t blown everything when he’d retired early from the military.
Since the day he’d kicked Mae out of his life, it seemed he’d made one glaring mistake after another.
“We’re taking the midnight train back to Prague,” Chet said, pressing the automatic unlock on their economy rental car.
“No airplane?” Artyom, his computer techie from Russia, ran to catch up, toting his own provisions, most of them contained in his laptop case. He’d been recruited by Wick, a former Green Beret whom Chet had enticed to leave special ops after a particularly brutal tour. Chet’s business partner Vicktor—a former FSB agent—had closed the deal, talking Artyom into joining Stryker International. Luke Dekker, former Navy SEAL, acted as medic and team explosives expert. Now all Chet needed was a profiler, perhaps a negotiator, and, yes, a pilot.
He still hadn’t found someone as skilled as Mae. Not even close. He’d been setting his sights lower and lower, until he was looking at recruits fresh out of a bush pilot school in Alaska. He needed Mae. But every time he opened his phone to call her, his chest would burn, old wounds stirring to life, and he’d shut his phone and the image of her from his mind.
He wouldn’t—couldn’t—put someone he loved in the line of fire. Been there, done that.
Chet opened the trunk and threw in the gear. “No airplane. This check barely covers our expenses and salaries for the next month. An airplane means another dwarf suit in your near future.”
Chet needed a break, something to put his business on the map. Something big, international and newsworthy.
Maybe even something to make him feel like a soldier, a patriot, again. Anything but a cartoon character playing a charade.
The wind blew against the ancient elm trees ringing the property, picking up his rather un-Snow-White scent. “Let’s get out of here.”
His cell phone vibrated as he opened the car door. Fishing it out of his pocket, he looked at the number—and stilled.
“You drive, Wick.” Chet tossed him the keys, walked over to the passenger side and opened the phone. “Chet here.”
“It’s…me.”
“I know.” Wow, did he know, because just like that, everything he’d felt that day when he’d met Mae Lund—the longing, the hope, even the delight—rushed back and took a swipe at his voice. He found it, although it emerged a little roughed up as he turned from the car. “How are you, Mae?”
“Not so good.” Was there a tremor in her voice?
“What is it?”
“It’s my nephew, Josh. He’s missing.”
“Then call the police.”
“He’s in Georgia.”
“I’m not sure what I can do from here—”
“Georgia, the country!” Her voice resounded loud and clear, and on the edge of desperate, despite being on the other side of the world. Uh, she was on the other side of the world, right? “Where are you?”
“Getting on a plane in Seattle.”
“Let me guess—to Prague.”
Silence. Then, “No, to Georgia. Why would I come to Prague?”
Wow, that hurt, more than he would have ever guessed. Because for a second he’d been hoping, wildly perhaps, that she’d forgotten how he’d stomped her pride into tiny bits, and instead remembered that once upon a time he really cared what happened to her. What she thought about. What food she liked and what movies she saw. What her dreams were…outside the ones that included the rather negative byproduct of him watching her die, that was.
“You’re going to Georgia?”
“Where else would I be going, Chet? Honolulu? My nephew is missing, and I speak Russian, which means I can probably get by, thanks to the years of Russia occupation. My sister is losing her mind, and I think I can find him. I know he was working near Gari…in a village called Burmansk.” Her voice dropped. “I was hoping that…maybe…oh…never mind.”
“Wait!” Don’t hang up. “You want me to find him?”
“No. I can find him. I was hoping you could tap into your contacts in Georgia to help me.” Her voice dropped.
“You know the ones.”
“Yes, I know the ones.” He climbed into the car as Wick started it up and cranked the air conditioner. “I’d forgotten that I’d told—”
“I didn’t.” She said it softly, as if the details of the letters he’d written while he’d been in Taiwan had mattered to her. Only she didn’t know it all, because if she did she would never have called, would never have asked him to dig into his past.
“I…I’m not sure that’s such a great idea, Mae. I don’t even know if I can find the right people anymore.” Not to mention the bounty on his head in that particular country. Mae could be walking right into the fallout that he’d always dreaded. “Have you called the embassy?”
“Yes, but their official position is that Josh ran away with a local village girl.”
“Maybe he did.”
“He’s not that irresponsible. He calls home every Sunday night, and was the only kid in his Sunday school who earned a gold star for perfect attendance. He’s an Eagle Scout, for Pete’s sake. He’s not going to just take off and scare everyone around him!”
“Calm down, Mae. I’m sure he’s already back.”
“He’s not back, Chet, that’s the point!”
“But it doesn’t mean you should go running off to Georgia! There’s still a war going on over there!”
“Exactly why we need to find him. What if he’s been kidnapped?”
“What if you get kidnapped?” He took a breath and lowered his voice to something that resembled calm. “What if something happens to you?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
But it would; he knew it in his gut. He’d seen the civil war between Georgia and Ossetia up close, and with Russia as Ossetia’s new comrades, one nasty misfire from the Georgian side and the entire mess could reignite. Just give the Ossetians one reason, and no amount of international tongue-clucking would keep them from unloading their Kalashnikovs right into the rag-tag Georgian defenses.
And Mae would be caught in the middle, a beautiful redheaded American pawn, leverage for whatever terrorist group nabbed her.
“Please don’t go, Mae. It’s not safe—”
“Last time I checked, I didn’t need your approval. You’re not my boss.”
He clenched his jaw so tight he thought his molars might crack. “I can’t believe you’re doing this again! Have you learned nothing about acting on impulse?”
He realized he was shouting when Wick glanced at him. He exhaled slowly as they turned onto Karl Liebknecht Street. The architecture in this part of old Berlin betrayed the age of the city—the dangling chandeliers that lined the streets, the colonnades of the stately former Third Reich buildings, the grandeur of the Brandenburg Gate, now silent and looming over them. “I’m sorry, Mae, that wasn’t fair—”
“You bet it wasn’t. If I hadn’t ‘acted on impulse’ and helped spring Roman out of prison, he might still be there. Or maybe not—maybe he’d be dead. I know that he wasn’t your friend, but, well, I guess it’s clear that even if he had been, you wouldn’t have lifted a finger to—”
“Watch yourself, Mae.”
“Forget I called. Just forget it, Chet.” The phone went dead before Chet could open his mouth.
He closed the phone, holding it in his shaking fist, gritting his teeth.
“Maybe you’ll feel better if you throw it,” Wick said quietly.
“I knew a woman like that once,” Luke said from the backseat. “Drove me crazy.”
“I married one,” Artyom added.
Chet shook his head, staring out the window. Crazy was going to Georgia to search for a teenager who’d probably decided to backpack around Europe. Or better yet, hooked up with a village girl and disappeared for a weekend tryst.
“She’s going to Georgia.”
“Isn’t that where you—”
“Yep,” Chet snapped, cutting Wick off.
“Where what?” Artyom asked, leaning forward in the seat.
Wick glanced at Chet, and when he didn’t answer, filled in the silence. “When he was a young Green Beret, Chet embedded with a group of rebels in the breakaway territory of Ossetia and helped them with equipment and supplies—”
“I helped them start a civil war.” Among other things. His own words had the precision of a scalpel, the old wounds fresh and raw. His palms slicked. Carissa’s scream still echoed through the chambers of his brittle soul. He shook himself from the memory, wiping his hands on his knees.
“He did more than that,” Wick said. “The leaders in Georgia declared him an enemy of the state and put a price on his head. If he ever goes back to Georgia—”
“Unofficially, I’m also wanted in the territory of Ossetia—the one that recently conspired with the Russians to invade Georgia—by a terrorist group called the Svan. Their leader, Akif Bashim, would like nothing better than to find me, and throw in a little torture—just for payback—before he beheads me, of course.” Deep breaths, in, out… Chet tapped the phone on his leg.
“I don’t understand—if you helped the Svan, and Akif was their leader, why would he want you dead?”
Chet shook his head. Leave it, Wick.
Wick’s eyes narrowed just a second before he betrayed him. “Let’s just say that Akif had a daughter, who fell in love with Chet.”
Chet drew in a breath. “Yes, something like that.”
Wick reached over and tugged the cell from his whitened grip, dropping it into the cup holder. “Mae will be fine.”
“She won’t be fine.” Chet flexed his hands. “But if I set foot in that part of the world, Bashim will know it. And neither of us will get out of Georgia alive.”
“You can’t go, boss,” Luke said quietly.
Chet leaned his head back against his seat, closing his eyes, and almost instantly Mae appeared, her green eyes bright, her red hair ribboning down her back, her skin sweet and tangy, her soft laughter like a balm on his calloused heart, smiling as he waltzed her around the dance floor of Viktor and Gracie’s wedding reception. Their last magical moment.
Before she dumped the drink over his head.
He ran his finger and thumb over his eyes, dispelling the image. “But can I live with myself if I don’t?”
TWO
Chet blamed his stupidity on his fatigue and the fact that he’d spent twelve hours on a train staring at the ceiling of his sterile compartment, listening to Wick snore, and trying not to imagine Mae disembarking in the Georgia airport in Tbilisi to Russian gunpoint.
No, he’d thought he was overreacting. The gun pointing wouldn’t start until she got to Gori and met one of the trigger-nervous eighteen-year-old Russian “brown boys” supposedly “peacekeeping” along the Ossetia-Georgian border. He’d read the papers over the past few months. “Peacekeeping” seemed to be a euphemism for “daily terrorist attacks.” These days, regions of Georgia bore a strong resemblance to some areas of Iraq.
And hadn’t that been a comforting thought at 2:00 a.m. as they’d crossed the Berlin border into the Czech Republic? Chet had found himself staring out the window at the dark, rolling countryside of Europe, seeing instead the sweeping hills of Ossetia, rimmed by the jagged, snowy peaks of the Caucasus Mountains to the north. Ageless villages, nestled in the nooks and crannies of mountains lush with fir trees, each centered on a lone, stone church. He could nearly smell the lamb kebobs roasting over an open pit, or baking Khachapuri, dripping with cheese. He could hear children laughing as they bicycled through the village, just outside his window, open to the spring air.
But every memory of Georgia ended with the staccato roll of a Kalashnikov being chambered.
He’d closed his eyes, breathing out the past.
No, sleep, regardless of how inviting, hadn’t been a great idea. Not if he ended up rolling in his sheets, lathered in a cold sweat, screaming. Just what Wick and the rest of his team needed for inspiration.
Instead, Chet had focused on figuring out a way to get into Georgia, sans capture, track down Mae and talk her—or throw her—out of the country.
No wonder he hadn’t gotten any sleep on that train. And no wonder, when he’d shoved his key into his office headquarters, he didn’t realize that the security system hadn’t beeped. He’d just pushed his way inside the sparse and dreary three-room flat, dropped his gear on the checkerboard red and black floor, and reached for the light.
It shed the barest luminescence over his dismal office. He’d turned a fifteenth-century, three-room residence into his headquarters. The largest room, flanked by two ornate French doors, housing his black prefab desk, his computer, a couple of black faux-leather chairs and a huge window that overlooked a grassless courtyard, served as his reception and office area.
In a room the size of his former walk-in closet in D.C., he’d fashioned a kitchen of sorts. It overlooked the alley, held a mini-fridge and a one-burner hotplate, and did a nearly miraculous job of infusing everything in the kitchen with the smell from the corner dumpster below. It was with relief that he did his dishes in the bathtub.
The last room housed their equipment, a veritable stash of electronics, and enough weaponry to take over a small, unarmed country. Oh, and his single bed. And a hanging rack for his clothes.
And, he noticed too late, the CIA.
The two suits, with their high and tight crew cuts and clean-shaven chins, must have lost some shut-eye themselves on the flight over from the Pentagon, because they barely cleared their holsters before Chet walked in on them, rubbing his eyes and hoping to flop down on his bed.
“What the—”
And that was all he got out before he, too, had his Glock in his hand, pointed at the taller of the two spooks, a guy who looked as if he might have played defensive end for Ole Miss, complete with the square jaw and blue-eyed stare.
They all breathed a long moment before Ole Miss lowered his weapon. He glanced at his pal. “Agents Miller and Carlson. We just want to talk.”
“Talk without the guns,” Chet said, his voice dead-pan, all vestiges of fatigue flushed from his system.
Carlson lowered his weapon, tucking it back into his arm holster. “We’re the good guys, remember?” A smirk tugged at his mouth as his brown eyes ran over Chet.
Yeah, good guys. He’d been a “good guy” for a different organization once upon a time. He wasn’t sure there was such a thing anymore.
Chet lowered his Glock. “What do you want?”
“We have a situation and we need your help.” This from Ole Miss, who backed away and sat on Chet’s bed, right on the sleeping bag. He folded his hands and smiled, like, Calm down, pal, everybody’s friends here.
Chet didn’t put his gun away. “I’m tired, guys, so make it snappy. What situation?”
Carlson glanced at Miller and nodded. Miller reached for a briefcase that Chet was now noticing about thirty seconds too late. If it had been a bomb, well, so much for worrying about what Disney character to play in his next gig.
