Cold Fear (44 page)

In that instant, Cressida’s fears about Dr. Hill evaporated. “Suz, Dr. Hill just gave you
the look
.”

Suzanne downed the shot in a single gulp, then met Cressida’s gaze. “Yes. He did. I’m going for it.”

“No way.”

“Why not? His divorce went through months ago. I don’t have a grant proposal under evaluation. I’ll be defending next spring, and Dr. Hill and his foundation have nothing to do with my dissertation or research. Plus he’s hot, and I’ve had a thing for him for years.”

This was true, Suzanne had been unabashedly jealous when Cressida met him during her internship. “He’s a bit older,” she pointed out.

“Too old for
you
, sure. But I’m on the other side of thirty. Hill is only a year or two older than my ex.”

Cressida gave Dr. Hill her own nod of thanks, then took a sip of her shooter. He tipped his head in acknowledgment, but his smile was entirely different from the one he’d given Suzanne. Good. Not just good. Perfect. She might survive this horrible evening after all. If only the translator would show up, she could head to her hotel room and get a few hours sleep before her early flight.

Suzanne stood. “I’m going to go talk to Patrick.”

Cressida laughed. “He’s
Patrick
now?”

“Well, if I’m considering having sex with him, I really shouldn’t think of him as ‘Dr. Hill’ anymore.”

Cressida smiled and shooed her with a wave. “Go. Hit on the world’s foremost oceanographic explorer. Leave me all alone after what I’ve just been through.”

“If he’s upset you punched Todd, I might be able to convince him not to tank your grant.”

“Well, in that case, give him a blowjob, and tell him I suggested it.”

Suzanne winked at her. “The things I do for friendship.” She crossed the bar with the confidence of a woman who always got what she wanted, and Cressida admired her self-assurance.

Alone at the table, she glanced around the noisy nightclub. It was a beautiful, sultry night in a hot, beguiling place. It was a shame that in this moment, it was the last place in the world she wanted to be.

She pulled out her cell phone. They were seven hours ahead of DC, meaning it was around three in the afternoon there. She tapped out a quick text to her friend Trina, telling her Todd was in Turkey and asking if she could find out if he’d been acquitted.

As she waited for a reply, she watched Suzanne and Dr. Hill—
Patrick
—on the dance floor. With Suzanne’s entertainment for the night set, she would happily leave, but she still needed the translations.

“My uncle pulled strings to get me out of the US before the trial.”

Cressida jerked her gaze up to see Todd on the other side of the table. She again curled her fingers into a fist. “I don’t give a damn.”

He shrugged. “I’m here because I have unfinished business. With you.”

She jumped to her feet and planted both fists on the table. She enunciated each word carefully. “You do
not
have unfinished business with me. Our business ended the day you stole from the department.”

“Excuse me, Miss Porter? Is this man bothering you?”

She turned to see Hejan, the translator. The wiry Kurd stood in a broad, menacing stance. Todd was bigger, but somehow Hejan managed to look meaner.

She smiled, grateful he’d arrived. He was late, but still his timing was perfect. Her conversation with Todd was decidedly over.

Todd let out an angry roar and slammed the table into her hip. Knocked sideways, she fell, landing hard on her side on the foul nightclub floor. Stunned by Todd’s sudden violence, she was even more shocked when she twisted around to see he held her translator by the throat.

What the hell?

Todd was many rotten things, but he’d never been violent. In decking him, she’d been the one to cross that line. She surged to her feet, ignoring the pain in her hip, determined to intervene before Todd hurt Hejan. Strong arms grabbed her from behind, stopping her. “Let me go!” She struggled against the person who held her.

“Never get in the middle of a dog fight,” the man said in a low tone that didn’t disguise his American accent.

It was over in a flash. One moment, Todd’s hands were wrapped around Hejan’s neck, the next, Todd was being shoved toward the entrance by Hejan, who held a knife to his throat. Hejan ejected Todd from the club, then turned to face the packed room of frozen onlookers. The sharp tip caught the light as Hejan sheathed the blade in a practiced, unconscious motion. The shiny surface was clean and bloodless.

He hadn’t hurt Todd, he’d just gotten rid of him. Shocking, but efficient.

She had trouble breathing as she took in how deftly and quickly Hejan had wielded the vicious blade. If she’d stepped in, she could have been seriously injured, or at the very least, she’d have thrown off Hejan’s smooth timing.

The arms that had held her were gone, and she twisted to face the man who’d stopped her, but there was no one behind her. She scanned the faces of several men who sat alone or in groups, wondering which one had stopped her, but no one met her gaze. All eyes were on Hejan as he crossed the lounge to her side.

She almost wondered if she’d imagined it—the chokehold, the knife. It was crazy. “I’m sorry,” she said to Hejan, knowing how vastly inadequate the words were.

The young Kurd shrugged like it was no big deal. The other patrons returned to their revelry. The world resumed spinning.

She didn’t know what else to say. She reached for the table and pushed it back to line up with the others that ringed the dance floor. Hejan dropped into Suzanne’s vacated chair at the same time Cressida resumed her seat. “I’d offer to buy you a drink,” she said, “but you’re Muslim.”

He smiled. “I’ll have a gazoz.” He signaled to the waitress and ordered the local soda. Task completed, his gaze flicked down Cressida’s side. “Are you okay?” he asked in a low, raspy voice she could barely hear under the loud music. Todd
had
hurt him.

“I’m fine,” she lied even as her hip throbbed.

He reached into a thin satchel he wore slung across his chest, plucked out an envelope, and handed it to her. “A write-up of my translation and a digital recorder on which I recorded translations of the map in Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, and Farsi so you can hear the pronunciation. Each language is in a separate file directory so you can easily play the place names for locals when they don’t understand you.”

“I’ve never considered using a digital recorder like that. I can see how that will be helpful. Thank you.” It was brilliant, actually, but she worried how much it would cost her. “I must owe you for the recorder. They aren’t cheap.”

He waved her off. “The university provided it. You must return it when you come back next week, or they’ll bill you for it.”

She let out a small sigh of relief. She’d return it first thing because free was the only price she could afford. “Perfect.”

Next, he slid a small card across the table. “My brother’s phone number.”

She tucked the card away, grateful for it. Hejan’s brother, Berzan, had agreed to act as her guide and translator for the week. A guide was vital for this trip because southeastern Turkey—which bordered Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and was far more conservative than the western part of the country—could be considered unsafe for almost any American, especially now, with ongoing fighting with ISIS along sections of the Syrian border. Add to that the fact that she couldn’t speak Kurdish, Turkish, or Arabic, was a woman traveling alone, and her trip was risky at best.

She’d spent the better part of six months planning this excursion—made thankfully cheaper because she was already in the country for the underwater excavation—and had no choice but to make the trip alone. At one point she’d planned to ask Todd to join her, but that ship had crashed, burned, and sunk. Of course, once she’d learned that he was a thief with shady Jordanian connections, she had to wonder if he’d had ulterior motives for being interested in studying ancient illicit trade routes in Kurdish territory.

*     *     *

I
AN COULDN’T BELIEVE
it. The woman with the mean right hook was the next link in Hejan’s cell. He’d been ready to believe Hejan had only intervened because she needed help, but then Hejan handed her an envelope with a mark on the corner. The signal the envelope contained the microchip.

Hejan hadn’t told Ian the courier would be unwitting, which meant this woman could well be a true conspirator who’d knowingly accepted the job of delivering the microchip to the leader of a Kurdish terrorist group. It rankled that he’d considered her attractive when it was possible she was a traitor.

“Are you certain she’s American?” Zack asked through the earpiece.

“Her accent is American.”

“That can be faked.”

Ian studied her again. Turkey had a wide range of ethnic groups with an equally diverse set of physical attributes. The woman’s dark hair, eyes, and deep tan could easily pass for Middle Eastern. She bore a strong resemblance to the actress Natalie Portman, who, if he remembered correctly, was Israeli. But the way the woman moved, the way she talked, even the way she punched… Her mannerisms were all American. “Not under stress like that. She wasn’t faking; she wanted to stop the fight. No way could she have hidden an accent.”

Twenty feet away, the pretty traitor tucked the envelope into her purse. The packet stuck out of the small bag, easy picking for a brush drop.

Ian spoke softly into his drink. “Can’t get a read on this. It’s so…blatant.”

“Get her picture so it can be run through the known associates database.”

Ian rolled his eyes. He’d been at this far longer than Zack and didn’t need to be told his job.
Rookies.
“Already sent it.”

Hejan and the woman chatted for several more minutes, then she yawned and glanced at her watch. Hejan nodded and stood. She caught the eye of her blonde friend and waved.

The blonde smiled and returned her attention to the American man she’d cozied up to. It was odd that the blonde hadn’t checked on the brunette after the fight.

The brunette wore a short, midnight-blue dress with a snug top cut low enough to reveal that impressive cleavage. She draped her purse over her shoulder just as a man walked by and bumped into her. The bag slipped and dropped to the floor.

She bent to retrieve it with reflexes that showed she hadn’t had much to drink. While she bent over, Hejan got a prime view of her ass while Ian got a glimpse straight down her top. He corrected his initial assessment of her cleavage from impressive to downright spectacular, but a quick glance at Hejan revealed the man’s gaze was fixed on the fallen purse, not the blatant display.

Yeah. Hejan had definitely passed her the chip, and now he was worried.

She slung the long purse strap across the opposite shoulder so it crossed her chest and wouldn’t be easy to dislodge again, then she swept her long hair off her neck and twisted it in a knot that somehow managed to stay up without a fastener.

With her hair up, her high cheekbones became more prominent. She went from being simply pretty to…well, something more. Irrelevantly and involuntarily, he found himself wondering about her eye color.

Focus, dammit. The microchip is now in play.

Hejan and the woman headed for the exit, but not the main one, which emptied onto the busy Antalya street. No, they went through the hotel entrance. The woman had a hotel room?

Shit.

“Grab her drink and see if you can get a print,” Ian instructed Zack. “I’ll follow and get her room number.”

She had a microchip that held information wanted by at least three countries and two terrorist networks. Ian couldn’t lose her. If she managed to pass it up the line, then a terrorist organization would have access to the funding they needed to plan and implement a major strike. Ian’s orders were clear: follow the chip, but if there was any chance he’d lose it, take out the carrier by whatever means necessary to stop the data from reaching the group leader.

His primary goal was to intercept the chip, identifying the group leader was secondary.

Hejan was playing a dangerous game, and unwitting or not, the woman was in it up to her beautiful unknown-color eyes.

Find out more on Rachel Grant’s website:
www.Rachel-Grant.net
and the
Covert Evidence page
.

Read the start of Toni Anderson’s Multi-Award Nominated Romantic Suspense/ Spy Thriller…

THE KILLING GAME

©Toni Anderson

I
T LOOKED AND
felt like the dominion of Gods.

Special Air Service trooper Ty Dempsey had been catapulted from a rural English market town into the heart of a colossal mountain range full of pristine snow-capped peaks which glowed against a glassy blue sky. Many of the summits in the Hindu Kush were over five miles high. The utter peace and tranquility of this region was an illusion that hid death, danger and uncertainty beneath every elegant precipice. No place on Earth was more treacherous or more beautiful than the high mountains.

He was an anomaly here.

Life was an anomaly here.

Thin sharp needles pierced his lungs every time he took a breath. But his prey was as hampered by the landscape as they were, and Ty Dempsey wasn’t going to let a former Russian Special Forces operative-turned-terrorist get the better of an elite modern-day military force. Especially a man who’d shockingly betrayed not only his country, but humanity itself.

They needed to find him. They needed to stop the bastard from killing again.

The only noise in this arena was boots punching through the crust of frozen snow, and the harshness of puny human lungs struggling to draw oxygen out of the fragile atmosphere. The shriek of a golden eagle pierced the vastness overhead, warning the world that there were strangers here and to beware. Dempsey raised his sunglasses to peer back over his shoulder at the snaking trail he and his squad had laid down. Any fool could follow that trail, but only a real fool would track them across the Roof of the World to a place so remote not even war lingered.