No Stranger to Danger (10 page)

Logan swept a gaze over the shithole cantina.

From what he understood,
MacKall
had gone back to Brazil to hunt down answers, but lost track. Or hope. Either way, he had ended up here drinking the rest of his life away instead.

Logan had done what he could in Brazil to right his mistake, and now he was here to correct the rest of it—to get
MacKall
back on that track he had fallen off of.

Connar
led them a few blocks away and up two flights of stairs to a portion at the end of the barrio. It wasn't exactly the toast of Caracas, but for a hunted spy hiding out, the dingy hole in the wall was preferable.

As soon as they were inside and
MacKall
shut the door, Logan leveled his stare and cut to the chase. "I need you to take something to Weston for me. It is extremely important in whatever Conyers has planned. And then, I need you to find a woman. You got a computer?"

Connar
paused, caught off guard with so much information hitting him at once. "Yeah, man. Let me get it." He walked off to a bedroom in the back and returned a moment later, sitting a laptop on the bar by a dried, milk-crusted cereal bowl that looked to have been on the counter for at least a day. He opened the small screen as he scooted the bowl down the bar to give them room to work.

"What the hell happened to you?" Logan asked as he pushed in front of
MacKall
and started typing, referring not to the fallout of Conyers's treachery, but to the lifestyle
MacKall
had adapted to.

Connar
looked around them, at the dirty clothes slung over the barstool and the litter of opened carryout containers filling the small counter beside the sink heaping with beer bottles.

He cleared his throat and pushed a hand through his hair. "You know, guy stuff," he said.

Logan shook his head and finished logging into his email. Mara stepped closer on his other side, to see also, and Logan scanned to find the photo he had emailed to himself of the young woman. He hoped, prayed, Conyers hadn't been able to find and remove it.

"I don't know who she is," Logan said, "but Conyers doesn't keep photos of women around for no reason."

"Do you know what he is up to? It's
gotta
be something big,"
Connar
said, leaning around Logan's shoulder.

"Only that it involves the Russian Prime Minister and
Sha
Amud
."

"
Oof
."
Connar
blew out the word and leaned against the bar, watching the screen.

Logan turned to him. "He's planning to overthrow the US government somehow, I suspect by creating a national emergency after a terror attack. Then whoever is behind Conyers is going to seize control of the US by use of martial law." Logan paused. "Someone in the US government is working with him to create this disaster. I was trying to hold out long enough to find out who, but I got caught. That is why I need the microchip I stole from Conyers to go to Weston personally, and we both know I can't take it. No one else sees it
but
him."

Connar
nodded. "Got it. What about this woman?"

Logan shook his head as the image of the security photo taken at a street corner came up and a light-skinned woman with short, curly hair appeared. She was in a formal black dress and carried a small black evening bag in her left hand. "I have no idea. Use facial recognition if you can find the software to do it with, or Weston can locate her surely. She's got to play some crucial part, and it seemed Conyers was looking for her, too."

Connar
eyed the screen a moment before he reached to turn the computer closer. He pointed to something in the photo. "She's in DC. Look at the plate on the car passing under the light.

Logan looked closer, saw the two horizontal red dashes with three red stars above. "Good work. Think you can get to her first?"

"If he hasn't found her, I will."
MacKall
looked up to Logan. "I'm glad I get to be a part of nailing that scumbag to the wall."

"You know this could get you killed," Logan warned, though
Connar
knew the risks if anyone did.

His friend smiled with his usual boyish charm. "Yeah, but they don’t know I'm working with you now."

"They know we're not in Kyrgyzstan anymore, and by now I highly suspect Conyers has his contacts looking for us." He glanced at Mara and then back to
Connar
. "That's why I'm asking you to do this for me. If they are busy hunting us, then they won't be focused on you. They haven’t tracked us to here yet. But I'm sure they have checked flight databases and security footage. We can hide our names, but under the circumstances, not our faces."

Connar
nodded slowly and crossed his arms over his chest. "So, you never told me why Mara is here." He leaned on the counter and looked around Logan at Mara. "Now what's a nice girl like you doing with a shit-bag like him again?" he asked jokingly with a wink. "It's been, what, a year since I saw you?"

Mara grinned. "Yeah. Believe me, I had no choice."

Logan glared at his friend. "She's here because Conyers threatened me with her life. He didn't enjoy the consequences of that mistake." He gave
Connar
a look that clearly said he would not enjoy the consequences if he did not remove his charming eyes from Mara.

Unaffected,
Connar
waggled his brows at the pair anyway. "Oh, really?" He grinned knowingly. "Might there be a reconciliation?"

Mara snorted loudly.

Logan had the impulse to slam his fist into the other man's face, but he only tensed his jaw. "Once you’re done making eyes at my ex-wife, do you think you can find me a knife? A sharp—" He glanced around them. "—sterile one?"

Chapter Ten

1800 hours, Wednesday

Caracas, Venezuela

Logan gritted his teeth as
MacKall
made the slice into his lower abdomen over the top of the rice-grain-sized bulge under his skin. To anyone else it might have looked like a scar or blemish. Blood pearled out and slipped over the side of the incision as
MacKall
pinched to extract the small capsule.

When he had it, he held the microchip up between latex-gloved, crimson saturated fingers.

"So this little thing is meant to wipe out a good chunk of the US?"
MacKall
mused as he lifted the microchip to the light.

Logan reached over to the table and picked up a wad of gauze from the top of the package, taking it to press against the less than half-inch long incision to clot the bleeding.

"One might guess it plays a big part at least," Logan gritted. "A trio of Russians dropped off a briefcase before I went into Conyers's apartment, and judging by Conyers's reaction, I believe what they delivered is now on that," he pointed to the chip
MacKall
rubbed between alcohol-dipped gauze. "I injected myself with that copy just before Conyers showed and his goon,
Taj
, hit me over the head. Conyers knows by now that I destroyed the original. I think whatever is on this has to be some kind of code or a key to something. But I'm not sure." Logan shook his head at the many questions he had regarding the microchip as he looked down to the cut.

"Hey, guys," Mara said. She turned from the seat at the bar
MacKall
had cleaned off. "I think I found something on the woman."

Logan looked up from his side sharply, to
Connar
, before both men started for the bar, shoulder to shoulder.

"What?" they asked in unison.

Mara lifted a brow at them and shook her head. "Well, I was looking at the picture and it was taken recently, because the handbag she is carrying is from the new Dmitri Markov fashion line." She paused, turning back to them. "I only know because of a fashion obsessed co-worker." Mara flicked her wrist and rolled her eyes, turning back to the screen as they came to each side of her. "Anyway, so I Googled events in Washington, and look." She pointed to a single picture in a group of three on the front page of the Washington Times three weeks prior.

"It's her,"
MacKall
said.

"What was she there for?" Logan asked.

"Doesn't say why
she
was there, but the article is about a celebration for Vermont's new governor, Lucas Powell
¾
son of the Secretary of State Jonas Powell
¾
after his election. Marissa
Volkova
is the name listed under the photo of the group. She is obviously
someone
if she was in the photo."

He and
MacKall
glanced at one another.

"Look her name up,"
MacKall
said.

Mara typed in the name. Search results came up, but they were scattered topics and nothing promising.

"At least you have a name to go on," Logan said, rising from the screen.

MacKall
went around the counter and reached for a sandwich bag, then dropped the chip inside. "You sure you want this to go to Weston?"

"He's the best candidate for a trustable person in the US."

Connar
looked at the piece. "So what's the plan?"

Logan sighed, dropping his stare to the floor in thought. "We are going to need passports to get into the US. I take it you have one?" He looked up at
Connar
.

Connar
nodded.

"Know where we can get ours? We might have maneuvered from Nouakchott to here by use of bribes, but that's not going to happen getting into the US."

MacKall
nodded again and grinned.

"Good. Were taking separate flights, and the earlier you leave the better. Now that you have what is important, Mara and I will distract Conyers. The US needs to know what is coming, so make sure
that
gets into Weston's hands before anything else."

"Wait, flights to where?" Mara asked, turning at the waist to face them, her hands coming around to grip the back of the chair.

Logan paused. "To Tennessee."

Her brow pinched. "I thought you said we couldn’t go there."

"I know. I changed my mind. I think we need them to follow us to the US, and it will only make it easier on them if we go somewhere they know we are familiar with. It's the only way I am going to get Conyers into the US himself. He'll send
Taj
or a few of the others before he will come, but if we can hold out long enough—"

"Wait, but what if Weston comes after
you
?" Mara interrupted.

Logan's expression turned grim as he looked at her. What was important was the safety of all his countrymen he had taken a vow to protect, and then singularly Mara. "Then, I guess, he comes after me," Logan said.

"So we are bait now?" Mara bit her lip.

He
was bait.

"We will hide out until you—" Logan pointed at
MacKall
. "—give us word that Weston has the intel and can give me an update on the whereabouts of the woman."

Connar
nodded. "What about contacting Conyers, to make sure he comes?" he suggested.

Logan put a finger to his lips, pacing just a bit. "Possibly."

"I'll contact Butler. He's at Campbell, not a few hours away from where you are headed. Let me see what he can do for you. He can get you a car, weapons … anything you will need."

Logan nodded, looking down at his side and dabbed the gauze. The cut began to clot, and blood no longer dripped. He tossed the bloodied gauze into a trashcan at the end of the bar. "Let's see about those passports." His eyes fell on Mara. "Supplies and clothing, too."

****

2100 hours, Wednesday

Caracas, Venezuela

Mara stepped out of the shower and into the fog of the bathroom. Taking a towel from the hook beside the shower, she blotted the droplets of water from her face, and then reached around to squeeze her hair in the towel.

It was amazing that, after the simple hot shower, she felt human again.

Mara wrapped herself and then bent to pull her washed and rinsed slip from the shower. She wrung it out with her hands, a splash of water hitting the old, chipped, porcelain on steel tub.

Having determined the coral slip salvageable, no blood or tears, she'd washed it when she bathed. Mara reached to the shower curtain where a hanger hooked onto one of the plastic loops holding the curtain up and pulled it off to hang the slip on by its straps, then hung it back up to dry overnight.

Mara caught her towel as it started to fall, turning for the sink and reached to wipe the fog from the mirror mounted on the wall over it. She glanced down to the shaving cream, razor, aftershave, and cologne littered there—it was a strange, purely male, assortment she hadn’t seen on a bathroom counter in quite a while.

She sighed, maybe a little forlornly.

"Logan," she breathed his name as she skimmed her finger over the cologne bottle. Though it wasn’t his, seeing it made her remember the spicy scent of his skin. She inhaled, looking up into the mirror as a trickle of moisture returning to the mirror rolled down the glass front.

Behind her, in the reflection, she could see the ghost of her past, her ex-husband fresh out of the shower, too, his skin glistening and dewy from the wet heat of the water as he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. In the memory, he kissed her neck, the rough bristles of his jaw scraping her shoulder as his lips touched her skin.

She gasped and blinked, the memory fading in the mirror.

Mara's throat hitched as a tear slipped down her cheek. She shook her head, a furious rise of emotion cutting off the gentle-but-savage vision of Logan from her memory.

Mara gave herself a shake and looked back in the mirror as she lifted the towel from her body to her hair and began to tousle it dry with the towel. When she was satisfied, she tossed the towel into the hamper and went to the toilet where she had left her new clothing and began to slip into the panties and bra. She tugged the white tee over her head and next stuffed her legs into the jeans, smoothing her hands over the skin-tight pants and turned in the bathroom mirror to have a look as she did up the front.

Mara picked up the over-shirt she had gotten, a red-plaid with rolled up sleeves, and began to shrug into it, but stopped at the voices outside the window.

She paused, listening. Those weren’t the voices of passersby, but two she recognized.

"You don’t still love her, do you?"
MacKall
asked.

Mara gaped and skipped to the window, pulling herself up to have a look into the dark alley. Opting for the shower, she had not gone back with Logan and
Connar
to get the passports after they'd gotten the call that they were finished.

There was a drag of silence and a hard glare from Logan to
MacKall
.

"Sorry I asked,"
MacKall
muttered.

"What exactly
were
you doing around her a year ago?" Logan asked.

Connar
glared back, coming around Logan's shoulder in the path between the houses and stopping in front of him. "You act like I was sniffing around for a piece of ass. We saw each other at Maloney's funeral, asshole. You weren’t there. Someone had to console her. You act like because you left her, everyone else did, too. Like we didn't have any feelings of loyalty and friendship—"

Mara gasped at the fleshy smack outside the window and dropped out of notice, a second smack quickly following.

"You fucking dick…"
Connar's
words trailed off.

Mara peeked to see
Connar
spit blood to the side and drag his hand over his mouth.

"I saw the way you looked at her," Logan said, likewise dragging the back of his hand against his lips.

Connar
laughed. "What, the same way I look at all women?"

A growl emanated from Logan. "
She's
not just any woman. Stay away from my ex-wife," he said.

The look Logan gave
Connar
set her back from the window and made her slink down the wall to her butt.

All the pain he had caused her when he left, all the pain she'd thought tucked neatly away, came crashing down on her in that moment.

Mara hugged her face to her knees, and a hot tear bled into the second-skin jeans.

How was she supposed to ever forget what she had just seen?

How else, but the obvious, could she interpret what Logan said?