Secrets of the Dead (22 page)

“Floor one clear,” another voice sounded.

There wasn’t a camera on the main floor that wasn’t near an exit so Declan had no way of monitoring the team’s movements except for the snippets that came through the mic. Time seemed to slow. Stretch interminably. “Floor six is clear again,” he said as the older man re-entered his room with the ice bucket. Another minute passed.

A door opened on floor seven. And Declan knew who he’d see coming out of the room. “Armed woman in the hallway of seventh floor. Heading to the elevator.”

“Shuang,” Eve breathed.

Adrenaline was spiking, but he kept his voice calm as he marked the woman’s progress on the camera. “Armed woman entered elevator on floor seven.” An officer was supposed to have dismantled the elevator operation, Declan knew. If he’d been successful, Shuang wouldn’t get far.

A moment later she reentered the hallway. “Armed woman left elevator and back in floor seven hallway,” he said. He watched her progress for another second before her intentions became clear. “Armed woman positioned near stairway on floor seven.”

Simultaneously he heard, “Prepare for entry.”

“Do not enter floor seven.” It took effort to keep his voice calm as he tracked Shuang’s movements. “Shooter on floor seven.”

There was a burst of activity on some of the cameras. SWAT officers poured out of the stairwell onto the eighth and fifteenth floors floor and swarmed toward the predetermined rooms, parting for the two tactical officers holding a battering ram. Once one door was breached, the duo would take on another, while other officers raced into the room, weapons ready.

“Shooter on floor seven nearing the stairwell.” Team members in riot gear were coming out of one of the rooms on the eighth floor to join their teammates who had breached the other two rooms. He could hear screams through his mic and Declan knew they came from the awakened women in rooms 1501 and 1502.

“Armed woman on seventh floor four steps from stairwell door.” Declan monitored Shuang’s movements closely. “Weapon in right hand. Reaching for door with left in three…two…one.” The scene exploded a moment later and a tactical officer carrying an armored shield burst through the door, slamming into the woman, knocking her off balance. He was joined by several other officers and one of them tackled Shuang, knocking the weapon from her hand and restraining her while another performed a body search.

The eighth floor camera showed the policemen herding two handcuffed men from two rooms next to each other. Harris and Amin. The one on the fifteenth showed a subdued and restrained Taufik flanked by two tactical team members, while others tried to the contain the stream of women coming from the two rooms. All wore shapeless cotton gowns and were barefoot. Each had a thick black bracelet encircling one ankle. In the milling crowd it was impossible to count to see if twenty-nine women were accounted for.

“They won’t have coats,” Eve whispered.

Without switching his focus from the laptop, Declan reached out link his fingers with Eve’s. With all the activity in the past few minutes, her concern remained with the women. He knew without looking at her that her gaze would be searching the image shown on the fifteenth floor camera, looking for Brina.

It was with no small measure of satisfaction that he watched Shuang hauled to her feet, arms bound behind her and hustled through the stairwell she’d been attempting to access. Since English wasn’t the woman’s first language, there was a good chance Eve would be involved in the woman’s interrogation. And that, he thought grimly, was a scene he was going to insist on watching. He couldn’t wait to see her face when she realized that they were still alive, and that she’d been duped by the two of them. Given the tantrum they’d heard on the receiver earlier this evening, she wasn’t going to take the news calmly.

“Do you have a visual on Malsovic or Zupan?” Stillions’ voice sounded on the mic.

Declan felt Eve’s hand squeeze his. “Negative. No image for the past couple of hours.” They’d been stationed here before the raid started at least that long.

“We’ll start clearing the floors one at a time. But chances are, they aren’t on the premises.”

“Eve saw the two of them leave the hotel this morning, but I saw Malsovic this afternoon.”

“We’ll keep looking.”

“If they don’t find him…” Eve murmured.

“I know.” Declan’s voice was grim. As long as one of the players in Royce Raiker’s abduction attempt was on the loose, the boy was still in danger.

In contrast to the quick eruption of activity when the raid had been in progress, the next hour crawled by. He relayed the details that came from the whisper mic to Eve. They watched Shuang, Amin, Taufik and Harris get hustled away in police cars that had arrived on scene. Shortly afterwards a chartered bus pulled up close to the front entrance. “The women are being brought to the elevators on the fifteenth floor,” he told her. Before he knew what she was up to, she pulled her hand from his and opened the door. “Stay here.”

But she was already gone. And Declan knew exactly where she was headed. Swearing, he opened the opposite door, balancing the harnessed laptop with his free hand and he jogged after her. He caught up with her as he rounded the bus, in time to see her get corralled by an officer charged with securing the perimeter.

“Translator at entrance,” he said into the mic. “Needs clearance.”

“Clear Eve Lassiter,” Stillions’ voice sounded. As Declan neared her he saw her show the officer her ID. The man nodded and handed it back to her before moving away.

The temperature was in the single digits, and a sharp wind cut through the coats that had seemed too warm while they waited in the vehicle. Pretty soon, the women began filing out of the hotel, wearing thick white socks on their feet, but still clad in only the nightdresses they’d worn earlier. Some were weeping, while a few wore an expression of shock. Others clutched each other, speaking rapidly in a foreign tongue.

Declan followed when Eve broke away to approach the cluster of women coming out the hotel doors. “Brina!”

One of the females detached herself from the group and walked rapidly toward Eve who hugged her. “You will be all right. I promise.”

Brina gave her a quick squeeze and then stepped back. “I did not believe.” She paid Declan no mind. Her focus was on Eve. “You said there would be help…but I could not let myself hope. Thank you. For all of us, but most of all for Dajana.”

Eve’s expression softened. “You were the one who helped your friend, by being brave enough to speak with me. You stood up for her, when no one else would.” When two officers walked toward them she said quickly, “I will see you soon. Now you must go.” She stepped back and the woman continued to the bus.

Declan went to her side, slipping an arm around her waist. He could feel her shivering, but he couldn’t coax her into the vehicle until the last of the twenty-nine women had climbed into the vehicle and it had lumbered away in the first few miles toward freedom.

_______

“I should be
exhausted. And I am, physically. But mentally…”

Declan helped Eve slip her coat off and draped it carelessly over the back of a chair. He followed it with his own. “Tough to turn your mind off after a scene like that.”

“So many sad stories.” And it was the tales the women had told, rather than the rescue operation preceding the interviews that would keep her awake. “Three of the women had been sold to Malsovic by family members and were terrified that if they returned home the same thing would reoccur.” Those had perhaps been the most heartbreaking interviews to conduct. With one hand balancing herself on the couch, Eve pulled her boots off. “Several feared their family finding out how they had been victimized, and the shame that revelation would cause. Many told similar stories to the one Brina had revealed, and feared returning home to their family without the wages promised them by Malsovic to offset the money paid for the ‘opportunity’ he promised in America.” And one, Buppha, had vehemently denied she’d been victimized at all. The trauma of prolonged psychological, sexual and physical abuse the women had suffered would take years to overcome.

He sat on the couch and toed off his shoes. “You’re the reason those women won’t spend the rest of their lives as slaves. Try to concentrate on that.”

Eve shook her head, propping a hip on the arm of the couch next to him. “They owe their thanks to Brina. And when I find myself overwhelmed with their heartrending stories, remembering the interview with Xie Shuang will cheer me.”

His face lightened. “I watched the live feed of all the interviews on a TV in the next room. The look on her face when you walked into the interview room was worth paying money to see.”

The memory had a ribbon of satisfaction curling through her. “I prefer her expression when I started repeating Stillions’ questions for her in Chinese.” Twice the woman had lunged across the table at her, venomous curses spewing from her lips. Each time she’d been restrained by a second agent in the room. “Unfortunately, she didn’t reveal much of interest before she stopped talking altogether.” And no amount of probing from the federal agents had changed that.

“Stillions said the information you got from Khalid, the attendant at the desk, and Shuang’s men, Amin, Taufik and Harris, is more than enough to build a solid case against the woman.”

She nodded. The men at least had been all too willing to talk, even though their stories had been told painting themselves as victims. “But none of them can shed any light on what Shuang was planning for Royce Raiker. And our inability to discover that, along with the disappearance of Malsovic and Zupan feels like a failure.”

He took her hand and gave a tug, tumbling her off her perch and into his lap. Then looked entirely too pleased with himself for her to believe he hadn’t had success with the move. “We still have their computers to look at. Stillions said the evidence was all being expedited by Raiker’s labs. We didn’t fail. We just haven’t finished yet.”

Somehow her position on Declan’s lap, the subtle pressure from the arm he’d looped around her waist, seemed far more dangerous than any of the activities they’d been engaged in for the past twenty-four hours. And still she couldn’t find the will to move. Her body melted, just a fraction, against his. “I don’t want to be finished until Royce is safe. And I want to see the case of the women through to its conclusions. I don’t get to do that enough. My job…” She stopped then, years of reticence about her career ingrained in her. Then shocked herself by going on. “You were wrong about what I do. I’m not a member of the Intelligence Community at DOS. As a language specialist I do provide translation and interpretation for…high ranking members of the government.”

She was discreet enough not to reveal how closely she worked with the White House and the Secretary of State. “But because of my familiarity with a wide array of languages, I’m sometimes loaned out for special assignments, by the request of a number of agencies.” CIA, NSA, FBI and DEA had all made such requests in the past couple of years. And the covert assignments she’d taken part in had been far more exhilarating than interpreting for a sensitive trade agreement or translating during the brokering of a ceasefire between war-torn countries. “I blame my staid upbringing for my taste for excitement.” Her gaze met his and her heart stuttered a bit in her chest. Something she couldn’t identify held her there, much too close to him, when every shred of logic urged her to move away.

His fingers brushed a strand of hair back from her face. A slight smile curved his lips. “I knew there was more to you than met the eye, Evie. You’re freaking brilliant. Surely you realize that.”

Her heart did a slow lazy spin in her chest. Brilliant. It wasn’t true—not even close—but he could make her feel that way when he looked at her like this. He could make her feel…too much.

“My parents never used pet names or nicknames,” she murmured. There was something about the glint in his eye that made it difficult to look away. “Which made the nickname I got stuck with even more incongruous. I can’t tell you how much better I like the your name for me.”

His eyes went to smoke. “I thought of it the first time I saw you first thing in the morning. Before you showered and tamed your hair, when it’s a mass of wild ringlets around your face. The rest of the world sees Eve, the mask you don, but Evie…that’s the part you try to hide from the world.”

She tried to catch her breath. He looked too deeply. Saw too much. And that was just a fraction of the danger the man represented. Declan Gallagher had heartbreak written all over him. And that was one risk she’d always scrupulously managed to avoid. But there was temptation here, in the intensity of his expression. The firm wall of his chest, and the way his hand moved to rest possessively on her hip. She looked at his mouth, remembering the feel of it on hers. Hot. Devastating. Just a bit wicked. And Eve was reminded that some risks were worth taking.

She closed the distance between them, brushed his lips gently with hers. The softness there always surprised her; it was at odds with the innate toughness that was so much a part of him. His eyes went to slits, and she saw the evidence of his desire in his expression. But although his lips moved beneath hers, he appeared content to allow her to set the pace. The freedom was more than a little heady.

Hooking her arm behind his neck Eve closed her eyes and gave herself over to the moment. There was so much to learn about a man from his kiss, she thought, a little dreamily. The nuances of touch and taste. The gradual shift of pressure and increasing hunger until the kiss became a prelude to something more.

She’d dated her share of men, had slept with a select few. With none of them had a mere kiss elicited this rollicking in her pulse, this instant steamy rise of emotion. The danger that Declan Gallagher exuded drew her as the moon drew the tide. But it was what she’d learned about the man himself that him irresistible.