Thin Ice (32 page)

The men filed out of the barn, black clothing and black balaclavas merging with the night, their NVGs guiding them through the darkness. Once they reached the end of the short gravel road, they melted into the darkness like shadows in shade.

Without an earpiece, Lance wasn't privy to any conversation taking place, but as far as he could tell, no one was talking. Mark was mute as he advanced through the underbrush with a silent stealth he must have honed during his HRT days. On his heels, Lance was just as quiet. When your life depended on perfecting covert approaches, you learned the skill fast.

A third of a mile in, Lance slowed.

Was that . . . music?

He touched Mark's arm, and the other man angled toward him.

The almost inaudible melody was vaguely familiar. Where had he heard that before . . .

Clair de Lune.

It was the piece Mac had teased him about that day in his apartment, after he'd thought the title was a woman's name.

“Do you hear that?” He pitched his voice so low Mark had to lean toward him to pick up the words.

“Yeah. Any idea what's going on?”

“Christy used that music for one of her competitive routines, and it's coming from the vicinity of the pond. A natural ice rink. Our guy could be making her skate. He's sick enough to pull a stunt like that.”

Mark spoke into his voice-activated mike, filling in the rest of the team. “Move in slowly until we get a visual.” He paused. “That fits. Let us know when you have something in sight.” Mark turned to him. “Kurt's picking up a slight glow in the vicinity of the lake.”

“He must have some lights set up. Pretty risky for a guy who's been very careful up till now.”

“Not if he knows the area is secluded and is convinced he isn't on anyone's radar. Plus, even the most adept lawbreakers can become lax and cocky once they've gotten away with a few crimes. In any case, the light will work to our advantage. Let's take this last stretch slow and easy.”

Lance fell in behind him in silence, his heart prodding him to run while his brain said creep.

Better that Mark was leading this show after all—because he wasn't certain which would have won.

Sixty seconds later, he spotted the faint glow through the trees.

Mark stopped. Touched his earpiece. “Keep looking. Check out the blind. Everyone else, find a concealed position as close as you can get to the pond.” He shifted toward him. “Kurt can
see the ice. Christy's skating. There are two chairs at the edge of the pond—but no sign of Terzic.”

Christy's skating.

As Mark's words registered, Lance grasped a tree trunk to steady himself.

She was okay.

But that could change in a heartbeat if they didn't find Terzic fast.

His nerve endings began to buzz. “He's watching the show from somewhere—and odds are he has a gun trained on her.”

Breathe, McGregor.

“I think that's a safe bet.” Mark sounded cool. Calm. Controlled. The way you were supposed to sound on a high-stakes mission. The way he'd always sounded on missions where lives hung in the balance.

Until tonight.

“You want to hang back here while we finish this?”

The fact that Mark had picked up on his nerves didn't surprise him. The guy was a pro at reading people. He had to be, with his background. And his question wasn't unexpected. Had their positions been reversed, Lance would have ordered Mark to stay back. No option. By giving him a choice, Mark was expressing confidence he could get a handle on his emotions and do the job.

And he could.

He would.

“No. I'm in this to the finish.” His reply came out strong, confident, and steady.

“Okay. Let's work our way in.”

Lance followed the SWAT team leader, wincing with every snap of a dead twig. Ending this was going to be dicey even with the element of surprise on their side. Tipping off Terzic to their presence before they were ready could be disastrous.

The faint glow was easier to discern as they approached,
though it was still subdued, and when Mark stopped to motion him forward, he saw why.

The pond was in a small, bowl-shaped depression, the woods rising like a natural amphitheater around it.

But it was Christy who drew his focus. She was skating, as Kurt had said, her motions stiffer than he recalled from the long-ago tapes he'd watched.

Understandable, given the circumstances.

“Kurt spotted the deer blind, but he's not seeing any movement.” Mark pointed across the frozen surface as he pulled out a pair of night-vision binoculars and handed them over. “I don't, either. Take a look.”

Lance aimed them toward the area, giving his eyes a few seconds to adjust. “Nothing.”

“If he's in the blind, he's staying very still.”

“He might have heard us.”

“Let's hope not. That's a complication we don't need.” Mark spoke into the mike. “Brett and Kurt, find a spot that gives you an optimal line of sight to the pond in general. Everyone else, find a concealed position and scan for our target. He's here somewhere, and until we get a fix on his position, we wait.”

Mark began to move again, easing down, taking care to make as little noise as possible.

As Christy continued to skate, Lance followed him down—doing his best to curb his frustration. He had no quarrel with the SWAT team leader's waiting strategy. In Mark's position, he would have made the same call.

But Christy was so close. A hundred feet away when she glided by on this side of the pond—yet there wasn't a thing he could do to help her except wait. Try to spot Terzic. Stay quiet.

And pray they pinpointed Terzic's location before he tired of Christy's skating and stopped the show.

Permanently.

H
er legs were getting tired.

Her fingers were growing numb.

Her body was beginning to shake from the cold.

She wasn't going to be able to keep skating much longer.

And once she stopped, it was over.

Pressure built behind Christy's eyes, and her vision blurred. She stumbled. Caught her balance.

Don't cry! That will only give Neven
more pleasure, and that's the last thing you want
to do. Right?

Right.

She needed to stay strong. Hang on to her control.

Opening and closing her fingers to stimulate circulation, she glided around a twig embedded in the ice and forced herself to face reality.

The FBI either wasn't tracking her cell after all, or if they were, they weren't going to get here fast enough.

Before she succumbed to cold and fatigue, she needed to play her final card. The one she'd dreamed up while going through her skating moves on autopilot, when her skate blade had sliced
through a dead leaf caught in the ice and she'd realized she
did
have a weapon.

Skate blades could cut.

Toe picks were sharp.

Up close they could both do serious damage.

Pulse accelerating, she glided into a spiral, examining the perimeter as she circled the pond on one leg, the frigid air stinging her face. Still no sign of Neven. Why had he left his ringside seat . . . and why hadn't he returned? Was he watching her from the shadows? Was he getting into position for a kill shot—or just trying to fluster her with his absence? Would he respond as she hoped after she laid her trap to lure him onto the ice . . . or simply shoot her and be done with it?

But if he killed her here, he'd have to carry her back through the woods to the car. That would be far too much trouble . . . wouldn't it?

Maybe not. Who knew how his brain worked?

If she didn't try this, though, she'd be dead soon anyway.

Better to go down fighting.

She made one more circuit of the pond. Neven remained MIA. Was there a remote possibility he wasn't watching? That she had a window of opportunity to skate off the ice and disappear behind those cedar trees?

No.

This show was for him, and he wouldn't want to miss any of it after going to such great lengths to set it up. He was there, in the darkness, enjoying every minute of the command performance. Waiting for her to drop. Relishing the idea of literally bringing her to her knees.

Well, she wasn't going to give him that chance.

Heart pounding, she finished the spiral, furtively worked off one glove, and picked up speed.

Now!

She set up for a double axel. Jumped. Rotated in the air.

And as she prepared to land, she lifted her hand and took the final step to make the ruse seem authentic—praying that if Neven fell for it, the ending of this story would be far different than the one he had planned.

Lance watched Christy leap, rotate—and fall hard on the unforgiving surface. She crumpled into a heap and skidded across the ice, coming to rest near the center of the pond.

And she didn't get up.

As she lay there still as death, every muscle in his body tensed.

Mark's vise-like fingers tightened on his arm. “Don't move!” The hissed words were soft but terse.

Fisting his hands, Lance wrestled his instinctive spring-into-action response into submission. His colleague was right. Neven was out there somewhere. If they exposed their position now and the man panicked, the situation could go south very fast.

“This might draw him out.” Mark loosened his grip, inspected the perimeter of the lake with his NVGs, then spoke into the mike. “Everyone hold. Keep a sharp eye out for our target.”

Lance lifted the night-vision binoculars again. The tremor in his fingers was a new experience on a mission . . . but he'd never been trying to save the life of a woman he was falling in love with, either.

As he zoomed in on her motionless form, he sucked in a breath. Despite the green NV hue, he had no problem spotting the growing, dark pool on the ice beside her temple.

“She's bleeding!”

“I saw that.” Mark's voice remained calm. “There's a paramedic team waiting at the barn by now.”

A lot of good that did them. Christy needed medical help here. Now.

He forced his lungs to keep working and scrutinized her face. It appeared the blood on the ice was coming from a gash on her temple. She must have hit her head hard or she wouldn't be . . .

He blinked.

Looked again.

Had her eyelash flickered?

He skimmed the rest of her body. One hand was curled into a fist—and she appeared to be breathing fast. Not typical symptoms of unconsciousness. The blood was real, but . . . could she have fallen on purpose?

His brain began firing. “Mark, I think the fall might be a trick to lure Terzic onto the ice.” He recapped what he'd noticed. “Getting him onto her territory would help level the playing field, give her a fighting chance.”

The other agent studied Christy. “You think she'd actually try a stunt like that?”

“Without question. You don't get to be an Olympic athlete without taking calculated risks—and fighting to win.”

Silence while Mark mulled that over.

“I guess it's not outside the realm of possibility. Let's see if it works.”

As Mark filled in the rest of the team and gave another set of instructions, Lance continued to watch Christy. If this was an act, she was doing a stellar job. Despite the cold that must be seeping through her leggings and inadequate jacket, she wasn't moving a muscle. Her willpower and discipline had to be off the chart.

Either that, or she was really hurt.

Whichever it was, though, her fall was going to force Terzic to react. This drama was about to end.

One way or the other.

An accident wasn't part of his plan.

From his perch in the deer blind, Terzic glared down at Christy. She'd warned him the surface was too rough for skating, and the several hard falls she'd taken in the past half hour were proof of that. Still, watching her get bruised and battered had been a plus from his perspective.

But it would have been nice to have another thirty minutes of fun before he ended the show.

That didn't appear to be in the cards, however. Not with that blood on her forehead. And if she was dizzy once she came to, getting her back to the car through the woods was going to be a bear. It would also take longer than he'd planned.

He needed to wrap this up.

Shifting carefully in the confined space, he scanned the area around the perimeter of the pond. All was quiet.

Nevertheless, he hesitated.

Was it possible those breaking twigs that had sent him scurrying for the cover of the deer blind had been caused by humans rather than a roving deer or raccoon? Or was he overreacting?

Surely it had to be the latter. No one suspected he had Christy—or knew where he was on this cold night.

Yet something didn't feel right.

Better to test the waters before he ventured into the open.

He felt around until his fingers closed over a half-empty box of ammunition on the floor. Tucking himself close to the rear wall, he lobbed it through an opening, putting as much muscle behind the throw as possible.

A few seconds later, it crashed into the undergrowth in the distance.

Then he waited.

And watched.

“Our guys on the west side are checking it out. It could be a deer.”

As Mark relayed the gist of his radio transmission, Lance tried to rein in his impatience. “Too coincidental with Christy's fall.”

“I'm inclined to agree. But let's wait for a report. If it was a deer, our target will be spooked too. He'll be on edge and jittery.”

That made two of them.

Two eternal minutes later, Mark pressed a finger to his ear. “Copy. Kurt and Brett, get where you need to be.” He swiveled around. “No sign of an animal, but while our guys were investigating the noise, they think they saw a movement in the deer blind.”

Knowing Terzic's position was good; the position itself wasn't.

“That spot gives him a direct line of sight to Christy. He finds out we're here, he could pull the trigger—and blind shots by us might not take care of him fast enough to stop a fatal bullet from finding her.” Lance motioned toward the north side of the pond. “Those chairs and generator are outside the circle of light. If we could turn off the generator, that would give us a window to get her out of harm's way.”

“You're assuming he doesn't have NVGs.”

“Yeah, I am. But if he does have them, I doubt he was wearing them for the show.”

“The show's over.”

“Look . . .” Lance did the quick mental fact-sort he'd perfected in Delta Force. “Why bother with NVGs if you're going to light up the pond? They restrict peripheral vision, and unless you're used to wearing them, they're annoying. If he illuminated that”—he gestured to the pond—“I'm betting he used a flashlight on their walk through the woods.”

“There's a lot hinging on that bet.”

As if he didn't know that.

“Do you have any other ideas about how to flush him out? Christy's bleeding, and if she doesn't already have hypothermia, she'll get it fast lying on that ice. If Terzic hasn't come out on his own by now, do you really think he's going to? He must be spooked already, and if that was a deer in the brush rather than an attempt on his part to draw
us
out, he's going to be more cautious than ever. Since we can assume he plans to kill Christy anyway, he can wait for hours to see if we make a move. She can't.”

His logic was hard to refute—but Mark had nailed it. If he'd called this wrong, if Terzic had NVGs, this could backfire.

Big time.

But doing nothing wouldn't be an option much longer, given Christy's perilous position.

“I'm assuming you want to use the window of darkness before Terzic snaps on his flashlight—or whatever light source he has—to grab Christy.”

“Yes. Once I have her, we can take cover behind those cedar trees.” He motioned toward the small cluster of dense evergreens at the edge of the pond.

“After you cross the slippery ice.”

“I played hockey. I've been around ice.” Years ago . . . but he left that unsaid.

“On skates.”

Lance gave the SWAT team leader a steady look. “I can do this, Mark. I was involved in dozens of high-stakes rescues in The Unit. I know how to evaluate risk and develop a strategy to minimize it.”

Three long seconds crawled by.

“Okay. Given the circumstances, it's not a bad option, and I think it could work—assuming our target isn't wearing NVGs. I'll get the guys set. How much time do you need to get into position?”

“Five minutes.”

“We'll cover you as best we can if Terzic gets trigger happy once the lights go out. Good luck.”